onomastikon

Join Date 02/2006

+18

GC2's greatest shortcomings or "Why I want to purchase Dark Avatar but will not"

Long post meant as constructive criticism

This post is meant as a form of constructive criticism which may lead to possible improvements in the future. I hope this somewhat longish post finds a critical reader (particularly among the Stardock staff, whose attention to these forums I cherish) who takes what I have to say seriously (even if much of it be mistaken and poorly formulated), since I dearly hope this is far from a "whine".
With that in mind, let me get right into media res:

The main reason I will not be purchasing an expansion under current circumstances and preview information is that GC2 – despite my initial excitement and my continued appreciation of the very sympathetic and devoted nature of the Stardock Dev Team – has failed to capture my lasting interest for the following reasons, some of which could be (but which, so far as I can see, have not yet been) addressed in future developments:

- The main weakness seems to be in too few strategic variances about which one must continually make decisions. I will briefly address this issue under the keywords "map / playfield", "nation-building", "unit-building", and "tech-tree":

- While the "space"-oriented setting demands by nature a stark, sparse board or playfield which lacks important elements in other 4X games – most notably: chokepoints, strategic centers, etc. – GC2 does not make up for this by offering lasting workarounds such as jump-points, permanent wormholes, "lanes", or other "artificial" strategic elements sometimes found in other space 4X games. For me, this decreases its replayability level, since almost all maps tend to look and feel identical over time. This also weakens a key element in strategy conquest games, namely choices to be made over key strategic elements; in GC2, it doesn’t really matter *where* you build, develop, place or defend units or colonies, only *how much*. Fewer strategic choices at this macro-level means, for me, less challenge and replay fun.
This could be addressed by adding (customizable) features to induce strategic decision-making, such as movement enhancers or inhibitors ("asteroid fields"), new techs which allow a player to exploit these strategic playfield modulators, and race or nation statistics which yield bonuses or penalties in certain types of "terrain" (one could call it "radiation level" or something equivalent) as well as new techs which allow for (other) races to exploit these terrains to various degrees.

- Whereas the early game (x-pansion) is, of course, usually exciting (any 4X game which fails here would be doomed, of course), I find my excitement often drops quickly about 20 to 40 turns after the initial colonies have been settled (once the early mid-game opens, or when it comes time to exploit what you have gained). In some games, I only get about 3 colonies before there are no others left to be taken without force of some sort. But even with double that amount, the usable area on a colony is soon used up, and hence the number of interesting choices I have to make during a turn are reduced. After the midgame, I often simply find myself hitting the return button again and again, churning out either constructors or warships. Producing constructors or warships are the only things one has to produce, and this becomes less exciting over time.

- Much like the Firaxis "Civilization" series, the Civs in GC2 hardly differ from one another except by the (admittedly very well done!) personality. While this is a mistake in the Firaxis franchise (since that game has premade "units" to buy: there is no excuse to not having more uniqueness), this is integral to the GC2 system. GC2 doesn’t have any units to buy, since the player creates her units during play. True variety found in other types of strategy games (e.g. Warcraft III, Dominions 2, Sword of the Stars – even if some of these games are not so hot) come about by having real weaknesses and advantages in their recruitable units.
But unfortunately, there isn’t really much variety here. You can choose from 3 types of guns and 3 types of armor, and you may make lots of fun cosmetic changes to your ships – I liked that very much for about a month. Then I found the lack of true strategic choice limiting. This could be addressed in an expansion somewhat by attempting to introduce radical changes in the tech tree at some point – radically different features that change how some game mechanics work. (Some features could include: armor piercing, warp-jumping, stealth / cloaking, disease, fear or routing, etc.)
Basically, the lack of choices in building my colonies combined with what seems like a lack of choices in building units makes the mid- to late-game (for me) not as fun as I would have imagined.

- Part of the above-mentioned problems arise from the static nature of the tech tree. I would have found a more robust and flexible tech tree to be more interesting. This would allow for more interesting decisions and choices which affect future choices. Instead, I feel that the tech tree – while large and imposing – is not so much an interestingly intertwined tree as a series of 16 or so discrete shops: you go to the gun library to research guns, to the fun library to research morale, to the armor library to research armor, etc. While straightforward, it lacks enchantment, surprise, and flexibility. While the tech tree in Civilization is only marginally better, good examples of interesting and surprising tech-trees can be found (the system of Dominions 2 works surprisingly well, for instance). I posted some examples for different kinds of techs above.

