Altarian Prophecy Campaign Feedback

The third scenario of the campaign seems a bit difficult. It mentions the opposing race has a precursor Avatar/Overlord but in reality its an Excalibur! I am sure I am missing some trick to this scenario but I keep getting walloped about 1/2 way through the technology tree.

~SDC~

I've already said something to this affect. Cant wait to get to 4rth scenerio.

Personally I found a real jump in difficulty just onto the second scenario. The Korx wipe me out before I can produce strong enough defending ships let alone set up the trading routes. They somehow manage to race ahead on the weapons technology and are pounding me with frigates when I've just managed to produce corvettes.
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I agree that the third mission seems unduly hard. Especially for such an early one. Maybe if their ship was a Ranger or something instead?

I agree.

Is there way for me to test the individual scenarios out of order? If this could be done, I could play 4-9 and maybe give some input on whether they need to be reordered within the campaign or toned up or down.

I felt the end of the campaign was a bit sudden.

The story and plot was building nicely and then - finished.

In the end the story of where 1 of the new races came from was answered but not so much the story of why the humans look the same as the Altarians.

As for the campaigns themselves ...

3 is a bit difficult but I like as it forces a totally different change in strategy. The Altarians need to play differently for them to be of any use in this level. Some specific advice on style of play for this level would also be good.

9 also requires a fairly specific strategy to win. An initial ship rush with constructors to breach the gap works well. Failure to do this makes the game very very hard as you are totally out produced, researched and populated. Manybe a few less colonisable worlds by the enemny planet would help here or just a minor or two.

Most of the other maps are a rush to colonise before the enemy. Knowing this allows the picking of speed resources giving a huge advantage. +2 speed is the key to many of the maps.

I particularly like how the objectives in many levels is different. This makes the correct choice of picks a major bonus. For example with a diplomatic objectives you can choose diplomatic picks which speed up the win. With an influence objective you can choose influence picks.

I would also suggest that some maps could benefit from the inclusion of some random minors. This would add to the mix and reduce the colony rush somewhat.

Paul.

~SDC~

A major problem with level 3 is that the Altarians are very poor allies. Where if it were two human players against the AI they would share techs generously, the Altarians DO NOT. I am lucky to get 1 tech in exchange for three, even if diplomatic levels are about equal.

Another thing; THAT IS NOT AN AVATAR,it is an Excalibur. Not that it matters, because I can't even get to battleship tech before I am eliminitated, but if I were to somehow figure this level out and get to Avatars, it wouldn't help.

If the Altarians were to be a bit more useful then maybe we'd have a chance, but really, they are stubborn mules when it comes to trading.

And I sure would like some tips on how to play this level. It's very frustrating.

Solitar listed an idea here:http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=150150

Just completed scenario 1. All I had to do was hit the next turn, playing on normal, and make some trade. Altarians did a fine job of waging war.

Scenario 5 and 9 need some reworking, as all i had to do was make contact with the AI once i had universal translators and they immediatly surrendered due to the power of my fleet (a Battleship with 10000000 attack or whatever is a bit much). Also, on mission 9, you only start out with 1000 BC, and your maintenance from your ships costs will over 80 BC a turn, meaning you cant build anything before you run out of credits. Something needs to be changed to make this an actual, playable scenario, not rush for universal translators and hope you dont run out of money.

Good feedback. Last night's build does update some things but we will continue to tweak it further. Some good poitns especially by black_shade.

i think someone already addressed this briefly, but the Drath make there appearance into the campaign rather suddenly. The story line is already set up so that in the scenario previous to their arrival, you here of a cult worshiping (not sure if this is right, but i know that you hear of some disturbance) and your agents investigate (similar to the cult following in the normal game that turns into a minor civ).

