Veblen

Join Date 03/2006

Regret buying the game?

I do, for a few reasons...

I play more games than I buy, because, quite frankly, most are only good for a few hours. After playing around with GalCiv2, and noting the developer commitment to both continuing improvement of the game and meaningful participation in the user community, I decided that GC2 was one of those that I wanted to support and bought it.

Well... maybe I should have played the game a little longer. At this point, the honeymoon is officially over and what I'm left with hardly seems worth $45.

The AI, to put it mildly, was more impressive in print than in person. Certain fundamental structural issues Stardock got exactly right, and seriously, props to them for that. They made the right choice with regards to parity ("no cheating") between human and AI players (well, almost--the diplomacy skill is a break from total parity). They understood how the AI should change its decision making process as the difficulty level changes, and from what I have read implemented this successfully (although I can't say, not having played on the lower difficulty settings). And, in general, the basic mechanics of the game are pretty solid and create an environment in which an immerisve, exciting, and sophisticated game play experience is possible. But the more I play, the more problems crop up with the AI; problems which, in aggregate, make the it so uncompetitive on "Intelligent" that, despite the great potential, the gameplay is shallow, predictable, and without challenge (for me).

For example, I recently completed a game (1.1B, huge map, 9 opponents, tough) and noticed these problems, among others.
1) Dedicated raiders devaste the enemy, where by raider I mean a cargo hull with 1 beam attack and maximum engines. Undefended troop transports, constructors, freighters, and unreinforced starbases are easy prey. The AI never builds or anticipates raiders, and as a result has no defense against them.
2) Enemy planets, as revealed by conquest or espionage, display poor utilization of special resources and suboptimal building strategies. I saw the screenshots that previewed the improved 1.1B buliding AI, and the screenshots looked ok. I didn't see that in my game. What I saw was mismatched buildings on bonus tiles, a profusion of unproductive buildings like orbital fleet managers, hopelessly long build times (upgrading to stock markets before upgrading factories), a propensity to build farms only where they're not needed, and a shocking underemphasis on production in general. And yes, this was in 1.1B.
3) Poor shipbuilding combined with poor tactical deployment by the AI resulted in a kill-death ratio for me of over 15 to 1. It's hard to summarize the mistakes; it was many small things. I had a huge advantage in surveillance and speed, and the AI never managed to muster a serious threat.
4) The AI for diplomacy, in particular for tech trading, is highly dysfunctional. The AI is not equipped to appropriately value technologies, taking into consideration the possible actions of the other players. This opens the door to aggressive arbitrage strategies for the human player. No change in "weighting" values can correct this problem. To put it simply, the AI needs to understand that it is better to be a participant than to be an observer. The key words here are "game theory" and "economics."

The only major problem not related to the AI, in my opinion, is these forums. This issue has been discussed here before. Seriously, though, sales were good. Put some of that into better site design, new servers, whatever. I don't know, I expect better.

I have some hope that future patches will resurrect this game, and deliver on some of the latent potential. As it is, with the AI problems, it's just, well, disappointing.

Edit: See comment #44 /Edit

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Perhaps you should move back to the currently released version (1.0X, I think), betas are not guaranteed to always have good AI.

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First I would like to say thank you for posting such an intelligent criticism of the game. Frankly I was expecting a troll when I clicked on the thread.

You bring up some good points, particularly with the AI's limitations. The game is still fun for me, and I'm hoping that Stardock will continue to improve things. Perhaps if they read about the raider problem, we might expect the AI in 1.2 to address that.

Anyway, good post.

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Perchance the only thing that may put this one on the shelf, is no multiplayer.

Thats the BEST way to fix the AI problem if you ask me. How to implement this so it works well and is still fun? Don't know. Still a great game by comparison though.

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Xan

Join Date 01/2003

+29

So what strategy game AI do you find sufficient? If GalCiv II's isn't good enough for you, then what is?

When people speak highly of the computer AI, they speak of how good it is compared to other games. I can't think of another game that is even remotely close.

Why not simply turn up the difficulty level?

And I hope this doesn't sound rude but complaining about the forums seems petty and has nothing to do with the game.

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The computer does seriously miss powerful tactics like cargo hulls loaded for sensors or speed. right now it's combat tactics are very straight forward. It doesn't cheat which is good, but it leaves it with very little information to evaluate and it currently has a poor ability to predicte human stratagies.

I do however strongly belive stardock will improve these things, probably in 1.2

It is unfortunate that we are essentially paying to play the open beta, but it does make things a lot easier on the developer and he's doing a good job so I won't give him to hard a time.