- Balance: I usually play against the "crippling" AI – unless in the game before my starting planet had either a large number of "bonus tiles" or one of those precursor bonus tiles to production (the one that gives 700%). Before I realised how important that was, I usually started my next game against masochistic – until now I simply restart the game. If I find one of those tiles on my first colonized planets, I also have to restart, because the challenge level sinks asymptotically. A 700% production bonus equals 6 free tiles immediately filled, and since anyone can purchase a starting factory for 438bc (and you have 5000), there is no reason not to exploit this. This feature needs to be changed so that players may have the chance to determine the level and frequency of bonus squares, as well as the level of starting money as a handicap (both for human player and AI).
Starting location also has a massive impact on future game outcome. While true for any 4X game, this seems exacerbated in GC2 because of the above-mentioned featurelessness of the map / playfield. (Other 4X games seem to be able to make up for this shortcoming by having inherent features in the map which make a very quick normative assessment of the map nearly impossible.)
The early game remains challenging and fun for me, because this is also the time in which my economy needs tending. I am often in debt after rushing to get out 2 additional colonies, and I need time to rebalance that. But once I have my first trade routes up and the mid-game gets under way, I can ignore my economic worries altogether: My spending slider is always at the maximum and I always have more than enough money for anything. Besides, I can only spend it on ships once all of my colonies are up and running – and a few improvements every so many years. It is too bad that there is no other money-sink.
Also, the way the tech tree is currently set up, it is far too easy to obtain nearly invulnerable starbases early on (with one tech you can have a 15-defense 22-attack starbase with only 9 constructors, something no early-game ship can take out, while with 2 or 3 techs they become untouchable to all but the very poor tactical AI decision-maker who insists (even at crippling AI) upon attacking things it cannot hope to defeat), while they become sitting ducks later on. The starbase tech could be split off into very different tech trees of the weapons variety instead of being bunched up together.
Otherwise, I have found that I must turn off Diplomacy victory (much too easy) and Influence victory (also too easy), which is a shame, since I really like the idea of different victory conditions. Work on balancing these must be done, it seems to me. (Concrete suggestion for balancing Diplomacy: In addition to being allied with all the remaining civs, these civs must also vote once per United Planet meeting to agree upon a President; your nation must win this vote to gain a Diplomatic Victory.) (Concrete suggestion for Influence victory: Reintroduce cost to each influence starbase module, but vastly increase the cost of higher-level influence modules.)

- While there still remain a number of interface issues that will certainly be optimized in the future, I think the last missing element to gain the attention and love of people such as myself would be the inclusion of more (and more significant) events which break up the otherwise rigid moving-about of the ship units. The United Planets council is a very nice touch, although I rarely find its decisions or its influence even halfway significant. The random events which seems to occur very infrequently are also most satisfying (such as: Fundamentalists taking over some evil planets). It would be most interesting to introduce some elements like Leaders or unique units which have some factor on production, combat or movement.

So to sum things up: While I really enjoyed playing quite a few games of GC2, I have found that my interested has ebbed quite a bit – in fact, much more intensively than in any other good game that I have played before. Yes, I think GC2 is a good game, and I have rarely seen a more devoted, pleasant, helpful and creative staff. (Which is one of the reasons why I have always given GC2 better reviews than Firaxis products.) Its replayability, however, is too limited for me because of lack of decision-making once the early game is over. I find myself hitting the turn button again and again, and no longer find ship-building as enjoyable as I did in my first 10 or 15 games. While I realise that this is a unique feature of the game that is justifiably praised and captivating for many users, this is not something whose costly expansion I would wish to see in future products.

Thank you very much for listening and for your constructive replies.

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I agree with a lot of the comments you have made, particularly the idea of permanently open wormholes to act as choke points, These would be very interesting on larger maps.

The UP council needs work in my opinion. Rarely do you get an event that makes a real difference to the game. The only events which can result in a change in tactics becoming necessary are when a change of government is forced or, if you're an evil civ and are limited to 1 trade route. At least those are the only ones that have effected me. I personally don't care whether freighters or colony ships are armed and this event occurs regularly.

