Valadar

Join Date 04/2006

Long time DA beta testers review/opinions on the expansion

Hello, I just wanted to make a post of my thoughts on DA. Some good, some bad, some needing improvement. I have thoroughly enjoyed playing the DA expansion beta, in all it really adds to the games experience. I play on masochistic, gigantic, 9 opponent maps with a custom race in case your wonder. Its just how I prefer but much of this applies to any game combo.

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First, "THE GOOD".

-Mega-events: these things rock. Even the bad ones everyone talks about like pirates, disease. These are MENT to totally throw a curve ball into your game and they do. I particularly like the, all un-inhabitable planets in say 2 sector range now become PQ13 event, pirates (though a rant later on about this one), and the appearance of new races (though underpowered). Very cool ideas, they just need some tweaking.

-UP war declaration before attacking ceasefire event, this should always be in effect, its way to easy to take 5-10 planets in the first round and I like this event as its slows that from happening

-PQ Levels: I love how that crappy PQ1 or PQ2 planet that you skipped over on first glace could actually turn out to be a 12+ after terraforming is complete. This completely fixes those stupid 1-2PQ useless planets that plagued DL. Now, just colonize everything.

-Hazardous Environments: it rocks, very nice at slowing down that initial rush but needs tweaking, see below

-Ship details: I love the ship details when inspecting them in DA vs. DL, cool 3d effects always rock

-Asteroids: great idea also, could stand to make them more plentiful or a configurable option on the sandbox game creation screen.

-Planet launch tiles, cool idea too

-Great revamp on the engine size issue, I use to build 30+ movement transports and shoot them in like darts in the air from the back lines until this change. VERY nice work balancing change.

- too many to list

Ok, now on to "THE BAD"

AI is so easy to kill even on masochistic. There are so many things to do to ensure a win but here are a few examples of bad AI choices.

-AI almost never uses tile bonuses on planets. I see use of them sometimes on 300% or 700% tiles sometimes, but also see a lot of star ports or whatever built on 700% bonus research or manufacturing tiles. Very POOR use of limited space. It would be best to use every bonus you can and adjust your overall civ structure in other areas on a different planet without bonus tiles.

-AI's are idiots when they build fleets and then just keep them in orbit. Ships in orbit do you no good unless two conditions exist; they prevent sneak attack by a transport or you have fleet defense built on the planet. If there are no other ships in the area, get them off the planet to patrol at the very least. MY BIGGEST AI complaint is when I roll in with a fleet of warships to an AI controlled planet with 8-10 small/tiny/SOMETIMES medium ships in orbit, but NO ORBITAL FLEET DEFENSE!!! Sitting ducks in a barrel, what’s the point of a fleet if I can pick them off one by one 90% of the time. The AI never leaves a planet undefended, ok sometimes but you can bet money they are fixing that dilemma. Not a bad decision IF there are ships nearby, silly if not. But one low end war ship can prevent a lone transport attack. Make the presence of an accompanying fleet determine how many ships to keep in orbit verses roaming/nearby protection duty. Even after going to war with a civ and them seeing my fleets approach, they should almost always launch and meet me half way when I’m on their doorstep with a fleet and they DON’T have orbital fleet defense. In times like this, the AI should be saying LAUNCH, LAUNCH, LAUNCH!!!!

-AI fleets are too small. Half the times you run into some "OK" 57 logistics fleets of say 10-15 ships, but they are all small ships and die with one or two shots. I basically don’t bother building anything but medium hulls early on and quickly kill off any small or tiny ships I have and never build them again. There is safety in numbers, but too many times I run into 4-7 ship fleets. Any good general in any military position will tell you to concentrate your forces for maximum effect. Give me 5 fleets of 8 ships vs. 8 fleets of 5 ships ANY DAY! AI needs to consolidate more.

-AI builds stupid ships like scouts and escorts. Scouts are lame, just wait and you will eventually discover fog of war hidden things in time. OR at least build some useful small warships that you set to explore and set them free for 50 turns or so. Then consolidate back to a rally point, upgrade if you have the money or use as your initial openers in your first war to wipe them out and not continue to pay maintenance fees. Regardless, useless waste of time and resources. Escorts, what a joke. I can’t count the times I see 1 or maybe 2 small escorts with a transport or two. Here’s an idea, keep your transports safely in the rear of the fighting until needed and you don’t need them to be escorted when you bring them in for the planet takeover 1-2 rounds later. ALWAYS keep them out of enemy range and you don’t need escorts. The AI builds an excess of these for some reason.

