If they nerf stock exchanges, I'll burn the box, I swear

I think we are safe. Frogboy is pretty much worn out updating GC2 for us.
Stardock has said update 1.3 is the last update series. They are just doing bugs and minor AI tweaks now.
But for DA all bets are off.

However, I would really like to know why Stardock nerfed the morale buildings though.
From the numbers I crunch -- the extra population from a morale building will not generate enough extra tax revenue to cover the lost income from having a Stock Market on the same tile. That includes a VRC on a bonus tile.

Of course maybe they are just nerfing the play style I play but I'm just not seeing morale buildings being viable. And even if they are somewhat positive in some cases it can not be very much from what I'm seeing.

Having said that, I'm really loving 1.31
Thanks Stardock

Do they work on Stock exchanges ?

Morale resources are independant of stock exchanges or any other morale buildings. That's why people are saying it is far more effective to build a dozen constructors and get a 44% morale bonus on every planet than spend the same amount on morale buildings that give a 5% bonus.

Also, players tend to do things the devs can't, because the pool of players is larger, therefore- the devs won't have a player as good as the best of the playerbase- who discovers these exploits.

I wouldn't bet too much on this. It appears to me that the developers who post are kind of obliged to have some games posted to the MV to show at least the minimum of credibility, but I suspect that it wouldn't be politically correct for any of them to be particularily high up on the rankings.

Without multiplayer it's impossible to tell who the best players are nor how good they actually are. The only thing you have to go by is the MV and I'm certain there are at least a fair number of excellent players that don't even bother with it.

Morale resources are independant of stock exchanges or any other morale buildings. That's why people are saying it is far more effective to build a dozen constructors and get a 44% morale bonus on every planet than spend the same amount on morale buildings that give a 5% bonus.

... Perhaps Anton meant Morale bonus tiles? But I suppose the point remains that using Mining bases on Morale resources is the more efficient method.

My question to all of this is why do the devs keep changing the numbers? A stock market should be what it is, period. Just like the virtual reality centers, and zero g stadiums, their numbers should have been set and then never changed since. I understand that maybe through playtesting things change since you get to see what actually happens in real time. But cmon, if you were sitting down to make a game and trying to decide on the numbers for buildings, wouldn't you pretty much come up with the final, raw hard numbers? If the stock exchange is to have stats at (x) and the virtual reality center is to have stats at (y) then why keep changing it.

Because players do things that we never imagined.

For instance, the game was designed with the expectation that tax rates would not likely go above 49% unless someone had control of a ton of morale resources and that would be very rare.

But we discovered that in actual play that players had no problem setting things up so that htey could have their tax rate at 79% rather easily.  The problem with that is that all the costs in the game were based on the expectation that 49% would be the max.

In my opinion, any good game with good support will have the developers making adjustments based on player feedback. It's not about messing around with the game, it's about making sure the game is meeting its original objectives.  IF you're playing the game with a tax rate at say 79% easily, then we failed.

It took a long while for Frogboy to accept anybody could win on the highest levels without cheese tactics. (Does he even accept it now?) And that was with version 1.0 which was an order of magnitude easier! Therefore I doubt they have an uber player in their midst.

I still don't think people are winning at the highest levels without using tactics that we are unfamiliar with.

I don't see detailed AARs from people winning at the highest levels. I just see claims.

I find it quite believable that someone on a gigantic galaxy is able to win by simply being far enough away from the other players to build up an unstoppable force.  But I find it difficult to believe that people on more reasonably sized maps are creaming the AI at the highest levels without doing something that we simply didn't account for.

And that's the key thing -- players using tactics or strategies that we simply didn't account for.  The AI isn't some neural network, it only knows how to do the things we tell it to do.  Unfortunately, the players who claim to smear the AI at the highest levels are amazingly vague about how they do it.

And when I do get saved games sent to me, I'd find people building crazy amounts of starbases or doing things like building starbases in such a way that they can send a fleet anywhere in teh galaxy in 1 turn to instantly annihilate any AI simply by projecting force in a way so precise that  no AI would be able to counter.

That's why I don't tend to take the "The AI needs to be better at its economy" suggestions seriously because that's not how the AI is being beaten. The AI gets beaten due to players who build incredibly fast ships who are able to make a massive, death dealing strike at key worlds in a single turn.