It would be nice if there was a list of possible topics to be discussed, each civ votes on the topics and then the top 3 are voted on in the meeting.

I also disagree with some of your points, particularly where you suggest that it's necessary to sit clicking end turn for extended periods, I always have people to move or trades to negotiate.

Despite this I enjoyed reading the original post very much, thanks for sharing your ideas.

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It is a good post indeed.

I agree with having a more varied terrain which can be exploited to aid or hinder different races, thus making each civ more unique. However, I realize that in the expansion, SD will add asteroid fields. I'd like to see how that goes before asking for too much too early.

Also, speaking of the infrequent special events. I recall many players have asked for a frequency control at the start of the game. I do not think it would be too hard to code and it would certainly make all of my games at least twice as much challenging and fun.

Actually, come to think of it, I fully agree with everything onomastikon says. I do hope Stardock employees will be reading that post and maybe, it will influence them in positive ways.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

chokepoints, strategic centers, etc...

FYI, you can get a galaxy with more strategic features (insomuch as is currently possible, anyway) by playing on big maps with tight clusters and normal or lower star-count. This should create large voids that cannot be crossed without building starbases to extend your range through the empty expanses.

Part of the above-mentioned problems arise from the static nature of the tech tree.

The ultra-linear tech tree was a design choice intended to simplify that aspect of GC2 (and allow the AI to pick its own research without any scripting or planning on the devs' part). Only Brad knows (if anyone does at all!) if this approach will be kept, expanded on, or dropped in GC3.

A 700% production bonus equals 6 free tiles immediately filled, and since anyone can purchase a starting factory for 438bc (and you have 5000), there is no reason not to exploit this.

This is not always true--building a 700% tile immediately in the early game can be a quick way to a tanked economy if you aren't very careful.

It would be most interesting to introduce some elements like Leaders or unique units which have some factor on production, combat or movement.

Heroes are a planned feature for GC3.

Lots of good thoughts. Will try and point Brad this way if he pops up on IRC.

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Galactic Civilization

The gameplay of galacitic civilization is 4X, to Explore, to Expand, to Exploit and to Exterminate.

The gameplay should be something like this.

Explore the map and try to find resourches and good planets to expand your empire faster than the competition. And information is always power.

Expand your empire and use your colonyships to expand your empire to grow faster than the competion. And try to get faster than the competion to the next uber planet or galactic recource.

Exploit in political, economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons/aliens are being mistreated or unfairly used for the benefit of others. This corresponds to one ethical conception of exploitation, that is, the treatment of human/alien beings as mere means to an end — or as mere "objects". In different terms, "exploitation" refers to the use of people/aliens as a resource, with little or no consideration of their well-being. So cheesy gameplay should be possible. It’s all a moral choise.

Exterminate grow so big you could crush the competion. You don’t have to do it, it’s just a possibility to do it. (personal opinion)

So analyzing the gameplay of Galciv.

The first fase of gameplay is going to the “best planets” in the shortest time possible.
The second fase of gameplay is building your few planets in to an empire. And trying to get ahead in research.
The third fase of gameplay is building your defences, fleets to defend your empire and try to conquer the competition. This can be called the midgame.
The forth fase depends on your skill if you have smashed the enemy conquered thier planets and be the biggest boy on the block. Then it can get tirresome you have grown to big to play the game smooth. To many planets to handle. So you have to streamline the interfase or remove some planets. But how?

You can blow them up or use them in a more useful manner. The first fase of gameplay trying to colonizing the best planets is one of the nicest aspects of gameplay. You have to get there faster than the competition or you lose.

The possisbility of aquiring planets as a recource in the end game should give the same gameplay and thrill as with colonizing planets. In the first fase.
If it where possible to build something like a Dyson sphere it would solve some problems. You have to use useless planets class 0 or above for material. And thus we have the same thrill as with colonizing planets in first fase. Just think of the possiblility to move a hole planet and use it as a recource in a giant planet eating machine.

In the end game it should be possible to build structures/ships Terror Stars or Planetmovers to destroy/move planets. The forth fase could then be one of trying to destroy or aquire non-usefull planets for raw materials or denying the competition them.

So in the endfase there could be a galactic map without many planets a few Dyson sphere’s and new gameplay possibilitiy’s.

