My one beef with the UI still exists, which is that the Turn button is too close to the mini-map. I don't know how many times I have accidentally ended a turn while trying to move my view to a spot on that edge of the map. But honestly, this is an extreme nitpick; the expansion looks awesome and I'll certainly play way too much of it.
I tend to take stock of my position every 6 months and see how it lines up against my expectations for the game and what sort of control I'm used to having at that point. I can generally tell at the 1 year mark whether or not I will win the game. Sometimes I can't tell until 1.5 or 2 years in, and sometimes I'm wrong. Mega events can really send the game off in unexpected directions when you least expect it.
After reading this AAR I decided to give the strategy a try. It's going pretty well, and I thought I'd share some thoughts and observations. First off, the game details. I'm not up to the upper difficulty levels yet, so this game is being played at Challenging. Medium-sized map, 6 opponents. I'm playing the industry variant of the strategy and didn't want to mess with spies, so I took the Yor (+20 social/military, +100 loyalty). My discretionary points went into economy, morale, an
What sealed the deal for me is the fact that you aren't paying any extra for the beta. So you aren't paying for the beta, you're just paying for the game early; in return, Stardock is letting you play the game early. This to me is an awesome deal. As far as the window for joining the beta goes, I was able to join yesterday (Saturday, 18th Nov.). (Yes, I know I'm horrible for not having got my preorder in sooner, but real world finances suck sometimes. <img src="http://images.stardock.
Sweet, beta on my birthday. Life is good. ^^
I'll preface this by saying I'm not playing the beta version, so if this has been addressed feel free to ignore it. My one serious gripe with the UI is the placement of the end turn button in relation to the minimap. I can't count the times I've tried to move my view to look at something in the bottom right corner, or tried to send a ship that way using the map
Say what? What difficulty are you playing on? I have to move quick to score even the resources in my own territory, and the AI builds up their starbases nicely. Admittedly I don't burn them down immediately, so as to avoid war earlier than I can handle it, but they don't dally too much from what I've seen.
We have access to a graph of military rating, so I'm sure the AI players have access to it too. Whether more military is better depends on the race though. Militaristic races respect foce, and any military smaller than their own will give a relations penalty. Other races see a large military as an invasion waiting to happen, and will have a relations penalty when your military is stronger than theirs. Ethical alignment has a starting value dependan
In my games I commonly upgrade a ship design several times. Each time I upgrade the functional components are removed and I have to put the new ones on. This is far superior to having to remove them all first, but I think its possible to do better. Then I have to save the design, and either give it a unique name or save over my old design, which is not optimal if I want to use it again in another game. So, here's what I'd like to see.
It doesn't even have to buy a lot of things on loan. I can usually manage parity with the AI on early building, and often outrace them entirely. However, I tend toward the production bonuses. Also, I save a healthy coffer from my starting funds to keep spending at 100% until I am able to bootstrap my economy into proper form. The 1-point morale bonus is pure gold here, for keeping the taxes up and getting the buildings and ships cranked out before
The AI is actually getting easier at the lower difficulties. At tough I would expect it to be somewhat harder though. I think the biggest difference is going to come from the AI building faster ships (at least for those of us who carry on in a warlike fashion). I might have to drop down a level also, or I might be ready to step up to the challenge of the increased difficulty. I'll probably play a game at the level I'm currently playing (Painful) an
The game is perfectly happy to let you overlap components, so if you want you can put something on that covers your entines up. Many of the pieces with a patch of engine have an attachment point right in the middle of the engine patch. Careful resizing of some of the flat boxes can cover it up pretty well. When I'm having a creative block I'll usually just make something bland and functional, and redesign it later. Another option is to ju
My ships are set up similarly. I'll have some sort of defender with 0-1 engines on it, depending on how late in the game it is. I use a medium speed ship for near defense and interception of enemy ships heading for my planets. Assault ships are slightly faster. Constructors are always as fast as I can make them go, and my transports are nearly as fast. I'd rather put two troop modules and go 12 speed than put 3 troop modules and move at 4. The ex
Perhaps when you sell a trade good to the AI they could accumulate a stockpile of the good, which allows them to keep using it for a certain number of turns (say 20 for the sake of argument) after they lose access to it. That way, if you trade it to them and declare war they still get to use it for a while because they have stockpiles, but eventually that will run out and they won't have access any more.
