Hi, just a few thoughts from playing ToA beta 3b.

1. Is there a bug where the AI can skip to the end of the tech tree for a particular branch? In many games, I'm seeing tech like hyperwarp, invulnerbility fields, adamanite(sp) armor floating around. And its only like 20 turns into the game.

2. I like the new ability to right click on tech to see details, especially during tech trading. What would be nice also is to be able to consult the tech tree in order to see where it fits in, ala Sid Meyer's Alpha Centuari 'consult datalinks'

3. It would be nice to know if the bonuses from a wonder/building is civilisation wide or only applies to that planet.

4. Some Racial Tech (like Precursor Archives) should be harder to trade for.

5. Espionage - Is it going to be overhauled? Like the ability to just gather info about the civilisation without having to set a spy to disable a building? How about specific tasks, like a % chance to steal tech if the spy is set on a research building. Or inciting riots to lower morale. Or sipponing off BCs.

6. Super abilities - Iconians should start out with extreme colonisation, or just be able to colonise more environments. Aquatic and Toxic are pretty lame.

Anyhow, I'm having a blast playing the betas.
Thanks for the great game.

evil is supposed to be better... the rewards for evil are immidiate gains... the rewards for good is the way the AI treats you. Good races stand up for each other... I do think however that it should be powered up... that is, if an evil civ declares war on a good civ then any good civ in good standing with the first one should help it, Monatary aid sounds like the best way of doing so. (think how in the begining of WW2 the us was sending money and supplies to the allies)

also "3. It would be nice to know if the bonuses from a wonder/building is civilisation wide or only applies to that planet. "

I also wish for that. Its been one of my biggest gripes, I just can't tell if a bonus is planet wide or empire wide...

good countries should defend their allies good or bad.


bad countries would only have allies as long as it is convenent.


but no country would ever identify itself as good or evil

Some last minute things I'd want

1) Support for 12 races in the game
2) Slightly better defensive options for starbases
3) AI will research Alliances, or at least allow for Alliances to be proposed by a player with that tech to someone without the tech.

Take a look at this post. I've been trying to make a master list of features to add to the ship designer (its going slowly). Feel free to comment, or add suggestions.

WWW Link



Lets not stop at blinking. Lets have something that can go through a series of images (including blank). That way, we could have a light flash blue, green, then red...

Wait a sec! How about having this be made advanced enough so we could make a ship look a christmas tree?

two words: blinking lights

DISREGARD MY EARLIER POST: It isn't letting me edit/delete it.

I'll keep it quick, all this is in my opinion and should for that reason not be taken too seriously:

SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS:
- Option to turn extreme environments for planets on or off, in the same menu as Tech Trading and Mega Events.
- United Planets votes less hateful to evil civs.
- Evil Civs less powerful, Good more powerful, Neutral of equal power to both.
- I know I'm probably in the minority with this one, but option to turn ethics off completely...
- ..or relegate it to an automatic process based on actual gameplay decisions and not arbitrary choices picked between three extremes on a pick a choice screen. Ethics are a reputation, not a choice the civilisation can make depending on what mood its leader is in at the time or how much money they have. Evil races should be considered evil because they declare war on weaker ones for no apparent reason, good because they stick up for others, etc.
My main criticism of the ethical stuff is it isn't 'ethics' at all. Sacrificing 100 of your kinsfolk a day for the benefit of the others could be the 'most good' choice in some theories and not so in others. It's overly simplistic to say that some choices are 'evil' and others 'good' based on the system imposed by the game, I'd prefer to scrap 'ethics' altogether. That'd finally put an end to the 'evil is too powerful' argument once and for all as well.
- Address the erratic weapon 'balance' of the three weapons trees. Stardock, for all the absolutely wonderful things they do in GalCiv, appear to bite off a bit more than they can chew with the current system, which is a bit of a mess. Beams have a huge jump to more-or-less match the others in power at the end of the tree, Mass drivers have the insane Nano-Ripper halfway through and a disappointing finish, Missiles are always better than both. The different costs of research, prices and weights of components do not balance things: one is nearly always best off going up the missiles tree, except in certain documented circumstances that can be found elsewhere on this forum. I know they're supposed to have different general power levels, but why exactly is this? Make them have the same power for the same amount of research commitment and use the rock/paper/scissors (for want of a more apt term) weapon vs. defence system, which works well and would increase tactical consideration if all weapons and armours were equally matched at each generation across the three respective categories.
- Auto-attack and auto-explore that is aware of the actions of other ships. I don't want 5 separate ships all going after the same target or exploring the same area at once.
- Set patrol routes for ships.
- 'Sentry' and/or 'Guard' functions with any use at all.
- Automated spreading of military ships to distribute themselves and orbit planets: if one has only a few production centres that turn out ships every turn it's currently a micromanagement hassle to distribute them to defend your planets in orbit.
- Auto-Explore that switches to Auto-Attack should war be declared on you without having to find your ships or fleets you told to clear up that fog to make themselves useful while they wait for some action.
- Internal trading networks for production bonuses.
- Shipyard accessible outside of the main game where you can create templates for use ingame. I get to the point where I need to design a new ship then give up because I can't be bothered at that precise moment as I need it right now for killing things.
- Make a ship return to the nearest shipyard for upgrade rather than sit in space and get upgraded by magic.


