Alfonse

Join Date 02/2006

+12

I think I've played my last game...

Review and commentary

So, I downloaded the 1.2Beta. And I played a medium game on Tough with abundent planets and 5 (total) races. And now I think I'm done with the game. Forever, regardless of expansions. So, perhaps I should review it.

Was it $40+ dollars well spent? In all fairness, I'd have to say yes; I've played it longer than Rome: Total War (though since I'm going back to R:TW, that may not be the case forever

).

I was introduced to some very un-Civilization-like game mechanics; Civ was the totality of my experience with TBS games, so it's interesting to see how different a TBS game can be.

The AI was the main feature touted by the game developers. From annecdotes posted on this forum, I could tell that the AI could be devious, starting wars of distraction while they built up power and so forth. However, at no time did I ever personally encounter such things.

In general, the AIs behaved somewhat similarly. Some races could expand well, others couldn't. Some went for offensive military, others just built a powerful defensive one. However, none of that matters because they all react to the same things in the same way.

The problem with the game is those intriguing mechanics. I've never played a game where you can trick the AI into doing the wrong thing so easily. If you want to keep the AI off your back militarily early on, build a few of cheap attack ships. and have a good diplomacy (build diplomacy wonders). If you want to keep the AI off your back later in the game, research the entire diplomacy tree, and build a Spin Control Center. That will keep you unmolested until you're powerful enough to kill everyone.

Another problem with the mechanics is that, once you get ahead, it becomes a continuously compounding problem. It starts with the tech tree.

In Civilization 2, you can't decide to research banks and marketplaces whenever you want, even if you have cities where they would be worthwhile. You have to research along the general intwined path that the game designers put together. You can get ahead in certain areas, putting off certain other techs and so forth. Terrain (and city size/growth) mandates that you can only get bigger so fast.

In GalCiv2, the only thing that prevents you from getting whatever building you want is how much research you have. Which makes research (and money) the foundation of any victory. Obviously, production matters, but research gives you production and more research. There's no slowing-down mechanism, so you can (relatively) quickly reach end-game status where you're just researching weapon techs.

In Civilization, you can only build one library in a city. Given specific terrain, and a specific tax rate, there is a fundamental maximum quantity of research that a city can do. In GC2, there are numerous ways to get more research; by allocating points during race creation, by finding galactic resources, by building more/better research buildings, and by using econ-starbases. If you do them all, the cumulative effects can "go non-linear".

Basically, in Civilization, the game designers can guarentee a certain pace to the game. They know just how fast a player is going to be able to advance, and so forth. In GC2, it is very easy to build up a world that has massive production, or has massive research, or has massive money making. And these happen pretty early into the game.

The fact that GC2 has no slowing down mechanism means that any slight advantage quickly magnifies and eventually becomes victory. And human beings always have an advantage over mere algorithms like AIs.

The ultimate problem with GC2 is that the mechanics make it a solved game, like tic-tac-toe. Population growth, morale, diplomacy, and research are the foundations of victory. You can, despite how many of the mechanics are hidden, easily find a strategy that will guarentee you victory on the highest difficulty level (before the AI gets cheats), without exploiting. The AI was designed specifically to be taken advantage of, and doing so is pretty easy.

No matter how simple and scripted other AIs are in other games, they, at least, don't have game-sanctioned methods for taking advantage of the AI. It's one thing for the AI to attack with a set style and set units, and to take advantage of this. It's an act of bad design when the AI is designed to be able to be deceived by certain factors.

The game is actually fairly entertaining before you find a way to solve the game. But once you do, the fun evaporates. Think of the game itself as being a meta-game puzzle: figure out enough of the game's mechanics to find the right way to play the game to guarentee success. Like any puzzle game, once you solve the puzzle, it instantly becomes less entertaining.

If I were to give this game some kind of numerical score, I'd say an 87/100 would be reasonable. I'm not fond of scoring games, however; I prefer having people read a review than just read a number and stop.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

deserves to be read....so i bump

Successfully updated karma reason!

well he has his opinion which is fine.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I can agree.. some things I would like to add, the difficulty on ai's is not even at all. What I mean is, playing painful and above, its very hard to keep the ai off your back beginning game. If you can survive past beginning game though, you easily begin to surpass ai's because of foolish fleet maneurving and research paths and countering and stuff. Basically, I can't go a higher difficulty because I get slammed in the beginning, and if i play painful, its way to easy to get ahead later, which only compounds like he says. Perhaps the ai's need to be more fine tuned for middle/end game, so you don't have the dilemma of a dead end beginning or a boring late game..