There is an interesting level of challenge to be had in playing in the cramped environments of the smaller maps. GalCiv2's AI deal with it much better than most. That said, my current game is on a large map, and I may go to huge for my next. I mix up the settings from game to game (really wish there were random options on the game creation screen). I avoid abundant planets, which results in a galaxy full of stars with exactly 5 planets around them,
I have also noticed the AI behavoir that h3lmut mentions and taken advantage of it on occasion. I expand much more aggressively in my games though and don't build a massive web of doom. However, if I'm in a war with multiple opponents I will usually "turtle" against all but one. I'll space a few good fleets out in those border regions and make sure every planet has something just in case the AI bores a hole through my defenses. If the war is protra
While this is functional in a pinch, it is very wasteful of resources. The cost of upgrading ships is comparable to the cost of rush-buying them to begin with. In fact, you might as well cut out the middle step in your strategy by rush-buying the good ships to begin with. You spend about the same amount of money, but don't spend any time waiting for that empty hull to be built.
Good stuff on the way, and I'll add my support to the idea YunHarla mentioned about collapsing the list of extras to just the icons. How many you could fit in a row would actually depend on your screen resolution (as well as how many rows, my laptop could easily fit the whole list on one screen). The "Customize your ship using extras..." text could be moved to a single box under the heading, to let newer players know that jewellery is totally cosmeti
They say "woot"?! I say woot! I am they! On a more serious note, good to see more positive noise from the reviewers to get the word out to more gamers about GalCiv 2.
The upgrade cost is significantly off in my opinion as well. For the same cost I can just rush buy a new ship of the line and have both the old and the new ship to fight with. An "empty hull" exploit should be pretty easy to avoid if the formula for the upgrade cost is well thought out. For example, set a flat fee for each hull size, and add the difference between the old ship's cost and the new ship's cost. Maybe even double the differen
I suppose the Dread Lords don't count; they are pretty much hack and slash and probably don't require a fully fleshed-out AI like the other races. Of course that still leaves a pair to share an AI, unless he was miscounting. Actually, he probably wasn't. You're never going to need more than 9 in one game, because the 10th player is the human. So probably each race has a preference list of personalities and when the game is generated the 9 personal
My preferred strategy is to use the smaller ships, usually small and medium but late game I'll have some worthwhile tiny designs to produce also. I don't find myself producing the same ship over and over, because I'm still upgrading periodically for new weapons tech, better miniaturization, etc. The original example does not feature ships of the same tech level (as someone else pointed out). Huge ships require a ton of research; tiny ships
Its possible to build a +4 speed colony ship using the starting techs for most other races, the exception being those that start without improved hyperdrive. A 4 speed colony is not an extra turn to build for many of them (depending on other racial bonuses). So I don't really see a problem with the Yor bonus based on starting colony ships.
I rarely put a starport on anything less than a class 9 world. The exceptions are when the planet has a 300% industry bonus tile or I just don't have access to enough planets to specialize. Small worlds I use primarily for economy with a side of research. I'll usually have one big world devoted to econ, and one to research, with the respective capitols built on them; if these worlds have fewer than 15 usable tiles they don't get starports either. E
The mission after siege isn't actually that bad. After the first time you do it you know which are the better planets, so go for those only and let your allies colonize the size 4 and 5 garbage. The main advantage is you have fewer planets to defend, and it forces your allies into the fight as a sort of buffer between you and the dread lords. Support them as you can, but mainly charge up the tech tree and develop industry to crank out the ships you