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I don't think I halfway agree or disagree with the original poster, in that what the OP thinks is not fun, I think there are valid work-arounds. Likewise, things I find not fun in the game other people love.

For instance, I don't play on really large maps. I don't find them fun at all. But a bunch of wormholes on a medium-sized map just would not make sense. That, and I usually leave the diplomatic victory on. If I know I'm going to win a game anyway, it's a quick way out. If I don't want the diplomatic victory, I just don't make that many alliances. It's an easy thing to control. That being said, out of all the "4X" games I've played, GalCiv has to be the one I am most likely to just stop playing midway through and go for a re-start.

I don't really feel any sympathy towards any of the Civs, no real emotional connection that makes me want to "save" any of them from intergalactic destruction. I sort of get the impression that Stardock is working to improve the personality of the various Civs, so for me that would increase the fun-factor much more than, say, manual combat.

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Nice post on the origional post. Its nice to see someone constructively and concisely giving criticism on a game without ranting and raving.

That said, I think there are some good points and some points you bring up that I don't really agree with. The UP needs work. I don't think many people would argue that something needs a little changing here. Also, I loved the wormholes in Master of Orion 2. Not so much a choke point, but a great potential back door to an enemies empire. And I agree that the tech tree could be better. Not that I am saying I dislike it or that it should be high on the list of things to change (though some of the descriptions are starting to lose their charm). One wany would be to have it something like the original Master of Orion, where every tech wasn't guaranteed to be in the game. For this to happen, the tech tree would need to be tweeked, and I am not sure how well that may end up. Plus I would rather the Devs spend time getting DA finished and polished.

That being said, I don't find myself in that much of a turn pressing phase that you talk about. Granted I am not playing on a very difficult level, however I find that, if anything, I am spending too much time playing each turn and it is going slowly.

I also do not think that starbases are worthless later in the game. I attacked one with a combined attack of around 80 and a defense in the area of 60. I hit it with my main fleet of 11 small ships, each with an attack and defense of 20\35 respectively (or something close). I lost 4 ships and a 5th was seriously damaged by the end of the fight, and that was just an influence starbase. I haven't sent my scouts out to their 3 influence mining starbases. In that game, the Altarans are the dominant race. they control over half the UP votes, over half the galaxy map is covered by them and they have a military rating more than 10x what I have. While I am winning in my war with them, it is painfully slow going, especially since my main shipyards are in the heart of what were my old borders. Now those planets are way too far from the front lines to effectively resupply my fleets with new ships or to send up transports in timely manners. So now I am having to totally rebuild two or three of the captured colonies to set them up as my new forward bases.

Now, all that being said, I like what you have to say. You have some good ideas that are more suited to a discussion of what mechanics should be in a new game, like GC3, rather than what Stardock should attempt to add into a GC2 expansion. Also, thanks for keeping it respectful. We all like that

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One serious mid- and end-game problem is, that you can anticipate, that you' re winning, but need hours to wipe out the three or four last civilizations. I have seen only one solution for this yet: having a much more powerful enemy than anyone else, worth building a big infrastructure for sustaining a big fleet of ships. The old 'Colonization' had it with the King's fleet hitting hard when you declared independent and 'MoO 2' had it with Option to fly to the Antarians homeworld (with the side effect of occasional raids of antarians super-warships hitting the fleets of an powerful race to balance the mid-games).

Stardock seems to avoid this concept intentionally to distinguish GalCiv from said games. But I think this aspect is worth thinking, if you what to have an incentive to the end of the game to keep the player heading for more resources and build of planets. I think the conquer of the Dreadlords and their homeworld in an parallel-univers would be perfect for this role - or think of Draginol (appeared randomly in GalCiv1) or an unkown dark avatar...

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I appreciate the points made by the OP, however, I disagree with his criticism of the tech tree. In fact I find it much more fun and dynamic that the Civ style tree. The basic problem with the Civ tree (I haven't played civ 4, so these comments pertain to civ 3 and earlier) is that you basically start and end at the seme points, and the only choices are what order to research in. For instance, you want armor, so there are a bunch of prerequisete techs you have to research, which give industrial, economic, etc benefits along the way, but it will take you just as long to get armor whether you go for tech A or B first. That choice is usually dependant on being able to start wonders earlier. In Gal Civ 2, however, I have to choose between better industry and better weapons. I can't just go towards better weapons and get the other stuff along the way. To me this is a very interesting feature which makes me think much harder about research priorities.

