On the matter of crossing borders... I am reminded of the Rise of Nations series (I actually live kinda-sorta down the road from the guys who made that, and would love to work there), where, if you are within an opponent's territory, you suffer attrition.

Units and buildings that fall within or moves into another nation's boundaries suffer what is called attrition damage. This simulates the effects of the need to supply your troops when they are not in friendly territory since they can not "live off the land".

What is "attrition damage" and is there a way to reduce it when I attack or increase it on enemies units? Military units crossing into neutral or enemy territory gradually take damage as a kind of "penalty" for violating borders and abstraction of the difficulties encountered by invading armies throughout history. Also, buildings stranded in another non-allied nation's territory due to expanding/contracting borders are also subject to attrition. Nations with whom you are at peace send their troops into your territory at the cost of those troops suffering punishing "attrition damage" - this greatly reduces the viability of a surprise declaration of war strategy. Enemy troops - of the nations formally at war with you - suffer a lower level but sufficiently detering amount of attrition. The usual amount of damage is roughly 1 hitpoint per second. Attrition damage can be mitigated completely if you are in your territory naturally, but also if your units are within range of an accompanying supply wagon or truck. You can increase the damage your enemies suffer by increasing the "allegiance" line of research that can be accessed in towers. Building the Colosseum or Kremlin wonders also increases the attrition damage. On the other hand you can reduce the attrition damage you suffer by increasing the "forage" line of research at your granaries Building the Statue of Liberty wonder likewise reduces the attrition damage your units recieve while in enemy territory. In addition, the Russian's unique ability is that enemies suffer greater attrition within their territory while the Mongol's unique ability is that they suffer less attrition damage while in enemy territory.

... I'm not entirely sure how this could be adapted to what you are talking about, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Greetings Everyone!

I have been playing GC2 for a week now and have a few observations regarding morale and economy. Since I started playing with the 1.31 patch, I can't comment on any nerfing that was done, but I can say that morale has been a key component of my victories. By building a couple morale buildings on each planet, or 4 in a system shared with enemies, I can convert a few planets the computer was able to colonize before me. This helps hold off the enemies which seem to be vastly superior in the early-mid game.
So without trying too hard, my influence soon becomes overpowering. Build and upgrade a few influence bases and neighbouring systems start converting to my just cause of galactic conquest at a rapid pace. At this point in the game, victory is nearly assured without building another ship.
I wonder what morale was like before it was "nerfed"?

Anyway, great game, I'm enjoying it hugely. Does anyone have any economy tips for the early game? Seems it gets bogged down after my initial colony rush and I fall way behind the computer.

I just want to offer an amen to mumbles earlier game strategy comments. The suicidal AI is NOT being beaten on planet build or the economy, it's being outrun and outfought on the battlefield via superior tactics.

One big problem with slowing down in others influence area would be that the AI would be even more pathetic attacking you. (or other civs)

The problem that needs fixing is the AI doesn't build fast ships, and people do. Three solutions :
1) Program the AI to build fast ships.
2) Change engines somehow.
3) Change movement/attack rules somehow.

Adding other fixes will not work. The human will still dominate the slow AI ships.

I personally think the AI would be able to play much better if it just built faster ships. That's why I don't understand the resistance to fixing that in the AI. To me the AI is doing the hardest aspects of the game excellently.

I'm beginning to think it's because building faster ships would require the AI to use more and more CPU to decide where they would go with all those moves... (and rather than address that, they just avoid it)

It depends on how the slowing is done I guess. If my ship moves at 50, and the AI is still building them at 20 the "slowing" effect would have to be highly non-linear (and strong, something like -30) to get the desired effect.

Actually, I don't think that getting AI and human ship speed more evenly matched is really going to change that much. I also don't think it matters if this accomplished by having a slowdown effect or by just having the AI build faster ships. In either method I think the net effect would be for the AI to set ship destinations exactly as being done currently, they'll just get there relatively sooner.

I've seen many instances where I've just conquered a planet and don't have a ship in orbit and I look around at nearby troop transports and they're on auto-pilot set for a destination I conquered 5 turns ago. Yes, speeding AI ships up will make that transport get there quicker but it won't cause the AI to re-evaluate the situation at that instant and change the transport destination to the newly conquered planet as a human would.

