[What follows below is an update I originally posted two days ago. These tend to come as I play.]
Time for an update! Gah, what have Firaxians and Brad turned me into, some crazy analyst who can spend more time writing than playing .
Getting straight to it, comments on minor civs. I like those folks, even if they are just asking to be eliminated when they’re located close to you – what not with the high planet quality they always have. But they can actually be good trading partners, so eliminating them isn’t always the best idea. That’s good. I noticed, though, a couple of strange things in their behaviour.
First, I saw on a few occasions minor civs build influence starbases. Seems to me that they never should – after all, they don’t have any actual influence as in they can’t flip enemy planets. And, if I understand correctly, their planets also can’t be flipped. It’s possible that I am missing something here about how they are supposed to behave, but influence starbases seem rather pointless.
Second, I had a minor civ trigger a false smart alarm for the AI. The GalCiv2 AI is programmed to, at the higher intelligence levels, recognize troops buildups as a sign that an invasion is imminent, and respond appropriately. So I had a minor civ’s planet in one of my star systems (I controlled the other 2 planets in it). I was fighting a war with a major civ, and preparing a number of Transports at planets in that star system. Just as I was preparing to send them to the front lines, the minor civ saw that there’s a bunch of Transports lined up and declared war. Those Transports were intended for my ongoing war with a major civ, but there you go. This is something that I don’t expect to happen very often, though, and it’s sure impossible to avoid – after all, you can’t have the AI know the player’s intentions.
Which brings me to a thought, I have to try a feint someday. Put some troops near a civ’s planet to make them thing I’m going to attack, thus detracting their attention from their economy and making them build military. Scare tactics.
Next up, influence victory and planet flipping. I got so excited by trying out influence in its various shapes and forms that I am now trying to win by influence all the time. And it is my belief that the 75% threshold is too high. One of my games, I was aiming for influence as the Torians. I wiped out some evil civ militarily, build a load of influence starbases and everything. The remaining civs in the galaxy had excellent relations with me. At controlling more than two thirds of the influence, I saw that I’m vastly more powerful than the others, but can’t win an influence victory until I eliminate some other civ. So I ended up eliminating the Arceans through culture – which allowed me to get to 75%.
My point is, currently, the influence victory doesn’t require just great influence. It requires you to wipe out some other civs, militarily or culturally. Otherwise, in a galaxy with 6 more civs, and you need 75%, you’re talking about you having three times as much influence as those 6 civs combined. Ack.
One option is to simply lower the threshold to 66% (which still takes effort to achieve), but I have something else in mind. I believe that, if you sign an Alliance with someone, their influence should count towards yours, for purposes of the Influence victory only, no UN combination or anything like that. That would be a good addition to the 1.3 change to Alliances, which are now finally hard to get. Then, one option to win an influence victory would be to get to close to 70% yourself and sign an alliance with someone.
Planet flipping I have grown very fond of. I love researching the yellow techs and putting two Influence starbases in such a way that they would flip a neighbour’s star system to me eventually. On my luckiest attempt, I’ve flipped four planets with two starbases – those four planets belonged two to each civ, and thus both of them were wiped out. Wow. It costs money, but not that much money. 1000bc for starbase modules, to push them to maximum influence, and possibly the starbase initial construction costs. I would say that isn’t so expensive for a method of absolutely peaceful conquest.
The AI doesn’t respond aggressively enough to this. Yes, I’ve received warnings from them that they don’t like my starbases (though not always). Still, they don’t seem to declare war over it, and I have even managed to maintain Friendly relations with civs up until the moment they’re wiped out by my culture. The AI should probably consider influence starbases near its planets as something more dangerous. To the point of declaring war if they feel up to it – after all, a lot of resources spent on influence also likely means a weaker military. Having a civ send a stern warning about a starbase, but then being able to assimilate them, doesn’t feel right – particularly when you manage to do that to different civs, several games in a row.
On a related notice, it would be great to see this strategy added to the AI’s arsenal. It will place influence starbases in its systems if these systems are at the risk of being overran by foreign influence, but I haven’t really seen offensive influence starbases – after all, they have to not only be close to a rival planet, but equipped with a considerable number of modules.
By the way, what’s up with the AI preferring to build several Economy star bases per a star system? I usually see something like 2 Economy starbases placed close together, instead of 1 with good upgrades. According to the documentation, the bonuses stack, but wouldn’t it make more sense to first fully upgrade the first starbase before building a second? Two weak starbases seem a worse solution. However, the AI definitely loves its mining starbases – I always see it going for resources only, and see its mining starbases equipped with additional modules at a good pace. That’s nice.