My last game is an example. While I had a huge lead in industrial, economic and diplomatic techs, when the humans declared war on me, I had no planetary invasion and badly outmoded weapons. I only won because I was using medium hulls and the Humans had small hulls.

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What about whormhole leading to another different map ?

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Here are some ideas that I think would improve game play while not being too complicated to implement.

1) Part of the problem with the first part of the game is that every civ is competing for the same planets, thus the most likely civ to win the end game is the one who can get the most planets in the quickest time. Since the human player is more flexible and can adapt to the conditions, they are most likely to do well or win the colony rush. Then the game comes down to who can consolidate and build up their economy the quickest. Once again, in tough and below it's the human player who has the advantage. In the higher difficulty levels, the bonus for the AI makes it more competitive.

What if the civs weren't competing for the same resources? What if there were multiple winners of the colony rush? This could easily be implemented by assigning a different planet quality for each civ. For example, a PQ4 for the Humans would be a PQ12 for the Thalans and a PQ8 for the Altarians. In this example, the Human civ would pass the planet by while looking for something stronger while the Thalans and Altarians would try to get a colony ship to the planet. Afterall why should a world perfect for Humans satisfy the needs of Robots (Yor) or Bugs (Thalan)?

This change would also open up the strategic options. Do I colonize that PQ4 world so that I can keep the Thalans from getting a PQ12 world? Do I let the Thalans get it and then deal with the increased influence from having a PQ12 world of another empire in my sphere of influence, etc. It also would spread empires out so that rather than have tight zones of influence you would have scattered zones. This would make ship quality much more important since you wouldn't necessarily be able to defend your planets with a few high quality killer fleets.

2) Two other problems pointed out by the OP are the lack of diferentiation between the civs and the lack of suprises in the tech tree. I think these problems could be alleviated by giving each civ a different tech tree. Not necessarily different techs on the tree but perhaps different cost for each civ. For example, the Arceans could pay half price for the early engine techs to take into account the age of their civilization as opposed to the newer races while paying double for their diplomacy since they seem to think they are better than everyone else. At the same time, Yor could pay next to nothing for advanced computers, miniaturization and logistics, while paying heavy for planet development. This change would enhance tech trading since some races would have certain techs before others and each would place a different value on the tech depending on how hard it was to research.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2411

Good post and many valid criticisms are in there.

Some criticisms I don't agree with (wormholes and such) but it really boils down to where one thinks the center of action should be. I don't care about tactics at all. I care only about the overall strategy. So for me, holding key worlds is what matters. I'd find wormholes and such far too artificial.

The technology tree was one of the things I wish we had done differently. We came up with, after the fact, the idea of there being a lot fewer technologies but each technology having milestones where one slowly masters the technology with each milestone providing more and more benefit.

Ultimatley, for good or bad, the features of GalCiv II are the features. Expansion packs can expand on what we have (asteroid fields in Dark Avatar, unique planets, etc.) but beyond that, we would be talking some future sequel where we take the things we learned from GalCiv II and apply them into a future sequel.

My own short list of things that I think the game needs includes:

A significantly different approach to how technologies are obtained
Heroes and a mechanism for improving them, especially mid to late game that requires users to make difficult choices in that.
Special, unique-per race powers ala Magic the Gathering, where you could play an "instant" on the map.
Terraforming or Dyson sphere type stuff late in the game where you have another late game "building"
Totally revamped galactic resource handling. They should provide X resources, not Y% to an ability.
A LOT more diplomatic options.
More sophisticated trading. Not just money but resources necessary for certain projects.
Treaty Territory. A level above "peace" but below alliances -- diplomatic recognition. That is, your planets and 2 tiles out from them become part of your recognized space which is distinct from influence.
The election of a President of the United Planets for a term who can submit "bills" to be voted on from a long list of bills.
Hypergates - connect two points and allow ships to travel 2X the speed they would in open space.
Modify how range works so that friendly planets (not yours) extend your range.
Tactical battle options.
More sophisticated ship design.
Revamp constructors and how starbases are built.

That's just off the top of my head. So there's plenty of room for a future sequel to go into. Expansion packs can only go so far and some things may show up in there (asteroid fields, unique planets, more treaties are already in Dark Avatar).

