Please fix this

it's a cheat but I think it's acceptable. AI has an edge over the player only early in the game, it's not hard to catch up later on.

Brad early in the development of Galciv explained that he wanted to concentrate on the Computer AI rather than coding a search alogrithym.
Unlike many other games this is the only advantage the AI gets.
The only setting I have found this becomes an issue is on smaller size galaxies but you can out produce the AI on average settings by buying Colony Ships.

My first game in 4C was a small galaxy, with only Drengin for an opponent, and the only "good" planet reachable at first was already taken by a minor. So researched, as quick as I could, transports and took the sucker. Even after all that I got about 2/3 of the good planets in the galaxy before Drengin got there. In most other games I've played they get there before me, so it was a nice change.

Once you get pretty good at the game, this "advantage" the AI players get (and it's part of the plot) is pretty miniscule.

I'm not sure I can agree with you yet, Brad. I played my first game on 4D today - or rather, tried to.

I've been on the verge of moving up to smart AIs, as the average setting was getting too easy. But my 4D game was unbalanced in a bad way. Examples:

1) The only way to trade with an AI is to surrender all of your trade goods in return for 1 or 2 AI trade goods. Actually, it's worked this way in every game I've played until the game I played running 4C. I've worked around it by conducting massive research programs and staying out of galactic politics for as long as possible.)

2) I won the race to an uncolonized corner of the galaxy by 10 or more turns (with a starbase) and colonized one of two systems with class 16 planets. The Yor managed to get to the next system ahead of me. Within 5 turns, the system had THREE colonizable planets at classes 19, 18, and 17, and a population of 2360! I made sure that the Yor weren't able to move ships through my blockade (they'd already declared war on me as I was the next most powerful civ) for at least 20 turns after they established their super-colony. Is that a bug or an advantage. (None of their techs listed indicated that they could have even reached the colony let alone teleport thousands of new colonists to the instantly terraformed system.)

3) The Yor were the wealthiest, most technologically advanced, most militarily powerful civ going by a long shot. This was not in the middle or end stages of the game. With a similar start to the rest of us, the Yor had somehow leap-frogged the rest of the galaxy.

I'm going to try again to see if it's just a one-off, but the game played as if an one of the developer's had forgotten to reset the Yor AI after testing. Anyway, I hope we don't have to go back to playing on dumb to get a challenging game.

End transmission.

Actually, when you read the intro text of the game, you will notice, that the advantage of the AI (knowing all the good planets) is mentioned. They are OLD civs therfore they know the good planets. That shows, that this is intentional and IF there is a balance issue it has to be compensated in another way....

Hunter

The other pain (which Bizarre pointed out) is that the computer apparently ignores range too.

The problem for me usually isn't in getting to the planets, it's getting the resource mining. The player has no clue (as opposed to the star map) that there is something there until the enemy already has it.

Zelphan said "The other pain (which Bizarre pointed out) is that the computer apparently ignores range too."

I, too, have pointed out my suspicions that the AI was ignoring range. I grow more certain every time I play the game. Since the AI is supposed to play by the same rules as us, and since the hyperdrive that the aliens are using was invented by the terrans, I am claiming that this is a BUG.

In another thread brad said that the ai was adjsting their spend percentage each turn. In regards to the yor getting 3 planets, i've checked diplomacy for a.i's from turn to turn, and 1 turn there at -270, the next 320, then next 640, the next -400 etc.... I've noticed that they are buying things very fast, and sometimes they can overwhelm you, but selling them trade goods over time, and other large lease type payments can just slow their economy down, of course you can do a little politicking against them, like less than 10% debstabalization, and it pulls their morale, which lowers their influence, which loses them sectors, and so on.

also check their ships, their hit points are way more than ours and their ranges on their ships are larger (until later in the game)

i got creamed in the last game on 4d the ai's set to genius, they had hyper warp just about the time i was getting to impulse

'The other pain (which Bizarre pointed out) is that the computer apparently ignores range too'

I remember Brad mentioning this happening before. I was under the impression that it had been fixed, though (and, in fact, I haven't seen it happen in a while).

'also check their ships, their hit points are way more than ours and their ranges on their ships are larger (until later in the game)'

Their hit points are larger because they are normally War Party (+50%), and usually put a notable number of their points at the start of the game into military (say around 5 points, for another +50%).

Getting back to the original complaint of this thread, no, it is NOT a cheat. It is a basic premise of the game.