Successfully updated karma reason!

I disagree with his criticisms of specific game mechanics, but I'm an unrepentant Sid Meier hater who thinks everything about the Civ-standard is shit, and the idea of 'fixing' 'flaws' by jamming out-of-universe rules like 'lolz one library' or 'you must follow our retarded links between techs cause we said so' is absurd. However, he is correct insofar as there are enough exploits to easily win any game, and indeed at high difficulties it's the ONLY way to win. The game is supposed to be flexible and such - due to the neat AI - but it isn't. The AI has problems, and even if it didn't it could never beat a 'rush to NLC, trade tech, spam out econ, have $2,000,000,000, win game' strategy. The only way I can enjoy the game now is to intentionally ignore the exploits.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Try larger sized games (large huge or higher) at the obscene or suicidal levels under the 1.2 .009 Beta.

Self limit some advantages if you are that good. (no eyes of univere, no trade goods)

The Stupid AI planet management (zillions of embassies morale and farms) is mostly fixed in 1.10.009, the AI is much more aggressive, and the production and research bonuses compensate for the stalls in its strategic thinking.

Frogboy has still to engage the intensive CPU option for the AI.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm not sure what exactly is being considered "exploiting" the AI or not. I can beat the game pretty easily on crippling, but I don't do anything that feels too exploitative - I buy factories to power up the initial colony rush, deficit spend based off of the starting cash and anything from anomalies, and tend to research to stock markets fast to turn my economy around, start making a profit, and then build up industry, research and military. I don't play with tech trading on.

I'm not sure what I see as the problem in game design regarding the fact that that strategy works (at least so far) to put me well ahead of the computer players even once they're getting bonuses (not the huge ones though, haven't played the very top difficulty yet and I don't really want to). Except perhaps for the ability to research one tech tree all the way up (usually economic buildings, then government types), which isn't an inherently flawed design decision, just different from Civ (which has it's own issues). And maybe NLCs are a bit overpowered and should be toned down just a little, though the good and evil ship techs are pretty powerful too. Overall I think the issue is really getting the AIs to properly colonize, specialize economy/research/industry planets, and place more emphasis on planetary infrastructure technologies. By the time I get around to conquering computer planets, their buildings tend to be considerably behind mine technologiwise, yet I've surpassed them in military technology as well because I've built up the economic base to research much faster. I think the best change would be to have the AI realize how important building up economy, production, and research buildings in order to power their strategy before attempting to conquer or expand influence or whatever strategy the use.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Xan

Join Date 01/2003

+26

If you've followed AlFonse's career on the GalCiv 2 forums it is that of complaint complaint complaint. He has his right to his opinion but I found most of his complaints petty and irrelevant.

This post is no exception. Is GalCiv a "puzzle" to be solved? Only if the game is about finding an exploit.

To me, games are supposed to be fun. GalCiv 2 is VERY fun. The fun is in the playing. Alfonse's style of play is to win. He gets his fun from winning. Therefore, his strategy is to look for holes and exploit them. Don't take my word for it, read his own posts criticizing the game.

What makes GalCiv 2 have longevity for me is that it has so many start up conditions. I can play on a tiny map filled wiht players and it is a totally different game than if you play on a very large map. The players play very differently depending on the starting conditions. I have played with the scenarios which provide team scenarios which is fun.

I also have Civilization 4. Aflonse is right that its game mechanics are much tighter. Tight like a straight jacket. Every game of Civ 4 ends up pretty much the same. There is only 1 way to play it. The tech tree is one pretty straight path. I can only build 1 library per city. Why? I can't trade tech for resources. There is no way to manipulate the players through diplomacy.

And worst of all, the AI in Civ 4 which is better than most AIs, cheats like crazy very early on in the difficulty sliders meaning you have to play against players that are getting big tech and money boosts in order to have any sort of challenge.

In GalCiv 2, you have the option to find some economic exploit and use it. But there are other ways to win the game. I have won GalCiv from using influence bases and technologoy victories. I have built grand alliances and been defeated by great alliances.

In Civ 4, not so much. It's the same. Every player is the same. They have the same dialog. The same behavior.

Alfonse is entitled to his opinon. But he has spent the last 2 months railing against GalCiv 2 for the sin of not being Civ.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Lot's of truth in the post but I like the game for different reasons I guess.