AI doesn’t understand the concept of front lines. I tend to build fleets and then send them to my borders to protect. Every game I play before I attack, I rally up on the "front" of my enemy. AI should be able to see if I have 90% of my forces at the end of our "close borders", guess what, I'm about to take them out! Even when I prep a turn or two before and place all my fleets 1 move distance next to 5 of their planets, all I get is a warning from the diplomacy screen to move or "else". By then its too late, I’m in position and next turn or two its "All your base are belong to us" time. At the least, the AI should give an ultimatum to move more than one turn distance from any colonized planet or immediately attack preemptively. I can go 5-10 turns parked on the AI’s door step with a 13 or so moving fast transport parked in range or one turn away before I SOMETIMES get war declarations. It’s a galactic conquest game, if ANYONES war ships are parked in my space for more than one turn, something is up, especially if were talking 0-1 turn from 5 planets or so.

AI fails to build transports worth a crap. Instead of doing like me, build on transport with 4 adv troop carriers or something, they will send 4 1000 unit ships (costs more) to take the same planet. I have a philosophy, one ship one planet. (Yeah yeah, one shot one kill knockoff but it’s true) Why does the AI never build transports with more than one troop module?

AI is too trust worthy. Example, I have 90% of my forces massing on our borders and then pay them or another race to start a war or two about 5-10 turns before I attack. This softens them up nice for me and I simply wipe them up. By the time they sign peace treaties with the one or two other civ's (IF they can) to try and focus on me, half their empire is mine and they are just buying time. Have the AI VERY cautious about players that pay them to attack others or vice versa, its usually a mistake and ESPECIALLY if I have fleets + troops on our borders.

Alliances – these should ONLY be achievable by like alignments. Good civ’s should NEVER ally with evil. Period. The AI almost never makes alliances amongst itself. Why not, you can break them any time and still end up friendly so its not a big deal. I can almost always ally with the top player and no one ever screws with me. Also, I ally with the AI all the time and break when they get attacked or I attack them. The AI almost always keeps their word and helps if anyone attacks me, it would be nice to see them not honor an alliance more often (does this ever happen, I’m assuming it does but never to me). Humans are liars at the core, the AI should not believe us, it is a game and we are ALWAYS trying to win it, no one plays to lose so we LIE, they should too. How about, "go back on your word and break the alliance, change to wary faction or go to war on the basis of a double cross"!

Tech trading- I stopped building research improvements long ago. I might build 2-4 tiles in my entire empire nowadays and go the whole game like that. I tech trade like a mofo, and after the first year I have almost every tech all the other civ’s combined have and it stays that way. Here is the flaw: if I trade say mass tech 10 for say the first green "agreeable" laser 9 tech the enemy has, they will almost always give me for free all the preceding techs under that, or for very little extra. I guess the AI does not place value on lesser techs after an "agreeable" top tech trade is reached. What is not being calculated is that I will use those "lower" techs on my next trade to another race to up my offer for one of their techs. I do not have to do almost any real research these days save the first year to get starter techs for trading purposes. The AI needs to say, ok this laser tech trade is agreeable, but ONLY this tech. If you want the preceding ones, make an offer for those separate; perhaps limit it to only one tech gained at a time from any tech trade session. So I get one weapons research branch AND all the preceding ones for nothing or very little, and then use those to trade with another. I get two weapons tech branches for the price of one, having only researched a few things for trade. Sure, all civ’s eventually get them too, but who cares, especially when I can steamroll them so easily later on. Also, the AI should tech trade all the time when its turned on. I might get one offer a year from the AI when I should get them more often IMHO. Plus those offers are already one for one offers.

United Planets meetings: there should be more of them, probably every quarter. Some are big events, some medium and some small. But they all make it more enjoyable and they should occur more frequently. Also, we could do emergency sessions like the US has when significant events occur like a race is wiped out or one empire is growing to strong. All I get now is a diplomacy statement saying the "Thalans influence is growing strong, we should support those that oppose them" from time to time. Make those messages into emergency UP sessions so everyone could vote on trade embargos or all out war against a powerful warmonger race (like me) or whatever.

Ship builds. The AI fails to analyze appropriate threats. If the civ’s on the map are all building missile weapons and say ONE race is building beams, why the hell are they researching shield techs unless directly at war. The odds are best it will be a missile civ that attacks them vs. the one beam civ. Sure, if they are at war or something go ahead, but defense is not as good as bigger guns in the long run. How many 16 beam 80 shield ships I have seen in DA is unbelievable, it should be the other way around. Defense is SECOND to offense; the AI goes the other way a lot of the time.

