Zenicetus

[quote] Another game that uses variable difficulty is Unreal Tournament, where your performance in a level gets evaluated and then the difficulty of the next level is adjusted accordingly. If I remember correctly, even the first few Wing Commanders had a feature like that. [/quote] I remember that Wing Commander feature. It was a cool idea in concept, but it kinda failed in practice. All they did was throw more waves of enemy ships at you as your performance improved, instead of

The problem with a chronology-based increase in difficulty, is that the "tipping point" is reached at different times in different games, depending on what victory condition I'm going for, and how the other AI races are doing against each other. Map size will also have a big influence on when a victory condition is close. A game timer can't possibly know when the player reaches that tipping point. It would be annoying if it kicked in too early, and worthless if it kicked in too late. O

[quote] It sounds like TA has wrecked my favorite race. Much like DA wrecked the Dregin. Does this flavor/mechanic make any sense? They're bugs. They should have some sort of hive building that boosts pop growth, and should have some sort of farm. They're freaking bugs!! They're ants out there that manage their own fungus farms, why wouldn't the thalians be capable of farming? [/quote] Just echoing what thehandofzarquon said above... don't get hung up on the idea that t

Yeah, I can see the diminishing returns for the advanced engine techs. I haven't run the numbers yet, but I suspect there's a sweet spot (like Franco fx mentions) for the early phase of the game, and the first engine techs. One other thing to consider: when a one-shot, throwaway ship is being used for something that has a direct contribution in income (i.e. constructors for economic starbases, or the initial freighter for a trade route), then whatever extra income you get by reaching th

[quote] 1) Some techs should be marked "untradable". Mostly techs that doesn't make any sense to trade, more than techs that could be "exploited" in another's hands. [/quote] Some unique racial techs are off-limits, but the list needs to be expanded. It already covers many of the techs that just aren't logical, but it should cover more of the "flavor" techs that make each race feel different. [quote] 2) Techs shouldn't be tradable by a

Although it's logical that non-combat ships shouldn't be totally free of maintenance, there are some ways this plays out in the game that I don't like much. And it's not just that it makes the economy tighter. I can handle that, as part of the game's challenge. First, it forces more attention to scrapping ships you don't need, and building only what you actually need at any given moment. That's something the player should be doing anyway, but I don't like having an economic gun held to

Desktop here. If I had a laptop strong enough to run the game, I'd use it for playing while traveling. But for playing at home, I just love the immersion of a big LCD monitor running 1600x1200 resolution, with a powerful GPU card driving it so I can play most modern games without any trouble.

I enjoy messing around in the ship designer, but then I'm a graphics geek. I used to do graphic design for a living. I like the challenge of trying to come up with designs that reflect each race's back-story and personality. For example, all my Iconian designs are intentionally very asymmetrical, and a bit klunky-looking, like they don't know quite what they're doing with their Precursor tech. All my evil race designs look mean and nasty... you'd know you're facing a killer race just by looking

[quote] So I believe the idea is that the Arceans are suppose to be the ultimate turtles. A strong military that is hard to use to invade with because of speed issues, but are also able to withstand all but the most determined attacks against them with their abilities. The problem than becomes how do you win by turtling? [/quote] Terror Stars? :) If they're good turtlers with slow-moving fleets, then a final victory involving unstoppable fleets with Terror St

I think it's a good idea, and I agree the current UI is clumsy when moving between extremes of short vs. long timeframes. However, one reason it's a pain, is that there is usually some lag on my computer before each new timeline is displayed as I click the arrow. It varies depending on the size of the map, number of opponents, and probably other factors. I have a mid-level CPU with 2 gigs RAM. I'm wondering if the timeline could be calculated fast enough on a slow to mid-level machine to keep up

It's situational. If there's a high-PQ extreme planet out on the frontier of my empire that would serve to push my influence, or would sit inside an economic starbase zone with other planets of mine, then I might try to grab it before the AI's do. If there is an extreme planet deep inside my influence zone, I'd rather let the AI's try to grab it, and then flip it with influence. The AI isn't very smart about avoiding that trap. They colonize without any regard to influence, and that's a

[quote] 3. The Korx should have a new super ability. All the other ones do something that no one else can do. The Korx just give them techs that everyone else get. It takes away from them feeling special. [/quote] Well, before TA, the super abilities were the only thing that differentiated the races. In the TA expansion they're less important, since a lot of the individuality is now in the unique tech tress. The Korx super ability does tie into the emphasis on trade in their tec

