There are a number of aspects of the game that only make sense on tiny maps:

Research speed.
Number of trade routes.
Kyrnn super ability.
Drengen super ability (at least I think its the Drengen. The one where they get a bunch of free ships.)
The price increases of researching spies.
Spy on every Planet Mega event.
How the AIs declare war on opponents across a large map that they could not reach in 100 turns.
How the AIs invade planets (sending all their rescources halfway across the board when that have much better targets that they can actually reach.)
Influence borders not being correct on reload (and other reloading problems.

There are others I can't think of at the moment.

All of these features work perfectly for tiny maps and are completely unballenced for large+ maps. These are the things I am referring to.

Scincerely,

[email protected]

Well, feel free to make your own game.

As for Galactic Civilizations, here was my rationale - a major new tech stream should cost more than modifications to that tech. So Lasers I will cost more than Lasers II but additional ones will cost roughly the same.

As for how many turns it takes to get to the next tech, there is a slider to control the research time.

Yes, everyone has opinions on how this or that feature should be made but to assume there is a single "correct" way is nonsense.

Again, nonsense. 

Research speed is scaled by galaxy size. The AI adapts based on galaxy size. the AI evaluates distance before declaring war (there are more reasons to go to war besides invasion btw if you think about it).

I think after a decade and a half or so of working on this that we do have a reasonably flexible design for map sizes. You may disagree of course but if you know of a space strategy game that scales better than Galactic Civilizations, feel free to play it.

Hey, Frogboy.

You've been getting a lot a flak from some lately, but I just want to remind you that...

your game is awesome. You are one of my heros. What you've done with your life is amazing.

THANK YOU for improving ours.

Thanks Zarth.  The hours putting into the AI have been pretty long this week so I apologize if I'm coming across as too harsh.

It does get pretty frustrating to see people complaining about us using another week to polish the game knowing we could have shipped the game months ago. I mean, this is basically free labor people are getting. The AI is much much better.

Then we have the people who think they have some sort of insight on UI design or game balancing as if there is a single unified way of doing it that all would agree to. I am sure the MOO3 UI designers felt they had a very streamlined UI for instance.

At the end of the day, it's a game.  It's the game we wanted to make and we feel pretty confident it's a good game.  Does that mean someone else couldn't make a better game? Of course not. But I don't see anyone else coming up to the table with a turn based space based strategy game at this point.

Most of us aren't really arguing that our way is the correct way. I think we're just stating our opinions about how we wish the game would be. I think most people are also hoping for more options. In some cases, that is where the modding system comes into play.

The game developers and designers have their own rationale behind every detail. But sometimes their priorities are different from the players.

Even though I think I now understand the rationale behind the current trading system, that doesn't make me stop wishing that it was more fair. Personally, I'd rather the suicidal AI get additional bonuses in other areas, but still keep a fair and logical trading system. There are ways to combat the 'buy the galaxy' strategies rather than gimping the trading system so badly that it's near useless.

I currently only use tech trading to sell them for minor amounts of cash to the minor races to help me finance the initial colony rush or first way. There is never any reason to trade planets or ships. They are near worthless to the AI. Some people understand the nuances enough to get more out of trading, but for me, it all feels so random. Sometimes I can get hostile races to fight. Sometimes I can't, and I don't understand why. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons behind the scenes, but it doesn't stop me from feeling the system is screwed up.

Oh well. As long as the developers are aware, that's the best we can do.

Brad, its not like you to be condescending to your customers.

As for myself, I was in agreement with that guy's post. The research speeds need to scale in such a way that it makes sense to build ships with any of these techs.
It should be rare for a player to ever reach the top of the tech tree by the end of the game. On these mega maps, that means research needs to *really* slow down.

If a player decides to build a fleet and send it across the map, it shouldn't be totally obsolete by the time it gets there because everybody is researching new techs every 7 or 8 turns.

I agree with you. We all have our own ideas.

But reading through the posts, it's pretty clear that some people think that there is a "correct" way for everything and everything else is essentially a "bug" to be "fixed".

Well, anyone saying there is a "correct" way is just plain wrong. This isn't math or physics or some hard science where there is a correct answer.

There are other very important criteria. Fun, fair, logical, popular, etc.

Even though this game is an artificial world with artificial intelligences, we still want things to be fair and logical. We want things to make sense. This is a game about competition against AI. We want things to be fair.

There are certain things that we can accept when the game is stacked in favor of the AI to create various difficulty levels. It's okay if the AI has no fog of war. It's okay if the AI has various initial bonuses. It's NOT okay for the AI to have this crazy trading advantage.

For me, it actually bothers me that the trading system is so unfair and biased against the player. In the real world, if you are offered $10 for an item, but that seller offers you a similar item for $100, you get angry and upset. It disturbs your innate sense of fairplay. That's exactly how I feel, but at much lower intensity.

Oh well.

Note that none of this means that I don't still love this game. I do love this game and I think it's one of the best, if not the very best game ever. I've logged some crazy hours playing this game, especially recently.

