Hi!
Just a bit of AI critics. My game is DA 1.50.72, fastest-tech, maso AI.

1) War between Drengin and Humans was silly: Fregates with 7 Photon torpedos against heavy fighters with Rail guns and Warp III engine. NOT A SINGLE NON-EVIL CIV RESEARCHED ANY RESPECTABLE WEAPON TECH. The highest are Altarians, who are using Nano rippers in their latest large hulls. Please make nen-evil civs react better at those massive weapon tech leads of evil civs.

2) Despite defenses are VERY cheap to research (in this game I went in 5 turns from basic Missile defense theory to Droid Sentries, but needed 4 turns from Photonic torpedos II to real Photon torpedos), are Humans the only race that are using any defenses (~15 missile defenses on their large hulls). In my 3 DA games (all maso) and the whole DA campaign I haven't seen a defense-heavy ship, but I've won all 3 games with them. Since defenses are really cheap to research and put on ships, would the defense-heavy ships made a real impact. Can you "convince" AIs to use lots of defenses early?

3) IMO AIs over-specialize planets. From conquered planets of Arceans, Yor, Korath, Torians and Drath, most were production-heavy, smaller planets to the point of having only factories. Drengin too are in that company. But from my current experience that's bad for economy. Despite they had 100% maso bonus to economic ability is that not enough to keep such a production planet running at full capacity, especially with their 100% maso bonus to production.
- Other extreme was a "money" planet with 6 morale buildings, while other planets had none. Such a layout would made sense only if AI could set tax level for each planet separately. Can it?
The "1/4 of every kind of buildings" rule (1/4 factories, 1/4 labs, 1/4 banks and 1/4 for other purposes: colony center, 1 morale, 1 farm, starport, specialization, "wonders"...) would IMO make wonders to the AI. Can you make AIs to utilize that?

BR, Iztok

The real problem here is the orbital fleet manager. The AI is rather bad at building specialised buildings like this. If that were changed, or if the fleet manager were made an upgrade for the starport it would be better.
That said, I find that the AI uses fleets to defend and attack just fine - but then I have them set to use the max CPU processing thingy.

What the manual says (and notice that this issue is so weird the manual needs to explain this), is that not all the pop on Earth belongs to the United Earth. Only 8 out of the 12 bill. Ok, so what about new colonies? Colonized by an Imperium government, they also get to have "non-aligned countries"? Worst, what about the Drengin? Does Lord Kona allow people on Drengi not to be part of the Empire?! What about the Thalans? Did they bring not just 8 bill but 12 bill people from another dimension, 4 bill of which aren't even part of the empire?! And the Yor, can there really be individuals outside the Collective? Etc.  
Same thing about the 100% employment explanation for 8 bill people...

The second half of the manual needs some updating BTW, due to changes in logistics values, min value for rolls, tile bonuses. So do some of the tile improvement descriptions.

I'd like to see the autopilot and the autolaunch to a rally point functions work all the time instead of just most of the time. This is the cause of major pain and AFAIK has been in the game in one form or other in v1.2, v1.3, v1.4 and is still in DA today. In particular, when you load a saved game it would be nice if ships on autopilot didn't 'forget' where they're going and some autolaunched ships didn't just sit forever by the planet that produced them. Working 99% of the time is not good enough.

I fell for this. It was like an April's Fool joke. Morale dropped down the toilet big time.



Yeah, Custom Races have no "Inherent" racial bonuses... and not all of the races get 10 points. The Torians get the least as far as I can tell, and their inherent bonuses are pathetic. No wonder they were enslaved by the Drengin, eh?

1) I just picked up DA today, but one thing I don't think was changed was the completely worthlessness of buidling planet defenses. I honestly think one simple change would have powerful implications in building these enhancements.
Make them Star system wide effects. Basically, when building the allows ships to act like a fleet on a plant, it should function star system wide. Thus making every habitable planet as an entry point into the fleet. It would really make these worth building, it would also add value to the low PQ planets in a system as they would work extremely well as the place to build the star system defenses.

2) Custom opponents: Terran AI description tells me nothing. Please take away the empire name and replace with Titles like Growth/Warlike, Trade/Research, etc.