AI war considerations. What’s the point of going to war with a civ on the other side of the galaxy if it takes them 10-20 turns to get there? Silly if you ask me, a lot of times I will pay a civ to attack someone way weaker or even stronger than them simply for this reason. Their ships leave their space and 5-10 turns later, I roll over them and by the time their ships get back to help, its too late. Don’t fight a war in Africa when 90% of another civ is lined up on your door step in Canada.

Victory conditions: If your playing a game of total war, no influence, no tech, no alliance victory options turned on, don’t have the AI play stupid by continuing influence victory style play. Great example, the alterians or the torians ALWAYS seem to build the crap out of influence star bases regardless if this is even a victory condition. WHY? Its not like they will take over the entire galaxy this way. Sure, MAYBE they will grab a few planets on THIER borders, but it wont push in too far and will not even come close to winning.

Lastly, "THE UGLY" (AKA: other things to improve)

-toggle to display un-inhabitable dead planets on/off. I hate looking at 3 dead planets just to see the 1 or 2 good ones in that system. Once I discover that system, I don’t care what ELSE is in it except for habitable planets.

-make the hazardous planet colonization techs un-tradeable. Force you to research these on your own, each race does have different biological reactions to say toxic environments. Just because the thalans found an air filter to combat the toxins on one of their planets, doesn’t mean I can trade them for it and adapt it to my race on the fly. This would even further slow down the initial planet colonization rush, at least on the human side. Humans and thalans breathe different you know 

-special race/alignment techs/benefits should NEVER been stolen. IE: Spore ships is a special ability, if I can take a planet and gain that ability, I now have TWO super abilities, not fair for the AI 

-there should be way more emphasis placed on killing the weaker civ’s. I would LOVE to see two or three (how about allied AI civ’s) attacking the same middle or lower, hell even strongest race to knock them out and dived up the rewards.

-the mini graph on the bottom center of the UI should only displays say the last year (52 weeks). I have no interest in seeing a 300+ turn game shrunk down on a mini graph constantly. Where I was at turn 10 vs. 278 is irrelevant. That’s what the large full screen one is for on the civilization page is for. Make it set at say 1 year or even better, configurable as to how many turns it will display.

-the AI should gun for certain trade goods more often. Researching armor just because another civ is starting to churn out a few mass based warships is not as important as grabbing that trade good before I do. Great examples are diplomatic translator, graviton accelerator, eyes of the universe, harmonic crystals, aphrodisiac and such. EVERY game I play I end up getting every trade good save one or two, but most times I get them ALL! AI should target a trade good and go for it!

-The AI places too little emphasis on happiness. I almost never see entertainment building tiles on AI planets I take. SOMETIMES, usually only one tax revenue planets. I have them on almost every planet I control, even manufacturing planets. I can therefore pump my tax rates up to 69 or 79% almost the entire game, especially after I get all the happiness trade goods!

-Social improvements are very low priority it seems to the AI. Late game I will take over planets from the AI and have to upgrade almost everything on the planet unless it’s a factory. What’s with that? And yes they have the tech, they just spend too much interest in military production. Does the AI even use the focus options? ECONOMY is what drives an army, if you don’t have the economy to support yourself, what good is a military.

Voting at the UP’s: a civ’s number of votes should not only be related to influence. If I’m the least influential member of the United Nations but my military is 3 times larger than anyone else’s on the planet, think anyone would NOT strongly consider my opinion in the real world? Why not in this game? # of votes should reflect overall civilization strength, not only cultural based influence. Things like current civ’s they are at war with, alliances, happiness, all these should play a part in how many votes you get.

Foreign civ’s should be able to refuse trade routes to themselves. When the thalans try to trade with me I should be given a choice to allow it or not, in a pop up window or something, not just the embargo checkbox. That would go a long way to drawing the player into considering trade partners more and add depth to the game and strategy to diplomatic affecting aspects. The AI would have to do the same amongst itself. Yes trade embargos are toggle-able, but I NEVER see the AI refuse me setting up a route with them, even when I'm wary factioned. It just doesn’t happen unless I’m at war with them, then naturally I cant establish a route to them.

-Pirate event, have the ships roam when they don’t have something to kill instead of hovering over a planet waiting for something to pop up. May make this even less of a game stopper for those that hate it. Also, how about an option to "pay them off" and get them to leave you alone!

