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I agree that it's hard to develop a good AI for a game like GC2. I don't quite agree about the lack of resources though. GC2 has had a *lot* of development time for the AI because the guy who does the AI is also the guy who controls the purse strings. He also has a lot of experience working on the AI for these sorts of game which I think is more valuable for this than Expert Systems or having a graduate-level CS degree (and I have one). In comparison to most strategy games, I don't thin

Does Spore Weapons tech have any prerequisites? I would prefer to give it more prerequisites than to just radically increase it's cost. Maybe hang it somewhere off the planetary invasion line?

One clarification: the fraction of your fleet destroyed in a given round is going to be more like: (EA - kD)/(D + HP) where k is the fraction of your total defence points that are expected to regenerate at the end of the round. In large battles, k will be very small, because only one ship per fleet can regenerate hitpoints at the end of every round (all others are dead or untouched). The upper limit is the fraction of your defence covered by one ship. However, in a small fleet

In my game, I would have gladly sold the cure except tech trading was disallowed. I think a fix would be to give the plague cure a ridiculously high priority if the no tech trade option is selected.

The AI is pretty good, but it does occasionally make these really bone-head moves that remind you that it doesn't actually understand the game. In my current game (on crippling), I was forced to try to rush the humans because I hardly had any planets of my own. That went ok, but the Altarians labelled me the galactic aggressor and everyone and his neighbour decided to declare war on me. So far so good. I captured a human radioactive in order to deny him a base in that region,

On the surface, the combat system in GC2:DA is much more complicated, but in a way, it is easier to analyse. If you haven't, please check the sticky post describing the combat system in the beta forum. I don't know if something like this has been posted before, but I'm going to post a formula for the 'theoretical' combat effectiveness of a fleet in DA and then describe how I arrived at it, the assumptions that go into it and where it breaks down. Theoretical Fleet Power = At

It looks as though the starbase defence modules follow the same progression (5, 10, 20) as they did in the original, v1.0 GalCiv2. Given changes in logistics, defence research cost and the new DA combat system these values are really appropriate anymore. Through the various patches, defence on ships has become more compact and easier to research, but I haven't seen any corresponding improvement to starbase defence. Similarly, logistics have been expanded, meaning starbases can face larg

I'm playing a no-tech-trading game with 7 (or 8?) opponents. The plague event occured about a year and a half ago, causing a continual erosion of planetary populations. I researched the plague cure and it's prerequistite in about 7 weeks, but so far, none of the AI players appear to have researched the cure after 75 weeks. This event is breaking my game, because the AI doesn't place a high enough priority on finding a cure. I recently conquered the Yor and their worlds were a sad collec

If you had access to the beta, you would have been charged immediately or when the beta began (whichever was first). So if you pre-ordered 5 days after the beta started, then the charge was applied 5 days in the past? Do you use pre-cogs or a time-machine?

I like the idea of it being harder to go to war with empires with whom you have good relations. In general a system that constrains the player's actions a bit in terms of how and when they can go to war (or stay out of one) would be pretty interesting.

I used to like the 'and the kitchen sink' approach to making games, but I've started to hate games that attempt too much. Moving ships around in every tactical combat, moving armies around in every invasion, detailing the life stories of all your officers and the social histories of your civilization all becomes a bit too much. A lot of what interests me about games these days is clever abstractions. Can you make systems that are simple yet deep, that are tractable for the AI and quick

Well, all combat rolls are a lot less luck dependant than before (exception made if you only have 1 weapon) because of the law of great numbers. Lower variability (due to more, smaller rolls) does help with the reliability of defences, but it's not my main point. The main point is that for situations with lots of guns and high defen

While it is clear that defences don't stand up as well against multiple attackers, one on one with larger ships they are much *more* effective than before. Consider a ship with 100 beam attack (10x10) attacking a ship with 100 beam defence (10x10). Using the previous combat system, that ship has a 50% chance of doing damage, and there's a reasonable chance of doing pretty signficant damage (25 or more hp). It's even possible to do 50-100 points of damage. This was a big risk in

I think he meant that his budget surplus went from 50 BC/week to 250 BC/week.

There's this meme going around that Sword of the Stars is some kind of kid's version of a 4x game, or perhaps made for people without the intellectual ability to handle a game with more numbers. I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. The economic portion of the game is heavily abstracted in favour of a deep and not abstract at all tactical combat engine. The game has some flaws but I don't think these are worse than those in the initial version of Galciv2, and I have some cause to expect

I picked up the full game a few days ago and I really enjoy it. The demo doesn't do it justice, as you can't get the full possibilities of tactical combat with such few technologies and only the smallest ships. You don't have as much control over the appearance of your ships as GC2 (what other game does?), but you have quite a few interesting decisions in terms of equipment and weapon loadout, with lots of tradeoffs. Combat looks great. Not so much because models are super-det

Lenius, I don't understand how you can execute your strategy. If you buy 4 colony ships and run 100% industry, by the end of turn 4 you should have less than 800 bc left. You aren't making much because of low taxes and you gutted your homeworld population in the first 4 turns. Getting enough production to build a colony ship every other turn will set you back another 300bc or so. Another 12-16 colony ships built will cost you 1300-1700 bc pl

Yes, it's quite ironic that the quickest way to hamstring your industry is to research industrial technology early. Want to kill your research ability? Go as far down the research path as you can, as early as you can. You could guarantee yourself a win by giving all the AIs Discovery Spheres or the final manufacturing tech on the first turn, as long as YOU didn't have to take it...

Those are some nice plots. You might want to change the scaling on the cumulative research axis so it's easier to see what's happening earlier on in the game. Perhaps switch to square-root scaling. Also, I wonder if there isn't something wrong with your calculations. Several of the 'special' techs seem to be below their base curves. While I might expect that on cost, on rating/unit I really don't see how that can be true.

Starbases don't grant defence unless your ship has at least some defence on it's own. Similar for attack. Build ships with say 1 laser and 1 armour and you are golden.

It will take a long time to build all the advanced structures, even if you have an efficient build order. They are just very expensive. Don't expect to ever get a lot from acquisitions where you've wiped out all the infrastructure.

Your ships need to have to have some defence in order to get the defence bonus, just like they need attack in order to get the attack bonus.

It wraps around after two. I look forward to playing the brand new Galactic Civilizations I on my nano-circuit implant in 30 years.

Ah, I didn't know you could incorporate multiple defences per component. That would certainly be handy. It does seem like an odd exception not to have starbase HP in the files.

Arming them? I don't know. If you build them with the cargo hull, they only have one hitpoint. Use a combat hull, and you are essentially paying all the upkeep for a combat ship that is crippled because it has to devote space to the trade module. The upkeep would really cut in to the trade route profit per turn, and it would take you that much longer to recoup your investment, since the initial ship costs that much more.