Galactic Civilizations III

[Leechmonger]

I've been told that GCIII is worse than it's predecessor, but people in this thread are complaining that it's not a big enough improvement (implying it's at least as good). Has GCIII reached parity with GCII?

 

[whatevername]

I've been told that GCIII is worse than it's predecessor, but people in this thread are complaining that it's not a big enough improvement (implying it's at least as good). Has GCIII reached parity with GCII?

GC2 had shit AI and shit combat, but the rest was ok.
GC3 is just an epic fail compared to GC2.

 

[Jimmious]

I've been told that GCIII is worse than it's predecessor, but people in this thread are complaining that it's not a big enough improvement (implying it's at least as good). Has GCIII reached parity with GCII?

GC2 had shit AI and shit combat, but the rest was ok.
GC3 is just an epic fail compared to GC2.

Dude if the AI of GC2 was shit, then which AI in 4X gaming do you consider not shit? Honest question

 

[whatevername]

I've been told that GCIII is worse than it's predecessor, but people in this thread are complaining that it's not a big enough improvement (implying it's at least as good). Has GCIII reached parity with GCII?

GC2 had shit AI and shit combat, but the rest was ok.
GC3 is just an epic fail compared to GC2.

Dude if the AI of GC2 was shit, then which AI in 4X gaming do you consider not shit? Honest question

Stars! 2 and MoO 2.

 

[Jimmious]

There's a Stars! 2 ??

 

[rezaf]

The GalCiv AI was always massively overrated imo, mostly because I pulled off some nice smoke and mirror tricks - it gives you pause when it happens for the first time that you concentrate your fleet on one of your borders to attack an AI player and that AI player drops you a message informing you that he couldn't help but notice the fleet concentration, asking whether you're maybe about to attack him. Those touches were great.
But in practice, I thought the GalCiv AI made just as many questionable decisions as most other AIs. Maybe I had just bad luck with my GalCiv matches.

 

[Irenaeus]

As a Founder of GalCiv3, I have the latest expansion automatically installed, so I'll give it a spin and give my impressions.

 

[Nirvash]

They got what, 8 major dlc? And still worse than 2?

Do they fucked up something big a la civ 5 1upt?

How can this be still worse than stellaris?

 

[Grif]

They got what, 8 major dlc? And still worse than 2?

Do they fucked up something big a la civ 5 1upt?

How can this be still worse than stellaris?

Not really. When it first came out, it was literally just GalCiv 2 but 64 bits and hexes minus a whole load of factions and mechanics. So less a sin of 1upt, more of a sin of omitting features that were present in the previous iteration.

 

[Irenaeus]

Played a bit of the new expansion, feels like a very different game. The citizen feature is interesting, but so far the largest difference from before is the complete rework of resources production (through space mining and with planetary extractor buildings) and use (including warships). There's lots of new features I haven't touched yet such as the new system for invasions and the whole espionage department. I'm gonna play more tomorrow.

 

[sovijus]

The GalCiv AI was always massively overrated imo, mostly because I pulled off some nice smoke and mirror tricks - it gives you pause when it happens for the first time that you concentrate your fleet on one of your borders to attack an AI player and that AI player drops you a message informing you that he couldn't help but notice the fleet concentration, asking whether you're maybe about to attack him. Those touches were great.
But in practice, I thought the GalCiv AI made just as many questionable decisions as most other AIs. Maybe I had just bad luck with my GalCiv matches.

Chances are you played the game with the last expansion pack, Twilight of Arnor, installed. It changed tech trees, buildings and race traits, so AI got severely screwed. Essentially, if you play vanilla GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition (or whatever it's called), you play with broken AI. You need to install a mod that fixes all that, if you want to play with ToA.

BTW, I find the suggestion that MoO2 AI is better than pre-ToA GalCiv2 AI very questionable.

 

[rezaf]

Chances are you played the game with the last expansion pack, Twilight of Arnor, installed. It changed tech trees, buildings and race traits, so AI got severely screwed. Essentially, if you play vanilla GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition (or whatever it's called), you play with broken AI. You need to install a mod that fixes all that, if you want to play with ToA.

I did not, my judgement was made looking at vanilla GalCiv 1 and 2 (I even own boxed copies of the OS2 games bearing the same names - I only ever played them on virtual PCs).

 

[sovijus]

This one: https://sites.google.com/site/mabusraeen/
It's quite good work-around, but it means that there's just one generic AI for every race and tech trees are not as wildly different as in vanilla ToA.