-star bases need an upgrade. If I can build ONE ship that has 200 attack on it, why cant a star base build up that good or better?. SERIOUS upgrades in defense would be great, or a module tech tree that allows for automatic small or tiny ship fleets that launch from bays to help fight space battles would be way cool. Upgrade the base with one module and get one ship, two modules get three, then five.. Something like that, maybe at half or quarter the attack of the star bases values. THEN it would be worth sending 40-50 constructers to the star base for upgrades. Military bases ranges should probably be doubled!

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All in all, I LOVE THE GAME. Don’t let the ranting mis-lead you, this is by far the best game in its genre and overall a damn good product. Too much of my free time is spent on it, but there is surely room for improvement. WAY TO GO DEV TEAM! Maybe my comments/ideas/opinions are valued, maybe ignored but at least anyone that has read this far knows what one long time beta player thinks.

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I like most of your suggestions, hopefully devs read this.

I would like to add one more thing to tech trading annoyance list. AI seems to throw all their techs for treaties, sometimes you get ridicilous amount of techs for trade/research treaties.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2423

Good feedback.

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i didn't read the whole thing but space miners should not be able to see astriods if they are covered by fog of war

as is i can set them to automatic and they become another scout

also i think astroids should be able to be found in empty secters too

i point to the fact that they(nasa) have found at least one set of planets without a star

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Mistralok1

Join Date 05/2006

+22

Mega-events: these things rock.

Agreed. A good old fashioned kick in the ass to wake me up.

UP war declaration before attacking ceasefire event, this should always be in effect

Disagree. I would go so far as to say that the AI shouldn't be required to declare war on me before attacking. 12/7/41

-PQ Levels: I love how that crappy PQ1 or PQ2 planet that you skipped over on first glace could actually turn out to be a 12+ after terraforming is complete.

Excellent

Hazardous Environments

Another excellent change. AI does tend, however, to place to place too high a value on researching these techs before they are needed.

I love the ship details when inspecting them in DA vs. DL,

Agreed. The starbases look like Faberge eggs now. However, all this 'bling' seems to slow the game down a bit, so can we find a middle ground?

AI almost never uses tile bonuses on planets

Should be hard coded to require the AI to use the +300/+700 tiles for the use intended. I often use the +100 tiles for other purposes, depending on the situation, but rarely these.

Scouts are lame

Scouts are great. They find habitable planets, but more importantly, they find anomilies, which give a gamelong bonus. Later in the game, they are less important.

AI doesn’t understand the concept of front lines

There are no 'front lines' in this game. What is there to understand?

AI fails to build transports worth a crap.

The AI should upgrade it's transport ships as new techs come online.

AI is too trust worthy.

Humans are lying, cheating, weasels. This is the only way that we could possibly beat this game.

Alliances – these should ONLY be achievable by like alignments.

What planet have you been living on?

The AI fails to analyze appropriate threats.

Wrongo. If I am researching beam weapons, then the AI will research shields, every time.

f I’m the least influential member of the United Nations but my military is 3 times larger than anyone else’s on the planet, think anyone would NOT strongly consider my opinion

I have to think that you are of a tender age. The former Soviet Union had an enormous military strength, yet was regularly outvoted in the UN.

-Pirate event, have the ships roam when they don’t have something to kill instead of hovering over a planet waiting for something to pop up. May make this even less of a game stopper for those that hate it. Also, how about an option to "pay them off" and get them to leave you alone!

Can't argue with this. The Pirates! seem to target one civ (me), ignoring all else.

star bases need an upgrade

Agreed. I can build improvements onto a ship that will go flitting amongst the stars, yet I can't add those to some great hulking thing that is just sitting there.

All in all, I LOVE THE GAME.

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Voting at the UP’s: a civ’s number of votes should not only be related to influence. If I’m the least influential member of the United Nations but my military is 3 times larger than anyone else’s on the planet, think anyone would NOT strongly consider my opinion in the real world? Why not in this game? # of votes should reflect overall civilization strength, not only cultural based influence. Things like current civ’s they are at war with, alliances, happiness, all these should play a part in how many votes you get.

i like this one

and the other feedback was good too, things to definitely consider for patches devs

though i am willing to bet the AI issues won't be as big in the final release, since we haven't had a beta update in a while, i'm sure a significant amount of coding has been done since the last one.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2423

One of the real challenges in writing the computer AI is whether to have the AI role play or to have it play like a multiplayer player.

Take for example influence victories. No real human player would ever, for a second, tolerate you focusing on influence/diplomacy victory if you had a weak military. They'd crush you.

