Edit: Well, now I'm just confused, because I'm getting a big bonus to all my research (beyond the 127%) that I can't explain. So this really doesn't have anything to do with focus. I sort of remember getting a research boosting event at one point. I remember it's tendency to drain my finances. Did you see anything like that?
Those are some nice ideas, mrudis. I'd certainly like to see them. Unfortunately, I think changes on this scale (and changing the combat system, etc) are beyond the scope of what Stardock has in mind for updates. Still, what you describe is pretty close to how my 'ideal UP'. Of course, getting the AI to take full advantage of this additional flexibility would be a nice piece of work.
The only weakness to this strategy is that at the end of your turn, your monster high exp ships will often have hp of about 1, so any attack on them would wipe them out. I try to build my ships with enough movement so that I can retreat out of the range of AI after I have done my damage. This is a pure attack strategy, there is no room for the AI ever attacking you. When I was in this war with the Yor, every time I tried to take out on
The combat system in Dreadlords was startlingly simple, but it managed to capture some interesting dynamics. Some things I liked about the DL system: 1. Simplicity. 2. Big-ship weapons help to penetrate big-ship defences. 3. Big ships can run into problems swatting the very small ships. Some things I consider drawbacks of the DL system: 1. A little too easy to make large ships invulnerable to small ships. 2. Defence was a little too streaky. If your defences
However do those corvetes "scale" with the tech level of the game? I mean: at the start those could be strong, but in mid-game where ships have 20-30 attack ... The ships don't get better, but they do get more of them. Eventually, their main purpose is to annoy the player with their sheer numbers.
Right now the AI does a pretty good job of doing this which is all your thousands of simulations will show. It can design ships. I'm not disputing that. All I'm merely attempting to point out is there is a lot more involved in intelligently creating fleets and moving them around a board in an effective manner. That is what would take 4 weeks to accomplish for the same reason it can take a chess AI an hour to move a single piece.
I think there's a bug involving non-optimal defenses: they don't degrade. Really? That sounds pretty bad. I wish there was a combat simulator built into the game, so we could just try it out. It can be kind of time-consuming to engineer that situation in a game.
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. I don't think the time to simulate battles is that impractical. I find it hard to believe that simulating a typical fleet engagement, striped of all graphics, would take more t
In DA, weapons roll individually, but defences are degraded when they hit. 4 of their ships have about 400 missile attack in total. The defence on one of your dreadnaughts will stop about the first 190-200 of that, then start taking full damage. So I'd expect the first ship of theirs to appear to do nothing, the second attacker maybe get a couple of points in, and the 3rd and 4th attackers in a given round to do full damage. So with 200 unchecked missile attack, they would probably do 100 damage
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 50/50. This is not always true. If I have a planet with lots of research infrastructure but no factories, then setting research to 100% and focusing on military production *can* generate more military production than if I had gone 100% military. It's almost certa
[quote] Again how many games did it take you before the AI needed twice as many ships as you have to win? I doubt anyone was able to wipe the galaxy with the AI in their first few games. I know I sure as heck couldn't. It took me several games to understand the underlying mechanics well enough to have a shot in heck of making the AI look silly. [\quote] There's no doubt that AI programming is pretty tricky and we shouldn't expect a real intelligence any time soo
When I catch a spy, I have no way of knowing who sent it. I assume it's the same for the AI. As for ways of souring relations, I find that declaring war on them works well.
