For both realism and design purposes the biggest issue is that the invasion tactics are poorly integrated with technologies from newer versions of the game, particuarly since the addition of planet types. It's reasonable to assume that aquatic worlds would be much more or less vulnerable to tidal disruption, for example. It's also difficult to imagine much success attacking a toxic atmosphere with spore ships. It's not like people living their have their windows open, after all. You could even make an argument that mass drivers ought to require an asteroid field in the system.

If memory serves, there's also a problem in that most of the tactics lower enemy advantage and comparatively few raise yours. The intentional failure cheese might be less attractive if there were more expensive tactics that favored a massive attacker advantage.

Scattering the tactics around the tech tree makes sense from a realism point of view, but doesn't really match the game. Personally I'd consider making the soldiering branch race-specific and giving each race a soldering theme to match the story. Super hivers would likely concentrate on troop modules and mass assaults, so it'd make sense to me if they had fewer choices of tactics but several levels of troop pods. Master spies would probably be drawn to special ops/special forces types of war and develop relatively expensive invasion strategies based around either reducing enemy advantage or converting large amounts of local support, so they'd have reduced advantage/improvements detroyed or better information warfare options to pick from.

I'd also grey out some tactics based on particular situations. No tidal disruption of water worlds, no spore ships/gas attacks of toxic atmosphere, no mass drivers without asteroids present, etc. Combined with race-specific tactics, that would really throw a wrench in the works. The terrans, for example, might be relative pushovers on small worlds and virtually impossible to dislodge from large ones, in keeping with their general taste of large fleets operating in their own influence. (Especially if their soldering tree granted advantage based on influence instead of invasion tactics.)

In the end, the combination would force you to carefully consider your overall strategy. If you have mainly small planets, you probably don't want to start a war with someone sporting the "Ultimate Troop Module." Similarly if an enemy planet is protected from your most powerful invasion tactic do you pass it up, blow it up, or expend large numbers of troops on it?

there are a lot of really good suggestions here, they're going to have a lot to read when the staff get back

Those are some very nice observations Elleron. I hope SD considers a revamp of the entire system to account for the planet types and culture based soldiering.

I've been saying for a long time that we should have the option of NO starting ships. So I emphatically support #4.

Yes some good point there Elleron, not sure how hard some of them would be to implement.

Will we be able to implement new invasion tactics with the editors I wonder?

I like the invasion tactic suggestions, but I'm pretty happy with the beta even without any changes other than what they're proposing.   

I've got one big problem, though- whenever one of my planets is invaded, the game crashes. And I was looking forward to the new invasion screen so much! Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

its a big bug that has its own thread. it will be fixed in the next version.

Also there is a sort of work around, (you have to do this again if you save and then reload the game after quiting). Basicly you have to make sure you invade an AI planet before they invade you then the bug doesn't happen.

Ah, yes. I'd love starting ships to be a check box like tech trading etc. I don't like that everyone starts out with ships that they can't make themselves.... Just seems out of whack, and I'm nitpicking....I know.

Random events at anomalies would be pretty cool, but I could live without that if it would take too long to implement. Maybe throw in a small percentage of negative results. That would be enough spice for me.

ok i love the ideas posted so far. here are the ones i deffinatley want in.

#1 the anomolies fix . make A.I more worried about anomolies late game, and make +25%tech bonus a point total

#2 races emerging need defenses. and as an addition i would reccomend they never spawn in occupied space. just make an class 0 instantly turn into habitable planet

#3 invasion tactics. man the suggestion for making damage happen at same time as troop combat i like. and also the one where each planet type affects the invasion tacts.
(i.e water is succeptable to tidal disruption ,toxic is unaffected by spore ships,also the yor should never be succeptable to information warfare,mass drivers requires some asteroids ,barren worlds should not be succeptable to core detonation because a barren world would not be volcanically active,now on other hand a heavy gravity world should be really succeptable to core detonation.

#4 start ships should be alterable by allowing us to check and uncheck what ships to start with.

