A question that's been in my mind for a long time. Why is it that tiles upgradeable with HabImp and Terraforming don't have the colored outline in the colony map? I mean, if you click on the tile, it *will* tell you that the tile is upgradeable, so it's not much of a secret. Either show the outline, or simply remove the unusable/upgradeable text in tiles? Doesn't make much sense.

Special environment planets. Had this PQ3 aquatic planet. Besides the fact that the tech description seemed to have been written by a 15 year old (artificial underwater volcanic activity creating lava islands or some such?! Eeek!), I didn't feel like they were that much different from regular habitable planets. So it has 3 tiles I can build on, but I can't colonize it?! Why? Doesn't make any sense.
Also, the production (not research though) penalty doesn't strike me as a good distinction. I could get 4 additional tiles per terraforming tech, for a total of +12. So with only the basic Colonization and terraforming I could get it to PQ15. Yep, I know about the pop too.
Now what I'd like to see was special planets being really different. Like being PQ0 initially, but flagged as special. Once you researched a certain tech (Xeno Biology?), you could build a special colony module, which would create a Domed Colony, different from the regular Initial Colony - with lower production values. Special planets now would become PQ1s. As you research Aquatic Colonization, aquatic planets get their PQs increased by a certain amount, as well as their max pop - Colonization techs would be more than just 2, and wouldn't have production penalties tied to them anymore. The terraforming techs would not have any effect on such planets, and farms could not be built. They would be smallish colonies (they were not habitable after all!), but with the ability to grow steadily with some major investment. Maybe they could have a higher chance to have special tiles? Regarding invasions, these planets can only be invaded by races that possess a certain tech - Adv Troop Modules for sure, maybe even Shock Troops? Or create a new one, like Infiltrator Squads or Teleport - something allowing troops to penetrate the dome.

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

I'm not a fan of changing the game for the sake of realism like some have suggested. Sure the life support, sensors and troop invasion systems are pretty unrealistic but they're still functional and well balanced the way they are. Changing and re-balancing these features + programming the AI to deal with them would take so much time away from other things.

In my opinion the most important thing currently is improving the AI. Given that the game is single player it's pretty much essential to have an opponent that's going to not just challenge the player but to play and respond the way a thinking person would. This means getting rid of all the irrational and illogical things that the AI does that a human player wouldn't do.

- The way it defends its planets needs to be addressed, it's been said many times so I won't go into detail suffice to say that the AI needs to know the power of putting ships in fleets, as opposed to just leaving them in orbit to be picked off 1 by 1.

- The AI doesn't use defence nearly enough now that it's been improved. By filling up a ship with defence the human player can create ships that can withstand wave after wave of equally expensive ships that the AI builds with just weapons - the game mechanics of defence are fantastic the way they are now, but the AI needs to be improved to take advantage of defence.

- The Evil AIs dominate every game I play, the neutrals do average and the Good get stomped. Good AI needs improving somehow, I'm not an expert on the way the AI works though so I have no idea what needs to be done. It seems their problem is their lack of military power puts them at a disadvantage the whole game.

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.

Eyes of the Universe - PLEASE...Make it so after building the Eyes of the Universe you not only see a signal on the mini-map, but you see it on the real map even if its in Fog of War - I don't think you should see an actual ship, but atleast the same symbol the ship would use if you were scrolled out far enough. On a gigantic map (okay on most maps), its kind of useless with Eyes of the Universe because its a pain to see ships out in the darkness unless you zoom into the mini-map to see their location, if the ship symbol showed up in the fog of war, it could help you see attacks that are coming up through the fog of war, which in my opinion is the only reason to have the achievement.

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 Keyboard Shortcuts for cycling thru the colonies such as left & right arrow for next colony & previous colony.

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.

1. Please make the "Planetary Improvement" buildings more fair (Social, Military, Technology). I know this has already been tweaked, but it's still ridiculous. I'm not asking for an increase in production, but tailor the cost to the production a little more fairly. Manufacturing Centers cost 200 Social Production to build, and Industrial Sectors cost twice as much and only provide +4 more Military/Social Production. Unless you're playing as a Thalan, this is hell.

2. Spies, in my opinion, shouldn't be instantly known as soon as they're placed. It's as if everyone in the galaxy has some sort of Spy-Detection device implanted into their brains. Maybe Espionage ability should be a % chance of detection each turn, but whatever you come up with would be better than the current simplistic Espionage system. You could even add the ability to capture and interrogate spies for information as a sort of counter.

3. Make it so ships can orbit a Starbase like a planet... or can they now?

4. Space-mines, and not the kind you work in, but the kind that blows up when an enemy approaches.

5. Trade routes give too little money. It's not even worth the effort for credits.

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?

All the races got their racial bonuses reduced with DA. The Torians were hit big time. There are some many bonuses, I guess they had to cut somewhere.

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.

I agree with this as a concept. It should be one PQ tech increasing for all base world you can inhabit initially including super ability worlds.

Then each other world would start at PQ zero with a designation and increase in PQ from there. I agree this would make these techs more inherently valuable and also provide to me a more logical approach to surving on a water world when that is not ur base world type. Every world, even homeworlds should be a base type and each race given one, two, etc. base world types it can occupy.