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When people speak highly of the computer AI, they speak of how good it is compared to other games. I can't think of another game that is even remotely close.

The Civ4 AI plays Civ4 better (closer to human ability) than the GalCiv2 AI plays GalCiv2.

You can argue about how much that's because of the game design, and how much that's because of the AI itself. I think there are some fundamental design features of GC2 that make it harder for an AI to play well. Like the fact that you can easily launch surprise attacks, contrast to Civ4 where you can't launch an attack from inside enemy territory. Or just the fact that movement rates are much higher and vary a lot between different ships and civilizations.

I don't think it's petty to complain about the forums. It's a real problem that they don't work correctly with non-IE browsers. Of course, it's still better than what most publishers do. And there are other forums, like Apolyton and CFC.

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ok to begin with, in each patch they have and 1.1 when fully finished, the ai has been changed, they are constantly adapting it and have been asking the top metaverse players to tell them what strategies they use and what dumb stuff the ai has been doing so they can fix it. if you want a better game, crank up the ai dificulty. in v1.1 tech trading can be disabled so if you dont like how they do it, you can keep them from doing it. all i have to say is give it some more time, they are still working on it, and will continue, its still a new game, and it will keep improving, give it time

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I agree with mishlai. The trolls do get annoying...
I know for a fact that the transport issue was an experimental addition to the beta. They decided to get it to analyse the area, and if they couldn't see anyone, would go on through. This fails because you can still see them, especially if you have planets behind the ship, its a deliberate human-style error, which has been repaired to make it work better in the newer beta.
I do agree to an extent about poor deployment. I've been in situations where the AI should have finished me off, but due to poor deployment and my superior ships (despite weaker tech). I lost in the end, have not enough diplomacy and trade to hold eveyone off, it turned into an all-on-all melee with me in the middle. I took out half the galaxy's ships first, but had to surrender because they just couldn't put me down.

However, the fact was they realised on quite a few occasions where to be, and ambushed my lucky ranger fleet, wiping out the best part of my army.

Diplomacy is a deliberate issue to highlight the different AI's, and also works against the Yor, who have miniturisation bonuses. (Gameplay lost to an extent, yet it's logical. Evil robots with dalekian attitudes don't make good conversation)

And, the AI trumps over pretty much every AI out there. The things I've seen it do while being a diplomat are quite amazing, including once when I (the Drath) thought I was running the galaxy in a sneaky way, had a group of people declare war on me, and found it the Humans had paid them off to do so.

As for replay value, there was a point where the game got boring for me for a bit, but I experimented different playstyles to be challenging. Try winning diplomatically as the Yor, or militarily as the Iconians. Another fun thing is to be the evil puppet-master of the galaxy, or wait until a precursor device is activated, leave it a game year, then try and kill the race who had it (damn near impossible) The AI has also undergone some revamps (especially Torian) for the finalised 1.1

As for the forums, we apologise if your criticisms weren't delivered as quickly as you may have liked. I myself run in Opera, which still isn't really widely supported, and they work fune. Were it not for the fact that the rest of your points were valid, (to a degree) I would offer you some cheese. To go with your whine.

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#4: Yeah, I haven't seen a 4x AI that has been adequate in my opinion. Usually I play 4x games long enough to understand how to exploit the AI, at which point it stops being fun. What sets GalCiv2 apart is that they are so close. If I criticize the game it's because there's real potential here; sadly, a few very exploitable AI problems spoil it.

Turning up the difficulty level will just give them an economic bonus, not make the AI start doing smart things. It'd be like going from beating crippled children to beating crippled children while running uphill. Not what I'm looking for.

As for the forums, they're a big part of why I bought the game. And they're slow, buggy, user-hostile, and frequently down. Like I wrote about, I expect better.

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The Civ4 AI plays Civ4 better (closer to human ability) than the GalCiv2 AI plays GalCiv2.

I'm sorry but..are you high?

Civ 4's AI starts cheating right after Noble level. And anyone who loses at Noble on Civ4 is not very good at strategy games. Civ4's AI is very basic and not remotely challenging unless you play at at least Prince level.

GalCiv II's AI is doesn't start to get advantages until it's AI is at Gifted which is very high up on the list.

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Like the fact that you can easily launch surprise attacks, contrast to Civ4 where you can't launch an attack from inside enemy territory

What difficulty level are you playing with on GC2? I don't know about you but when I make a surprise attack or am about to make one, I get a message from altarians (plus others) that they know what I'm doing. Two turns later they declare war on me.