I want to win every game and I enjoy winning every game as long as the AI doesn't just lay down. I have found that I can win the game every time on tough but I can't win it the same way every time. I can also win without getting stressed out. The game is a pleasant diversion and relaxing.

I played one game on painful and I won it but winning was, well, painful. I could have easily lost if I had screwed up a few times. This tends to make me intense in a way that I don't like. Consequently, I am happy to play at tough and for larger maps I might even drop down to normal or challenging. I haven't played many large map games because unlike most players I don't care to play for 3-4 days, I like to finish in 3-4 hours.

If I were looking for an epic challenge I would probably agree with Alphonse 100% but real life provides me with sufficient challenge. (I also can't stand films with unhappy endings.)

Props to Alphonse for giving the game a decent rating even though it disappoints him in some ways

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree with what the above posters said (#3-#7 as of now).

The point where I agree with the OP is that there should be put some kind of limit on how many buildings of the same category can be built on one planet. I know this would lead to problems (what to build

) on the higher class planets (like 16+), but could be circumvented by implementing a decrease in efficiency.

Just for example (no actual values for the game): the 1st eco/research building gives a 20% bonus (full effect), 2nd 18%, 3rd 15%, 4th 11% and so on.

I think that change wouldn't hurt the AI that much since they don't cheese their planets up with eco/research building like a human player does.

That idea isn't perfect, but I like it more than making the AI build the same cheesy way like a human.

After all it really doesn't make sense (at least if you take a minimum of realism into account), that a planet full with eco/research centers automatically delivers the maximum possible output for each building.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I also have Civilization 4. Aflonse is right that its game mechanics are much tighter

No offense but I believe =Aflonse was using Civ 1 and 2 for reference material, not Civ 4.

I thought Aflonse's post was well written, not trollish at all. You may not appreciate his opinion but I don't think it's fair to hint that he was trolling or is complaining just to complain. Also, it's probably unfair to claim to understand why he plays games based on a few posts in the forums.

One thing I've not been impressed with about GalCiv2 is how rabid the fans of the game are if anyone dares (GASP!) to find any fault with it. I'm a HUGE fan of StarDock AND GC1 and GC2 but I can understand that it's not perfect and not jump on people who find fault with it. No offense intended to anyone here but people are going to have things that they dislike and the main heart of the GalCiv community needs to try to understand that better or risk coming across as insular and unfriendly.

Just my two cents, hopefully I won't get jumped on for it! LOL

PS. Again, I LOVE the game and think it's probably worthy of Strategy Game of the Year (any platform) quite easily!

Successfully updated karma reason!

I find the biggest problem with the game to be once you get over the "hump", the game is just too easy. I mean there's allways a point where you start crushing your opponents, and picking up more momentum that can't be stopped. (pretty much as the post says)

I personally think the way to resolve this is to slow down pop growth, and make invasions more painful for the attacker. That way you could not wipe out 10 AI planets quite so easily and still have huge pop centers to keep the transports rolling. You'd be forced to slow down, and even try for peace while you rebuild your new planets and population up. Also hopefully this would weaken your economy.

However...I realize how much harder it would make it for the AI's to win a war as well.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Aren't all games puzzles of a sort? And with a bit of creativity and originality, can one not solve a puzzle in different ways?

Successfully updated karma reason!

I cannot help feeling that in the future the OP will watch a sci fi movie on tv or read a good book and feel the itch to play again. What else is there that compares?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Population control is a great idea, and would create a natural breaking mechanism. In addition perhaps more diplomatic options would make things interesting. Perhaps a tendency for other races to create alliances against an obviously growing threat? Espionage options, specific goals like breaking an alliance between enemies, or instigating a war???Perhaps a bit more general options like: sabotage, intelligence gathering, or diplomatic mischief. Borders may tend to shift back and forth, with some fluidity in alliances and allegiances as well. Just some thoughts.

Successfully updated karma reason!

A pretty reasonable post, but if you think the AI in Galciv2 is not up to scratch, then I guarantee you will NOT end up playing Rome Total War longer. That game is MUCH easier. Even on the highest levels with the weaker empires it's still a breeze.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree 100%, except that I stopped playing about 1-2 months ago(I remember playing 1.1 beta 4) and am going to start up again tommorrow. The game is fun, but saying the AI is extremely good is a vast, vast overstatement.