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Omg! I never even thought of that, thanks.

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That post makes me really look forward to GC3 ;o)

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Thats a really nice list Frogboy!

Iam very glad to see that one of the developer actually shares so many "wishes" as does a common gamer. It seems that the expansion and sequel is in good hands

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Special, unique-per race powers ala Magic the Gathering, where you could play an "instant" on the map.
Terraforming or Dyson sphere type stuff late in the game where you have another late game "building"
Totally revamped galactic resource handling. They should provide X resources, not Y% to an ability.
A LOT more diplomatic options.
More sophisticated trading. Not just money but resources necessary for certain projects.
Treaty Territory. A level above "peace" but below alliances -- diplomatic recognition. That is, your planets and 2 tiles out from them become part of your recognized space which is distinct from influence.
The election of a President of the United Planets for a term who can submit "bills" to be voted on from a long list of bills.
Hypergates - connect two points and allow ships to travel 2X the speed they would in open space.

Revamp constructors and how starbases are built.

Tactical battle options.

More sophisticated ship design.

All excellent suggestions would love to see those in GC3.

A significantly different approach to how technologies are obtained

I like the GC2 tech tree. Its simple, straightforward and means u r making a informed strategic/tactical decision on what to research. Alot of games have awful tech trees which r overcomplicated and frustrating. U think u will get a tech then find u have not researched 5+ pre-requistes in 5 different branchs of the tech tree. GC2 tech tree is far better than GC1 which was all over the place and spraweled out.

Heroes

I like...

users to make difficult choices in that.

Don't like, sounds a bit like good/neutral/choices...

Modify how range works so that friendly planets (not yours) extend your range.

Why? The present system is very good. Why make it even easier when its already incredibly easy anyway? I never have range problems, even on gigantic with very rare everything.

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Froyboy:

Modify how range works so that friendly planets (not yours) extend your range.

I made that suggestion before the release of GalCiv II but you replied there is a UP event for that.
Alliances Should Extend the Range of My Warships

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This doesn't really solve the problem though, and it adds SIZE to the map when you may not want SIZE.

My point all along about this isn't so much how the open movement system affects the player, but rather how the AI is pretty much incapeable of dealing with it. Put in starlanes and some openspace around stars (ala ascendancy or SEIV...) and you have the best of both worlds as near as I can tell.

You can keep the anomolies and resources localized around stars, but you also allow the AI to be able to focus on defending itself in a better way. Either that or scrap the OFM and just let all ships in orbit defend as a fleet, cuz the way it is now just doesn't work really well for the AI.

I don't think Brad agrees with my vision though, and that's certainly his perogative, but there's gonna have to be a hell of a lot of AI improvement strategically in GC3 for me to get around this issue with the AI being so suboptimal at dealing with the open space problem. From past discussions and explainations from Brad I think I have a handle on what some of the issues are in GC2 with the AIs not having much success at fleet strategies, what I don't get is the resistance to fixing the problem by changing the mechanic so that the AI doesn't need to be good in open space. Get rid of open space! Save yourself the hassle

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Why? The present system is very good. Why make it even easier when its already incredibly easy anyway? I never have range problems, even on gigantic with very rare everything.

Why? Because it's his game, he can do pretty much whatever he wants with it.

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Thank you for the many reasonable and constructive replies.

1. Tastes do differ. Und das ist gut so. If they didn't differ, we'd all be playing Doom, or Chess, or Baseball. So quite obviously, what I am saying is applicable only to the target group of strategy gamers who feel as I do. From the few replies here, it seems like there are quite a few overlaps with many GC2 players on these forums. Good to see, too, that many people disagree because they simply *like* something else.

2. With that being said, I think there is one universal law which would apply with apodictic veracity to all strategy gamers and strategy games, and this law I would formulate as the "No-No-Brainer" law: If any one strategic decision-making process in any strategy game may be solved by a "no-brainer" solution, then that decision-making process is per se broken, because no "real" decision was ever required (the conclusion to the process having been foregone). No-brainers are bad.
Let us call this, for short, the NNB law.
It follows inductively from this law that the following postulate be true (if not apodictically so, because gleaned via inductive logic and making assumptions about the nature of an empirically varying anthropological factor, namely: fun): The less true decision-making processes involved in a strategy game, the less fun. I will call this Theorem F.
I use F explicitly in my first subsection devoted to the map / playfield in GC2. I do not care for wormholes, or asteroid fields, or whatever you want to call them; I merely mean that the current playfield is underdifferentiated, providing me with fewer strategic development decision-making processes. If F is correct, the playfield could be modified somehow to address that issue, as it has been done before. Many posters made some good suggestions, as did Brad above -- yey!

