michaelwhittaker71@yahoo.com I'll also take them

I like twilight of the arnor also I like dread lords I didn't like dark avatar. In dread lords it was a challenge. Then someone had to cry the dread lords is to hard. Ruining everything.Then dark avatar came out good game with a crappy ai. Then twilight of the arnor came out, good game. The thalans, torians, and iconians are challenging. What I didn't like they scaled down the drengin, terrans, korath, and krynn. I didn't like what they did to the espionage of the krynn and iconians. It definately is an improvement over dark avatar. I don't agree it's the best in it's class. Try civilization. I don't agree on the mods. They take a mod to make a game, and leave the other good stuff from other mods alone. I've read all these ideas, and think you should be on a couple of other posts. Ideas for galactic civilization 3, and tactics. The game could be better. You guys give me ideas for the ai. I'll try some. I can't download mods though I'm registered I would like to know why. One thing I would like to see different, instead of giving bonuses on higher levels. Give a better ai on harder levels. These crutusums are great. I'm tired of hearing how the game is to hard. Also I would like to see the other ai's work, and I'm tired of seeing a good ai scaled down on the upgrade to make another ai look good.

Can you just send them to michaelwhittaker71@yahoo.com instead

You can fix your points 1 and 5. Disable the surrenders to fix one, and increase the tech speed to fix 5. The others you can probably partly fix by modifying the races - making them use a different AI or tweaking the parameters (I think you can do this in game).

I am not a great player, but I once got beaten very badly by Thalans who built up their military and conquered every one, one after another. I hoped to research the tech victory before they came for me, negotiated some treaties with them in the hope to keep them off my back, but they realised what I was up to and dispatched me promptly. I was quite impressed. Though perhaps my AI standards are not as high as yours.

It doesn't.

And I agree with topic starter on every point. Shame on Stardock!

Also check out this mod a guy made to help sort things out and tell what you think.

https://forums.galciv2.com/382002/page/2/#replies

If there is any feedback to them then I would like to make it. They just robbed me of my money I think.

I believe that tech speed should be adjusted to the size of the map you're playing. The bigger the map the slower research rate should be chosen. And I do not think this is a bug -- the problem just that AI's aren't doing anything right at all with the new tech trees.

The first 4 point's are still the biggest nuts in the game. Before coming to this forum I've made a motherload of test games and the bugs mentioned were presented every time.

And the sporadic successes of the flawed AI isn't something we paid for, right? The games should be challenging every time otherwise they are hardly worth our while.

And to be stupid AI and suck in every game isn't the part of personality. Just compare with DL where all the races expand so quickly and build military so powerful. That's something that should be present here.

What playstyles do suggest to let the enemy take all the resources and planets from under your nose and then wait for the inevitable? Because it doesn't matter how soon that AI starts building up military -- with 5 planets vs 40 it hopelessly outclassed. The only feel about that races I get is the feel that they are damned to be losers for eternity. So sad.

I did ten more test games yesterday and I take back what I said about sporadic success -- the AI is ALWAYS flawed.

I also finished testing the maklar mod.

It did help a lot. With the tech trees returned to the DL style all the stock races began expanding a lot better and built a military a lot better. However they still behaive strange (they never build a trade routes or try to trade techs with me for example).

After all I decided to go back to the Dark Avatar. If the testing of it's AI will satisfy me I will not be playing ToA untill a proper patch is released (And I guess it won't happen any time soon) and will play DA instead

Try maklar mod anyway see how it changes things a lot.

If you want to evaluate the bad start factor try a test game in the galaxy where only you and the test race are present. This will let you see if the race is expanding properly when there's no one to get in their way or to box them in.

To avoid getting boxed in on crowded maps, the Yor need an edge in speed.  Their Super Isolationist ability (reduces ship speed, allows colonisation of barren worlds) gives them an edge only if they gain enough planets and influence to form a big blob, and it doesn't give them much of an edge unless their ships are faster than 3 pc/week.

I pick a +1 speed boost for them, which puts them on par with the stock Terran race config.  Though speed is of less importance later on, there is no later on for them if they're crawling around unsuccessfully trying to grab planets.

I use 8 for the Yor and 11 for Drengin. The Yor on 8 do a good job getting to the Barren planets.