 

[Dexter]

Played this for a bunch of hours after Stellaris and Endless Space.

Compared to the other two, GalCiv III has an actual Tutorial mission that explains most of its functions, although they exaggerated with the kind of information they offer and some of the most obvious stuff.

Spoiler

It also got great art, although this only comes into play for a few Screens and cool animated movies of a whole different category than the other games, kind of making it feel "higher production value" even though they only appear on a few occasions. The UI is also actually practical with not that much to complain about for the most part, it also has resolution scaling and some Options Endless Space for instance lacked.

Spoiler

GalCiv III also got an actual campaign, starting with the Tutorial acting as some sort of "Prologue" and three missions in which you have to fly the overpowered ship dubbed "Crusader" to earth, but they all feature the same Faction (Terrans) and the same enemy (Drengin) and are a bit simplistic and contrived. It's basically just used as an excuse to push you into the larger scenario and make you explore mainly in certain directions.

Spoiler

Not sure if the previous games also featured campaigns that this was a continuation of although it looks like it, I remember playing GalCiv I and Birth of the Federation back in the 90s, but it's too long ago to remember the details.

The game seems good enough to waste some time with it and is far from the shit heap that was Endless Space, but it ultimately gets a bit boring and monotonous after a while, especially after discovering the whole map and after colonizing or seizing a dozen or more planets and having to micro-manage all those colonies and just isn't as good as Stellaris from my experience with both. It ends up feeling more like playing a board game supervising some units with breaks for further developing the colonies instead of "space exploration" in late-game.

Also, so far either I’m doing something wrong world building or the enemy has an advantage with his Slave Works, Slaughtertoriums and Slave Factories, since a lot of the planets I conquered late-game from the Drengin seemed to have better Industry and Science ratings than my fully upgraded colonized ones despite trying to use the Boni from Capital City, Fusion Plants, Antimatter Power Plants and Capital buildings and Terraform spaces around them.

Overall enjoyable for a while, still doesn’t come close to Stellaris, for which I’ll need to get some of the Updates the next time they go on Sale.

What else is there on the market concerning 4X, but especially Space-based 4X games? I still have "Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity" from the "Intergalactic Bundle" I got GalCiv I-III with and I guess there’s the new Master of Orion?

Other than that I heard Endless Legend is supposedly way better than Endless Space despite having a fantasy setting, and since I had already wishlisted it some time ago and it was cheap in the Humble Sale I got that for €8.99: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/endless-legend-emperor-edition

Along with the first two Master of Orion games for only €1.61: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/master-of-orion-1-2

There's also the new Master of Orion for €12.59 I'm not sure about: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/master-of-orion

And Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion for €8.99: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/sins-of-a-solar-empire-rebellion although I assume this is an Expansion for the previous game I already got, and I'd rather check that out first before getting this.

 

[Turjan]

I had played GalCiv II for quite some time many years ago, and with the current Humble Bundle out, I thought about trying GalCiv III. It's relatively hard to find much information about the game. I found a recent post that made me chuckle by the lead developer though:

GalCiv III: Beyond version 2.6
October 2, 2017 9:21:13 PM
Greetings!

So the team is starting work on the next major expansion pack. But we also want to keep an eye on the base game.

Right now, the recent Steam reviews for GalCiv are pretty awful with most of the people reviewing it doing so because they don't like some of the changes in v2.5. So if there are changes you would like in 2.7 and beyond, this would be the place to ask.

The Steam review system is something I have and will continue to complain about because frankly, it absolutely destroys games. When it's less than 70, a game might as well not exist. So I'll be explicit, if you want us to keep working on GalCiv III, please leave a Steam review. If not, don't. If you already have, thank you!

As many of you know, I am AI biased. But I know I'm in a minority because there is another space strategy game outselling GalCiv III and, suffice to say, AI is not its focus.

It is clear that narratives in games matter. GalCiv has a quest system ala Fallen Enchantress/Sorcerer King. But we have tried to avoid doing that because we don't want the game to be a series of scripted narratives. We don't plan to change that position in the base game but we are looking at releasing DLC that will do that if players want it.

Now, the next major expansion pack focuses on politics and government. So we'll set all that aside for now. Otherwise, it's all open. What would you like to see?

Less than endorsing remarks about what I assume is Stellaris aside, people didn't hesitate to point out that he should not be surprised about the negative reviews if he continues to push updates that break savegames during sales. I have noticed that this is also the reason why you have a hard time finding a finished LP of the game. Those updates are not simple bugfixes, they usually fundamentally change basic game mechanics around, like what planetary buildings do, what kind of resources they need, etc.

