Shhh Sedenial, ignore Qui-Gon. His reasonable explanations would just kill this thread.
Note this actually means that the player cheats, since he is the first to move on any given turn, and unfair advantage. Turns should be simultaneous (orders/execution) in order to avoid that damn player cheating.

Actually.. this brings fwd another question.. who does go first .. what order do the AI players take. Is it random.. Or do you the player go first. ???

Tell me about it. Mine is 600 Mhz with 640 Ram and it's got riva vanta(16m graphic card) for heaven's sake. It takes real couple seconds to click at anything when computer starts to build bunch of starbases or fleets.

One way to prevent it is to have war with all other aliens all the time. So that the game wouldn't have that much ships and starbases on the map.

I need a new computer.....

Has the scenario that Qui-Gon outlined above been officially stated?

If this is the way a typical GalCiv turn occurs then . . . why?

The TBS games I've played seem to have each player complete its turn before going on to the next player. I suppose the turns in GalCiv may be broken down into "Production Phase" (where the production for all players is resolved) and then the "Movement Phase" (movement for all players is resolved) or something like that but I'm not sure.

Any other explanations?

That is my point Chronus. GalCiv is NOT a simultaneous turn game (Space Empires IV is, if you want an example of how it works when it programmed that way). If it was as he stated, then you would select where your ships would move to when you hit end turn (along with a number of other things). If that were the case, then my "completed next turn" ships would appear on the screen as soon as i hit end turn. They do not. They appear on the map at the begining of my next turn. Which means the AI could invade a system, that had many ships "completed next turn" and not have to worry about it. How else would the AI (or human) player be able to capture a paid for production queue?

No, the turns are calculated one by one, not all at once. And you get you new ships at the begining of your turn, not the ending of it.

One possibility:

If Qui-Gon is right about the turn sequence, Bluewulf, you mentioned that you had a couple of planets in the system in question. If you were building something bigger than a Starfighter in one of the others - colony ship, constructor, Avatar or whatever - the AI may have switched production to the "cheaper" Starfighter just to have enough production built up to finish a cheap orbiter fast. The rollover ability in a captured planet's military queue permits this.

I've seen the opposite scenario often enough. If I capture an AI planet in the mid- to late-game, odds are that they have something ridiculously big under construction like a Dreadnought with 25 turns to go. Switch it to a Battle Hammer and it might be finished. Switch it to a Battleaxe and it WILL be finished.

Of course, all of this assumes that Qui-Gon is right about the turn sequence. With no evidence to the contrary, I'd assumed that GalCiv followed the standard turn-based system as found in every Civ and MOO-type game. Meaning that you'd need 2 turns to do everything Bluewulf mentions - one to conquer the planet, change the queue and fly in the nearby Starfighter, and one for production to finish on the second Starfighter. If Qui-Gon is right (and this WOULD explain a lot that I've seen), I can understand the confusion.

The fact the the human player gets to move first is a huge advantage when racing to colonize a planet or grabbing the attack initiative (anti-matter missles anyone?). The auto-pilot moves for your current turn do not occur until after you hit the turn button, however, same as the A.I. So technically, if you have ships on autopilot, your turn is still not over when you hit the button. That's why when racing to be first to a nice juicy yello star, don't let autopilot make the last move -- do it manually and it could make the difference in beating the A.I. to it.

Not from what I have seen. My auto-pilot moves happen after the ship with movement moves. Then I have to manually hit the end turn button. There is a setting that allows this. But I think the ship movement order would be the same no matter which option you chose.

Ahh, well I have long been an admirer of the Jedi Way, though they suffer from a fundamental flaw in that they fail to see that nothing is real and the Force is All.



No, this thread couldn't possibly be dead yet as Godwin's Law http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/Godwin_s_Law.html hasn't yet been reached.

[Message Edited]

In 1.05 at least, Autopilot ships move After you press the turn button but Before the AI ships start to move. You can easily see this if you have 'follow autopilot ships' selected.