Instead of immediatly fighting them in the next scenario, why not have them appear at a key a event in the next scenario(say... when the first korx world gets taken or the human controlled player reaches a certain number of worlds) much like the original cult following in the game does (i think they are the dranth or draginol or soemthing like that, i always get those confused). They could start with several worlds (previously uncolonized, poor quality) and a large amount of resources to quickly build up a defensive fleet. As a precursor towards this, your agents could continue the investigation in this scenario, and as they pick up information give sketchy details/background info into the Drath and their connection with the Korx and Altarians. Just an idea (and probably confusing the way im describing it... it just sounds so much better in my head).

And my previous post, im not sure i meant scenario 5, but whatever mission you initially fight the torian confederation where your survey ship is very, very powerful and they surrender as soon as you make contact due to your powerful survey ship.

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Another idea is that once you have completed a campaign level, allow users to play a specific level that they have already completed. So if i have beaten all 9 levels of the campaign, i should be able to start scenario 2, or maybe 4, or ..... depending on what i wanted to play. Similar to Starcraft/Warcraft Campaigns, where once i complete a level i have the option to go back and replay it without having to go through all the other levels previous to it.

I'm on mission 2 (normal). I beat the korx, but the game continues to go on, just me and the altarians. Is the problem that my morality is 23? My relations with the Altarians is friendly. The game says that "Close relations with Altarians means victory." Can I win this, or do I have to start over?

Scenario 2... I definately do not like it.

Here's the constructive comments:
I'm a builder. The scenario was really ticking me off, as it is purely a military problem.

I tried several different game strategy/tactics. The fact that if you don't go straight for some form of serious ship tech, the Drath will have Transports attacking my worlds before I could build freighters.

After several attempts, I decided to take a new tack: turn scenario 2 into scenario 1. That worked, until a random event completely ruined the scenario. I did this by colonizing all "my" worlds possible, getting Universal, and then turning over half of my worlds to the Altarians. That worked. Then I just had to hit the end turn button. Altarians were able to utterly destroy the enemy, given a superiority of worlds. The advantage of that strategy was that the Alts declared war VERY early, thus protecting my worlds from the enemy, allowing me to build up my meager "minor" level empire and keep them supplied with trade techs and freighters so the Alts could trade with me, as well as turning over the majority of my ships built to aid them. However, shortly before they finished off the final enemy world (combat transports on the way in, 2 turns left to travel), they got the "Now believe in the opposite of what they beleieved before" event, and they declared war on me because I was so good, and they were now so evil. Lose scenario.

Definately disable the swap alignment random event. It is just an extra pain in the rump which can cause the loss of a scenario through no fault of the player.

I do really like AP. But the scenarios are not to my preferred play-style.

To win you need the to get from "friendly" to "close" relations. Try gifting the Altarians techs, ships, BC, or even a system or two. As long as you have one system left when relations become close you win.

BTW... on the summary screens... it looks odd having the human player's stats on all the lines that are normally used to display the various alien stats for the game. Shouldn't they have just been blank instead?

Actually 2 is a purely diplomatic problem. You only need to get close relations with Altarians to win. In fact beating the Korx is irrelevant ( I won with the Korx still having a system). Freighters and high diplomacy with relatively few defense ships (no higher than battleaxe are required). You need to make sure that everytime that you get a tech that you either trade it or gift it to the Altarians because ultimately they need to be your best buds and protectors.

Bromoser, thanks for the comments. However, I had "Close" relations with the Alts for several turns without winning. So there is something else involved in its victory conditions. That or my set up is just messed up, I suppose.

I had looked at it as a matter of time. Because with trade, you'll get to close relations with the Alts... if you are of Good alignment.

I view it as a military matter because if I don't go straight for combat ships, I get my worlds invaded in a transport rush and taken away, and I'm out of the game. Once I am trying to defend myself, I find I spend the whole game just trying to break even.

From a builder's POV, I find the AP Scenario's to be a complete waste of my time that I could be spending playing something *fun*. When I want to play Sergeant At Arms, I play RTS games. GC is not a military game to me. It's a "build up an empire and goof off". Sure, you need some military units in the game, but in standard play, you just need a few corvettes to pump up your military rating high enough to be left alone. Unless some bad randoms come along, you'll be left alone to manage your empire and have fun as you like (whether it's waging war or whatever). The scenarios, of course, are *nothing* like real GC, and that's going to cut down on the number of people that find them fun as a consequence.