Whereas in GalCiv, your diplomacy ability is practically like having force powers as far as the AI is concerned. "These aren't the droids you're looking for." And as long as you have it, you can get away with a lot more. But from a multiplayer point of view, it's insane.

There are a lot of things like that that I don't put in because it just wouldn't be enjoyable (not for me anyway). Another example is I don't have the AI zip out of orbit and nail transports. It could. Easily. You know -- that one turn where you messed up and left a transport uncovered by an escort? Of course the AI could send out a defender and whack it. I know the hard core people would love that. But it's *not* fun for most people (certainly not for me). The AI will focus on transports and so if you don't guard them they will get whacked. But not from a ship that's in orbit. My view is that the people who really want a bastard to play against can turn it up.

The AI that's in the beta is most definitely not what the final Dark Avatar will have. If you'v echecked the journals area, you can definitely see that we've been gaming the AI over and over and over again game after game after game to tweak it.

The one comment I do have is about building on special tiles. I never see the AI not use special tiles except occasionally the food, morale, or influence tiles. If one thing has definitely been improved, it's using those tiles. Sometimes, the AI comes to different conclusions on using those tiles but it definitely has a strategy for those special tiles. I've never seen a case where it's build a factory on a 700% research bonus for instance. Obviously it's possible, but extremely unlikely.

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Frogboy, yeah i thought it was so odd too, but sure enought, factory on a 700% research tile my last game, and memory does seem to recall a few other times with the current beta as well. My comment about the ships in orbit thing was mainly referring to the enemy not coming to meet me if there is no threat of transport, or limited at least, but you have a huge fleet moving in, ESPECIALLY without orbital fleet defense. I really hope the final build could check to see if they see a fleet coming in but no transports, launch and "take it to me" mentality. That would so rock instead of me picking them off so easy.

I agree it would suck to have some small ship pop orbit to snag a lone transport, im not saying that. I guess the reason 75% (my guess) of an AI's entire fleet sits over its planets is to prevent sneak attacks. Not saying dont leave behind one or two as defenders, sure, but the rest should always be on the move.

Regardless, you guys have created a killer game and i play it 8 hours a day or more and will continue to. Cant wait for the next update/final release.

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Mistralok,

just a quick rebutal..

-Scouts are great. They find habitable planets, but more importantly, they find anomilies, which give a gamelong bonus. Later in the game, they are less important

*Disagree, my colony ships pull double duty for me, they explore to find new worlds, then colonize them when they find them. why do i need a scout to go look, radio back the location to my base world and THEN i send the colony ship out just in time to find another civ just took it because i took too long? More importantly they find anomilies? You must be thinking of survey ships, and those you just put on auto and forget about em, fog of war does not affect them.

-There are no 'front lines' in this game. What is there to understand?

*Sure they are, i guess i just use my border edges. If my enemy is east of me, that is a "line" from which i know my enemy will be coming from that direction. The thing is not to let them get past it, or have a few ships in the rear to tag them if they do. Unless you are colonizing planets all over allow several other civs to colonize in your sectors, you should always be able to have a feel of a "line" or border.

-The AI should upgrade it's transport ships as new techs come online.

*It does, but not to it fullest potential. Say i have supreme miniturization and other invasion techs, I upgrade the base transport with new engines, adv troops mod and the like. Guess what, there is a TON of left over space. I continue to put more troop mods and fully load it up. Sure its longer to build, but one ship, one planet.. very effecient.

-What planet have you been living on?

*This one. You used russia in another example. Ok back in the day they were our "enemy" and considered a bad group of people. Do you think we would jump to thier side because another country attacked them? Hell no, thats the idea of alignment based alliances. Ally's are someone that "has your back" (GB, Canada, stuff like that) but allys always seem to be like minded cultures. You dont see the US allying with people that are evil based and commit attrocities like killing off minor populations or cultures

-Wrongo. If I am researching beam weapons, then the AI will research shields, every time.

*Correct, they sure will if you are the one they take interest in. My point is though, say no one is at war and if you watch what they build. 7 civs build lasers, 1 builds missles, 1 builds mass... chances are it will be a laser civ rolling in on you later on. It would be best to research the most popular (effective) defensive t ech, not one that is used by a civ you are nuetral or better with. When i finally do start building defensive strategies, first thing i look to is who doesnt like me, second is i scan the galaxy to see what everyone is buuilding. If noone is attacking or near that point, i will ALWAYS research the most common weapon types defenses.