The only way to really counter that would be game changes that would make the game a lot less fun for a lot of players (like limiting how fast ships can go).

You can also bet that a GalCiv III WILL have politcal borders as well as spheres of influence specifically so people can't launch massive attacks on every planet at once.

One idea I had that might work in Dark Avatar would be that when you're traveling in someone else's sphere of influence that your movement is reduced.  The Metaverse causes a lot of this stuff though. People playing to win rather than to play to have fun.  I could win at higher levels if I played under specific map conditions and made sure I could launch mega attacks on enemy planets in a single turn without having to duke it out with their military until I've already given their economy a mortal hit.

Luckily, in Dark Avatar, there's a LOT mroe game mechanics in play.  In GalCiv II you have your fleets and that's about it. That's your only weapon. You start the game by claiming hte best planets and then you move to fleets.

IN Dark Avatar, you can't necessarily gets the best planets right away because they may not have a compatibile environment and you have to contend with enemy agents doing bad things to you and you hve more political options to manipulate players.

One idea I had that might work in Dark Avatar would be that when you're traveling in someone else's sphere of influence that your movement is reduced.

Forgive me for the interruption but I am just curious.

What would be the reasoning behind making an enemy fleet move slower within another Civs sphere of Influence? I would think that space is space and my ships would travel just as fast in or out of an influence sphere. They are just lines after all. If anything, I would encourage my captains on those ships to move as fast as possible within someone else's sphere.

Speed has always been a legitimate tactic in the real world, seems fair enough to me in game. If the AI spends BC on espionage the AI should be able to determine that ships of very high velocity are being built and then should move in one fashion or another to counter such a tactic. To not take this into consideration while creating the AI doesn't seem fair......... to the AI.

Frogboy, very good to hear your feedback on 1.3 changes. It makes me feel better about them.

You are absolutely right about people doing things to win on high difficulty levels the game designers did not intend. I was winning Suicidal games on gigantic universes with 9 races in 1.2 and I'm pretty sure I was doing a few of those things.

The question is, should you sacrifice things that are enjoyable about the game to keep people from using unintended tactics. I think you shouldn't. It's a fun and rewarding part of the game to find them, whether the game designers intended them or not. I think you accomplished what you set out to do in 1.3 to some extent. The only change that I really dislike in 1.3 is the morale buildings. I think those should be reverted.

The blitzkrieg is a vital tactic for high difficulty games. I wouldn't be able to win one without it. I think there are other options to make that tactic less viable other than slowing ships down. That's not something I would like to see myself. One solution would be to program the AI to react as a human player and actually fight back in the same turn. After all, a human player wouldn't just sit there getting hammered. Why should the AI.

Another way to deal with the blitzkrieg tactic would be to require all military ships within movement range to be destroyed before a planet can be invaded. That's more "real life" anyway. One of the reasons the blitzkrieg works so well is that you only have to destroy a planet's defenses. You don't have to eliminate any other opposition. An enemy could have a massive deadly fleet in the same sector and you can just take the adjacent planet it as if it wasn't even there.

Thanks for posting, it's really is great to hear what the lead developer has to say.

How about allowing fleets to move simultaneously rather than consecutively

Comments?

I like, however it would probably take a lot of work to code it into the game and have the AI take advantage of it.

But it sure would make blitzkrieg attacks harder to do and should actually be easier for the AI than the human player.

I always love it when people make the obvious argument that the A.I should be made to handle the mechanics. Unfortunatly, that is often not possible. And I doubt all the development time in the world would make the A.I. able to counter some of the cheese in earlier versions of the game.

The improvements were good ones. They shifted the game in the direction of micro, which much more thought intensive than the powerful high level strategies which were supposedly broken by the latest patch.

I always love it when people make the obvious argument that the A.I should be made to handle the mechanics. Unfortunatly, that is often not possible. And I doubt all the development time in the world would make the A.I. able to counter some of the cheese in earlier versions of the game.

When you guys are talking about the AI it sounds like you are talking about how to teach your 10 year old nephew how to play better. Which is my point. The AI is like playing a person. Is it perfect? No. But the AI flat out beats anything I've ever played. I think that all the criticism about the AI is valid, but once in a while we should stop and remember how good it is.

The fact that it is so good just makes us wish it were perfect...

Come on GalCiv3! I'll never sleep again!