cyberj914

I know you can mod your race colors along with the colors of the AI empires. To modify the AI colors you simply have to modify their XML files. I'm not so sure you can modify the colors the game uses to denote the build squares on the planetary screen. Those seem to be hard coded though it may appear in one of the desktopx files. Maybe in a future patch SD can add an alternate palette option for those that have trouble with the current color scheme <img src="http://images.sta

New espionage system - I'm sure SD will continue to make improvements to it. I'd really like to see the ability to assign missions to the spies like a few other games have had. Is it a deal breaker for DA? Heck no! You are only hurting yourself by not picking it up. Spies are not *necessary* in the game. You can win without them. You can win without them being a nuisance. Now on the higher difficulties where the AI is swimming in BCs yes they can start to overwhelm you. But on T

The system lists what bonus the asteroid field is provided to a planet along with its max output when you click on it. For the basic level that is something like +3/+5. For each mini tile the field is away from a planet you lose one point of resource. So my example would have the planet two tiles away from the field not counting the tile the field is in nor the planet tile. The minimum a field will produce is +1. In order for a planet to get the max out of a field it must be directly next t

As with a lot of things in this game there is no single *right* way to do things. A wide variety of build strategies, colonizing strategies, and general empire management strategies will and do work. The trick is to find the set of strategies that make sense to you and play to the strengths of your race. For me I buy that first econ building not build so I'm not waiting for that first factory anyway. Also every planet of mine gets at least 1 sometimes 2 econ buildings but may get no

This sort of thing falls under the *by design* category. I'm sure the devs have a rationale behind why ships orbiting a planet do not automatically fleet up. One I can come up with off the top of my head is if you have to attack a planet 5 times to destroy the 5 defenders that takes up 5 movement points. I know thats a small thing but even so holding the enemy in place for another fleet to move in and destroy is a valid tactic. Its just the AI rarely has another fleet to come save the day <i

I've said it before and will say it again: your economy is the most important thing in this game. The way the AI tends to get ahead of you is because they are sacrificing their future economy for conquest gains now. The strategy works well and will win the game in the near term if done right but it will sink you just as quickly if you are unable to win before the economic crash. As others have said your goal in the first 50-100 turns is to get a stable economy and keep from being some

Some feel tech trading is an exploit period and why the devs added the *Turn tech trading off* option a while ago. Right now there isn't a way that I know of to tone down the value the AI assigns to techs on a per AI basis. There may be some under the hood type coding in the AI itself that adjusts how it values things but we can't change that yet. I know you can modify the XML files to adjust how valuable all the AIs think a particular tech is along with how likely it is to research t

Also don't forget he sometimes posts under Draginol as well.

Entropy Avatar: Ok now I think we are on the same page. I know the AI does some form of what you talk about simply because it redesigns its ships to counter whatever I'm doing with mine. So it obviously knows how its ships stack up against mine. It used to only redesign its ship every game year. This put it at a severe disadvantage. Now it seems it will redo them every few game turns if needed. Snyder: Ummm... have you read any of the posts about the planetary bui

Heck, I'm very tempted to code it up in C myself just to see how fast it could possibly be. Whelp I'll tell ya what. You go right ahead and code the C yourself to simulate the complex battle system including all the possible ship combinations along with fleet compositions and get back to us. Feel free to work from known items such as current tech level along with economic potential. I seem to remember (an

Simulating battles to gauge relative strengths of fleets and designs is an excellent idea. (and of course you know the *but* is coming ). However this is an impractical solution in terms of how long the AI actually has to make that decision. Think about chess AI for a moment. The longer you let it think the stronger it plays. Sometimes it can take it upwards of an hour or more to make a single move. A

Don't forget the initial colony site produces MP/SP/RP as well. My example also doesn't take into account any bonuses that planet may have or your race as a whole has. These play a factor in how much you produce. As with a lot of things in this game you can find instances where general rules do not apply. One of the nice things about the design is that you can get by never figuring out all the under the hood stuff but if you want to dig you'll start to find all sorts of interesting ways to m

Well the first flaw here is that population has nothing directly to do with production. All population does is pay taxes. Which in turn you use to generate production. I know that may not be *realistic* but it is how the game is designed. All the factory/lab on a planet does is convert BC into MP/SP/RP. So by setting an econ slider to say 100% research but then setting a planet to focus on military production results in lesser research and not as much military as if you had them at

