Returning Player

from GalCiv2 Forums

I've not played in many years now. I stopped playing shortly after ToA got released (even though I bought it too).

 

I liked to play on very long campaigns, usually the largest map size possible.

 

I've started to return to 4x games, but I'm reading threads about major bugs in the AI (the threads almost make it sound like a sandbox game).

 

Is the AI really that bad that I should re-consider installing ToA once more? (i.e. is it bad enough to prevent decent gameplay)

 

If so, is there a rebalance mod that can fix this for a standard vanilla install? (I have 0 mods yet, the only one I was thinking of was Digital's "Smaller Fighters, Large Battleships" http://library.galciv2.com/index.aspx?m=400 )

 

Thanks

7,595 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Its not bad so much as it is broken. Since the devs are hiding their heads in the sand I'll try to explain. There are 4 backbone AIs for main races with are further tweaked to fit that particular races characteristics. 2 of those backbone AI are dysfunctional. One doesnt expand and the other doesnt build on planets under certain circumstances. Of the two remaining functional AIs one is extremely aggressive in colonization and the other is economic. It leads to rather repetitive predictable game play.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Here is a better description from one player who has put out a mod to fix this..I havnt tried it yet myself..

Quoting Tolmekian, reply 7


The AIPersonality refers to the actual AI used.  Twilight has four AIPs that the major races use, one for the minors, and one for the Dread Lords.  Of the four major AIPs, two are broken and one is flawed, in my opinion.  That leaves only one to work with, though now that this mod is out I plan to see if I can work with the flawed AIP.  A rundown of the AIPs:

7 - Drengin, Yor, and Korath: Broken.  Won't colonize worlds outside of its sphere of influence.  People say it sometimes plays a good game, but it normally just colonizes the handful of worlds in its sphere then makes a dozen colony ships that all just stay in orbit.  You end up with a little 4-8 world empire while everyone else gets all the other planets.

8 - Terran, Thalan, Krynn, Drath: Flawed.  Doesn't research Extreme Colonization, or any tech with the Colonization category.  Is also hyper-militant and will rush weapons techs regardless of the AIValue assigned to the tech.  It does like the yellow technologies and puts serious effort into claiming galactic resources and fortifying its starbases.  Overall doesn't pursue a very balanced research strategy with my current settings.  This is the AIP that I want to work with now.

10 - Torian and Iconian: Broken.  Starts off fine, but eventually stops building anything on its planets - to the point that it has a bunch of empty planets in the mid-to-late game.

11 - Arcean, Altarian, Korx, and Generic: The stock AIP. I figure this is the AIP that they started with, the one that came from Dark Avatar.  Pursues a pretty balanced research strategy based more on the AIValue assigned to the techs than a preference for any certain kind of tech.  You could imagine how much easier that made the whole process, since I didn't have to fight against the AI to make things work.

And to answer your last question: Yes, having all AIs set to 11 does make them behave more or less the same.  When you look at a summary of the AIPs, there doesn't seem like much of a choice.  It's not so bad, though, as all earlier versions of the game only had 1 AIP. 

AIP 8 can probably be salvaged - in fact others think it's just fine - but I wanted to focus my efforts on fixing the TechTrees and finding a balanced research strategy for AIP 11 first.  I think of it as a baseline for all future work.  TechTree Fix v2 will have some TechTrees designed specifically for AIP 8.
End of Tolmekian's quote

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Glad to see someone's still playing GC. Regarding games ending too soon, I just turn off those victory conditions, like research and influence. I usually leave the alliance condition on, but I sometimes don't form an alliance even if the relation has become "close." You can also challenge yourself how quickly you can overcome a civilization, like can you conquer a friendly civilization within one turn? These are just some ideas a veteran GC player might want to try. It's sometimes fun to test how stupid the AI is.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Of course the AIs can, depending on the games, range from annoying to outright tough.

After all, the agressive colonization is the #1 reason why the Terran, the Thalan, and the Krynn are usually my #1 enemy in my games. They expand so fast that they usually become the most powerful civilizations in that game.

Before I come along and knock them silly.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Firstly, TOA is the only expansion with non-functional AIs - DA and the original GalCiv 2 have no problems in that area. In addition to the AI problems, there are a large number of categorization problems in the new tech trees that results in poor AI research. Tolmekian's mod (mentioned above) and a few others fix the tech trees, but the only way to deal with the bad AIs (7 and 10 - 8 is not really flawed per se, it just operates differently) is to switch them to one of the functional AIs. That said, doing this should result in a much more balanced game - I disagree that it's as repetitive and predictable as enoeraew37 said.

However, I find the way the game has been completely abandoned very disappointing. I don't actually object to the idea of releasing an unfinished game, then finishing it through patches - this worked for the other GalCiv games. However, abandoning it before all of the bugs are fixed is downright disgraceful. Minor issues may be one thing, but the flawed AIs had been reported almost immediately after release, with no work ever done on them.

TOA is playable, and in my opinion quite challenging, if you tinker with it some, and the new tech trees arguably compensate for having only 2 basic AIs once you get them working, but the fact that you have to get the game to that point yourself is at best disillusioning.