(Too bad, however, that this must be in GC3 -- wouldnt an expansion pack be the right place for at least hyper-lanes? Then customers like me would be no longer estranged.)

Similarly, F applies to planet-building. Some good suggestions were given above, and I think this can be made to work for GC2-X as well. Why wait for GC3? Adding late-game tech which changes the QP of a planet, or lets you build on (say) desert squares, or ocean squares, or forest squares only (for example) would be unproblematic to add, no? New types of terraforming, and radically new different kinds of things to build -- say, GIVEN that a particular Resource R be gleaned from some mine -- late in the game are easily added, no? This latter idea would also include Brad's excellent suggestion that (some) resources add Feature X to a civ, not Y% ability. Why not add, in Dark Avatar, some resources of this kind which, when unlocked with the right tech, allow you to build something funky? Which, if built, allows you to research yet another tech which allows you to build a funky UNIT?
This would be VERY MUCH like a way of interconnecting the tech tree, the building system, and the unit production system in a unique twist which would allow for VARIABLE, long-range decision-making processes, depending on what happened in the game.
(Do you go for the far-away Resource Q which enables you to researche Tech T which enables you to build *either* the HyperSpaceFunkulator *or* the ArmorDrainingStunOMat -- or do you try to go for the well-defended Resource G which enables you to research Tech M that enables you to build *either* the HallOfAncestors *or* the WellOfTime, each of which enable you to unlock further, interesting techs? Do you research a special tech which allows you to build (currently broken) Survey Modules which enables you to find *unique* anamolies which unlock *unique* tech paths? Maybe Race C has the ability to do just this....)
This is an implementation of Theorem F working quite nicely, it seems to me.

I would buy this. Here, I wave my wallet in your general direction, my cash is yours.

But anything short of this -- well, at least anything 50% or less short of this, and that is what I have seen so far in the GC2-X preview material -- is not captivating for me. It is simply my opinion, and perhaps there are others like me out there with similar wallet-bearing dispositions. As much as I love Stardock, I want them to make GC2 the best it can be before I rush out and buy their product (which I did with GC2 vanilla two days after it was available this spring).

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Ono, your ideas are good. In fact there have been enough good ideas posted in this forum to last Brad & co. up to about Galactic Civilisations 7!

But they are only a small team and there's only so much that they can do with the resources they have available. They can't put in even a tiny fraction of the feature requests that have been posted in here.

There's also the problem of game balance. There are lots of nifty ideas I have seen that would be so cool to have in the game (the resources thing you mention is one of them), but a real problem is coding the AI to take fair advantage of them. Brad has many times said that the GCx AIs do not and will not use cheats or scripts. This does have the disadvantage of laying them open to the "No No-Brainer" problems that people describe, and it means that they are often at the mercy of very skilled players and have to be given big production bonuses to provide a challenge. So any new feature suggested for the game means new work on the AI, and some ideas will require a lot more work than others.

But, you know, I wouldn't have it any other way. It's his vision of how a 4x game should be, and I love it. I want to play the game, not the rules.

There are plenty of posts in here, some mine, detailing the deficiencies of the game AI, but it has improved significantly and I have every expectation that it will improve again in 1.3 and in the planned 1.4 update, as well as in the DA expansion. In my opinion, the AI is the game; the various features and options, the "chrome" if you like, are nice, but they're the mustard, not the meat. And so if there's one thing that the GalCiv2 team can be said to have delivered it's more game. For this reason, I think they deserve our support, for the huge continued effort they have made to give us more for our money after we have given it to them. I will certainly buy the DA update, and am happy to do so in the knowledge that it's unlikely to contain even a single feature or change I have suggested or requested. If nothing else, doing so makes it that bit more likely that GC3 will appear, and will have something that I wanted.

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I like the Idea of those hyper speed lanes. I magine seeing a huge fleet arrive escorting a constructor to your home planet and helplessly watching as they built a hypergate. It would be great if you could somehow take possesion of the gate and send your own troops back through the other way.