That doesnt neccesary means the AI is good since the AI in other games are pretty dreadful. The AI in this game got some pretty huge holes, specially in managing its fleets during war. If the devs somehow could fix those deficencies then the AI would be a really good opponent since it already is pretty good at economy/research. But for now, the only way I would lose a war against an AI is if he outnumbers me atleast two to one. And defeating someone

These AI threads crack me up at times. No one ever accounts for the fact that while the human opponent gets better with every game they play the AI has to start from basically scratch every time. There is a reason there are a dozen difficulty settings in this game. Also I'd say pat yourself on the back for being able to beat the game on Tough. There are a lot of players on this forum that can't even do that on a regular basis. I know if I get a rough starting placement I'm hard pressed to b

Umm.... I think there are cases where A is right and there are cases where B is right. From my understanding of this I think if 2 ships both destroy each other at the end of a round the tie goes to the one that had the most HP at the beginning of that round. If both had the same number of HP I think win goes to the attacker but haven't actually tested this. I'm sure Kyro will clear this up for us <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Smile.gif" border=0 align="absmiddle

Eh... I guess I'm far more easy going when it comes to this sort of thing. Then again it could also be that I enjoy designing ships so much that I typically redesign every ship I build from scratch every game. Ok so... maybe I'm weird that way

This expansion does what all expansions should do: improve upon the game. I won't go into the hot button new features since there are lists and lists of those. All I can say is if you enjoyed Dread Lords you are doing yourself a favor by pickup up Dark Avatar. I will point out that there have been a few game play mechanics changed. So some of the old strategies will no longer work. But if you approach the game fresh I think you'll find that these changes are improvements not detract

Maybe I miss read something here but did I read it right that you took 5 ships up against 25? That may have working in DL but it will not work in DA. Ok I shouldn't say *will not work* but the chances of you winning are very slim. The reason for this has to do with how weapon damage and ship defense now work. Each weapon is fired individually now not as a group. So it is far better now to have 10 weapons doing 10 points each as opposed to 4 weapons doing 25 each. Also defenses now degrade.

I tend to use either Top Down 2 or Free Cam. I use TD2 when I just want to get a feel for what ships in my fleets the AI is targeting most. I tend to use a mixed fleet approach so I like to see what ships are being targeted at the start. Gives me a pretty good idea of what my ship producing worlds should be making and where I need to adjust my designs. I use free cam when I've got a really cool ship design that I just want to watch maneuver around space. If I have 1 vs 1 battle view

I'm kinda mixed here. While I don't like it when the AI manages to wipe out a few key starbases I also don't want a situation where it takes me forever to dislodge theirs. What I tend to do is station a defense fleet on top of any important starbase. Back that fleet up with a nice military base (again with another fleet on top of it) and problem solved. Since the stacking rules force the AI fleet to attack mine first the starbase stays intact. And with the changes to combat rules its not as

Hmm... well you are most likely falling into the same base trap everyone does as they move up the difficulty levels. You are not micromanaging your empire in the first 25 turns as you should be. This game can't always be won in the first 50 turns but it sure as heck can be lost. In the early go your economy is the absolute most important thing in the universe. Do not get any advances that force you to build planetary improvements that cost bc to maintain. This single mistake can doo

My 0.02... Here's my guess: I'm sure there is a good chance that SD is going to improve this system over the next few months. It is a good start. I like the fact that you have to do more then just move a slider and throw money at espionage. However I'm like the rest of you in that I don't like the fact that I spend a good bit of cash to get a spy only to have it eliminated the very next turn. I've experimented some with which planet I place them on and it does seem as if th

Each of the AIs has its own code behind it. Now some are derivative of others being that I think the Dregin and Terrans are the core code they used to then tweak the others. But each is unique. And yes there are some races that are *worse* at the game then others. They each play a different style. Some are aggressive and some are not. This is one of the best features of GCII. Most games you are lucky if the AI can make a half hearted attempt at actually playing the game. This game we get

I honestly cannot see myself going back to DL for any reason. DA does what any great expansion should: expand and improve the game. I mean we get new opponents, new ships, new graphics, new techs, new spies, and new AI. We get a better fleet combat system. We get a more strategic colony rush. The new tech tree UI is very clean. While I don't use the *old* tab much in the planetary improvement screen that alone is probably worth the price for some. And I know I've left some things out too.