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The more I read posts about fixing the AI to deal with surprise attacks, the more I like CivIV's borders. Of course, with with high ship speed you can do a lot of damage without crossing the border before declaring war. The AI almost seems to play as if this was a rule anyway. An who cares if there are "no borders in space". This is hardly a realistic game. The ideas about various penalties are interesting, but making the game even a little more complicated is just going to make things hard

Europa Universalis: I have the first one. Is EUII significantly better than I? If I want to try and get into EU should I go ahead and play the copy I own already, or buy EUII (or III)? CPW: That sounded like a pretty good game. I'd still describe that as moving up with speed bumps though. Things may have gotten tough, and you pulled out a close victory. I guess it is sometimes worth perservering, but once you're far enough behind it quickly becomes pointless to try. It is poss

Thanks for all the responses. Europa Universalis: I knew that it would get a quick mention. I actually have EUII but had a hard time getting into it. For some reason real time, even if it can be set to a crawl, has never worked for me. I need to take a second look at it. Sims: Are you saying leaving 6 babies laying on the front lawn, surrounded by rancid milk, so dirty that wavy green lines are coming off them, so the the father can get 1 night's rest to make it to wor

That game was on challenging, but I did the same thing in my last game on Tough. This is on DL too, BTW. I hadn't noticed any previous posts indicating that the AI had improved much on this problem.

In the first real game I played of GCII I camped outside several planets of one my opponents. As I moved my ships into position I kept thinking that something would happen to stop me. Surely, the AI won't just sit there, right?? Then I was sure once I attacked (thus declaring war) my ships would move back across the border or something. Nope. This is such an obvious tactic to use it seems crazy that the AI is oblivious of it. I like the way borders worked in CivIV better. Unless y

In just about every strategy game I know of, the goal is to win. I guess, this seems like an obvious goal, but certainly isn't a realistic one. I don't expect that any country on Earth will "win" any time soon. Of course, a game has to end some time and it's nice to be the winner. Gameplay in GCII is focused on an overall victory by one civilization. The AI seems to specifically not take a "Let's all get together and stop Napoleon" mindset of status-quo. But it will take a "Let's all carve

In my current game I invaded a planet and used Mass Drivers. Every improvement was destroyed, so I was left with a planet with only the initial colony (or whatever), and a starport. Despite this, when focused, the social production was 72! I checked the summary and details tabs but they gave no clue about this production. It wasn't included in the summary page. There were no stations affecting the planet either. Anybody have any idea what happened here? This was using DL, latest

I kept thinking about a way to say this earlier, but I really like a "roleplaying" AI. Before visiting this Forum I had never heard of AARs. I've always played TB games with a running "history" in my head, which I sometimes even wrote down. I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one doing this That said, I like the idea of a "roleplaying" AI, even if it sacrifices a little strategy and tactical brains.

For me, a good AI isn't simply one that plays the game farely well, but one that makes an interesting game. The AI should have built into it a trigger to try and keep the status quo. The history of Europe shows how natural this sort of thinking is. If someone starts to get a real advantage, it's obviously in the best interest of everyone else to stop them. Oh, and I know I haven't experienced the full AI yet. I'm gonna' start on that now <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_

Mystikmind, Well, I didn't just dive in. This game is really terrible for "just diving in" as the manual is useless(ly out of date) and there's no bloody "civilopdedia" (in game). I nearly never got going on it 'cause I couldn't figure out how things worked. The Wiki saved the game for me. It's REALLY frustrating to research Alliances and then not be able to offer another civ one. Hmm, why isn't is on the trade screen? Maybe it's somewhere in the Foreign Relations tab. No.... wha

If there are continued reports that the AI is significantly better I guess I will be buying the expansion soon. It'd be great to actually play against an AI with a real tactical brain though. In about every game I've ever played I've overcome my mediocher economy (I don't go crazy crunching the numbers) by fighting sometimes very tricky (or "cheesy") wars. Most AIs fail badly at concentraing their force in the right area, and so you can defeat a huge army with a smaller since most of the huge

Thanks for the replies, especially Yamoda. That's exactly what I needed to know. When the AI is running at full (with the intensive CPU option on), does it do better at "tactical" things, or, if I lose, is it mainly going to be because it's beating me with it's "economy"? Simply getting crushed by numbers isn't always fun. Oh, and if someone knows, if "blind exploration" is on, is the AI also "blind"? I guess even if it isn't I might turn that on. I kinda' like not know

Hi, I'm a pretty new player to GCII, but a somewhat experienced strategy game player. I played a bit of the campaign, but got a bit bored, so I started up a "gigantic" map with about 9 opponents. I like big long games. I'm pretty sure I requested the intelligence be random, but it looks like all the computer AI is "Bright", or, at least, that's what it says on Stats page under MISC. Anyway, my game has been going pretty well...maybe too well. At this point my economy, manufacturin