3) Starbases need to show when clicked on in the info box at the bottom of the screen how many modules of each type are added. Mining 0/1(5), Defensive 2/3(5), Trade 0/1(5). First number showing how many are installed, second showing how many modules currently can be built, and final one in paranthesis showing how many total can be build when fully researched.

I would also like to make them easier to manage. I'd love a universal UI screen that allowed u to set generic upgrade priorities for starbases types, then based on module. Then when planets spawn a constructor they would automatically send it open module slot highest on priorty list.

Example:
1: Mining (1: Mining, 2: None)
2: Economy (1: Production 2: Trade 3: Sensor, 4: none)
3: Military (1: Ship boosts 3: None)
4: Influence

Or, it could be a flat number system from 1 to say 15 (unsure how many total options it would be). Anything would be nice to make it easier to do. Starbases get flat out tedious to do on the biggest maps. I'd love to do something bigger than large but its too tedious.

4) Rotation of planets around the star, with limit of no starbases built in orbital path. Secondly, ships cannot park/sentry/defend within orbital rotations. Ships if in path automove on next move one space out of orbital rotation.

5) More Government types, more ability options, more super abilities options, more icons. These seem simple things to add to me, and I hate figuring out how to use mods to get a few more official balanced ones.

6) I would add a generic weapon, defense, engine bank jewelry piece. That way when modeling templates, I can place various weapon, defense, engine mount spots. Then when upgrading the ship I can click the generic mount spot from list in top right/modeled screen then click the weapon i want and it'll attach it automatically in that mount spot.

The reason for this is because sometimes i use weapons/engines on thee base jewel piece then add to it with the jewelry which overlap on the mount points. This makes it almost impossible to keep same design yet simply upgrade weapon/engines when new technology comes out.

It would also allow us to design ships for custom opponents, and the CPU would automatically add weapon engines to the generic empty bank spots first before randomly adding them somewhere else.

7) Better description of AI levels, such that Easy (50% Econ. Limit strategy scripts available.) Normal (Computer recieve 100% Econ. All strategy scripts available.) Challenging (Computer recieves 110% econ. All strategy scripts available.)

8) Ethical Choices: I haven't played long enough in DA to fully test this but unless a dramatic change was implement the ethical choices favor going all evil then just flopping with the advance to the technology that lets u choose.

Evil doesn't always need to provide the best bonuses. The should all have 33.3% of being either the best, middle, or worst choice. To balance it out from everyone ending up neutral, you only get a the percent you are leaning. IF you are at 75% (Assuming 0% is neutral) good, then u choosing good option would give you 75% of the benefit. Choosing, evil would get you 0% of the benefit but move you substantially towards evil. (Could have base of 25% for completely opposit choice.) Something to spice this up.

9) Growth/Influence tile pieces still are about useless and need serious adjustment or flat out elimination from spawning. Instead you could add an economic tile boost.

These are worth reiterating.

Lots of great ideas here. And it's great, of course, that it's for a company that actually wants and will use some of the feedback.

Anyone mention Carriers?

The one thing the game *doesn't* need is more bonuses, or ways to get them. Every "new" feature is the same old. Let's have some diversity in effects. It's boring that everything leads to stacking bonuses.

The Altarians have lost their Luck, and instead went econ. They don't have XenoEcon though.
The Drengin have gotten way behind their cousins the Korath in just about every way.
The Korx, supposedly mercs, don't really have related abilities. More of a trader civ.
The Thalans, even though they're new to the galaxy, still have Stellar Cartography   
The Iconians, starting with armor, somewhat give away their preferences.
The Krynn do have an impressive array of natural abilities. And Ion Drive.   
The Dread Lords still have zero Logistics, I wonder if that has anything to do with their "apathy" at times...

Of the minors, seems only the Akillians actually had some time devoted to them, with some assorted abilities. The rest have a common template.

I know there is the screen where we can read what techs we have in common with our opponents and there is always the trade screen where we can tell what we have that each AI player doesnt, and vice versa. But these can be time consuming approaches to compare what we know to what they know.

I would like to see in the next update, a screen that allows me to see these comparisonns more easily. Prehaps a tech tree with my race color on the techs I have alone, the AI color of the race im currently comparing myself to on the techs they have and a combination of the two colors (diagonal stripes?) for those we have in common.