But....as mentioned earlier, what is the order of the AI races. Do arceans move first, then Yor etc; minors last??? Doesn't matter I suppose, they all get wiped out in the end!

1.05 IS what I use, and auto-pilot ships will move before you hit end turn. The setting I use are:

Auto Turn: Off
End Turn Skips Moves Left: Off

If choosing something other than these setting will cause you to lose a colonization race for a specific planet with the AI, then why use any other setting?

I can see how you could lose one, have 1 turn remaining on your auto-pilot route, but you lose that one movement because of your settings and the AI beats you to it.

It dosn't appear until the next turn. Look my analysis closely. The A.I. decides to build the ship on Turn 1, and it doesn't appear until the beginning of Turn 2. It only seems like the same turn to you because it all happens after you hit the turn button.

Qui-Gon Jinn -- I'm going to give the GalCiv AI the benefit of the doubt I guess - I really want to continue loving this game because there are so few excellent TBS games out there. PS -- Did anyone here play Ascendency?? I loved the way that game looked and the battling -- Too bad the AI was so weak -- I've been waiting and waiting for Ascendency II but so far it hasn't come out and the logic factory has been saying it's in the works for quite a long time

Hey!! How do u copy a bit of someones thread and put it in that white box?? I tried it on my last submission {part of Qui-Gon Jinn's message} and all it did was print it into my message -- Where's the white box?!!!

highlight the text and hit the "Q" icon. at the bottom of that post
or
type '['quote']' and '['/quote']' (REMOVE all eight of the ')and the beginning and end of the text you want to box
[Message Edited]

highlight the text and hit the "Q" icon. at the bottom of that post or type and REMOVE all eight of the ')and the beginning and end of the text you want to box

lets see if this works

maybe this time

IT works!! -- Thanks Bakka

This is just a bug not an AI cheat.

I've had situations where I get the ship the AI was building immediately after invading a planet. It doesn't happen often, but I've seen it happen on a number of occasions.

Does the fact that the AI turns are asynchronous to the human player turns help at all? This is what I think is happening: While you are doing your turns, the AI are doing theirs. I am not sure what the order of this is, but it could be that they are just compressing their turns while you are not. Ie:

YOU

|==============turn 1=======||========== turn 2=======|

THEM

|======================turn 1 || turn 2==============|

Just a thought.

Gibbie99 -- very interesting -- that would answer the question and show the AI is not cheating --- I don't know if thats what's happening but -- good thinking Gibbie99

Bluewulf,

I've had the exact thing you describe happen when I invade a planet. So I don't think this is an AI cheat, just a bug that only happens under certain circumstances. Surely I'm not the only one who has seen this.

It happened in my last game. As soon as I invaded there was a constructor in orbit. One of the planets was set to build a constructor and had no shields in reserve. The constructor was somehow completed right after I invaded.

There is one fact most of you haven't thought of.Think about the differences in production between your race and theirs.If your production is alot greater than theirs sometimes this results in a ship for you.And again think about where your sliders are set on domestic policy screen.If you have 100% military and the aliens had 30% then possibly when you invade you might get a finished production bin.Also the reverse is true as well for them when they invade.Remember that once a planet is conquered that the policies of that race apply immediately and something might get finished or was finished and waiting for next turn to appear.Sometimes I think that the game code gets overloaded and doesn't realize that planet was just conquered and should wait til next turn anyway to produce anything.I think after conquering planet there should be a 1 or 2 turn delay before anything is produced because of under new management time to readjust to new culture.
I do agree that the unit should not show until next turn though.

The A.I. is "thinking" and "planning" it's turn while the human player takes their turn. But nothing actually happens as far as the A.I. turn is concerned (ships produced, research completed, etc.), until you click the turn button. This is not unlike a chess program where the computer is allowed to "think" during your turn. It still has to wait its turn before it can actually do anything.