1) Races often do improper research - many going far into the research tree without researching weapons (this often combines with the "surrender" option where an entire empire surrenders to another before almost any of their planets are taken or they make an attempt to defend)

2) Races do not expand properly - many staying gimped throughout the game - either by not expanding, or by expanding and then doing nothing with the planets or building enough ships to defend/attack

3) Races do not build on planets properly (if at all); some leave planets completely barren throughout the entire game, others build wrong buildings on wrong bonuses

4) Races often don't make ships with weapons or with defenses, complete lack of balance for most races (I just played one game where the Thalans had researched large ships and then outfitted them with 4 pts of lasers ..... )

5) Tech costs inexplicably double - wreaking havoc for AI and player

There's a few to get started... give me a bit and I'll list more.

That list alone, taken all together, makes games predictable and deeply (deeply!) flawed.  The Terrans, the Krynn, sometimes the Altarians and Drath will usually put up a fight or dominate; the Thalans will expand like crazy and then just get obliterated b/c they are too stupid to do anything; the Arcaeans (sp?), the Drengin and often the Korath will not expand sufficiently, not just in ONE game but in EVERY game - the races act idiotically or overpowered like clockwork.

Compare this to Dark Avatar where the majority of races faired well depending mostly on luck, planet quality etc - as it should be.  They all played relatively smart and managed their planets/resources at higher levels without cheating, but by making the most of what they were given and adjusting it.  This seems utterly missing from Twilight.  It has the appearance of depth in my opinion, without an AI to take advantage of it.

It has been over a year and a half and many of these huge errors are still in the game!  The research bug alone that doubles weapons research is crippling and game-breaking.

These are far more than "tweaks", Syanis.  And none of these issues depends on graphic cards etc.  I am not considering hardware issues in this post - just programming.

J

Worrying feedback. Do others agree? I haven't bought TA, but have DA and DL. Should I buy TA?

You really need to play "Twilight" for the 'real' game.  In "II" and in "Dark Avatar", things were really broken as far as being able to swindle the NPCs out of all of their items (tech, planets, etc).

Twilight really made it harder to do this, adding a bit of 'realism' to this affair.

I'd say go for it, you won't be sorry for the challenges.

Because all the ai should act like milatarist clones of each other and not attempt to pursue reasearch and expansionist goals in accordance with their "biography"...

Go play an RTS then if all you want is nothing but armys bashing each other.

Does anyone know if 2.03 fixes these issues?

I do agree on some of these issues - the strange tech-inflation seems to be able to wreck havoc to AI's at times.
At least thats what I blame for some AI's not researching weapons sometimes.

I also have the impression that some races (esp. Drengin) expand almost never. However, based only on my experiences that could be only bad luck - they almost allways end up with crappy starting positions.

However, I cannot agree with the attitude of some people. They get great games for years in a row from some company and the instant that one of them doesn't come up to their very own personal expectations, all they can think of is starting a flame war.

Ok, they had time to patch it up, but it's a pretty complex game who knows whats ultimately behind those issues?

And finaly - it's a game, get over it!

Thats your decision of course.

However, I find TA very enjoyable, even if it has some flaws.

But then, DA had some, too.

I guess it comes down to playstyle and taste how much you will notice them.

You know, if you only scratch the surface, I can see how it could be perceived as broken.   I mean, tax is a function of the square root of population, population has nothing to do with productivity, entertainment centers' 10% morale never really gives 10% morale, why even have 300% farm tiles at all, there's the silly 20k bc limit, bonus production is half paid and half free (?!?), miniaturization doesn't miniaturize anything (it makes ships bigger), ships can actually come out of combat with more HP's than they went in with, and the ship defense...enough said....    It's obviously the result of a lot of tweaks and tuning.  At some point you just had to call it done, and that left a lot of loose ends untied.   I didn't have a problem with it.  But I can see how someone else would.  I mean after all, you'd think 10% morale means, 10% morale.

I want to see how the game performs at the MAX CPU settings once I upgrade my PC. I am definitely hoping that it will improve significantly. A good AI has been a very good reason to play GC2.

I am definitely interested, but did you design them for ToA? Do they work with the Metaverse?

Thanks!

No, that will almost certainly trip the cheat flag for metaverse games. As I plan to play mostly MV games, I don't think I will make real use of them.

Thanks for your time

Here's an issue for everyone.  Diminishing returns.

Let's say a company starts up, and makes a game that's pretty good when compared against its contemporaries.  As time goes by, they make improvements to that game through patches.  Later on, they make a new game, which takes all they've learned, and does a few new things to keep it interesting and experiment with.  The same happens over more time until they make yet another new game, and so on.  Eventually, they reach a point where they've made a truly awesomely epic game, in terms of functionality.  Its gameplay is smooth and intuitive, its AI challenging and reliable, and its features are interesting and balanced.  Now what?

Well, now...because of simpletons who demand "new, new, new" at all times and immediately, they have to scrap their "perfect" system and come up with something from scratch all over again.  They can't even use their established system for inspiration because even the slightest hint of similarity will be met with chagrin and debasement from critics and consumers.  "We already played that, we want something else now"  It doesn't matter at all that the system can be applied effectively to other games of other genres, it only matters that its new...but it still has to be perfect or else everyone gets their panties in a wad anyway.

People in general seem to fail to realize that there are points where there simply isn't a better way to do something, and to do that thing a different way can only possibly be a step (or sometimes a flying leap) backwards.  The number of potential "ideas" in the universe is certainly staggeringly large, but hardly infinite.  And the number of those that are actually viable to any degree, let alone the greatest, are so few in number that even we have already gone through too many of them.  Most things imagined simply don't work...ever...and nothing at all will ever change that in any way.

Now...all that said, look at this game.  Really look at it.  It wasn't designed to be some blockbusting international gaming event.  It was just supposed to be a well-made game that was fun to play.  The only crime I think the developers could really be accused of is worrying too much about critical acclaim in a game designed solely for players.  Its like they tried to make an award-winning game while trying to keep it fun...and honestly, the two are most often mutually exclusive.  Because games that win awards rarely strike me as fun...but that's just me.

GC II: TotA isn't perfect, but it's not bad.  It would've been nicer if it could've been refined more, but while its the fault of both company and consumer, I blame the consumers more than the company for that.  It's consumer behavior that leads companies to their ultimately stupid business practices after all.  They do what they do to sell products by any means possible...because of the way the public behaves with their money.  It's less that organizations are lousy and more that the public is lousy.  Garbage in, garbage out.  The game is fine after its patches, and its easy to tweak a variety of values and behaviors in the game in some way or other to make things more palatable.  Finally, like someone said before, it's just a game, get over it.

Actually, one other thing.  Some say, "the customer is always right," while I'm more a fan of, "let the buyer beware."  Idylly, economics is a closed circuit just like an ecosystem, with finite quantities of resources being shared among all aspects of the system as needed.  That it's become so adversarially oriented is part of the problem, not a potential solution.  And before some wannabe environmental biology major spouts off the same nonsensical dribble that's caused more problems than its solved for decades now; I'm fully aware that the food chain IS adversarial, and that there are pocket ecosystems throughout the world...though those are only smaller components of the whole.  Until we or some natural catastrophe interfere though, those systems remain balanced on their own with no one aspect gaining dominance over another.  We screw each other just because we can...rather than considering the benefit of the species over the individual.