Scenario play is always about finding the one or two designed ways to win the map. That is very different from a basic empire builder game and the general open nature winnability of GC. However, they will like AP Expansion. There are lots to like in it. So the GC customers that buy AP will find plenty to like. And since only GC fans will be the ones picking up the expansion, it should be an overall success. There will just be customers unhappy with the scenarios. AS there will be customers that think there should have been 8 more such campaigns included. Or more ships. Or more tech and wonders, etc. You cannot please all the people all the time, after all.

It's not that the AP campaigns really suck. They just don't float my boat. I do want to see StarDock succeed, which is why I've been giving them whatever feedback that I think has some positive information in it. I don't want to sound like it's all bad. It isn't. It just isn't interesting to me. And I don't see how SD can fix it so that it is. That isn't the purpose of that campaign. In the future, some players may build a campaign I find interesting. I expect that will happen. Such is how it goes.

If you enjoy it, more power to you. But for this sort of boredom, I am normally paid to tolerate. So I'll probably not be testing the campaign any further. It would be a more interesting use of my time to harvest out the text strings to get the details of the story then wasting my time in the unenjoyable task of playing the particular scenarios for the AP Campaign.

It's just what you find fun. That's what I intend to do. I'll go back to what I find fun, and leave the campaign for others that like that sort of play. It's not like I think I've been gypped, after all. AP is fun in the general play for me. I definately recommending it all GC players that like GC.

Your right this is messed up. You should win immediately after getting "close" relations. I can see how that would add to your frustration with a scenario that you didn't like to begin with.



Exactly. That's why I'm playing the campaign. I personally still hate scenario 3 but I played it to get to scenario 4 and beyond. Unfortunately based on your experience with scenario 2 not ending, the campaign still needs some work. Its fairly obvious that the campaign was intended to test the various conditions that could be set to achieve victory and to show future campaign builders what could be done. To this end, the campaign is very successful even if it is not especially compelling regarding some or all of its scenarios depending on your point of view.

Finally, my previous post was purely meant to show a different point of view. I think Stardock appreciates lively debate as long as its civil. I really liked reading your posts.

I think the difficulty scale is broken. In team scenarios or scenarios where you're supposed to ally with the Altarians, if you pick obscene/sucicidal difficulty, you shouldn't end up with incredible altarians and incredible Korx. You can just sit and watch the Altarians murder the Korx because they have more stars (give the stars to the Altarians if needed).
A suicidal difficulty should have incredible opponents and dumb allies.

Also the 'team' option makes the ai look very very artificial and dumb. There's no way an intelligent player wouldn't share all his techs with his teammate.

Overall, the maps seem to favor +speed for rush towards planets. I haven't been far yet, but it's pretty obvious that taking one system near the border can make the difference.


From the first scenarios, this looks true. Is there even oen scenario where the ONLY way to win is by researching faster than the ai for instance (not necessarily all the way through, having a winning tech in the scenario could make it shorter)?

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Some more comments.
It's possible to advance past one step in a campaign by simply resigning the game. Juts leave and you can continue the campaign. I'm not sure whether it's a bug, a spec, or a workaround to circumvent a design flaw.
I still have to understand how I can restart a mission which I have failed. If that's possible (it should), it's not clear to me how it can be done. I can restart from the start, but not just one mission?

Do you have a save from the beginning of the scenario you want to replay? I had a mission 2 saved campaign game that showed up on my "Reset" menu, but I don't recall if it was generated by AP or I created it myself at the very beginning of Scenario #2.

no, i only have 2 or 3 saves for the whole campaign ( i would resave as i got to the next level). Thats why a feature allowing me to go back to previous missions would be useful.

LDiCesare That is a very good point. Hmmm. We'll have to think about that.