So congrats and thanks to the developers and designers. I was just hoping to get my voice heard about how I think the game could be made even better.

I like the trading system as is. I honestly really don't know if their is a 'fair' price for a planet. This game doesn't simulate a free market, but rather a mutually exclusive competition between a finite number of players. The price should be based on strategic considerations.

Part of playing a game against an ai is that sometimes it will blunt your strategies. This isn't a multiplayer game and doesn't pretend to be, but it has to be atleast somewhat competitive; i think it gets the balance between diplomatic manipulation of the ai and pure competition just about right. The end game at this point may be a bit of stroll, but, otherwise, i'm satisfied.

Jasamcarl, what difficulty level do you play?

At Tough, I didn't used to have much of an issue. Some AI were pushovers. Some AI were harder to deal with.

At Suicidal, it's a whole different story. Even the minor races are unreasonable at that difficulty. Yes, I do understand the irony here. It's Suicidal. It's supposed to be hard and I'm complaining. But this is made hard in a way that feels really, really unfair to me. This is made hard in a way that basically removes this aspect of the gameplay.

If the multiplier was x2 at Suicidal, I would be okay with it. But the difficulty multiplier seems like it's x10 or x20. It's something ridiculous.

Perhaps the trade barriers are an intentional part of the Suicidal difficulty? Has that thought not crossed your mind at some point?

Just because you have a problem with it, does not mean it needs to be fixed. Deal with it, turn trading off, or back the difficulty down a step.

I already said I was going to mod it over my upcoming deployment so... um... okay? Is that what you wanted?



Would you like a thanks? I've already posted one around here. Would you like money? You already have a lot of it, and despite the treatment I got at the hands of the CEO himself, I guess you're lucky that you'll probably still get my money. Hell, maybe some day when you guys are bigger, I can go back to this post and show the equivilent of the CEO of EA trolling his customers (or me trolling him, depending if you read the rest of my post or not).



Yeah, I DO have insight on UI design and balance. I have my OWN insight - because I deal with this UI on a daily basis, I have a list of things that simply annoy the hell out of me. Maybe instead of a nice, long, meticulous post on exactly what my problems are and my own suggestion to fix it, you'd prefer I simply make a ****ton of whines about how shit it is? I'm also not stupid (but thanks for the subtle insinuation). I never ONCE said that there was no balance problem with just going through and changing the speeds of the all the techs. I never said there wasn't. In fact, one of the trickiest parts of my mod (since god knows it'll never be a feature) is that every racial tech tree needs to be considered in how it affects it. There's also other things as well - player abilities, bonuses, and the like will also have much more of an impact on slow-tech games than they do in fast-tech. Did I ever ONCE say that there wasn't, that you should simply get off your lazy ass (since I KNOW you're not doing anything [Insert eye-rolling]) and jump to do what I demand? No, I didn't do that either. The closest I got was asking for what a developer thought of my suggestion (and instead I got a heap of sarcastic bullshit).

I also never said that this wasn't a lot of work either, or that I expected it to be in the game in time for TOTA. What I *WAS* looking for was a constructive discussion with other game players, and in light of positive feedback, a response from someone official on popular threads is nice as well. Am I expecting a "Yes! We'll get right on this!"? No, that's silly. Was I expecting the response I got? Well... no, not really. The fact is, however, that the tech trading and tech speeds issue has been brought up over and over and over, and from what I've seen, the majority of people do not like how either of them works - and we've gotten nothing but stony silence from the official side of the camp on a response to this.

Anyway, I digress. Since I'm such a burden, what with giving you a couple hundred of my hard-earned dollars, encouraging others to do the same, making these decisions with blind trust that you have the customer's best interest sincerely in your heart, and then posting constructive feedback on what few weak points I see in your game on your forums and everything, I suppose I can start posting in a manner that more fits what you look forward to in clientèle.

Would you like me to start by spamming the Sins of a Solar Empire forum with whining about what a bunch of worthless ****s you all are for my minidumps? Or would you prefer that I start a little closer to home in this thread and suggest that you eat a ****?

Is that how you'd rather I communicate around here? Because I can do that, I'm really quite good at it.

You already told me to make my own game, and I'd fix this myself too if I could, only all these values are locked away, and without an SDK, I'll never be able to change them. I guess I'd make a thread asking if we can have an SDK now that TOTA is out (nearly, at least), but I'd sincerely hate to post anything constructive, or at the very least, polite. I don't want you to get upset again that I didn't make an expletive-filled post calling you a bunch of assholes for stopping development on GC2, and demanding that I'm *OWED* an SDK.

One general thing I just thought to mention: On Suicidal, if you expect to get a "fair" trade from an AI without massive diplomacy bonuses, you're going to be disappointed. However, since humans are capable of much more subtle and effective use of many technologies, even if you've got to give up a lot more than you're getting back, the trade can often benefit you. Additionally, if you are playing with for instance 7 AIs, you may have to trade 4 techs to get 1. But if you trade the same 4 techs to each race, and each gives a different tech for them, you've got 7 techs and have only traded 4. This is a clear advantage. I think perhaps a lot of some players' issue with trading on impossible is caused by expectation. They believe trades should be "fair", while if they would be a bit more flexible they may find trading quite useful even if they did initially seem to get the worst of each individual bargain.