However, I do very much like the "open borders" feature in Civ4...even with that though you can still make a surprise attack in CIV4...just creates plenty of "stack of doom" and place near borders. Once you got a good amount of troops...declare war! I have not once in Civ4 seen the AI asking me or telling me why I got 20 tanks, 10 artilleries near their border.

Or just the fact that movement rates are much higher and vary a lot between different ships and civilizations.

You make a very good point but remember GC2 is a space game and Civ4 is a land based game (based on REAL life units and REAL life terrains). You going to expects ships move at different rates.

I don't think it's petty to complain about the forums. It's a real problem that they don't work correctly with non-IE browsers.

I agree. Complaining about the forum isn't petty. But the OP seems to suggest that the forum and the game is somehow linked.

For example:

The only major problem not related to the AI, in my opinion, is these forums

Hold on a minute "The only major problem not related to the AI" WHAT!! How is the forum and the game related. I prefer them to focus on the game, make more changes, additions etc then having to overhaul the entire board just because some people are used to other forums?!!

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It is unfortunate that we are essentially paying to play the open beta, but it does make things a lot easier on the developer and he's doing a good job so I won't give him to hard a time.

that's seems a tad unfair to say. stardock could correctly point to the countless user reviews and magazine reviews stating how good the computer ai is in the release build. what you are saying implies that stardock didn't finish the computer ai which is absurd.

not that anybody asked my opinion but it hink half the posts about ai are from people who want to prop up their "street cred" by crapping on the computer ai because eveyrone knows it is really good.

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Turning up the difficulty level will just give them an economic bonus, not make the AI start doing smart things. It'd be like going from beating crippled children to beating crippled children while running uphill. Not what I'm looking for.

Are you serious? That is not how it works at all.

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Xan

Join Date 01/2003

+29

As for the forums, they're a big part of why I bought the game. And they're slow, buggy, user-hostile, and frequently down. Like I wrote about, I expect better.

Like what? Civilization4.com's forums? Do they have forums? I can't even go on there because the site says I don't have Flash installed even though I do. So maybe someone else can answer me, does Civ 4 have forums and does Sid Meijer post in them? Or does "expect better" involve comparing the game to some magical super website?

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like a few people before me said, give everything some time. The GC2 stardock team is the most user supportive bunch of people ever. If people have a problem with something, they will fix it. Look at how young the game still is, and ho wmany updates have already been made available. More fixes have been made in the first few weeks then some games get in their lifetime. I expect the AI to be fixed for all the problems you mentioned within 3 updates. (so by version 1.3) Same goes for the forum, many many people are having issues with it ergo it will be fixed. Although I believe it isn't as high a priority as the game itself, which is good.

on a side note, you may friend have just written the first constructive critisism I have ever read on a game forum. Good job! There are intelligent civilized people out there after all!

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I so agree with you. So many reviews and I mean MANY reviews have commented on how good the AI is.

The real problem with the game is this: Stardock and GC2 are very different and some might say unique. They put an emphasise on making the player feel like an actual customer (hence no cd protection and constant updates). They put an emphasise on making sure the game is fixed of all problems and they always add new content. Some thing that you don't actually see with other games. They put an emphasise on the AI...making it an enjoyable single player game without the need of multiplayer. That is the problem with the game

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It'd be like going from beating crippled children to beating crippled children while running uphil

No, but the point is the AI is tuned to do stupid things at lower levels aswell. That's a bitch to do, code the AI and they say "oh no wait, you're meant to be stupid"
Civ4, as has been said, you can stack of doom. GalCiv2, you can be wiped off the face of the universe. You do the same thing, they react differently. The forums and the game aren't linked at all, except ifyou stretch your imagination and say "metaverse", which really shouldn't be in this article

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I also have noticed a problem with the games AI set to intelligent...

There have been games where I was going to lose and I end up winning. Why? Because I can make ships that have extremely high movement points and while I don't have the military might to take on my opponent head on I can easily make fleets of extremely fast crappy ships that will take out the enemies troop transports and ships guarding their planets. Then I use extremely fast troop transports to bum rush their planets and I win every single time. No matter how bad off I am when I use that tactic it always works. I prevent them from invading me and I slowly take one planet at a time. Shouldn't the AI see this and either start increasing its own movement speeds or maybe taking more of an effort to guard its troop transports? It should but it doesn't.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy this game, it is a lot of fun and the AI is awesome compared to most strategy games I have played in the past. I fully expect there to be strategies that we humans divise that the AI can't cope with but the positive side is that the developer is commited to continually updating the game. That tends to keep things a little more interesting.

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The AI kicks my butt at Normal. Sorry, your majesty, that you are so great and intelligent that even GalCiv AI can't live up to your lofty expectations.