To keep with tradition, the current Humble Bundle sale was a good enough occasion to push another game update again, which hit yesterday (v. 2.6). He seemed to have listened though and the update is opt-in (we will see whether it stays like that after the beta phase). As always, things get changed around:

Spoiler

Hello,

We have prepared a preview of our next big update that includes bonus starting citizens, more trade, better balance, and tweaks to make evil more, well evil.

Please read below for details.

To enable the patch, please do the following:

• Select Galactic Civilizations III in your Steam Library list
• Right-click and select Properties
• Select the BETAS tab
• From the dropdown, select "opt-in" and click Close (if you don't see this option, restart Steam)
• Steam should pull down the changed files; if you ever want to go back, do the same as above but select default

Please note: The opt-in is an early preview of the next update and you might experience bugs or other issues. We encourage players who try the opt-in to report any issues to the support forum or via support ticket so we can address them.

Base Game



Update 10/7

• High-level factories require Durantium to build.
• Fusion Power Plant requires 1 anti-matter to build
• Research Cloister promethion cost reduced from 10 to 5
• Cities can be built any number of times on a planet but now have 1 promethion cost. The idea is that if you have lots of Durantium, you should probably build up with Factories. If you have lots of Promethion, you can build up with cities.
• Added personality traits to Diplomacy Report Window
• Made the planet window not display manufacturing for military if the planet isn't sponsoring a shipyard
• Eject all button on planet UI of planets that are not yours
• Fix for odd behavior in MP that can result in a crash for the host in the United Planets system.
• Disabled the required win ratio for UP resolutions because no one really understood it.
• Fixed issue where the resource log wasn't being updated for administrators whenever you bought a mercenary
• Fixed issue where you could get infinite legions if you had a stationed general on a planet

Gameplay / Balance

• Prototype Hyperdrive base mass use reduced from 8 to 6 but now uses 10% of the ship's mass.
• Prototype Hyperdrive moves reduced from 5 to 2 to conform to other component performances.
• Thrusters made smaller but cost more.
• Thrusters now faster.
• Fixed typos in Tutorial_Refuge_FlavorText.xml and added in the tutorial text to explain changes from 2.5.
• AI more careful about getting overextended with too many wars.
• Ripe for conquest Diplomatic mod now takes more personality traits into account.
• AI is a little more wary of going to war with lots of other players.
• Updated description for personality traits to be more explicit in what they mean.
• Changed planet word on the street text better grammar.
• Building a shipyard with a constructor in crusade will now refund an administrator
• Pirates are slightly more frisky.
• Turn time improvement.
• Made it so that the rename object dialog always appears on top (otherwise it has issues when bringing it up in places like the planet govern screen)
• Fix for missing strings in base campaigns

• Reduced power of some of the ideological events.
• Slave trade route benefits balanced to not provide quite as much approval bonus as well as reduce production bonus.
• Balance pass on base game improvements.
• Political Mastery military manufacturing reduced from 20% to 10%
• Planetology +1 raw production bonus removed
• Starport level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5 military production
• Space Elevator manufacturing level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
• Fusion Power Plant and other high level mega improvements reduced in effect
• Updated Mercenary abilities
• Certain high-level improvements no longer provide an empire wide bonus (particularly ones that can be built over and over...)
• Drengin slave improvements don't increase population cap anymore.
• More balancing to ideological events.
• Pirate event more common
• Evil motivation traits reduced from doubling to something more reasonable
• Updated and rebalanced Mercenary components just for the Mercenaries DLC.
• DLC Mega eventsirates start with some techs that make them move faster, get some money up front.
• DLC Mega events: The Artifact diplomacy points reduced from 5 to 1 so that you don't just instantly win.
• Updated base game Manufacturing improvements to work better with the "All Construction" adjacency bonuses.
• Map generation balance fixes to make Crusade/base game let idiotic in their resource generation.
• Battle Initiation Window doesn't pop up when you are attacking an asteroid
• Added a Crusade specific FOW coloring.
• Added a Crusade specific starbox.
• Increased number of trade licenses that techs provide
• Tiny hull cost increased from 20 to 25
• Tiny hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Tiny hull acceleration increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Tiny hull max speed increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Small hull cost increased from 30 to 40
• Small hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Medium hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Large hull cost increased from 150 to 250
• Large hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull logistics cost increased from 12 to 15
• Starbase maint increased from 1 to 3
• Trade Route income reduced from 5% of planet income to 3%.
• Snathi get 4 instead of 3 trade route licenses with Xeno Commerce in order for Stardock to survive their inevitable culling of Earth.
• More typo fixes.
• Rework to various colonization events to give the evil choice more goodies because evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
• Starports now cost 1 maint