Would be nice if there was some random element to make each game different, the AIs certainly aren't doing it.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I will go along with most of the OP. However, which game cannot be considered a "puzzle to solve"? This game is fun to "just play". I've toned down the difficulty level of late. Not because I can't beat it. Just because I can only beat it by playing a regimented game. On suicidal it feels like if you wander one step from the path of economic expansion then you get overwhelmed.
There is fun to be had inventing your own rules (I cannot start wars, but I can bribe as many as I want - One sector challenge - I must play as the Altarians with their default (dreadful) racial picks - I can only put one engine on a ship etc.etc.) Each time you play the game you can see how the AI is actually very robust. The problem is it was overhyped. It plays like a young child who knows the rules move by move but not how to put together a winning strategy. What is more it will falls into making the same mistakes over and over again. That is not to say it isn't as good as most games in this respect. It just shows that AI's are not yet designed to "learn" properly from games the've lost.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I too think Alfonses post was well written and agree on some of the points made. I disagree that the AI is designed to be taken advantage of - the game mechanics as they are - production / eco / res bonuses etc is being optimised by players much better than the AI. However this is due to the tile based planet upgrades and starbase desgin etc not the AI itself. I would state that the game mechanics as they are give us too many 'production' bonuses overall.

I fully agree that adding 8 manuf. centrres on a Capital and getting all the bonus multipliers is a bit of a nonesense and the Devs since GC1 have been triying to balance this. Getting diminishing returns as Visisbledark mentioned I think is a good way of countering this. I would also add that some improvement types should work better or worse than others when you have more of them EG. Adding another farm/food improvement should double food production but another entertainment centre esp. of the same type - no chance. Same for economy improvements - how can adding more stock markets give you the same benefits? Therefore I also suggest that there should be limits on certain building types BUT allow you to build lower tech versions EG Only 1 Stock market but allow a banking center or lower to be built which have less benefit but are not the same thing.

Limiting what can be built will actually help the AI too since it would not then build 6 embassies etc!

These changes seem fairly easy to code into the game? Another idea but longer or harder harder to code would be to have different TYPES of manuf. and research improvements. EG generic or specific resarch improvements. You could have a MIL reserch centre focused on Military research (weapons and defense) which gives bonus only to those research types. Generic research centres as now but with much lower bonuses across the spectrum. Other research centres could be for Government/Social eg. Influence, diplomacy, logistics, farms etc. Then another focusing on enginerring and new technology applicatiions eg. propulsion, factories, entertainment, sensors, bigger structures etc.
I would also reduce the base food production of a base food unit forcing you to add more farms to be able to sustain a high pop - this is probably the easiest code change making the biggest impact of the whole game!
All this would require some careful balancing but would imo make it harder for players to turtle in on one thing eg. If you focused on wepans research, you are going to get good att/def but no high production or large ships. This would require more of a balnce overall which I think the AI could keep up with.

I also think (as others do) that invasion should be harder ie harder to invade (maybe require a planetary improvement on planets you want to send troops from - representing military bases/garrisons) and easier to defend - planets should have a higher base defence against trrops before adding any further improvements. I also think minors should get a SERIOUS defence ability or something since I dont play them in the game any more as they just get wiped out so easily.

The AI also does seem to place contructors well to capture resources and build starbases in good places but:
a) Builds too many starbases especially influnce ones that are inefective.

Does not maximise starbase improvements enough.

Finally, I also think the Eyes of the Universe wonder is too powerful. It is only really a bonus to the player not the AI and gives us a huge field of view. I would suggest reducing its power by half and forcing us to add sensors to ships if we want to see further.

Anyway I still love this game but there is plenty of room for improvement - which the devs really are trying as we can see from the change lists

Successfully updated karma reason!

Oops double post - removed it !!

Successfully updated karma reason!

@Xan
I don't care if you let people down who complain around pointlessly. But here your just being unfair and completely ignoring the fact that the OP has valid critics. He has an oppinion and an explanation, there is nothing wrong about that.

I fully agree with the OP. Even though I don't believe the game would get much better by eliminating all the exploits. I think the game is less expoitable than most other games I know. For me the main problem is the one gallagher118 mentioned:

I find the biggest problem with the game to be once you get over the "hump", the game is just too easy

The game can be very very enjoyable, but only to the point when you become the most powefull civ. From than on nothing happens anymore. No other civ will declare war on you. All you need to do from now on is build tons of Transports for conquest victory, fill the galaxy with influence starbases or try to achieve diplo victory. If your a little lucky and get plenty of ressources at the begining of the game you might actually never face a war, because the ai just doesn't dare to attack, due to your economic/military might. I usually restart the game right away when I encounter such a map setting, the game just gets too easy than. I'd like to see the Ai act accoringly to the situation, in which one civ becomes very powerful.
I have never seen the ai forming an alliance against me, in fact I can't remember a game where the ai formed an alliance at all. Considering I usually play as the only evil race in a galaxy of good and neutral civs it shouldn't be too difficult for the ai to find alliance parters.
Eventually the ai should be made less coward by allowing them to declare war even if they are less powerful in economy and military.

