Fun from last night..

Smarter..Faster..

from GalCiv2 Forums

The AI difference from Beta 5 to now is..well just night and day.  Beta 5  as far as I'm concerned had no AI.  Sure, the ships moved around and such but that was about it.

Now the AI reacts to things like influence starbases.  It'll try to counter your influence star bases with its own.  Some races will try to do a culture attack on you. 

And when it comes to combat, no more willy nilly sending ships around ineffectively.  They focus on specific goals and mass up for battles to take those goals.

They will identify a threat, determine what htey need to kill it and then put together the appropriate force.  No more pathetic "Look, it's a lone fighter attacking my mega fleet".

In this example, I had a huge fleet massed for attack.  I was pretty impressed with it.  But then the AI massed an even bigger fleet.  Some AI players go with fighters, others with capital ships, depends on the AI module. 

One late game battle was pretty painful, my brand new "Debbie" (my wife's name) class battle ship was alongside a bunch of "Victory" (older model) class battle ship and the Drengin's fighters were powerful enough to take out the Victory class ships on their own. (speaking of which, I significantly decreased the upgrade cost on ships as a result).

Here's some cool battle scenes from last night:

If you look closely, you can see the Drengin fighters, they're itty pitty but they're nasty little buggers.

Also, the AI is MUUUUCH better at adapting its weapons.  In Beta 5 the weapon analysis went like this:

IF (I am at war) THEN (Find most lethal enemy and counter their weapons).

Sounds good on the surface. But it's stupid.  The Drengin and Altarians had been battling it out all game and the Drengin were finishing them off while I had built a huge fleet of ships that were perfectly suited for whacking the Drengin.

So the algorithm changed:

IF (I am at war) THEN (If my most lethal enemy is much weaker then me) THEN (Look at the most powerful military in the galaxy and factor their weapons and defenses into my counter measures)

ideas
18,030 views 42 replies
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Sweet, Brad. I'm looking forward to this game more than ever now!
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
So much for finally getting ahead on normal mode. I am going to have to debug my AI-whacking program.

The space battles are kickin, pretty much like my dads hot sauce.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I really don't see a point to those cinematic battles. Sure, they're fun to watch. But when you're at war and taking on multiple battles, they can get quite annoying. I like the traditional GC1 style of battles better to be honest. Am I missing something? Can you manipulate the ships using the Cinematic mode? Can you assign what ship should attack what? Or is it purely for visuals?
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
There is an option to skip space battles.I think it looks great.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Buck, dong 'top down' and zoomed out looks like the old battles. however I think they look superb and I enjoy them, I feel they add to the game, Why? - well for me I like to analyse the weaknesses and strengths during the combat and i learn a lot 0- in GC 1 i simply would not have been arsedto do this. Just the pause to enjoy and study the battle allows my brain to consider this analysis process.

when we gonna get a loo at the next version please Brad?
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I like seeing my ships in action. 
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
It's nice...I would just like a little more control, that's all. It would be neat to allow you to control what ships attack what and so on. But like I always say, "better to have the option."
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I really don't see a point to those cinematic battles. Sure, they're fun to watch. But when you're at war and taking on multiple battles, they can get quite annoying. I like the traditional GC1 style of battles better to be honest. Am I missing something? Can you manipulate the ships using the Cinematic mode? Can you assign what ship should attack what? Or is it purely for visuals?


Watching the battles play out can show you what works against what and where you're going wrong, seeing a bttle might suddenly reveal to you that the new enemy cruisers are bad news for you or maybe show up a weakness in your own designs, too little firepower too much defence on your new battleship for example.

But, if you still find them pointless (I think they're great) and would rather skip the battle scenes entirely you'll find options to disable them on the options screen.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I really don't see a point to those cinematic battles. Sure, they're fun to watch.


The point of computer games is to be fun; therefore, the cinematic battles are successful.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
The point of computer games is to be fun; therefore, the cinematic battles are successful.


Well put, Saber. Greetings from an old colleague, by the way (Renegade MOO). Cheers!
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Greetings from an old colleague, by the way (Renegade MOO). Cheers!


Howdy! It's much nicer to meet in the forum of a game that won't **** goat **** Open betas are always a good sign!
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
It's much nicer to meet in the forum of a game that won't **** goat **** Open betas are always a good sign!


LOL!

Indeed. I really wish now that I'd been able to finish upgrading my computer earlier on so I could've participated in the beta (I finally pre-ordered it last night). [sigh] Ah well, I should still be done right upgrading around the time the game ships out, so it'll work out well enough in the end.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
lots of fun to have a fleet attack a single ship and choose the "chase target" cam.

missles and miniballs start coming in from all over the place!!!
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
One late game battle was pretty painful, my brand new "Debbie" (my wife's name) class battle ship was alongside a bunch of "Victory" (older model) class battle ship and the Drengin's fighters were powerful enough to take out the Victory class ships on their own.