UI

• Fixed quirkiness with the "Allow Clear Queue" governor option
• Fixed issue where having an empty modifier list in the improvement tooltip would mess up the display
• Added confirmation for when obsoleting a ship design in the designer landing window
• Added new hotkey for building asteroid mining base (defaults to "B")
• Added tooltips to the fleet stats entry in the main game window saying what each stat represents
• Fleets now use the closest star system plus roman numerals for their name when 'creating' a new fleet ('creating' meaning when a single ship becomes a fleet)
• Fixed small space at the bottom of the command buttons list in base game mode
• Added Design Author field to the ship style set editor that shows the ship design's author (hides if it's a core ship design)

Bugs

• Fixed issue where the city improvements were showing as lit up and available to build when there were no more tiles left to place the city on
• fixes issues with some hotkeys not working, like CTRL+S, as well as being unable to assign those keys with flags correctly
• Fixed issue where fleets were getting hidden underneath things like asteroids and rally points when you select the fleet
• Fixed issue where clicking on a different improvement in the planet's build queue would not update the Rush button's tooltip with the correct rush cost
• Fixed issue where a few of the ship components with abilities were not showing up in the fleet/ship abilities list
• Fleet/ship context windows are no longer rounding down numbers to the stat breakdown tooltip giving inaccurate info for the weapons and defenses
• Erragis now correctly gives the kinetic damage reduction to all ships in the fleet, instead of just itself
• Fixed error that was setting the wrong spinner for the custom faction's second material def
• Precursor anomalies now correctly actually give Antimatter and Elerium when you survey them

• Added checks to prevent asteroids related crashes.
• Updated research video for base game tutorial.
• You can longer upload cheesed factions to the workshop
• Fixed issue where when the AI would fall-back to governors, the governor would queue up durational projects as regular improvements, causing the icon to show up on the colony map
• Made it so that whenever a new governor is assigned to the colony, the governor takes action immediately, instead of waiting for the next turn
• Added new checkbox to the Govern Planet and Govern Planet With Production Wheel windows that enables/disables allowing the governor to clear the production queue whenever a new one is assigned
• Factions that start with techs no longer start researching a high level tech without your permission.
• The economy dot on the production wheel no longer pops out on Govern screen
• Fixed issue where base game "classic" saves weren't showing the message to load the classic branch in steam
• Fixed issue where you could click a tab in the civ builder a second time to de-select it, which would then prevent the line next to it from un-highlighting whenever switching to another tab
• Fixed a MP crash related to the godlike AI
• Fixed issue where pressing the "save" button in civ builder wouldn't leave the civ builder when it finished saving
• Optimized UI code to get a perf boost

Crusade

Updates 10/7

• Research improvements now have a maint of 0.5
• Research buildings no longer have a Promethion cost
• Research based Wonders require Arnor Spice to construct
• There's no limit on the number of cities you can have on a planet but they now cost 1 promethion in addition to food. Again, the idea is that if you have lots of Durantium, use factories to increase the productivity of your population but if you have lots of promothion then people are probably a better bet.
• Added personality traits to Diplomacy Report Window
• Made the planet window not display manufacturing for military if the planet isn't sponsoring a shipyard
• Fixed issue where if an opponent's planet had stationed ships, but you didn't have enough espionage to see them, the "Eject All" button would still show up and be clickable
• Eject all button on planet UI of planets that are not yours
• Fix for odd behavior in MP that can result in a crash for the host in the United Planets system.
• Disabled the required win ratio for UP resolutions because no one really understood it.
• Fixed issue where the resource log wasn't being updated for administrators whenever you bought a mercenary
• Fixed issue where you could get infinite legions if you had a stationed general on a planet

Gameplay / Balance

• Prototype Hyperdrive moves reduced from 5 to 2 to conform to other component performances.
• Drengin labor camps and such only provide 0.1 population cap increases instead of a full point.
• New mission: Aurorus tree expedition
• AI is more careful about getting overextended with too many wars.
• Ripe for conquest Diplomatic mod now takes more personality traits into account.
• AI is a little more wary of going to war with lots of other players.
• Updated description for personality traits to be more explicit in what they mean.
• Changed planet word on the street text better grammar.
• Building a shipyard with a constructor in crusade will now refund an administrator
• Pirates are slightly more frisky.
• Turn time improvement.
• Made it so that the rename object dialog always appears on top (otherwise it has issues when bringing it up in places like the planet govern screen)
• Fix for missing strings in base campaigns