I finally got around to playing with the governments some. Previously, the situation wasn’t quite right for that. The idea is very neat, particularly that of the Senate. However, there’s a problem. You need control of Senate, which is determined at the elections. The chance of losing control is the one and only drawback to running an advanced government. Elections are determined by your approval rating. In theory, this should force you to pay more attention to your approval when running an advanced government. In reality, you can keep watch on when the elections are coming up, and lower the tax rate dramatically the turn before the elections. That should let your party win the elections alright. I’ve also used this when the Senate disapproved of a war I wanted to start. I lowered the tax for high approval, and could declare war easily. I think the optimal way to handle this is by having mean approval between the elections matter. Thus, when new elections happen, what matters is your approval throughout the entire time since the previous ones. The having high approval for one turn won’t help you if you are running low approval for the rest of the time.
Another thing is special planetary attacks. You know, Mass Drivers, Tidal Disruption, whatever. As the game progresses, you became unable to take larger planets with traditional invasion technique – at least not without losing a bunch of Transports first. So you have to resort to some of these special tactics. These, in turn, have a disadvantage in the form of loss of planet quality and/or planetary improvements. However, it turns out that there is a problem – these negative effects do not happen if the invasion fails.
Basically, here is what you can do. There’s some planet which you can’t really conquer just yet. You estimate you need three Transports with special tactics – with just a little experience, those estimates are pretty easy to make. You send in two Transports, choosing a powerful special tactic, such as Mass Drivers. You lose, taking out many of the defenders. Then you send in another Transport or two, using a non-damaging tactic – either the standard invasion or Information Warfare. Yay! Planet taken, no damage to planet quality or improvements!
This ain’t good. By sacrificing a few Transports here and there, you can take planets without having to face the negative effects of special tactics. If you had used enough Transports in the first place, you’d still likely lose at least one, so your Transport losses don’t increase by much with this tactic. However, you do get enemy planets intact – and in the long run, it’s definitely more than worth it. After all, capturing a class-20 planet is so much better than having it reduced to class 11!
Unfortunately, the obvious solution also has a flaw. That is, if special tactics are made to damage planets regardless of the invasion’s outcome, that is also a possible exploit. Send single Transports (one troops module) at enemy planets, use Mass Drivers, fail, but considerably weaken the enemy planet at the cost of just 500 million population. Launching such attacks against key enemy planets would also be a very powerful tactic. On the other hand, you can’t invade a planet unless its orbit is empty, so you wouldn’t be able to just send Transports all over the place. And the AI puts a very high priority on maintaining some ships in the orbit. So maybe it wouldn’t really be much of an exploit. I’m unsure, though it would be interesting to test.
Speaking of exploits, what’s up with selling the AI obsolete techs? If you put Laser II and Laser III in the same deal, the AI smartly recognizes that and tells you that Laser II is useless if you’re also selling Laser III. Great. But what you can do is sell the AI Laser III for whatever, and then, separately, sell Laser II for something else (you can at least get a sum of money out of it). Why? Many older techs are indeed useless if you have the newer ones. There are exceptions, but in the situation above, the AI should see it already has Laser III and refuse to give absolutely anything for Laser II.
On a positive notice, I recently noticed the Terrans research the mass driver tech branch well, being ahead in it of everyone else. In a smart move, they refused to trade those techs point blank. I hope it wasn’t a fluke but instead the AI actually trying to maintain a monopoly on these techs it’s well ahead in.
I complained, in my first 1.3 analysis post, that the AI is sometimes weak at figuring out when to sign peace. I’ve got a suspected reason for it today. It seems that the AI, when deciding about peace (and which side should pay for it) uses the comparative ratings of itself and the civ it’s at war with. That is, say, you’re at war with the Dratha. Later, if the Dratha have more population and economy than you do, they’ll think you should pay for peace – possibly even if you’re kicking their butt. I don’t have access to AI code so I can’t check anything of course, but this is really the only explanation I can come up with for some of the AI peace-making decisions I have seen, in wars against me and other AIs alike.
A good measure of who’s winning/losing the war would be just that, relative increases/decreases in various numbers since the war began. When a war starts, the AI should memorize its population, industrial and military strength, the number of planets it has, and such info. Then, when considering peace, gains/losses relative to that should be considered. If the AI loses three planets and 20 billion population in a war, then it is losing, and should understand so – even if its research or industrial capacity outstrips that of the enemy. At peace time, capacity matters. At war, it’s the actual losses or gains you have that matter.
And I just became even more assured that forced peace periods are needed in some circumstances. Being able to declare war the turn after you sign peace just isn’t right. If you’re close to exterminating an AI, you can sign peace, take all / nearly all their tech and money for peace, and then just redeclare war and finish the job. At the same time, if you pay a superior AI for peace, you can’t even be sure if you bought yourself any time at all – which is why some forced peace period seems like a good idea.
My final point for now is regarding the whole life support thing. It would be better if life support ranges scaled to galaxy size. Playing a Huge galaxy, life support technologies become important, and there are indeed many places you can’t reach. Playing a Medium galaxy, I put a low priority on those technologies, and have never used a life support module on a ship. Scaling would simply make life support range relevant to any galaxy size.
Oh, another possible tweak would be to make influence / economy starbases not extend your range. Only planets and military starbases. Not a major thing, but I’d have a good feeling about such a small tweak.
For now, that’s it. As always, thanks for reading!