To slowing down the game pace:
Maybe slowing down the economic growth would help so that one civ can't become ultra powerful in an instant.
I am big fan of moo2. this game was far more cheesy than galciv2. Heck! one could even build invincable ships with the right tech combination of cloaking, and other techs (forgot all these names). On the other hand there was a far greater balance between the civs than in galciv2. This was achieved by the special structure of the technology tree. Techs of the same type could not be researched in sequence.
Example: As in any straregy game you could build various types of factories to boost your production output. Between one type of factory and a better type lied a couple of techs that needed to be researched first in order to get the improved facility. But these "techs inbetween" were quite expensive, so before you could afford that you needed to get a new research lab first in order to boost your research output. So in short, rushing your economy to max production output was impossible. To rush for a certain tech was very risky because you than had to neglect all other techs for a long time. That worked well for moo2, and I liked that system.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I also agree with what the OP has written, a well thought out post which made many valid points.

I am hoping that when 1.2 final is released it will be a step in the right direction in resolving some of those short comings that have been noted. It might also allow those people who are skilled and adept enough to release mods that will increase the longevity and diversity of the game, just like the RTW series. The ability to customise and modify the RTW games has surely been one of its greatest features with many superb mods making it a game that is still just as playable today as it was when first released..?
I would like to think that the Devs of GCII also realise that the ability to modify, with relative ease, is of great benefit to extending peoples interest in the game.
Whilst it might not have been designed like Civ IV, with the SDK, I really hope that the tutorials promised, IIRC, will be of help to the modding community.
I wonder just how much is 'hard coded' and would be impossible to mod in this game though..?

Successfully updated karma reason!

The original post is spot on. What I dont find amusing is that once Frogboy mentioned that the only way to beat AI at high levels is by exploiting, alot of fanatical fanboys just caught this as their bloody mantra on the forum. A pretty low point that was by Frogboy, though - exploiting the only way to beat your AI at high levels? The hell? That's just having too high an opinion about your computer intelligence code...

Seriously though, this game's AI was so hyped. Indeed, it was hyped. That's the correct word for it. It was shown in developer journals and advertisments and forum posts to be near human-like in it's responsiveness and evaluation of situations... Is it like that? Not at all. At first it seems brilliant. But later on you just learn to "solve" the game like the original poster said. The AI in this game is above average... But that's it. The rest is hype.

Is hyping bad? No, that's what everybody does about their product and with good reason. But you should understand that once you hype something, people tend to get very high expectations for that. And there's no need to pretend and lie later on when people realise the AI is pretty much like anywhere else.

GalCiv II is a great game. But it gets on my nerves how Frogboy&Co hype it's AI and jump at people who claim they can beat it easily. That's just rubbish.

Successfully updated karma reason!

@Justas5 - be aware that there are zealots here that will brand you as a heretic for the blasphemous post that you have made

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hmmmm. Things are not always so black and white. For instance, in similiar games (!), it's obvious that the AI 'knows' you are the human player and will treat you differently. One of the main aims of the AI here (and the reason I like it so much), is that the AI is not targetted against the you, the human player. Ultimately, you are the 'first among equals' .

The OP has suggested you can easily start to 'trick' the AI. Remember again, that the Ai is not necessarily trying to 'win'. There are definatley some really different AI personalities in the mix. Your advantage as the human player, is to realise this is a 'game' and know where the goal posts are.

How you programme an AI to be competitive, seem 'real', and not 'cheat' is no easy matter. If anyone can suggest a game that does this..................well..............nuff said.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I think that if you are not having fun, you should play something else. Ive vast experience in computer gaming and you are not going to find a better AI for 4X games.
Do you play metaverse games? Hang out with your Empire? These things add significantly to the experience, the former because you have a standardized system to 'compete' and the latter because you have people to talk to about your wins, losses, frustrations.
You sound like a decent person and i also give kudos to you for rating the game highly. I hope you find Gaming Fun out there.

Successfully updated karma reason!