-I have to think that you are of a tender age. The former Soviet Union had an enormous military strength, yet was regularly outvoted in the UN.

*But they were still feared, and the real world UN is a good aligned bias style orginization. Perhaps that was a bad example, a UN for the "bad guys" doesnt exist in real life.. its a game in the future, the UP should not care about alignment the way the UN does. It comes down to the stats and politics, but big guns always help

anyhow, not the best example.

Anyways, i love different points of views. Glad your liking the game as much as I am!!

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Mistralok1

Join Date 05/2006

+22

Great posting, Valadar. You have obviously given these matters some real thought. We won't always agree, but I will always respect your opinions. Thanks, and happy gaming.

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Well written post, I agree with most of your points.

The Pirate mega event needs tweaking, right now it's a little bit too much. Quite literally, they shut down the entire game I played last night. 2 races went under and surrendered to other races because the total collapse of their economy (low taxes / higher income from trading event also going on). The entire game came to a stand-still, I had to cut spending down to 15% just to cut my bleeding (and this is after my entire military budget had been cut). Eventually I was able to lure pirates away from my planets by using the privateer trade good (aka undestroyable freighters). Once they were clear of a planet, I was then able to build a fleet and start clearing them out, but that took years.

The sheer number of pirates, the fact they had much better tech than anyone else in the game was just too much. Tone it down a notch or two, not a lot, but less than it is currently.

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Re: Environmental research & Trading

That'd be cool if you couldn't trade them but I suspect it's a programming mess to do that. I suppose you could up their "perceived trade value" way up high so they wouldn't give it up, but then you'd have to be careful so they wouldn't give the farm away when you offered it.

One thing I found last night, is it possible that you get at least 50% ability when someone surrenders and gives you a planet? I can see you not automagically getting it when you take a planet by force, but getting a bunch of planets unable to do anything when someone surrenders to you is a bit too much.

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Valadar what about Tech Trading is it really so cheesy as you say?Does it worsen so much gaming experience?

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one more comment this one is about the terriforming tiles

just becouse our race can't build on them to start with doesn't mean that the predicesaries(sorry about the spelling) couldn't maybe you could have some hidden bonus tiles

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Very, very good post. Specially the many AI bits. Hope the devs read this because currently, no matter how many threads or cores they AI use it is still totally inferior to a semi smart player.

But some of the things to improve are so obvious. Like having defensive fleets patrolling its borders and not having a fleet in orbit without orbital defense. Even with orbital defense its alot more efficient to put 90% of those ships in orbit in a fleet instead and go meet your invaders or better yet, attack their worlds.

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Marioflag,

Well, I wouldnt call it cheesy, just needs tweaking. In my post i mentioned how i build 2-4 research buildings and thats it. Im talking tiles empire wide, not per planet, on regular plain jane tiles even. I never upgrade them unless i manage to trade the tech, but still my research is WAY low. For me it improves my game experience (fun) for me because I dont have to build but a few research centers and thats it so i can build other stuff instead. I love having all the techs every race has, every 5 turns or so i will just use diplomacy with all the races and grab everything they have im interested in. It basically has one downfall. By the time you have it all, they have it all too, every race, because im trading it to them over time or they trade themselves. Regardless, i find it creates an even playing field and since i can outplay the AI it doesnt affect me and i get everything for nothing or very little expendature on researching things myself. I dont fool with it is all, but it could be seen as way out of wack and needs readjusting for the masses. One other benifit to not caring about building research structures is they are time expensive to build. Takes forever to complete building these and i just up my own research abilities when i take over AI planets as they tend to build them alot.

*edit: Also, just FYI in case your wondering, i play the diplomatic super ability so that gives me a large edge on the trades. I just think this is one of the best super abilities anyhow as it gives game long bonuses that affect your trades and even your faction with other races. (ever notice those ++Diplomacy on the foreign stats reports, seriously helps prevent others from ganking you when your military or alignment are giving you - signs.) Also, by time i reach the mid or end game on suicidal difficulty, i have caught up to the AI for the most part even thought they get the bonuses to everything. ALL thier worlds are way over mine in production values, but it still hang in there once i get going. Team that with me having all the tech tree FAST without research, AI that i can outplay and its all over even on Suicidal level.

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Thank you for yor feedback Valadar.
Hope the issue can be fixed with a patch or before release.

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My opinion on a few things. I'm going to disagree with a few things said here, but please don't take it wrong. It's just differing opinions:

- I think it's safe to say everyone agrees the AI needs work (and it's getting it).