To the guy who said Civ 4's AI is better, that's insane. Even I can beat Civ 4 with lots of players quite a few notches up. It doesn't allow me to trade very much with it and so restricts what players can do that it takes a cop out. Were the borders put in because they're cool or because they help the computer AI? Does it red-out the techs and other things you can trade for better strategy or because the computer AI is easily exploited?

NO OTHER game other than GalCiv II has ever had an AI that did the things it does. Messages to player showing that it sees what I'm doing. Flanking my forces. Avoiding some units to get to others. Adapting tactics and strategies.

And they keep making it better. The game's only been out what? 4 weeks and they keep listening to what we're saying and making it even better! The game already has a trophy room of awards from the original release. That they keep improving it still speaks volumes of the type of people they are.

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#13: The AI doesn't get smarter after Intelligent. In the quote you refer to, I was specifically, if not explicitly, referring to raising the difficulty setting above Intelligent.

#14: Have you really not had problems with these forums? Posts not showing up, pages timing out, strange organization of the sub-topics, etc. Forums are not bleeding edge technology. I agree that the forums shouldn't be a problem--but they are.

Maybe I'm on my own here, but I consider the online component (forums, mods, news, updates) to be a critical factor when deciding to buy a game. I think it's a reasonable expectation that the forums are up to par.

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Like what? Civilization4.com's forums? Do they have forums?

Civilization 4 doesn't have forums. They point to CivFanatics and Apolyton.net; both sites have GC2 forums too.

So to complain about GalCiv2.com's forums seems really silly since other game companies don't even provide forums let alone have developers participating on a regular basis.

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#18 by eride
Thursday, March 30, 2006 10:00 PM

Trolling
Insightful

I also have noticed a problem with the games AI set to intelligent...

There have been games where I was going to lose and I end up winning. Why? Because I can make ships that have extremely high movement points and while I don't have the military might to take on my opponent head on I can easily make fleets of extremely fast crappy ships that will take out the enemies troop transports and ships guarding their planets. Then I use extremely fast troop transports to bum rush their planets and I win every single time. No matter how bad off I am when I use that tactic it always works. I prevent them from invading me and I slowly take one planet at a time. Shouldn't the AI see this and either start increasing its own movement speeds or maybe taking more of an effort to guard its troop transports? It should but it doesn't.

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy this game, it is a lot of fun and the AI is awesome compared to most strategy games I have played in the past. I fully expect there to be strategies that we humans divise that the AI can't cope with but the positive side is that the developer is commited to continually updating the game. That tends to keep things a little more interesting.

Just wanted to mention that I liked this post eride. The reason is because even though the AI is very good...there will be things that the developers did not think of and bugs that are bound to be in the game. You did not judge the game because you were able to exploit a certain feature of the game (ie. the ship movement).

You see it seems there are three types of people who play GC2:

1. "I hate the game. The game is crap" TROLL. RANT. TROLL.
2. "HA! I found a bug in the game OR HA! I found a strategy the AI did not follow or implement. Therefore the game is crap and everything about it reeks.

3. "Yes I found a bug or a strategy that the AI didn't use or implement or I found an exploitation. I have told stardock about this and I'm sure that sometime down the track it will be fixed. I'm going to go back and enjoy what the rest of the game offers."

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Maybe I'm on my own here, but I consider the online component (forums, mods, news, updates) to be a critical factor when deciding to buy a game. I think it's a reasonable expectation that the forums are up to par.

So what games have you bought recently, sir? Civilization 4 must not have been one of them.

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I personally think, thatif all who owned the game were asked, teh AI would be ranked very high. Unfortunitly, the nature of a startagy game is that no matter how good the aiis, it's still ai. It's limited, it isn't as smart as a human is, nor ever can be. Humans will always be able to find some nook or cranny with which to exploit (I use the word exploit because it is taking advantae of something he ai has no way to counter, I don't mean "cheat" otherwise I would say it). That's why Moo2 lost it's appeal to me, I learned how to beat it. While the titles are similar, I also think it somewhat unfair to compair with Civ4, which had a much, much, much larger budget/development team.

i for one love the game, wand while I am learning how to win, I lok forward to years of future gameplay (this one's a keeper!)

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The AI kicks my butt at Normal. Sorry, your majesty, that you are so great and intelligent that even GalCiv AI can't live up to your lofty expectations.

Ok. Your experience may be different than mine. Maybe I have more experience, or maybe I've just gotten lucky; maybe I play slower and more deliberately, maybe I spend more time analysing my options instead of "playing for fun." Play however you want to, man, and if you get pushed around on Normal and like the game, good for you.

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