Frogboy Frogboy

Twilight of the Arnor: BETA 4 and beyond

▼

Twilight of the Arnor: BETA 4 and beyond

It's here but read the whole thing

from GalCiv2 Forums

The good news is that Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Beta 4 has arrived on schedule. If you've pre-ordered the expansion pack, you get download the latest version now. It adds the Thalan Empire and Altarian Resistance.

The bad news, if you can call it that, is that we've decided to substantially push back the release date -- all the way to the end of March. 

However, we ARE going to continue forward with our original release schedule of this month for getting out what will be called a "preview".  My beef is that as the AI developer, there's just so much cool new stuff to make use of and as beta testers (and we ourselves) have discovered, this expansion pack has turned out a LOT better than even we had expected.

So while delaying the game may set back my plans at getting a jewel-encrusted segway, I think given the way the expansion pack is going, we have a real opportunity to release something that will be remembered long into the future. 

What we'll do with that extra time is continue to flesh out the unique civilizations and beef up the computer players to be increasingly more interesting and unique per player. A big thing I'd like to do is to use the time to have the computer players also play uniquely on top of having unique technologies (that includes the minor races btw).

We are going to keep the "beta" open so that anyone who pre-orders can automatically download the latest version and by the end of this month, it should be pretty close to "release" condition in terms of stability and base content.

You can see what's in beta 4 here.  There won't be a beta next week as many of us are going to be at CES. But the following week we'll have another beta which will add in the new winning condition and the first new serious AI updates. 

 

65,077 views 93 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well ANYTHING is better than atari soldiers and crane tanks alongside mobile happy meal boxes of death. So I know the new invasion screen will be better. Just a question of how much better!
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hay if stardock's pushing the release date back can they add a few more options to game setup. Mainly I speak of relations to other factions. Right now you can setup relations to other factions, ie ally, warm, close, at war and so on. Can we set it up so that you can make other factions allied to each other and so on.
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I ordered it from stardock.com
End of quote


Do you not have broadband? If you have a broadband connection (it is also possible with dial up, albeit much much slower) then you can just download stardock central and get the latest beta and be playing it now.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I love what you have done with the game. but....

I just tried my new beta with this game. Playing Terrans and having 50% economic bonus (30 race abilities, 20 government.) and I was bankrupt in no time. Before I had my forth coloney colonised I had to have my taxs set all the way forward so that I had 49-50% happyness and spending all the way to 0. I was still at -12 BC a week.

I don't know if this is a fluke or bug yet, has anyone else had this kind of trouble?

This is the first time I ever went bankrupt in any version of this game right back to GC 1.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


I just tried my new beta with this game. Playing Terrans and having 50% economic bonus (30 race abilities, 20 government.) and I was bankrupt in no time. Before I had my forth coloney colonised I had to have my taxs set all the way forward so that I had 49-50% happyness and spending all the way to 0. I was still at -12 BC a week.

I don't know if this is a fluke or bug yet, has anyone else had this kind of trouble?
End of quote



I was earlier going to mention my economy crashing early myself when playing the Korath, but then I realized that the upgrade reset the customization points and I hadn't put any of my 10 points in anything. With the points setup normally I was fine though.

I'd say the economy is definitely tighter now though, ships without weapons including colony ships now have maintanence. Manufacturing building apparently have higher upkeep costs. I'd say the intial economy boost is more critical then ever to keep up with colonization, but I haven't had problems avoiding a serious crash with my normal racial economic boosts.

Maybe you can work around the problem somewhat by going straight for trade and building an economic capital as soon as possible. Sometimes though you just have to drop production for a while until your population catches up. Morale bonuses and population growth bonuses will also help you out here, and there are definitely some techs out there that will grow your population faster.
Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Odd. Since I got GC2:DA I have gone bankrupt pretty much every game at least a few times. I just sort of assumed that was the style you had to accept. (By bankrupt I mean my credits were below 0 and I had to change my econ to get out of it)

With beta 4 I have only played the Thalans, so I can't speak about the Terrans, but I've found the economy not to feel particularly different than other TA betas. However, the maintenance on non-combat ships could be your problem if you didn't pay close attention to that note in the change log. If you do the major colony rush and end up with a few extra colony ships, you may want to dismantle them. Not sure on colony ships, but constructors, for instance, are costing 8BC per turn now. Hoarding them while you wait for the Korx to destroy the Yor's econ mining starbase, for instance, is much more difficult than it used to be :d
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well I will try to be more carefull. I didn't realise that the factories have increased upkeep. I did colonize a 26 world and started building factories as my 3rd and last colonized world, though I don't think it was able to finnish even on factory. Even so that might be it with a factory being my first thing to build on every world. I might have to revise my normal building strategy.

I did reset my points before I started this game, I change them all the time and I didn't like my last choice.

