I’ve had a strange problem with GC2 DL (Dark Avatar will have to arrive in the mail since the download didn’t work). Some races seem to NEVER expand from their home planet and the one colony from their starting colony ship. In the last half dozen or so games the Yor, Drengin, Iconians, and Thalians didn’t expand at all. My setup was painful, 7 random AIs, huge galaxy, common habitable planets, abundant planets and stars with loose clusters.

When this first dawned on me I recorded the status at the end of the first year. Number of planets per race in 22Dec2225:
Me (Korx) 13
Arceans 15
Altarans 12
Terrans 11
Drath 2 (Terrans and Altarans are goggling up their space)
Iconians 2 (ditto to Drath)
Others I haven't met but can imply based on their sphere that they haven’t expanded at all:
Yor 2 (now partially boxed by Arceans and Altarans, but can expand in 1 direction)
Thalians 2 or maybe 3 (now completely boxed by Altarans)

Based on my qualitative observations, the Altarians, Arceans, and Torians expanded vigorously, and the Terrans did a decent job. Needless to say it was disappointing to see the Altarians grab PQ 14, 12, and 11 planets in systems adjacent to the Yor home world, and see the Drengin have me (from the other side of the galaxy, no less) grab lots of worlds from around their comatose home system. These non-expanding races were, of course, doomed. When I put them out of their misery (I was Korx, so it was a natural thing to do) they had almost no development on their home world! They also had a huge bank account of many thousands of BCs (the Drengin had 10K!), so it’s not likely their economy imploded. On the flip side, the Altarans and Arceans were hugely powerful and spamming the galaxy with colony ships. Something was seriously wrong, and it kind of sucks some of the fun out of the game.

So, my question is have others seen this problem? Or did I just get a half-dozen bad starts? The last time I remember seeing this level of inaction by the AI was my first few games at the Cakewalk levels.

To see if this was a fluke I did four test runs. The same setup was used for each, and each game was run for one year (ending Jan 1, 2226).

Setup:
* Huge galaxy, common habitable planets, abundant planets, abundant stars, loose clusters, abundant anomalies, normal tech rate.
* Painful difficulty, 7 random AIs (that do not have randomized intelligence). I’m playing modified Korx.

Of the runs all but #3 was pretty normal. Below is a summary of the number of planets per race ending Jan 1, 2226. In many cases I haven’t met all the races, but it was quite clear that some hadn’t expanded at all since their empires were nice, small perfect circles in the mini map.

Test 1
Korx 14
Drengin 2
Thalians 2
Yor 2
Torians 17
Terrans 11
Arceans 12
Iconians 2
** no race was boxed

Test 2
Korx 14
Terra 15
Alkarans 11
Terrans 16
Drath 2
Drengin 2
Iconians 2
Yor 2
** Iconian boxed

Test 3 (odd setup with most races in one portion of the galaxy; I abandoned this in 22 Oct 2225 since no race had expanded at all)
Korx 16
Drath 2
Terran 2
Yor 2
Drengin 2
Altarans 2
Yor 2
Thalian 2
** No race boxed (even if it was tight)

Test 4
Korx 15
Altaran 2
Drath 2
Terran 2
Thalian 2
Iconian 2
Arceans ~7
Torian 2
** No race boxed

Something is very suspicious here. Some races simply aren’t doing anything in any of the runs, and in Test 4 most races aren’t expanding. At the very least they aren’t keeping up with my colonization, which should not happen on Painful. Perhaps my copy of the game is corrupted?

Hydro