What everyone here is asking for is the ability for the AI to be able to wage a tactical war against a human. This would be true artificial intelligence. I'm a hardware engineer by education and trade, so this is not my field, but the last I heard (this information could be very dated), true artificial intelligence doesn't exist (has any program passed a Turing test yet?). What exists are really "expert systems". Expert systems function very well in a very constrained environment with a limited, though potentially complicated set of rules. Examples of expert systems are such things as master chess programs or 3D electromagnetic field solvers. I don't think it's realistically possible to implement this in a $40 game operating on a PC even if that PC has a dual core 3.5Ghz processor. If movement in the game were constrained to a network of stargates, for example, the AI would have a better chance, but that's a different game.

I really don't quite understand this desire to fix every possible hole in AI performance, particularly when, if their medals are a true indication, most of the posters in this thread aren't playing at the suicidal level. I personally find myself very challenged to win at suicidal. I'm really not that anxious to make it even harder.

gal,

I'm not 'resistant' to the ai building faster ships. But its not an either or proposition. And the problem is already less the ai's ability to launch a good offense (which from a technical point of view might be hopeless; and that is not 'avoiding' it as you negativly characterize it. its a techincal limitation), but its ability to counter a human offense. Forcing ships to slow within influence would make countering the blitz much easier as its more likely human ships will come into sensor range and the ai will have time to declare war and attack.

And i submit the a.i. making any progress in the attack has more to do with numbers than with speed.

Yep I see this with most game companys and it is worse with on line games. This game having the Metaverse makes it fall somewhere in the middle. The 'uber' players, the min/maxers will kill any AI period. They spend their lives beating the games in ways the Devs or the average player would not dream of doing. Then they get on the boards and brag about it, not knocking you guys if that is what floats your boat then more power to you

The 'uber' players start posting about how they do it and even average palyers start beating the game at higher levels. It is an endless cycle that the Devs can never seem to stay ahead of, and it is SO much eaiser to nerf game parts then make the AI smarter. The average player tends to lose playablity as the Devs try and keep ahead of the 'uber 'players and many of the fun parts of the game get nerfed.

This thread is a very good example. Look at what the Devs have done to try and slow down the uber players, they have nerfed morale buildings to the point of making them useless along with tile bonuses for them and farms. Now they post about how they did not know stock exchanges gave such good morale bonuses which means we might see a nerf to stock exchanges next. Where does it all end? With the heart of the game ripped out just to try and slow down the 'uber' players which is a losing cause to start with.

Where does it all end? With the heart of the game ripped out just to try and slow down the 'uber' players which is a losing cause to start with.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Put an option in to deactivate tech stealing and I think even *most* of the uber players will be struggling now.

I like the spirit of the 1.31 changes, and to be honest they suit me just fine (had worked my way up to beating suicidal...not any more) but they do seem a touch excessive. Customizable difficulty levels are the way to go.

Ideally I'd like the ability (should I so desire) to control exactly how much bonus *or* penalty both I and the AI get in every category. This wouldn't just allow *everybody* to find a challenging level, it would also allow people to manipulate the game balance toward whatever their favoured setup might be. Don't like the morale changes in 1.31? Hand out morale bonuses to everyone. Dislike the way defence becomes much less useful once weapons trees max out? Either put in penalties to weapons, bonuses to hitpoints, bonuses to defence or a combination of all 3. Etc, etc. Make these configurations exportable and people can easily share the fun combos they find. (Of course, you can change the game balance by modding the tech tree too, but that's a great deal more work!)

How this could be made to work with the metaverse I don't know. It probably couldn't, but then does the metaverse *really* work now?! Seems to me to be more about doing what scores the most points rather than what is most likely to win the game. That's part of the reason I don't bother with it.

Customizable difficulty is coming in Dark Avatar anyway isn't it? (Although probably not on that scale)

I also agree that it would be very problematic for Metaverse scoring. Maybe make it unavailable for Metaverse games.

I guess that's easy for us to say.