Hi all, I have just started playing Gal Civ II (Dark Avatar) and I am loving it.  I recently got an email promo from Stardock saying that I could buy the TA expansion for 25% off.  Does the expansion really break the AI?  Should I just save myself the money and stick to DA?  I'd like to be playing this game for years, and I don't want anything to compromise the great experience I have been having with DA. 

Having some success with overcoming few issues in TA that are discussed above.  Here is a short list of the changes I made and reasons.  I also gave alot of thought to the tech slowdown and came up with what I believe is an intriquing possible solution but it needs testing.

I prefer long drawn out games, this is my playstyle.  My usual setup: Terran, industrialist, 7 customization points, 9 races, crippling, gigantic map, abundant hab planets, uncommon planets, occasional stars, scattered density, anomalies rare, asteroids uncommon, very slow tech rate, 8 minor races, extreme planets rare, occasional random events.  I use cntl-N until I get a map which seems to give everyone a fair chance or maybe I am at a disadvantage.

Please note changes below were only tested on the above setup.

-reduced galactic resource mining from 4 & 5 to 1 for subsequent mining station upgrades.  The first starbase gives you 5 and I just felt getting 4 or 5 each time thereafter is too destablizing.  Makes for more interesting game and less chance for race who gets lucky having alot to dominate.  But they are still worth grabbing.  This was one of my first changes and made a huge difference in itself.

-reduced top weapons to 70% of original damage value.  Just a tweak I prefer and makes it more interesting in late stages.

-added +10 to propulsion speed every other propulsion tech starting with impulse.  This helps to speed up the ai on very large maps and makes them more competitive in battles.  I probably need to work on aivalues for these so they go after the techs more decisively.  But I did notice ai's seem to have faster fleets which is a plus. 

-reduced arcean war rooms creative ability boost to 5.  Felt 10 was just too much but see below.

-lowered luck from 25 to 10.

-lowered creative from 25 to 15 and eliminated it as an additional game start bonus. (see next)

-gave all races (including minor) creative ability to help offset tech inflation slowdown. 

-thinking of putting in incremental creativity boost of say +5 then +10? for every other propulsion tech.  This would be for all races and might help to overcome the tech inflation slowdown issue!  Of course I need to determine what value it should increment.  So this will go up gradually but I don't want it going up too much or it will destabilize everything.

-made all races get 7 logistics to start game.   Felt previous values were unfair to some.  This also helps to facilitate decent fleets for all in the early stages and I see its working very well in recent games.

-customization points to 7 for all races.  I may adjust this a bit but seems ok for now.

-made arcean propulsion tech identical to other races.  This is just temp until I can figure out how to get their unique tech back in but since I made so many other changes with propulsion it was not fair to them.  But believe I can work navigation centers back in but its not high priority right now.  Too many other things to work on.

I made alot of changes to raceconfigs but tried to keep the overall theme of the original setup.  So the evil races will still have those hitpoints, weapons, etc but I also lessened up the diplomacy penalties.  All races received 50 points to work with and I only used 10, 20, etc, not 5's.  The aipersonalities were adjusted, I feel that 7 is definitely broken so drengin and yor became 10, korath became 8 and korx remains 11.  Aggression was also adjusted somewhat but remains similar to what it was before, just tweaked a bit.  Well Drengin is up to 85 and terrans are 55, etc. I also beefed up the minor races to make them tougher and help resist invasion longer.  Took away a few Thalan starting techs, imo they seem to have way too many. This is still a work in progress bit gives a general idea of where I am at. 

Some rules I made up on the fly for my play style...

-I pause for 7 turns before moving any ships.  This is my choice to make game more competitive.

-no building innovative complex until turn ? (need to determine)  I was cranking out transports with +1 speed from earth and it was just too destabilizing. 

-max major race treaties with me: 2 economic and 2 research until turn ? (need to determine)  I was just doing too well with so may treaties.

Quite frankly, the recent games I have been playing are much better with these changes.  But I still notice things slow down later due of course to that tech inflation kicking in.  I am hopeful the incremental creative ability boost might help.  I am not ready to make this a mod but wanted to get the info out and see what others have to say.  Maybe get some feedback that could help further.  Thanks. 

Any comments, suggestions welcome.