#5 now i also know that custom races have not been implemented in toa yet, but i have been playing around with gauntlets race mod grmfv and he allows custom races .the reason i point out custom races is that I selected default tech tree and I ended up with a butt load of research possibilities. way too many to be fair to the regular oppinents. perhaps this will be not so cluttered in the final release , as being able to research all of the normal races techs is too much for fair play .
ok all i got for now . BTw i freaking love this game way more than that old hag called civilization 4 . even though i do have both expansions to that game also

Yes the Default tech tree is now effectivley useless as it is generated by the system to include all possible techs in the game as of Beta4.

This has caused issues with minor races too I think, and tech trading, etc.
Clearly this will have to be fixed before the final release.

BTW: My quick personal solution for the +25% issue with anomalies would simply be a percentage of your research budget for that turn.

I suspect they will, but that's a guess based on the fact that it's astetically pleasing and they seem inclined to those sorts of changes. Though I'd expect at least one level of default invasion technology to make sure no reace is left out in the cold when operating out of the default tree.

As far as how difficult they are to implement, a better question might be what are acceptable alternatives to the current ones that are reasonable to implement. Things that seem logical to me would be:

1. More troop modules for the Torians. These guys aren't developing mini-soldiers or anything else high tech. They're cramming as many bugs with cruddy weapons as possible onto their tiny ships and coming to get you. Think Vikings. They tactics they do get should reflect that. Spend some credits to juice up your soldiers with Bug Roids and get an advantage bonus. Or demoralise your enemy into hiding by sending your biggest, badest fighters into highly public areas and lower their advantage factor. Seriously, who isn't hiding from a massive insect army?

2. More planetary defense for the Terrans. These guys aren't invading anyone. Master diplomat, improvements to increase your ships power in your own space. Why wouldn't they have developed the best defenses? For tactics I'm thinking high-tech and proganda galor. Information Warfare is a natural fit. Given the American fascination with guided munitions so are improvement-destroying tactics.

3. More tactics for the Korath. Sure, they're into planet-quality reducing attacks. But if we're going to write those out or limit them there are other options. They're exterminating people, so make them like exterminators. You don't fight bugs, you gas them. No buildings or ship components here, just a string of oddball tactics that raise your advantage and destroy buildings. Maybe other races get a mix of tactics that raise/lower advantage and a couple extra improvements while the Korath get the largest bonus to advantage of anyone. Yeah, they suck against equal or better teched opponents and their soldering tree does next to nothing to help against invasions, but that's just not their style.

So while I'd like some special tactics based on the planet (see: Star Trek Insurrection for proof that rings make it easy for your enemy to construct some sort of death ray.) it's still possible to change to race specific tactics and/or get rid of the planet-quality ones. It's probably an open question as to how many people would want racial flavors to wars, and how well the AI would do with them. I'm guessing that a lot of people would like them, and that the Ai wouldbe about as successful as it is now.

That would make them kind of worthless, wouldn't it? I mean, instead of 1 turn's worth of research, you get 1.25 turns' worth.

nocutius

That's got my vote.

That depends it is all relative. If you get one of those puppies and you are a heavy researcher type it will pay off in spades. If not it was not your lucky day but it was surely better then others.

As I said it is a quick solution and one that is proportional to the player and not the tech level.

One problem with having invasion tactics always work is that you could then just chuck 2 people in a transport and hurl it at your enemy's best planet. Mass driver it, kill 2 people, and abuse his planet quality.

Neither option is perfect.

perhaps invasion tactics damage would scale according to the amount of invading forces.

I mean, it doesn't really matter how high your research is set, the bonus for that anomaly is relatively minor compared to the amount of research you're doing - you'd need four of them to reduce total research time by a full week, which makes them almost irrelevant, regardless of your total research.

That is fine. Hell it could even be set to 100% or even more for that matter. The point is that the bonus is no longer tech based, which is what the original issue is for many players.


On the question of the invasion tactics scaling with the number of invaders that is not reasonible. The number of troopers has nothing to do with the ship crew and it doing its job as far as I understand things.

