Personally I always liked GC2, but judging from comments of friends or found in other forums, the differences between the races were far too small for some people. And it is true: If you take away the background story - maybe you don't care or never even played the campaign - the only notable differences left are graphical ones (which aren't that decisive in the end) and the three moral alignments. Read: About the same strategy worked for most if not all races. A first step in the right direction was made with Dark Avatar and the super abilities, now another big step will be done with the race specific tech trees and planetary improvements of Twilight of the Arnor.

I guess that one of the few weak spots left is the economic model: It is unusual and needs time to get used to. It is logical in its own way, but is quite different from other games, at least from all that I know. Having to choose between research output, social production and military production and being able to make 0% to 100% switches and back in a glimpse - which are then more or less mandatory for every planet - is a little weird indeed. Maybe that's the only thing that stands in the way of GC2 becoming a real PC game classic - if there's one at all.

Sorry for the long post, and now: Keep up the great work and bring on the beta!

The AI in GalCiv is not like AIs in other games. It will adapt automatically to custom tech trees.

The AI doesn't know anything about the tech trees in Dark Avatar. It has no hard coded paths to take.

It does look at the AI value to help pick when it has to make a blind pick. But otherwise, it uses the categories and branches (which are defined) to make intelligent choices.

Any decently made custom tech tree will adhere to calling manufacturing technologies manufacturing (as opposed to say cultural).

As for the argument as to why Micro Fusion was invented by humans - it has to do with intertia.  Why did some groups of humans remain hunter/gatherers while others invented rockets.

For 30,000 years, humans basically hung out in the jungle and in caves.

The premise of the Arcean and Drengin is that their worlds, long united, fell into a kind of technological inertia. There was little incentive to move forward with technology.

Incidentally, the technology in the Star Wars universe doesn't really change either. It's a common theme in both the real world and in fiction that some societies simply peak and then stay the same unless there is outside influence.

Heh, interesting - so it sounds like the AI would certainly be able to cope with the player having this unusual tech tree idea I've proposed (although certainly it has been proposed before, if perhaps in not so much detail). My main concerns would probably be two-fold...

First, making sure that the AI who uses the tech tree are able to use the improvements in that tech tree to maximum effect, which could be tricky if you have a tech tree that is radically different depending on ethical alignment. Having the adaptive AI helps quite a lot, but it might still be a bit of a trick. And then of course there's the whole tech-trading dynamic, which could make for rather interesting situations if not handled right...although I think one step that could add a bit of depth is to allow you to set how willing a power is to trade a tech DEPENDING ON ALIGNMENT...so that if you want to trade an Evil tech, you're more likely to trade it to an Evil power than a Neutral one, and not at all to a Good power. Otherwise, one would probably need to restrict tech trading to techs outside of the Good/Neutral/Evil tech trees, which would probably be a good sized number of techs.

That last point actually segues nicely into my second concern - tech tree balance. Specifically, how to make sure that the player is not FORCED into an ethical decision early on, and can instead pursue it at their leisure. Part of the solution, of course, would be to allow a good number of techs to remain outside the ethical view - things like most weapons, defenses, engines, sensors, cultural, etc. Then the player is not excessively penalized for not choosing an ethical alignment early. But then you'd have a somewhat different problem - namely, how to ensure you don't have redundant or useless improvements involved. Again, part of the solution here is to allow a number of these alignment-sensitive buildings to have unique abilities and multiple bonuses - at, of course, great expense. (A bit like the Temples of in the current game, only perhaps more tempting to the player.)

I don't know if I really have the skill to pull this off effectively, though I can certainly try - may be a bit of a learning curve in using the tech editor effectively, so I may start out just tweaking existing tech trees for different races, before diving into such an expansive project...not to mention the possibilities for custom race logos and portraits, videos and so on...

I guess you could say I tend to think big.

I guess the AIs will do fine then... though an AI editor would still be fun to have.

Slavelings! Hell yeah! Put me down for three... let's see... ah, yes, three Jessica Alba models. Thanks!

I still wanna know about the XXX Torian tech tree. I also totally dig that the AI doesn't know about the tech tree other than in a general categoric sense. That makes the AI seem even sexier.