I understand exactly what you were saying about going for economic and happieness bonuses. I was doing my best to get to xeno economics (I think that is the one.) for its 10 percent bonus. But I was bankrupt long before I could get there. I was only able to research 3 or 4 techs before I was toast.

I wonder what it would be like if I didn't have any bonus at all.

Well I am off to try another game, I hope this one goes better.

Edit: Doogles.

I had only my mining ship, flag ship, and one colony on its way.

I can't stress enough how fast I was done. I didn't get a chance to meet many races even. We are talking 50 turns at most. By bankrupt I mean that at 0% spending I was still in the red by 12BC per turn even with taxs pushed up so that I had 50% moral instead of 70ish. (Which is SOP for me at the start of the game.)
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Glad to see they are pushing it back to improve it futher. I am prepaired to wait for RTM simply because we are able to play the betas which are updated every week or two.

It would of been a different matter if we did not have access to the beta and it was pushed back.

Right time to start a new game and see how I do.
Reply #38 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Solution on the invasion tactic cheese

Make it where you need at least 1000 troops to use an invasion tactic. That would solve most cheese.

Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't stress enough how fast I was done. I didn't get a chance to meet many races even. We are talking 50 turns at most. By bankrupt I mean that at 0% spending I was still in the red by 12BC per turn even with taxs pushed up so that I had 50% moral instead of 70ish. (Which is SOP for me at the start of the game.)
End of quote


That's what you're doing wrong.

To get money you'll need people and to get people you need low taxes.

Try to have 100% approval on all planets for as long as possible (100% approval = double population growth).

It doesn't even matter that much when you get below -500BC for some turns, just let the population grow and don't increase the taxes. Since with 50% approval your population won't grow much (if any) and you'll never get out of the hole.

--------------

As for the topic:

Way to go Stardock! :CONGRAT:
Reply #40 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have comcast. My dad ordered the game at work for me. He ordered the download plus cd option.
End of quote


He'll have recieved a serial to use to download the game, then. If he used a different email address from that you have GC2/DA registered to you'll need to have support merge them, but otherwise you should be able to go ahead and get it without waiting.
Reply #41 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
two part post:

1. sweet! I was getting bored of playing the current races :D

2. MARCH!?! that's- *goes to look at calender* -2 MONTHS?!? ah well, you'll release the map editor before release right? RIGHT??? ;)

BTW, winter-een-mas is coming, you'd better get ready!
Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
lecek: I just noticed that all ship maintenance went WAY up, so maybe that's part of your problem? As the Thalan I had been struggling just to keep up in tech (as I mentioned it seems like everybody's trading unique techs like mad, so everybody's bonuses are insane). Until just a bit ago I hadn't built any really strong ships. Now my econ is doomed - 6 tough medium ships are costing me around 300BC / turn - that's a huge chunk of my total income (around 20-30%), even though my population is on par with everybody else, and I have something like a 30% econ bonus (plus bonuses from traded techs).

Looking at this line in the change log confuses me a bit:


+ NEW: Ship maint cost increased to correspond with higher level of money in game
End of quote


What higher level of money are we talking about? Tourism was nerfed earlier to near-DA levels, as I understand it (due to the problem with the initial way-too-high setting). So maybe there is in fact a real econ problem with this beta.
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the replies. I have been messing with the game and here is what I have found.

1)For some reason my 50% bonus wasn`t working. When I removed it and spent points elsewhere and picked a different government the game cash flow improved. (and that would be because I was ready for the situation so it didn`t blind side me. I think that if I went back and set up for 50% bonus again it would work, it probably was just a fluke.)

2)The population is more sensitive to taxs. Where as before I could raise taxs to a 50% popularity and be fine (and the trade off with reduced population would even be worth it), now the smaller populations are at 38% moral and are not growing so this just kills me.

3)The increased upkeeps just makes things more exasperated.

4)I noticed that Mars and some other class 4 planets got stuck at lower populations. mars was stuck at 2.5 and others at 2.64. Earth later on got stuck at 15.84. All those planets had food and high moral at the time. Has anyone else noticed this?

EDIT PS: I have noticed other complaints about economy and immense galaxies. I am on that size and that might have something to do with it.
Reply #46 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This is great news to be sure. SD seriously rocks in my opinion. Brad for President!


Anyway, regarding the ideas already offered I completely agree with the race emergence suggestion. I would also like an option to set emergence cycles and number of races to boot. I also like the startup suggestion but with only one colony ship. I support the idea of a "Go to Colony" command.

I would like to see an expanded UP system and the ability to have "factions" that only races of the same alignment could participate in and have votes on issues. I would also like to set factions relations for other factions at game start. I would like to be able to lend other players money and get paid interest as well.

Regarding things that could easily be done by players so these suggestions are not a priority, I would like to see the political parties fully developed and balanced. I think the anomalies should be expanded an order of magnitude at least given all the variables in the game and the same with events.

