Zenicetus

[quote] Try playing all the races at maso or higher and i'm sure you'll find the drengin to be one of if not the weakest race, tough should be easy for anyone. [/quote] This brings up some balance questions, I think. Maybe this has been discussed before, but I don't think I've seen it in the TA beta talk yet: Is it even possible to balance the game so the player will have an equal chance at victory with every race in the game, across all difficulty levels? Every race

Yep, it's addictive. We have family visiting for the holidays, and the gamer-geek daughter noticed I was playing the TA beta. She got interested, took over my computer when I went to bed, and stayed up the entire night playing the TA Korx on a large map, Normal difficulty. She won the game with an alliance victory. No sleep at all, but she crashed early the following night. She customized the Korx... renamed them, and made their UI and all their ships PINK!! She used the ship designer t

I haven't tried it, but leaving the UP should work, if you want to build one with a ban in place. Also, the devs have said that they're working first on getting the new racial techs into the game, and the AI polishing and game balancing will be done just before release. So we're not seeing the AI optimized for using the new toys yet.

It's a little frustrating at the moment, because we don't know yet how final these tech trees are. I found the same thing about econ starbase upgrades with the Iconians. They get a line of trade boost upgrades (when researched) for the zone of effect, but no production upgrades past the first one. I traded for the next level starbase production upgrade from the Terrans in my last game. It came with the first level of traditional factory tech, IIRC. But I'd have to trade/buy each successive one a

Terror Stars can be fleeted now, so that's the defense. No more Luke sneaking through the defensive screen, unless your defensive screen isn't very good. I don't like the secondary use idea, because doing anything besides the original role would turn them into very clumsy battleships, or overpowered cheese if they're able to throw a military starbase's bonuses while still being mobile. I like the pure strategic role of pounding an entire star system to dust. It's the futuristic equivale

[quote] Seems to me the natural use for uninhabitable planets would be to act as resource sites. Just replace resource starbases with resource outposts on planets. Why resources would be floating out in space I can't imagine. Of course, extracting minerals from pluto is still different from extracting gasses from Jupiter, ferinstance. [/quote] I like the idea of putting resources on planets... seems a lot more logical than the abstract "power up" presentation they use now. OTOH,

[quote] Thirteen habitable moons = thirteen tiles. The planetary background artwork would be interesting. [/quote] Interesting yes, and also probably realistic. A spacefaring civ would have outposts on moons, on the larger asteroids, maybe even comets in addition to their main colonized planets. Plus a bunch of artificial habitats. But in game terms, I think it just adds more micromanagement. It would take forever to build anything besides early-tier buildings, since you couldn'

The convert-to-asteroids idea is interesting, but I guess I'm not much in favor of adding a tech for colonizing the "0's," for several reasons. First, we already have a mechanism with Extreme Colonization for grabbing more planets in the mid to late game. I'm not sure what this idea adds, that you couldn't get just by bumping up the number of planets/habitables in the setup screen. For players like me who don't really enjoy micro-managing hundreds of planets, this would just add more m

Well, there's another reason (Dsep's post). Maybe they want to offer ideas and hooks to modders, but don't have time to implement and test these things while still delivering the core game they want to put out.

Hidden, unfinished features linger in games for many possible reasons: * Not enough time to finish, test, and balance the idea. Or to put that another way: something else had a higher priority. * The idea was tested and didn't work. It was overpowered, underpowered, or added more micromanagement for no real benefit. * Another feature was added, which did the same thing better. * Partially developed and slated for future release, after more testing and balancin

Since the size of components and hulls don't actually change, I've always thought of it as reducing the mass and energy drain of components, so more stuff can fit on a standard spec hull size without reducing performance. Doesn't quite fit the word "miniaturization" but it's close enough. I'm kinda glad the components don't change in size, since the better versions of engines and weapons get smaller as you move down the tree (within each main tech box). Some of them would look pretty si

[quote]Vietnam was bogged down by politics, jungles, and an attempt at a prolonged occupation against an enemy that could pop up practically anywhere. [/quote] Right, Vietnam's a really bad example. The U.S. never implemented Curtis LeMay's "bomb them back to the stone age" saturation bombing plan for the North, due to political constraints back home, and the involvement of China and the Soviets supporting the North as a proxy war. Those constraints don't exist for GalCiv2 invasions