Is it bad that strategies like these are possible? They are powerful, but I don't use them because they're very inflexible; you'll never be able to research quickly if you only have factories. In a sense, minimizing research infrastructure in increasing flexibility, because you don't have a big infrastructure commitment that's useless when you are also trying to build up your worlds or produce ships. However, I don't think it's
Since reading about the DA combat model, I'm starting to think that 'Lucky' is a pretty darn good pick for 1 point. A race without luck will roll (0 to weapon rating) for every weapon. The average damage is rating/2 and over a large battle, you are going to get pretty close to the average damage. A race with 25% luck rolls from (rating*0.25 to rating). That is, the minimum roll is 0.25*rating and I assume it's uniformly distributed across that range. So a normal race with a 4-d
I think the AI would benefit if it incorporated the concept of an offensive task force. That is, it doesn't need to escort its transports, it just needs to make sure they end their turn on the same tile as a friendly battle fleet. A possible composition for an offensive task force: - 1 to 4 full-logistics battle fleets (enough to certainly defeat at least two full-logistics enemy fleets). - 3 to 8 high-speed interceptors - 12-20,0000 troops formed into maximum
You sure you're playing DA and not DL? He was fighting the Drengin super-dominator corvettes. Since they only have three attack, a fleet of 5 will only do 7 or 8 damage per round. 8 armour will therefore stop almost all of the damage from the initial round, and subsequent rounds have zero chance of getting through.
The way planetary focus works is very odd, and can lead to very strange build strategies. Take, for instance, a situation where your overall spending is 100% social. A factory planet, focused on research, will generate far for research than a research planet, focused on research. Somehow the factory workers, without labs or training, are way better researchers than those people with all their fancy computers and giant installations built specifically for research . A change of the
So far I have already seen colonies rebel and join the cause of the greater culture and the same has happened for miningstations on astreoids also. Is that so, however, that starbases never flip ownership due to influence? Starbases don't flip ownership, no. Maybe see if you can buy that starbase off of the AI? It would help you achieve a culture victory.
Also the AI doesnt seem to understand that you have Galactic Privateer, it still keeps chasing around your freighters and just tag along indefinetely. Ive had empires that I was at war with who had a large percentage of his fleet chasing around my freighters instead of attacking/defending. That may be a good tactic if I didnt have Galactic Privateer but if I have then it's just plain dumb. Just quoting again
Since CIV and SMAC aren't 4X games, their relevance to this discussion is questionable. Civilization is probably the quintessential 4X game. Alpha Centauri is also very much an iconic 4X game. I think you are thinking of the narrower 'space 4X' genre with Reach for the Stars and Master of Orion. I definitely consider the 'Civ-like' 4x's relevant to a discussion of GC2. From the wikipedia entry on 4X games:<b
I'd rather have the option of "removing functional components" on-the-fly in the ship builder than have to set it as a game option. Yes! This would be a time-saver. One button is all I ask.
Many people on the boards are passing along the conventional wisdom that if two fleets annihilate each other, the attacker wins and survives with one hitpoint. However, as far as I can tell, this isn't the case. If I attack a ship with very high attack value with weaker ship (but still sufficient to kill it in one round), the ship with the highest rating survives. So which is it? A: attacker survives with 1 hitpoint B: 'strongest' side survives with 1 hitpoint
The 'core' ships your are waiting for are simply a trap for the unwary. It's a way of making the game harder and more frustrating for newcomers to the game. My advice is to forget that core ships even exist. When you need a ship, build one. Your 2 speed, 9-attack ship is better than anything you will get for a *long* time from the core ships. As to how to build a frigate, that's just what the AI names it's medium ship designs. Since you also have the medium build tech, you too
I'm sure you've already thought of that, but you have military and social spending set to reasonable values, and your capacity utilization is set to 100%? Also check that you don't have a huge debt. That can shut down production until you get in the green again. If you have the appropriate planetary techs, have the right spending, have decent infrastructure, with no spies and aren't in debt then I guess it's a bug. Or some special event.
I don't think it's a level up. First, are ships automatically healed on level-up? I seem to recall they get their bonus points, but aren't healed up to full. Besides, when I encountered this behaviour myself, it didn't change max hitpoints. Plus it only happens when a ship is at 1 hitpoint but survives the battle (and not always then). I've reported the bug under 'AI Ships Healed by Damage' and sent in a save game where it can be reproduced. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next patch.