Additionally, maybe I missed something but the majority of planets I colonize in game have a default pop cap at 6Bn. I assumed this is part of the beta but I figured I would mention it just in case.

In a last desperate plea, does this mean we at least get the option of controlling our ships targets now?
Reply #47 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A population of 6B is the normal population cap if you don't build any farms (or similar tech that gives a pop bonus), just as in DA.
Reply #48 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That is what I figured. For some reason I was thinking the base was changed for TA.
Reply #49 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I sincerely am hoping that in the final release .you will have adressed the following minor problems that detract from my "fun factor"

#1 anomolies : by this i mean respawning anomolies are good. but at least make the A.I
want to build survey ships throught the game and not just in beginning
,,anomolies part 2 ..... the +25% to a tech bonus must be replaced by A pre set tech point bonus .. this prevents you from getting a huge tech advantage. because simply put 25% of universal translator is not equivilent to 25% of black hole guns
there have been games that i played where I build fast surveyors with like 20 speed and actually get the +25% bonus 2-3 times in same turn for a tech . I feel that it is cheesy to go all the way from beginning a long tech like a long time 70 turns to complete to being a few turns from finished in same turn just because i am only one surveying .

#2 race emergence .. races MUST spawn with planetary defenses and ships in orbit.
otherwise the simple tactics of having a few transports scattered about the galaxy is enough to wipe out any new race regardless of tech . the method i use now is pure cheese but is essential due to the way the game spawns races .. if a race appears with end game techs, then trade for it all . no matter what it takes , because it does not matter what he gets if he dies in the same turn . right now the game basically gives me about 12 end game techs .all the time for free due to this event .

#3 invasion tactics. right now there is an exploit where if you use mass drivers or some other detrimental attack but fail in the invasion .then planet quality does not drop and improvments are not destroyed. this should happen regardless of success or failure. and here is why.knowing that i can attack a planet with 16,000 troops ,and use only a invasion fleet of 1000 but use mass drivers ,i gain all the benefits of this tactic and cause massive enemy casualties yet I dont intend on succeding ,because the success means that this planets quality and improvments will lower,no... what i want is to weaken the defending army to a low number like 3000 troops ,then just send in another ship with a less destructive invasion tactic like mini soldiers(my Favorite).it seems to me a bit unrealistic. at least make a invasion tactic ,s detriment always happen regardless of sucess or failure.

#4 i beleive that space miners colony ships,and survey ships should have to be researched before recieving one . i think games would evolve in different directions if you only started with 3 colony ships and had to research to build anything else.then you would see almost instantly each races different approach to winning (I.E korath,drengin might go straight for military/invading and not go a mad colonizing from the start)trading,mining,colonizing,military,construction/resource gatherer,could all be a start strategy It does not have to be expensive to research any of these start techs

number 4 sounds a bit radical but please consider this kind of startup as maybe a option that i could enable at game setup(I.E i could check and uncheck "enable colony,miner,survey ship{s} at startup" )
well i hope these dont sound too difficult to change.thanks for reading .
End of quote


1# I mostly agree with theis as far as changing +25% Tech to a fixed text point value I'd say make it a random text point value but with in a reasonable range so it doesn't allow you to get major techs so much quicker.

2# I totally agree with this one.

3#Again I agree not because it allows cheesy tactics but because it's unrealistic for the invasion tactics not to cause any damage if the invasion fails.

4#I would like the option to start with no ships, so everything including survey ships must be built and in many cases researched, think it should only be an option though. The fact your survey ship has technology way in advance of what you have at the start, (e.g. medium hull size) is also strange, Plus some races may prefer to wait and research a lightly armed survey ship.

And to add something of my one I would like to see some anomilies result in combat encounters or mega events, this would obviously make unarmed flagships a dangerous proposition.

Reply #50 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

1# I mostly agree with theis as far as changing +25% Tech to a fixed text point value I'd say make it a random text point value but with in a reasonable range so it doesn't allow you to get major techs so much quicker.

2# I totally agree with this one.

3#Again I agree not because it allows cheesy tactics but because it's unrealistic for the invasion tactics not to cause any damage if the invasion fails.

4#I would like the option to start with no ships, so everything including survey ships must be built and in many cases researched, think it should only be an option though. The fact your survey ship has technology way in advance of what you have at the start, (e.g. medium hull size) is also strange, Plus some races may prefer to wait and research a lightly armed survey ship.

And to add something of my one I would like to see some anomilies result in combat encounters or mega events, this would obviously make unarmed flagships a dangerous proposition.
End of quote


As I stated earlier I back these ideas. Additionally I have always wondered about the survey ship situation and found it unreasonable. I would love the option of starting with nothing for all players truth be told. Moreover combat and events associated with anomalies would really spice things up to be sure.