SILLY IDEAS:
- Some techs give you a 'free' ship. It's likely that during research a prototype is built, e.g. for a Survey Ship. Why can't we use these ships?
- Ability to distribute research production across more than one tech at once. The total research production if you wanted to research two techs at once would be halved across the two, and thirded across three. The upside is less micromanagement, downside is research of individual techs is slower.
- Conversion of a built-up but now lamentably useless starbase back into half of the constructors that went into it.

USER INTERFACE:
- Tone down the psychedelic default race colours. I'm sent on a trip every time I glance at the mini map with the territories marked.
- Make it possible to see which colours are already taken by the other races when customising a race.
- Diplomacy screen with windows-explorer-like collapsing menus. Current boxes are too small for large lists.
- Planet quality visible next to planet names on diplomacy screen.
- Keep planetary improvements in consistent positions by category on the window thingy at the side.
- 'Automate' function for Survey Ship that auto-surveys.

A vassal feature. I'm actually surprised they haven't done it already. Would go nice with being a Drengin and enslaving other civs rather than destroying them.

I got an idea..

Why not have the events list posted to the metaverse when you submit your game? Then everybody at least could view what events led to your victory, or loss. What weapons did you research, what did you research, and in what order?

I definitely second the idea of building an ethical reputation by your actions, not just the choices that pop up in events. I would also steepen the monetary penalty for choosing an alignment that is far from your own; being evil and buying neutral for 2500 is the best deal ever, but it shouldn't be. Perhaps make it proportional to current treasury/economy?

I also am greatly in need for a way to automate the distribution of warships amongst planets; the same principle for constructors heading to starbases would be nice as well.

I like the partial auto upgrade idea, even if it was somewhat random. Maybe have two guidelines to assist in the predictability. (1) no units outside your sphere of influence can upgrade and (2) it takes the ships closest to your capital.

I know this is well known bug... but please fix the tech tree jumping (warp drive, invulnerability fields) in the next update. Its killing some games for me.

Love the Krynn.

I find it too easy to shift any nation to evil and get the weapons bonus. Like others, I think ethics needs an overhaul.

Hi all-

Below is a list of constructive critisism. Take from it as you may

- When in the trade screen you can trade civs for all thier planets, money, ships, starbases, and influence by giving them 20 ships(amount of ships very depending on different things). This trade whould not have any benefit to them being that once they give me all thier planets they are no longer a race in the game and therefore thier remaining ships become pirates roaming the galaxy. Sometimes I am able to get more ships as well as more powerfull ships by using this trade option as well as cheaply take over a empire.

- Now that buildings become destroyed that you don't have the technology for or can't reproduce the technology for are destoryed, conquering a planet isn't as useful as it once was, Last night I took over the Dregin and Toran and I had a bunch of populated planets with little buildings of use. Most of the tiles were open for me to build new structures or had real basic structures of thiers to use, mind you I had all the technology that they were able to trade me. I think that they should somehow make it so that the structures are somewhat usefull be it with a penelty or something else, We could always destroy them if we didn't have a use for them.

- Some of the various Empires in the game don't seem to be building on thier planets or at a very slow rate, it the same game I refered to above I might have lost 3-4 structures on certain planets but, most of the planets only had 1 or 2 tiles used on class 15 and above planets, plus again I saw poor use of special tiles which the AI rarely seems to ever use correctly.

This is meant as good feedback nothing more.

Thanks,
Seilore