If you make it relative to the tech being researched, make it +100% for that turn, then. Effectively doubling that turn's research, subtracting a week from the time required to finish.

Irrelevant isn't good. The 1 bc for a worthless anomaly is fine because there's a chance to be worthless. Don't also make anomalies that are supposed to do something worthless.

Just like to reiterate Lecek's comments. I haven't played Galciv for quite awhile (well pre DA) but have visited the site from time to time because MoM was/is my favourite game of all time and I really hoped Stardock would do MoM2 (would that be stepMoM?). Galciv2 was OK, but no better than OK for me. DA and especially TA seemed to address many of the factors that limited my enjoyment of GC2 so I downloaded them and started playing. I went to an immense map (one of the missing factors for me) to give myself time to learn the nuances of the expanded game. Well I went broke so fast on Tough that I basically learned nothing. So I dialed it down to normal and got a good homeworld as the Terrans, playing max opponents and minor races. Also found a bunch (5) of size 16+ planets relatively nearby. None of it did any good. Bankruptcy awaited, sooner or even sooner. Only ships were my initial miner and survey ship plus 'in transit' colonizers and construction ships. High morale for high pop growth - bankrupt REALLY fast. Colonize a 22 and a 16 and make 'em money worlds - ran out of money before I could build enough economic improvements (2 factories/2 market centers on my size 22 world - still running at a loss for the planet and I am now down to 1 production point at 25% capacity). I have dialed up taxes as far as I can and keep approval above 50 and dialed down spending to 25%, which only means that I am now building/researching so slowly that the game is pointless AND I will hit -500 BC about the time I next build something.

Any Civ3 veterans out there. Well the economy in TA beta 4 is as broken as waste/corruption (1 shield suckland as someone wrote in Civ Fanatics very memorably - given how long ago it was)of Civ3. While I like a challenge in games, there should also be at least a modicum of fun as well. I suspect that TA suffers from the same flaw Civ3 did - testing was done on small worlds/galaxies to get through the game quickly/often and it worked at those levels (no waste/corruption in Civ3 because of small empire size; economy works because of contact/trade with other civs in TA). However, adding the capability to generate big worlds but without adding the capability of actually playing those worlds for more than 25 turns adds up to taunting. I do welcome making Calciv2 more challenging but Tax Rate 52%, Approval Rate 52%, Spending Rate 0, Net Income -23BC doesn't meet my definition of Challeging. Broken: yes; Frustrating: yes; Impossible: yes.

Any tips would be appreciated but I suspect useless. The underlying model is flawed, at least on Immense and I will not be playing again until the next release - and only if it addresses this problem.

About the tech anomaly thing:

What about the anomaly bringing whatever is being researched up to x% of the full research of the current item. This could actually backfire too. If you have already researched more than x% it would bring it back to that level (research has been lost due to some disaster or other). x% could be a random number from 0 to 100 but the randomness could be biased up or down depending on the difficulty level or it could be fixed at approximately 50% with random variations.

no multiplayer - no buy

seriously people... no multiplayer???
i will buy this game only when it supports decent multiplayer - hot seat wont do i want LAN

no really .. do you even plan on adding multiplayer?

i bet my leg and my mmm ... precious that sales will go way UP if you add multi....

i have beta 3b loaded,still lots of bugs in the game but i cant even get beta 4 for that matter logging into the stardock up gay manager is really ticking me off. every time i get the ser. no. and try to log back in to star dumb central it fails to log me in and yes i do the tool button cr-p ect ect.ive been playing the game from the beggining and buying every version from online down loads and store copys, i know ive paid off someones mercedes by now.they can at least fix the bugs that they had back at altarin proficy witch still exist in every version of the game.1)the game crashes at least 4 or more times on large gal. or bigger when auto save is enabled.all the versions have that problem.2) freezes in all the gc2 expansions when auto save is enabled and now one of the newest bug crashes is the turn space freezes but you can still scrool around and design ect. but the game never recovers and you have to quit it and get to loose all the stuff ya were doing.