- I disagree about hazardous planet techs being untradable. That adds a sweet strategic element to the game.

- I'd be okay if Alliances could transcend alignments. The rationale I would give is that the alien race may be good/evil, but the government ruling over them could be neutral. I think it's good enough if the game just makes it hard for opposite alignments to get to friendly and achieve an alliance.

- I disagree about Spore ships not being able to steal other races' abilities/super-abilities, but ONLY in the case of Spore ships. That should be what makes the Spore trait so super.

- I disagree with Brad about the AI not taking ships out of orbit to snipe undefended transports. I totally think the AI should do that. It's your responsibility to put engines on your transports so they can hover out of range of Defenders.

- I agree about the AI valuing treaties too highly--sometimes. But sometimes your economy/research is so big that the 10% you're giving the other race is, in fact, worth quite a lot to them. Not to mention that your treaty is effectively a peace offer. Not having you squash them should be valued by the weaker AI.

Now for my own thoughts on the beta:

- Is there no button to have a Space Miner mine a tile when it's already on top of the asteroid? I frequently have to move the miner off, then move it back on, to start mining. You can get into that situation through things like Autopilot, or researching a Space Mining tech.

- The Galactic Guide Book still occurs too late in the game to be of any use. It would be nice if anomalies appeared randomly throughout the game, to make this useful. Also, it would be nice to automatically let all ships survey, instead of making the Survey modules free, so you don't have to redo your entire fleet.

- It appears there's a cap on morale bonuses. Why? If you're able to load up on 3 Yellow starbases, Ultra Spices, Neutral alignment, etc., shouldn't you be entitled to them?

- Should good alignment's Secret Police Centers be named something else?

- I understand the reasoning behind not being able to speak with a race for a couple months after a trade, but in doing so, you have effectively nerfed all the diplomatic bonuses. I think these need to be re-balanced to reflect the change.

- Asteroids and hazardous planets are awesome! So are all the soil enhancement tiles on class 1 planets.

- The money coming out of anomalies has been nerfed, and rightly so. I think they're about right.

- More special planet tiles, please!! I love these! It increases the richness and replayability of the game.

- Influence flips have been increased, and I agree, it was too hard to flip in GC2. It MIGHT be a bit too much now, though. In my last game I ended up beefing up my influence all the way to the point that I won an influence victory, just because I had some planets in danger of flipping.

- I'm glad to see Fusion Power Plants back from GC1.

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One thing on the weapons point, I was in a war with the Korath and I had Graviton Divers, and after the war started they started on Laser 1. They had never come close to destroying any of my ships. That really needs to get fixed.

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I saw on another thread that not enough discussion has occurred on balancing, so I thought I'd add some more input on that:

- Engine technology has been nerfed quite a bit. At least, the Impulse Engines sure have. Fair enough. This actually makes the Speed race ability more worth the cost. However, Super Isolationist isn't all that useful, because they nerfed engines.

- I like that they reduced the research time for Xeno Farm Construction II (Intensive Farming). It should be. Also I like the new Pop Growth techs (e.g. Xeno Medicine). Actually, I think they should be bumped up a little to 15%.

- Shouldn't Aphrodisiac belong under the Fertility tech now, instead of Habitat Improvement?

- I think Stardock's being a bit over-cautious on the Spacing Mining techs, and I think their research time should be reduced. There's just not that many asteroids to justify focusing all that research on it--not to mention that your miners have to spend forever upgrading your mining bases anyway.

- Galactic Privateer is looking to be actually useful now, since Trade revenue has been beefed up in DA. But we still don't know what exactly GP does.

- I felt Economic Starbases were way underpowered in GC2. I haven't even bothered with them in DA, but I hope they're getting beefed up.

- I propose an easy enhancement to DA, if this hasn't been done already: when you've researched a particular weapon/defense line, reduce the research cost of the other lines by ~25%. For example, if you've researched Laser 2, make it cheaper to research Missile 2 (but not Missile 3). The rock-paper-scissors system is much richer when you have all the weapons/defenses at your fingertips. (it also enriches Diplomacy, because now you can trade for Deflectors 4 and that will let you speed up your Armor research)

- I'm glad to see that Neutral alignment has been nerfed some. They were overpowered.

- It's too easy to choose Good alignment after you made a bunch of evil moral choices. I mean, 10 bc per turn for the rest of the game?? IMO that should be 40 bc per turn for 250 turns.