Farms should be universally used, it just there should be a PQ investment boosting type for each type, base worlds and then each exotic you can't occupy normally.

These are worth reiterating.

In DA, the torians have the best super ability in the game though, they also start with very good tech. I actually find it easier to win games with Torian than with the Yor, which is the race everyone seems to complain about being too powerful.

Having said that the current races are anything but balanced. Lets compare the Korath to the Iconian refuge for example. The Iconians get toxic and aquatic for free, plus some mediocre racial bonuses, the best of which is +20 morale and they get 7 points to spend. Now look at the Korath, they get toxic colonisation for free and the ridiculously powerful spore ships, they get +25 morale and a bunch of other useful bonuses, and they can spend the full 10 poitns on top of that. Is 1 colonisation tech worth all that?

Giving custom races any more points is a tricky one in DA because of the difference in super abilities, if you give a custom race 20 points instead of 15 it kind of makes the Torians obsolete for example, because you can pick super breeder and have 20 points to spend on top of that. The only way to make it balanced is if super abilities were worth a certain amount of points too.

My suggestions would be the following:

- Custom races get 25 points to spend including their super ability. Super abilities are worth a certain number of points depending on how good they are like Super Breeder, Super Hive and Super Annihilator might be the full 10 points, where as super spy might only cost 3 points.

- The Thalans and the Korath have too many natural bonuses considering how powerful their super abilities are, they need to have around the same as the Torians.

- The iconian refuge need to be buffed, I think let them colonise 3 or 4 types instead of just two. Plus they should have 10 points to spend.

- The Arcean super ability doesn't seem that good either and their natural bonuses are fairly average. Having said that I haven't played them yet so I won't comment.

- Super spy is almost useless at the moment. While the Krynn are balanced out by their ridiculous +50 morale boost, I still think the super needs to be better, even if it's just for the purpose being viable in custom races. Perhaps their morale bonus could be included in their Super. Change Super Spy to Super Empathy - A greater understanding of sentient life forms gives them huge morale and espionage bonuses etc... This also seems to fit in whith the personality of the Krynn as galactic peacekeeprs.

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?

I have found them to be no more or less powerful then any other race; but then I am still a new player. I am only up to playing normal. I can win regularly at normal/tiny regardless of race. Same thing with small. I am debating wheatear to go up in size of the galaxy of the difficulty factor. I had planed to go all the way up in size and then change the difficulty factor; but instead started going up in difficulty before size. Which way did most here accomplish getting up to gigantic/obsiean or the biggest/most difficult setting?

From the Desk of Sugien CSK
_____/}
@###{ ]::::::Cyber Striker Knight::::::>
~~~~;\}

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.

Here's another request, and I think it would make the game easier to play (not easier to win, but less of a headache)...

In the Technology screen, the one with all the technologies... some techs unlock weapons, armor and buildings and all that stuff. It would be nice for the techs to not only show what it unlocks, but to show what this new stuff does. For instance, the, uh... Economic Capital! All it says is...

New Improvements
Economic Capital

But it doesn't say anything about what an Economic Capital does. Sure, I know *now*, since I've played the game about 6 or 7 times, but it would be nice to open up the Tech panel and think to myself, "Now... what do I research next? Ah! I see an Economic Capital gives a 50% bonus to Economics on the planet it's built! I need money now because economy in this game is damn near impossible to manage!"

It would also be nice to see in the Colony Managment screen how much, in Social Production, a building costs to build. You could even put that in the Technology screen, too. I don't know how to give an example because I don't know how much hammers anything needs, which is why I'm requesting this, don't you know...

Same goes for weapons, defense and all that stuff. You do know that Subspace Blasters do the same damage as the weapon behind it (Phasors III? Plasma III? I can't remember), except that it costs a whole lot more to build, and it's bigger? Where's the sense in that? If you add these new features, it will be easier for players to spot these inconsistencies and report them so they can be fixed, because they desperately need to be...

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.

Which is not very helpful if you wish to turn off SAs.






Two good suggestions. A mouse-over tooltip, a right-click pop-up window, whatever.


Shouldn't mining stations have a maintenance cost? If starbases do, I don't see why they shouldn't.

Setting planets as your Homeworld, doesn't seem to be working correctly. The only thing I see being updated (besides the colony name) is the maintenance cost. Everything else is updated in the Summary screen, but not in the Details screen or the Colony screen.

Taxes, what exactly is the logic behind a planet with 110 mill pop producing 4bc in tax revenues, and a similar planet with twice that pop producing 5bc? It's just a very basic example, but looks pretty stupid to me.

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.
(b) 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

Or make it useful. Allow it to increase the planet's pop limit, but at NO cost in approval - approval is calculated as if the farm was on a no-bonus tile for pop limit purposes. Could be an interesting way to make econ planets.

(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)!

Instead of having it where players can only buy the most advanced model of each building/improvement that they've researched, I think it would be great if there was an option players could turn on and off, where if turned on, players would be able to select from every build/model that they've researched for every building/improvement.