I figue, the information is already available, this would just make it easier to see.

Minor/Moderate changes that could appear in an update or expansion to GalCivII:

(1) Dynamic Game Difficulty Level
There have been several posts that the game difficulty level "Crippling" is too easy and "Masochistic" is too hard. At the higher levels, you start the game out way behind the AI players. A decent human player does a much better job of growing his/her economy, developing his/her planets, researching and trading tech., etc., than the AI. So if the human player can avoid getting crushed in the early game, he/she will eventually surpass the AI and find the mid-late game easy. But what if the difficulty level of the AI increased over the course of a game to keep things more interesting.

(2) No buying planetary improvements or ships; instead rush build them
When you buy a factory, lab, or ship, who are you buying from? Since there is no vendor to buy from it makes more sense to rush build. Rush building would build something in half the time at double the cost (round the clock shifts, overtime, etc.)
If I Purchase a Ship, Why Do I Have to Wait Until Next Turn For It?

(3) Remove the 300% food bonus title!!!

(4) Allow capitals and super projects to be destroyed
After I capture a planet I should be able to destroy a capital or super project built by the AI to free up a title.

(5) Debt Limit Should Be Relative to GDP
The fixed 500BC debt limit does not make sense when your economy gets large!

(6) Have combat ships in orbit auto-fleet to the player's logistics ability (this will help the AI since it parks several ships in orbit)
For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit?

(7) Allow ship combat to end in a tie
Attacker Advantages are Exploitable!
Fix the bug that causes the attacker to be restored to full health.

(8) Fix "Subspace Blaster" and "Subspace Annilator" in the beam weapon branch!

(9) Show damage to defenses during combat rather than just damage to HP. This would have made the off-type defense bug easier to spot!

(10) In mid to late game starbases may be destroyed too easily, so I abandon adding weapons/defenses and instead defend them with ships.
Why not:
(a) Have the HP of starbases increase as you advance your hull tech.
( Apply the attack bonus to the starbase's weapons (currently they only get defense and HP bonuses).
(c) Allow starbases to fire their weapons separately like ships now do.

(11) Allow Star Bases to Attack within their Area of Effect
Star Base Weapons/Defenses Should be for more than for Just Defense
Starbases will only engage in combat when attacked. It is silly that a star base will ignore an enemy invasion fleet on its way to your nearby planet. It would be nice if they allowed star bases to attack ships/fleets within its area of effect; if other star bases are within range they should also join the fun.

(12) Link the Techs in the Trade Window to the Tech Tree
This was a nice feature in GalCiv1 AP.

(13) Getting Best Trade Deal = Micro-Management Pain
Please Auto Set Optimal Cash and Influence Points

(14) In the ship designer, allow sorting of ship components based on size, cost, and/or value
It is annoying to have to scroll through a long list of obsolete ship components. By obsolete I don't mean older, an obsolete component would be one that is inferior in one of the attributes (size, cost, and value) and equal or inferior in the remaining ones. For example, Plasma beam weapons would not obsolete Laser Mark V because although they are cheaper and have attack value 2 vs. 1, they are larger. Selecting a checkbox would hide/show obsolete components. Also, visible components should be sorted based on size, cost, and/or value.

(15) Adjust Starbases Upgrade Levels
To get a starbase resource up to 10% takes 3 constructors. How about instead you get 5% when the starbase is constructed (like now), then 5, 7, 10, and 13 for the next 4 constructors for a total of 40%. I hate that the first two mining modules are only 2 and 3.

(16) Round all values to the nearest integer
Brad, "The problem is, a 10% bonus to research is hugely different than a 10% bonus to morale which is a huge difference form a 10% bonus to weapons. I mean, heck, if I have a ship with 8 attack, I won't even get an additional point."
That's because you are rounding all floating point calculates down! If you would just add 0.5 to all floating point calculations before typecasting to integer then you round off to the nearest which I think would make more sense. Then in your example 8 * 1.1 = 8.8 -> 9. Also a non-optimal defense of 8 would have an effective defense of 3 instead of 2 (i.e., sqrt(8)=2.828427)!