- I think it's fair that initial colonies don't have any special tiles (e.g. manufacturing +100%, etc.). That reduces all the Ctrl-N's at the beginning of the game. However, I'm disappointed that there are so much fewer special tiles everywhere else. I wanted to see more of these than GC2, not less.

- Can Galactic non-mega events start occurring earlier?

- Super Traders should have the exact opposite problem that the Hive has: they have more money than they know what to do with. I don't think giving them all the starting trade techs goes far enough. I would say they should be able to build markets in one turn (like the Hive does factories), but that's a bit much. Then again...the Hive is a bit much.

- Super Organizers should get a zero penalty for doing a focus production on a planet. Actually, heck--round up.

- Super Isolationist could be much more pronounced than it is. You could forbid all trade routes to/from a SI, withdraw from United Planets by default, but grant domestic economic bonuses, loyalty bonuses, and +100% planetary defense bonuses.

- I think Super Spy should just know what everybody else is doing.

Anyway, just my thoughts. The beta's been fun so far.

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Here are my thoughts

- I have been playing a lot using Custom Opponents. It works pretty well, and I have even been able to apply negative modifiers to certain races (like soldiering etc) by directly editing the custom race files. It works pretty well. I still think that Abilities and Economic advantage should be separate from the race personality (since you set the difficulty AFTER you pick your opponents). I have tried playing around with the Abilities and Economic advantages but gave up since no matter what I set them to, they are altered when I go back in and edit the race (Somthing to do with the difficulty level I suspect, again which is why I don't think it should be part of the Creation of the Custom race).

- Not sure about Espionage yet. It seems that Espionage is just too darned expensive to use in an offensive manner, especially on Huge or Gigantic games.

- I captured a few planets and was surprised that the AI built a starport FIRST before building any factories. I know because the only thing that was there was a starport. This seems to be a pretty useless strategy.

- I was surprised once when the Alkari (Good, Superwarriors, Fast Speed) who was really close to me stabbed me in the back and attacked me. This is cool ... I like a good backstab as much as the next person (though I think it was the Elerians - Super Manipulator) that put them up to it). Too bad the pirate event had already occured making such a backstab useless. However this is the only time that an AI has backstabbed me. I think I will write a post on the whole AI Backstab thing since it is a subtle issue.

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One of the real challenges in writing the computer AI is whether to have the AI role play or to have it play like a multiplayer player.

The role of the AI should be neither. Its role should be that it should do its best to WIN. If they see another empire, AI or human, that has a weak military is about to win an influence victory it should do everything to crush that player.

Any player currently not allied with another player who is about to win should do anything it can to prevent that other player from winning. The highest objective of any player should be to WIN and hence not to lose.

If that is not "fun" for some people then maybe this should be a level of an AI that those people can choose not to play with.

Not fun if the AI is doing its best to prevent you to take over their worlds?? Well I think it is very fun if the AI is challenging to play against and that means that if I screw up or plan my invasions in a way that I leave unguarded transports then I should suffer the consequences. Thats one of the defining abilities of a good player, someone who punishes you for your misstakes.

Also I dont know if you guys have improved the AI in Dark Avatar in this occasion but in the original game the AI has no sense of defence at all. It rarely has other ships to "whack" my transports since it doesnt seem capable of having fleets guarding its colonies beside the sitting ducks orbiting their planets.

It should always have a percentage of its fleets guarding the front line against an empire its at war with and any fleets who break this line should be hunted down and destroyed.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

One of the real challenges in writing the computer AI is whether to have the AI role play or to have it play like a multiplayer player.

Now I'm *really* starting to understand how this game has pulled in so many players with such different interests in the game.

Plus I've had yet another lesson on the "assume makes an a$$ of u and me" thing. I apparently quite wrongly assumed that Brad's take was "pure wargamer." Here's hoping this character trait is given free rein for NotMoM2.

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Isn't that what different AI levels are for?! I'm confused...

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That's what I thought. You get a lower level AI that doesn't kill transports, even though it can, easily. Then you get a higher level that does, and makes you think more. Those who don't like it don't have to use that level of AI. That's why there are different ones.

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I do think the AI should role play to an extent. Some features (e.g. Super Manipulator, Super Organizer) rely on the AI role playing. And things like Alliance Victory and Influence victory, I don't think the AI particularly needs to fight that. Although I do think those two victory conditions should count as shared victories, somehow, on metaverse. The only pure victories would be Conquest and Tech victory, and the AI *should* fight that.

In other words I do think the AI should play to win, but sometimes it's a shared victory.

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