[quote]we have been giving the tools that well let us change this game in ways that well keep us playing for years!!! not only well we be able to do our own Custom Race with it`s own Tech Tree we can mod all the rest of the Races Tech Trees too and there abilities. being able to mix and match how we want to!!! [/quote] Absolutely. I've never tried to mod this game, because with the same underlying engine for all races, it seemed like just cosmetic changes. But if the editors ar

[quote]Yeah, a week is pushing it, but considering the huge advantages in the hands of the attacker, it would be a very, VERY lopsided war. [/quote] That's the other side of it, yes. Especially against a totally alien race, where you may be more inclined to exterminate than assimilate.

There's another thread around here somewhere discussing this. My $.02... I see myself as the ruler of a large galactic civilization, and I want to focus on the "big picture" of managing colonies and military strategy. When I have a wave of warships and troop ships expanding on my frontiers, capturing planets right and left, I don't want to micro-manage the actual invasions. Or even know too much about what's going on, beyond asking my fleet admirals "did we take it, or didn't we?" <br/

[quote] 1. This one can be fixed: I need a help screen or a page in the not-yet-present PDF manual that shows me all of these various techs of the different races. ... I don't want to play all 12 races myself and make all of these notes; or rather find on-line someone else who has done it for me on the internet. I want it in the PDF manual or in the on-line help. [/quote] I agree this would be nice to have. I think it would have to be programmed in the game itself and no

[quote]Just had an after-thought, why just have a problem with ships...what about techs and trade goods? If you know what weapon techs they have you have an avenue to build w/o looking at their ships.[/quote] Yep, I use that as an early exploit, before I have ships anywhere near another faction's part of the map. But the trade window won't show a tech they have, that you also have. So it's not 100% reliable for knowing what the other faction is doing. As a practical matter, I usually h

On the "are the Korx balanced?" question... I have mixed feelings about that balance issue. From the player perspective, I wouldn't mind having a choice of easy, medium, and hard races to play. I like games that give the player lots of choices, and that's just one more way to tweak the game to personal taste. Sometimes I want a real challenge, other times I just want to relax and cruise my way to victory. An "easy" race is also a good way to try out the next hardest difficulty level, w

It would be tricky to fix that, without breaking something else. You have to know the value of what you're buying/trading, but it does also serve an espionage function that isn't very realistic. If it was changed so the list only showed ships that were in range of your sensors, then it would limit trading opportunities on both sides. You wouldn't be able to trade or sell ships yourself, if the other faction didn't have the ships in their sensor range. I suppose you could intentionally m

[quote]The military calculation is (if I remember correctly) total offense + total defense + 0.1 * total HP. As you can probably see, that doesn't actually tell you a whole lot about your opponent's military. Ranking itself versus its opponents is one of the major weaknesses of the AI. [/quote] The main problem seems to be the way [I]potential[/I] military production isn't taken into effect. That makes it way too easy for a player to sandbag the AI, because they don't reali

[quote] Are the Kyrn not supposed to have Stellar Cartography? I see it's in their XML tech tree but they don't get it when I play them and I can't see it on the tech tree in the game anywhere. [/quote] It's there on the Krynn tree, but you have to go way down the line through Planetary Improvements and Xeno Research to get it. I'm pretty sure that's a bug, because I thought only the Terrans didn't have Stellar Cartography. Also, by the

Ugh... no fix in the changelog for freighters resetting to home planets on a game load. Oh well, bugs get fixed on their schedule, not mine, and there's other good stuff there.

Good to see that Terror Stars can now join fleets. Anything like this that reduces micro is good. On the downside... so there's no fix for freighters resetting to their home planet when loading a save game? I know some people (well, me anyway) have avoided even trying the new Korx, until that one is fixed.

I think it's intended mostly for Eyes of the Universe. I don't think I've ever seen one of the AI races get the Eyes before I got there, and I don't exactly rush to it.

[quote]Most of these additions seem like more of the same that we've had before. I was hoping for something new and maybe innovative.[/quote] Completely new and innovative means GalCiv3 a couple years from now, after they produce the upcoming fantasy game. The TA expansion does what a good expansion needs to do; it extends the playability by adding new features, new depth, and a new challenge for people who have been playing the game for a long time. It addresses the one major