I'd also like to see more random events like the pirates. It'd be great if enemies had to fight side by side to defeat a common foe. Say 20 dreadlord ships appear and the UP offer a reward to whoever bags the most, or putting a bounty on the head of a space monster, or even capturing a certain planet from a minor race which has grown too big for it's boots. Minor events like this would help to make every game different. The prizes could range from cash to extra UP influence or even to precursor artifacts.

As far as I know this hasn't been suggested before, maybe that's because other players think its a stupid idea or maybe they haven't thought of it at all. Either way I'd be interested to hear feedback on these ideas from other players.

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Stardock has said future expansions for GC 2 depend on the sales of Dark Avatar. If the original poster does not buy Dark Avatar and enough owners of GC2 do not either then there will be no future expansions for GC2. Will this make them satisfied and happy with themselves?

Stardock being very nice people will continue to support GC2 with new patches that tinker around with gameplay as time allows between other projects.

If no future expansions r developed for GC2 after Dark Avatar then stardock have said they will continue the franchise with GC3. However u will have perhaps a 2-3 yr wait (est.) for GC3, while stardock have already proven they can produce an expansion to GC2 in 9 months. Which would u prefer to see?

Perhaps a developer/moderator will correct me but if Dark Avatar is a success (sales wise) then we may get our candy now and cake in the future. As then Stardock may have 1 team develop a new expansion for GC2 and another 2nd team start work on GC3. As the number of teams/people/resources assigned to the GC franchise depend entirely on the income they have coming in.

What I would like to see (they did this to some extent already in a poll) is stardock give us 12 options for an expansion and let us choose the lets say 6 they could do/implement in a certain time frame (6 - 9 months). The majority wins. losers accept the majority vote.

I pre-ordered Dark Avatar and am looking forward to it.

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I would imagine it would, as it would mean that the SD was listening to the customers. If there's not enough interest in a feature (ala MP) or additional material then why keep on pushing back other projects?

I think GC2 is basically a good game, however, it is forced into certain directions by the initial design choices. That much is obvious for any game, but it blocks certain directions in expansions. If enough people 'tire' of the current mechanics, or simply want the new mechanics then there is no point in continuing along the old line with new expansions.

This is where SD will find itself after DA comes out. Brad I think already sees this, and while he and all of SD want to make GC2 and DA as great as possible they have not been shy in telling the community what will not be, and what will have to wait for GC3.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2411

Ultimately economics determines what we do and don't do.

Things like Hypergates and other massive game altering features simply aren't practical in an expansion pack because the cost to implement and write the AI for it would be high whereas expansion packs just don't sell well enough to justify that.

Expansion packs in my view should expand but not completely re-do the fundamental game play of the game. So for while I really am not a fan of the GalCiv II tech tree implementation, I can't go and really change it in a game called GalCiv II.

I think the features of Dark Avatar do add things that the vast majority of GalCiv II players are looking for and would find interesting. Unique planets, for example, are pretty significant. Asteroid fields to harvest and build on, User-designed players, etc. These things do add a lot to the game play and extend the life of the game.

And in my best Troy Maclure voice (from The Simpsons) "We'll keep making expansions for GalCiv II as long as it's lucrative enough to do so."

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Great points broght up so far, and even more impressive is the knowledge they're actually being listened to by the developers (unlike other game companies)

Another idea to improve the maps is to add some other inerstellar phoenemon such as

-Black holes (navigational hazards that woudl lower a ships movment speed and have a % chance of desroying them if they came too close)

-Nebulea (bonuses to movment, maybe negetating shields, or cloaking he ships from detection by those outside the nebulea)

-Supernovas (suns about to go nova with worlds rich in resources orbiting them, harvest quick but be careful to choose the evacuate option before they go nova or take serious morale penalties to the rest of your culture. Also great to lure enemy ships near when your sensors detct it's likely to detonate in x amoutn of turns , give or take 5 or so)

More than anything though it'd be nice to ber able to choose starting locations. (like random, 4 courners, monkey in middle, etc..) this way you can try a certain strategic placement without having to start a dozen random maps to get the sarting postions you want)

Oh and to the OP: asnother great game to check out is Earth 2160, a fun rts with a make your own unit approach and incredible single player storyline.

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