I don't like the way Creativity can take away player decisions like that. It should just dump any excess research point after completing the current tech, IMO. Another problem with Creativity is that it's potentially a player exploit vs. the AI, since no race has creativity as a default ability. The game retains the player's last settings for each race as a new default for each game, so all you have to do is make sure no race except the one you're playing has creativity, and you get a b

The current beta seems to have all the major content in place, and lacks only the stuff outside the game like editors for custom campaigns. The devs have stamped out the early crashes with things like Terror Stars and the new invasion screen. There are still a few pathfinding glitches here and there, and the AI and tech trees haven't been fully tweaked yet, but it's enjoyable to play. At least, I'm enjoying it. So, if you want an early look at how different TA is from DA (and there are

The efficiency tech line is a must for the Yor. I didn't have any problems playing Yor on Tough level, as long as I included that line fairly early. I had tech trading turned on, but didn't bother trying to pick up any additional government or econ techs from other races. I wouldn't say that's a "must have" unless you're playing one of the highest difficulty levels, where you're artificially crippled compared to the other races in economic output.

[quote] So what your saying is that adding one slider or one more option when setting up a game would put it over some mysterious limit and the screen would suddenly become cluttered? [/quote] Adding a slider for something like ship maintenance cost, or some overall economic difficulty setting, seems premature to me. Let's wait and see how the devs balance the game in the next few updates. If we're all still struggling with the economy when the game is close to release, then we

Changelog is here: [link="https://forums.galciv2.com/?aid=172386#1415483"]WWW Link[/link] It looks like mostly a hot fix for the invasion screen crash, and a limit for minors trading unique racial techs. There's more, but those are the two that caught my eye.

[quote] Why not make it so a constructor initilises construction of a starbase, then the player can select modules to build. Once some modules are chosen, the constructor acts like a freighter and brings materials from the chosen planet (proximity and production have an effect on how long it takes to build the modules as the constructor has to travel further). [/quote] I think that's one of the better ideas for reducing the micro. It also means you're making your strategic decis

[quote] Ok, i think there needs to be a slider for economy and upkeep. the bottom being Beta 3 economy and the top being the economy as it is now in beta 4. [/quote] I don't think it's that simple, because we now have races where some are doing better than others, due to unique tech trees. This isn't DA, where everyone is running the same economy and we're looking for a single "best" strategy for the game. Yes, there are some things that affect everyone that seem out o

[quote] Playing with tech trading off is no longer an option with some races having no access to starbase mining modules, good econ techs, morale techs (Hello, Thalans!), etc. I've heard this from other people before. I don't know how they miss it, but the Thalans have a pretty nice Morale building in their tree. [/quote] That only goes so far, compared to the flexibility of starbases. Even the Iconians lack the line of production/econ u

I like the new screen, and I think it's fine. There was a lot more work done on custom ship design because it's a *space* game, and those ships are used for many purposes; not just combat. We spend most of our time looking at a space map, and land invasions are, or should be (IMO) a minor detail in that larger scheme of things. Besides, any 3D view that would be zoomed-in close enough to show individual soldiers wouldn't represent the invasion as a whole anyway. It would just be one tac

[quote] Warp bubbles are only for Terrans, so it isn't fair to mention that the Yor don't have it. Why isn't it fair to mention that when I'm wishing I could move the terror star along a bit faster? [/quote] FYI, the new beta (just released today) disables warp bubble speed increase on Terror Stars. From the change log: "+ NEW: If a terror star is added to a fleet, it NULLIFIES the effect of fleet speed enhancing m

You have to be "close" in relations to get an Alliance, not just warm.

One problem I see with having to research each language separately, is that some players rely on selling tech in the early turns to help fund colonizing, and then to help buffer the econ crash after the initial colonies are built. This idea would drastically slow that process down, pushing other desperately-needed techs in the early turns further down the timeline. The current design allows finishing UT at about the point where you start meeting other races, and then you can move on to

[quote] I still say this is a bug that has to do with 'awareness' of the other races in the game. I play with blind exploration turned on. And if I haven't met someone, how can they declare war on me if they don't even know who I am? All that's needed is that the Drath have met both parties for them to start arranging wars (even if the others haven't met each other). [/quote] That's really counter-intuitive. Why should we