Huh? Obviously, the current system is an intentional part of the Suicidal difficulty. Obviously, it was designed this way to make it more difficult for the player. If you actually read my post, instead of flaming me for some reason, you'd see my point.

There are many ways to make the suicidal AI more difficult. Some ways are acceptable to players. Some ways are not. I'm not the only person who has a problem with the trading system.

In any case, there is no point in my stepping down the difficulty when I can beat suicidal right now. Anyways, the obscene AI won't act much differently from the suicidal when it comes to the trading system.

Yes, that's the way to play the system right now. Players used to take even more advantage with the old trading system, which is why we have the current system now.

But do you see my point here? If the player can do it, supposedly the AI can do it too. But that's not the case. There are different rules for the AI and player. There is different behavior from the AI and the player. That is what I don't like.

I know it's really hard to code AI well, so maybe I'm just expecting too much? Instead of making the system really biased against the player, I would prefer a fair trading system with smarter AI.

I think it's an impossibly high standard to expect any AI to evaluate the relative worth of a trade in vastly varying game situations with the same balance an experienced human player is capable of. One thing I like about suicidal is that everything gets harder, diplomacy included. If they took that away, to me it would detract. Suicidal is supposed to be punishing IMHO, all the way around. It makes it so much more satisfying each time you win that way.

It's too broad a statement that the current trading system is unacceptable to players as whole.

Perhaps it is too difficult. The fact that the developers did implement the current system probably is an indicator that it would take too much time to beef up the AI with all the possible behaviors.

Let's assume for the moment that it is not possible to improve the AI's trading algorithms. I would still prefer to give the AI bigger advantages in other areas and have a trading system that is more fair. It would also be nice for planets and ships to be worth something that makes sense.

It's the fact that it seems to be biased against the player by a magnitude of 10 or more that bothers me. If it was twice as expensive, or even three times as expensive, I think I could accept it. As it is... Anyways, it is a matter of opinion, and I think I've made my stance very clear. The developers probably have more than enough on their plate right now, so I'm personally going to drop this issue for good.

BTW, I never said that the current trading system is unacceptable to the players as whole. People have made it pretty clear that this is a debated topic, which means opinions are divided.

cityman, IIRC the AI always used to treat the player and other AIs using the same ruleset for diplomacy (and, in fact, for everything!) Assuming this hasn't changed, then the only reason it offers you such lousy deals on suicidal is because it has enormous inherent diplomacy bonuses. This is good news (if you play non-metaverse games) since it means you should be able to fix things to your liking simply by modding in a high diplomacy bonus for your race. Have you tried that?

If you want "constructive" discussions you would post with a little less "tude".

At the end of the day, it only matters if I like how it works. I know that sounds arrogant (it is arrogant) but it's my game. I like the way it works presently. I put a lot of thought into it. I think history has shown that we do listen to feedback from people and implement people's ideas and preferences too. But at the end of the day, it's my game.

If people don't like the way I design games, they can vote with their purchases and the market will ultimately punish me and you can hope someone else steps forward. 

There are, after all, plenty of alternatives. There's Sword of the Stars. Space Empires V. And MOO 3 with enough mods is a lot better than the original release.  Each game has its pros and cons.  I can't make a game that is everything to everyone. 

The AI still uses the same rules on trading at the same difficulty levels. It's the same functions being used. I'm too lazy to write a specific function just for the human player. That's one of the reasons why the AI doesn't "cheat", it's easier.

Ah, I didn't realize how Frogboy (or whoever designed this system) modified it for Suicidal. I thought the algorithms were actually different. I didn't realize it was because of huge diplomacy bonuses for the AI. My error was believing the trade window when it told me that my relative diplomacy skill was still relevant to the deal at hand.

Okay, that is better than I thought it was. I am focusing on Metaverse games lately, but it might be fun to detour once in a while and see if I can tweak it to my liking.

Perhaps the trade window messages should be updated to reflect the true diplomacy values?

Sorry Frogboy, I was not trying to be overly critical.

I will stop and say right now the Galactic Civilizations II is the best strategic game on the market, and in my opinion, no one else is even close.

I was trying to present a reasonable set of evidence to back up my earlier staments that the game is better ballenced for smaller maps than it is for larger ones. Although I do believe this to be the case, I also understand that it is a lot easier to test smaller maps than it is larger ones. I love large maps, but I found it hard to beta test them as each game could last 100+ hours. (I have participated in both the DA and the TA betas.) I believe that you could play 20+ tiny games in that same time that it takes me to play one gigantic game.

I do play exclusively on the largest maps, and I am sure that there are fans of the smaller maps who would say that there is another set of features that work better on large maps. These things that I have said are soley my opinion and I mention them in the hope that my experience might make you aware of a problem that might need addressing.

I am sorry if I came off as rude or obnoxious.

Scincerely,

[email protected]