Any ways to make the games more balance/climactic?

from GalCiv2 Forums

Galactic Civilizations 2 has been one of my guilty pleasure games for years. I'll break it out once or twice a year and spend 2-3 days on a campaign. Its a great game, addictive, and fun.

 

There is one major problem with it thought. The game really only ever go two ways. Either you start off in a bad position and end up getting slaughtered early on, or you build and race research until you are so far ahead of the other races that invading all of their worlds becomes incredibly boring.

Even if you play with max number of races one or two will wipe all the other out, and with no diversity you end up at war with the remaining civilizations. Has anyone found a way to extend the game, where many races remain active and nobody is so far ahead of everyone else as to make finishing the game pointless?

If there are any mods or settings that can make the races less prone to fully wiping eachother out, and instead maybe conclude a war after capturing one or two planets? The only real way I can see doing this would be to either make race relations easy to improve, or to make a races primary worlds near impossible to invade.

Anyways I hope to hear back, I am sick of putting two full days into a campaign that ends up a pointless slaughter against one or two other races.

8,441 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Turning off surrenders, if you haven't already, will help the races last longer.

In terms of modding, I don't know of any existing mods that alter what you describe (although the second at least should be possible, either by adding planetary defence bonuses to civ capitals, introducing new defence techs and improvements, or perhaps some other things I haven't thought of).

However, there are a couple of mods that address more general imbalances between the races by restructuring tech trees and correcting errors in how some races research (in unmodded ToA, some fail to research space weapons, while others pursue an imbalanced strategy that bankrupts them.) By fixing these problems everyone becomes more competitive, against the player and other AI alike. Check out the threads for MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix & Tolmekian's Tech Tree Fix for more info - I've tried out both and the AI is definitely more formidable with the changes.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Like MisterAedan said, some of the glaring imbalance comes from widespread errors in the TechTrees and other files.  In Twilight of the Arnor, that is.  Those races you see getting steamrolled by the local strongman?  They probably never even developed Space Weapons.  My mod fixes pretty much all of those kind of issues along with making many other improvements for gameplay and AI competitiveness and balance.  If you're interested in something like that, you can find it here: https://forums.galciv2.com/405819

 

v2.0 goes a long way toward fixing the issues, but v3.0 is set for release this weekend.  You should probably wait for v3.0 if you want to download it.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Will definitely check it out. Hopefully with some more balance I can see some new parts of the game besides just combat and conquest. Thanks.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting roaky, reply 3
Will definitely check it out. Hopefully with some more balance I can see some new parts of the game besides just combat and conquest. Thanks.
End of roaky's quote

Well, the balance has served to keep wars going longer and ending in peace more often.  I was going to say that we can't do much to curb the AI's thirst for violence, but there is something.  You could always edit your opponents and reduce their aggression.  I've never done it, but reduced aggression means better relations, which should lead to fewer wars, more trade routes, and potentially more alliances and more time to work the culture game.

I think I will go ahead and drop the aggression for my next playtest.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I've observed that, lacking the actual means to make war, the AIs aren't very bloodthirsty at all.  Five years in on my latest test game, some races have yet to develop a military, and they're doing just fine.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I wonder if its affected by which races you play with? That and likely random occurrences, like spaced out star systems and diplomacy techs. Really though it seems like the pattern is all the races gang up on the weakest one, wipe him out, and repeat, so the longer races remain similar in strength they wouldn't be over-eager to start wars.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting roaky, reply 6
the longer races remain similar in strength they wouldn't be over-eager to start wars.
End of roaky's quote

  ...that is another good reason for helping the weaker races and minor races,  besides that they would wear down the stronger races and be more friendly towards you.

Quoting roaky, reply 6
like spaced out star systems
End of roaky's quote

  Setting stars to "tight clusters" in a larger galaxy size avoids some of those close-borders wars,  and it is more difficult for the AI (and you!) to get ships to enemy planets quickly enough for a slaughter.

I am sick of putting two full days into a campaign that ends up a pointless...
End of quote

  That is why I used to have Tech Victory on,  so that I could win by research;  but the AI doesn't always go for this victory when they could,  or a minor race appears and researches Tech Victory.  Tech losing or Tech winning,  this interrupted too many good strategy games for me so I switched it off now.  I recommend for people new to GalCivII.

  Political Victory and Influence Victory are good game enders (larger galaxy maps):  you have to be in some kind of a strong position to win (you don't need to wait for weak races to surrender,  they join your alliance). 

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting roaky, reply 6
I wonder if its affected by which races you play with? That and likely random occurrences, like spaced out star systems and diplomacy techs. Really though it seems like the pattern is all the races gang up on the weakest one, wipe him out, and repeat, so the longer races remain similar in strength they wouldn't be over-eager to start wars.
End of roaky's quote

Well the key components for each race to be able to maintain military competitiveness are economy, research and manufacturing.  Not enough of any one of those three and they'll have problems.

For example, it doesn't matter if you can defeat the fleets they're fielding now, if they are able to replace their losses in a matter of weeks.  Or if the fleets they do eventually put together are superior to the ones they lost.  And when both of those are true for you and they, it does come down to a battle of economies.  Are you willing to buy new factories and labs in order to cement you edge, or do you prefer to rush build new ships?  Either way can work, but what determines the ability for either side to keep doing that?  Answer, it depends how much money their civilisation makes each week.

Of course, the AI civs are not incredibly great at developing their worlds so that they don't lack one of those vital components, but unless you keep tabs on what they're doing every single turn, they can surprise you.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Played a game with Tolmekians 2.0, huge galaxy, tight clusters, max minor races, and it went pretty well for a while. With few habitable planets there was a lot more balance between races. Short wars, trade and influence battling. Was a real good run. Eventually, long before anyone got close to victory conditions though minors started to get picked off. I kept sending them precursor rangers that for some reason I kept getting, but to no avail. devolved into 5 races, with 3 declaring war on me. Could maintain my small chunk of the galaxy, but with trade cut off economy started collapsing and eventually my star-bases got overwhelmed.

 

Just a thought but in my last game the planetary council proposition came up to end all wars. If there were a way to force that proposition to come up at regular intervals might help to break up aggression. Though later in the game even if you get a peace treaty the race will usually break it soon afterwards.

 

I want to try the 3.0 that I saw just got released, but I am getting quite bored of races and the look of ships. Anyone have any interesting mods to change the feel of the game? I tried Babylon 5 mod, which was quite good, and even combined without errors with Tolmekians 2.0, would like to try some others if there are any good ones out there.