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I still need to vent my confusion. I finished the game, just because.

All the other races didn't care about me destroying their species one after one. The Humans didn't even try and just kept sending out constructors and freighters while I was busy taking out their planets. It was as if they were thinking "if we just ignore them long enough, maybe they will vanish by themselves".

To give them credit, in the very end they started putting single "Defender" ships onto their planets: Ships with 4 armor and no weapons.

They all had superior technology, but my crappy Super Dominator Corvettes (the ones the Drengi get for free) were enough to blast defenseless troop transports (everyone built plenty of them) and constructors out of the sky.

The other races made a good effort in crippling me economically, I have to give them that: Spies kept hurting my infrastructure. But spies alone won't win wars, and it just made me press on the attacks even faster.

7. If there's one thing you could name of the main strong point of the game, what would it be and why ?

The computer AI. It thinks while you are making your move which allows it to form much more complex strategies than usually seen. We have also put a lot of effort to try to make the different difficulty levels feel like different levels of play. Usually, difficulty levels just mean that the AI is given more or less free money and such. In GalCiv, the AI plays more intelligently as you increase the difficulty. So at low levels it’ll do things like mindlessly throw ships against a fortified target or leave transports unescorted. At higher levels the AI actually plays a lot more like an expert player would.

 

Seriously, I feel like my AI is simply broken. As if it was playing on beginner's difficulty even when I crank the setting up to masochistic.

Again, now on masochistic, the enemies will just send loads of unescorted troop ships at me, while at the same time ignoring my fleets as they approach their homeworlds to kill them. Other nations declared war on me, only to send even more unescorted troop transports at me. They took the small planet next to my homeworld since it was undefended - and now all these transports just hang around next to my homeworld, doing nothing.

In terms of combat, the AI is near to non-existant for me.

Hi,

In case you search for a tough space-battle, I suggest you take on the "Arcea's Last Stand" tournament in suicidal difficulty. That was about the only game were I had to destroy my own planets and flee back into the asteroid belt because I couldn't hold my planets anymore.

It also seems you're doing things wrong diplomatic-wise (the AI's did declare war on you....) in this instance, the "Drengin Gambit" will teach you a good lesson. That was the only game I ever lost, because with brute force you're not always getting everything.

Did you patch the game to the latest version?

That is, what is the game rev?

I haven't played in a long time either. Did most updates apply to both the open, non-campaign games AND the campaign games?

I usually play just the open, non-campaign games anyway.

I see some of the troopp transport thing happening myself. However I never have an easy time of it. Seems that the ennemy ships are always a step in front of me and I never get to kill easy ships.

Strange that you do... 

Oh well maybe I am just a bad player

Oh, finally some community reaction, thank you! 

Patch: Yeah I actually went through the hassle of the Stardock upgrade process, but ultimate edition is current anyways.

I am just not getting much fun out of it as I need a very high difficulty level to keep it challenging. On that difficulty level, the enemies should actually crush me with ease due to insane numerical superiority, but I can maintain the balance by shooting down enough stupid constructors and troop transports in the middle of a war zone to offset the AI production boni.

As for doing something wrong, Maiden666, I am genuinely trying to treat this as a role-playing game. I was very pleased to see 3 neighbouring races unite against my evil Drengin Empire. Actually the only AI decision that has left me pleasently surprised so far, after 2 games and many disappointements about this acclaimed AI. Can't see where all these positive reviews came from. 

Thanks for the scenario tip, but I was mainly looking towards the sandbox aspect of the game. I figured GalCiv2 might be the right game for a thoughtful player who wanted to play out some immersive roleplaying sessions.

Solam, in my games the enemy didn't even try to evade my war ships. They were just passing by in numbers, at a rate so high my warships almost couldn't keep up with shooting them down. It was ridiculous. And if you just place a warship near their homeworlds, you will be able to shoot down a constructor every other day.

In contrast, the enemy will ignore my own unescorted troops ships as I have found out. One occasion: I place my transport ships next to a Korath Clan world during peace time. Due to a mistake on my behalf (the transports being faster than the warships), my escorts are lagging behind and can't protect the transports this turn. The Korath clan (in a feature that was often praised in reviews) declare war on me, going like "yeah right, we know what you are going to do with your transports". They have a warship on the planet. But they do not attack the unescorted transports. Fail.

By the way, isn't there some key combination that will cause combined fleets to move at the same (lowest) speed? It's a pain having to move transports and escorts manually turn per turn.

Maybe you are expecting too much. The AI is bound by a set of strict patterns, which, once identified will the Human Player a huge advantage, esp. in space tactics. You are currently experiencing these.

One of them is that the AI will value a defended world much higher than an undefended. Thus, he will almost everytime leave some ships in orbit, and these can be ships of any kind. Early on, it is constructors/colony ships - although there are probably resources/empty planets nearby. He's also having unarmed "Fighters" in case no ATT-techs are available to him.

Here you have the answer why your Troop Transport is not being attacked.

Later on these are real Fighters and he will leave them in orbit, all the while producing some more which he will fleet together near his planet. In times of war he'll use them to clear out your orbital defenders, followed by a round of Troop Transports.

In times of peace his armies will stack near his worlds and take down his economy because of maint.

Another AI "trait" is that his ship will be locked onto a destination, and this will stay unless the mission is completed or has become out of reach. That is, if a you e.g. leave a planet open for invasion, his Transport will head this way and you can easily shoot them down. This is so because the AI doesn't re-evaluate his decisions every turn. Because, if he would, you could easily use this for your own benefit to totally distract him from any strategy.

However, in any case, if you know how he's going to play of course this will give you an edge everytime, and hence, old and experienced players use this to artificially prolong the game, using their strategies to even balance the AI's.

btw, just add one of your slow warships to your Transport-fleets, they'll then all move at equal speed. Plus you can shoot down some more Constructors 

Would have thought there had been some convenient function for this already.

As far as my transports are concerned, I guess I should just start putting at least one ship on every planet to prevent them from sending mere transports into their doom.

This is interesting, because this hasn't been my experience playing at all.  I play ToA, and tough difficulty.  The AI regularly builds a huge military and very aggressively comes after me and defends their planets.  They amass large fleets and defend their transport ships.

So...weird.  I don't know what to tell you.