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.