I am wondering, did all your battleships concentrate their fire on one Drengin fighter each time, even if it means that they would have killed him 10 times? If it is the case, then I guess that the fleet commander should make a better use of his weaponery: If one battleship is enough to take out a fighter, then each battleship should take care of a specific fighter instead of concentrating their firepower on the same fighter, since it would means that only one battleship is effectively using its firepower to destroy ennemy ship.

As each ship stats is known before the battle starts, it is conceivable that the fleet commander give orders to ensure that firepower is correctly used. Maybe something along the line of:
take a target, calculate average damage made by each ship in the fleet on this target. When you have enough ships to make damage greater than 2 times the hit points of the target, assign another target to the rest of the fleet and repeat the process.
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You know, while the cinematic battle viewer is a really sweet bit of code, I'm not really for it. It will continue to make users request control of their ships while in the fleet battler. People will want control. Heck, I'm against adding to Micro-management in GC2, and I will have the occasional fleet battle where I want control (because I think I can make my fleet do better then standard behavior).

Also, I find it darn confusing that about 50% of my battles aren't in the battle viewer. If the point of the viewer is to provide fun (by giving you a starship combat show ) and to let us see how our ships are doing, then why aren't *all* our battles in the viewer? Even if it's just my one puny little armed fighter hunting for mini-freighters getting its ears pinned back by any enemy ship, if the point is to let me see how my ships do, then it should be in the viewer.

Other then that... I am really looking forward to the new AI! Sounds great!
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
You know, while the cinematic battle viewer is a really sweet bit of code, I'm not really for it. It will continue to make users request control of their ships while in the fleet battler. People will want control. Heck, I'm against adding to Micro-management in GC2, and I will have the occasional fleet battle where I want control (because I think I can make my fleet do better then standard behavior).

This is exactly the reason why I want to have the fleet attacking a bit smarter. If not, the better way to destroy an incoming fleet of battleships will be to launch a fleet a tiny fighters with only attack: defense and hit points are worthless since ALL the battleships will target them. But at each round only ONE fighter will be destroyed
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Having a whole bunch of battleships target one fighter would really affect the game in a negative way. I hope this isn't the case. As far as I understand, one of the defensive options is point defence in order to counter missiles. Maybe fighters should be interpreted more like missiles in the sense that they don't become a primary target for everyone. Maybe they should be fired on only by the ship that is being attacked by them.

But I am otherwise happy to hear about the AI. There are so many games that I would love to play if it wasn't for lacking AI. Hopefully this game will set the standard for AI, and encourage other game manufacturers to also focus on great AI.
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I really don't see a point to those cinematic battles.


Interesting... Here I was trying to push for a much better battle viewer (Nexus style) and didn't even realise some don't wish to watch them at all... IMO seeing battles is great, but hey, each has his own preferences.

Otherwise I agree with people who say that whole fleet shouldn't attack one target. It's a waste of firepower. While the fleet could destroy two or three enemies it (I've got such a feeling) overkills one enemy by far. This system has nothing to do with reasoning.

EDIT: Wait, I may be completely wrong. Since this is a turnbased combat the ships probably don't attack ALL AT ONCE, just all the same target. So if the target is destroyed by the first (second, third) ship in a fleet, the rest of the fleet probably goes on destroying the next enemy ship, right? in this case there is no overkill, this system simply enables your fleet to kill at least some enemy ships completely instead of letting them all survive each being a bit damaged. That's ok by me.
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
All of your ships generally blast the same target, one after the other. Concentration of firepower until the enemy is dead. AI does the same. But, sometimes I'd prefer that my ships had started with a different ship. I'd still concentrate fire. So it's really just a matter of target priority for me.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Since this is a turnbased combat the ships probably don't attack ALL AT ONCE, just all the same target. So if the target is destroyed by the first (second, third) ship in a fleet, the rest of the fleet probably goes on destroying the next enemy ship, right?

Well, I am not sure that it is the case. I fear that they fire all their weapons all at once. The cinematic seems to imply that since I got 3 ships using weapons against a lone freighter (1hp, no defense).

Concentration of firepower until the enemy is dead

Too bad, I fear it isn't the case but concentration of power against one ship each round.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Concentration of firepower until the enemy is dead

Too bad, I fear it isn't the case but concentration of power against one ship each round.

Well, I was able to finally test a fleet of 10 medium ships against a fleet of 4 fighter. And it is concentration of power until ennemy is dead : at the end of the battle, I have fired 5 shots while the ennemy had fired none.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top

This is exactly the reason why I want to have the fleet attacking a bit smarter. If not, the better way to destroy an incoming fleet of battleships will be to launch a fleet a tiny fighters with only attack: defense and hit points are worthless since ALL the battleships will target them. But at each round only ONE fighter will be destroyed

How is this bad? How much defense and hitpoints did X-wings have? Fighters die a quick death. I would never bother putting defenses on fighters once battleships are out there.