• Reduced power of some of the ideological events.
• Slave trade route benefits balanced to not provide quite as much approval bonus as well as reduce production bonus.
• Balance pass on base game improvements.
• Political Mastery military manufacturing reduced from 20% to 10%
• Planetology +1 raw production bonus removed
• Starport level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5 military production
• Space Elevator manufacturing level bonus increased from 0.3 to 0.5
• Fusion Power Plant and other high level mega improvements reduced in effect
• Updated Mercenary abilities
• Certain high level improvements no longer provide an empire wide bonus (particularly ones that can be built over and over...)
• Drengin slave improvements don't increase population cap anymore.
• More balancing to ideological events.
• Pirate event more common
• Evil motivation traits reduced from doubling to something more reasonable
• Updated and rebalanced Mercenary components just for the Mercenaries DLC.
• DLC Mega eventsirates start with some techs that make them move faster, get some money up front.
• DLC Mega events: The Artifact diplomacy points reduced from 5 to 1 so that you don't just instantly win.
• Updated base game Manufacturing improvements to work better with the "All Construction" adjacency bonuses.
• Map generation balance fixes to make Crusade/base game let idiotic in their resource generation.
• Battle Initiation Window doesn't pop up when you are attacking an asteroid
• Added a Crusade specific FOW coloring.
• Added a Crusade specific starbox.
• Increased number of trade licenses that techs provide
• Tiny hull cost increased from 20 to 25
• Tiny hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Tiny hull acceleration increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Tiny hull max speed increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Small hull cost increased from 30 to 40
• Small hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Medium hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Large hull cost increased from 150 to 250
• Large hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull maint increased from 1 to 2
• Huge hull logistics cost increased from 12 to 15
• Starbase maint increased from 1 to 3
• Trade Route income reduced from 5% of planet income to 3%.
• Snathi get 4 instead of 3 trade route licenses with Xeno Commerce in order for Stardock to survive their inevitable culling of Earth.
• More typo fixes.
• Rework to various colonization events to give the evil choice more goodies because evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
• Epiphany now costs 2 instead of 1 Spice
• Central Bank provides 1 wealth instead of 100% wealth (was a bug)
• Central bank provides 1 wealth per level
• Starports now cost 1 maint
• Bureaucrats get 10 instead of 25 bonus administrative points.
• New Improvement: Diplomatic Corps. Let's the player train Diplomats.
• Players now start out with a leader.
• Awe trait now provides benefit to all civs rather than just minors since you don't trade with Minors in Crusade
• Interstellar governance now provides a leader upon researching
• Republic government now provides a leader upon researching
• Democracy tech now provides a leader upon researching
• Star Federation tech now provides a leader upon research
• Various high end diplomacy techs now provide a diplomat
• Cultural Influence tech now provides a celebrity
• Xeno Economics now provides an Entrepreneur upon researching
• Xeno Farms now provide 0.5 food per level instead of only 0.3 (along with all the upgrades)
• Various recruit projects on planets cost less but now require a special resource.
• You can now recruit celebrities but you cannot yet eject them into space (patience).
• Treasure Hunt mission is now available at start of the game.
• Prototype hyperdrive base cost increased from 8 to 50 (duh)
• Beam weapons use slightly more mass
• Plasma weapon cost increased from 60 to 70
• Phased cannon cost increased from 70 to 90
• Rapid recharger mass dramatically reduced but cost increased from 12 to 32
• Energy Accelerator mass greatly reduced but cost increased from 23 to 50
• Harpoon cost reduced from 80 to 60
• Photonic warhead cost reduced from 150 to 90
• Triton missile cost reduced from 250 to 120
• Photon Torps reduced from 300 to 120
• Kinetic weapon mass substantially reduced across the board
• Kinetic weapons damage slightly increased
• Quantum Driver cost reduced from 120 to 90
• Singularity driver reduced from 140 to 90 cost
• Rapid reload and other special modules have their cost increased but their mass decreased. Idea is that special modules should be used by wealthy civs.
• If a commander is already in the fleet the "Add Commander" button (if available) is disabled.

UI

• Fixed quirkiness with the "Allow Clear Queue" governor option
• Fixed issue where having an empty modifier list in the improvement tooltip would mess up the display
• Added confirmation for when obsoleting a ship design in the designer landing window
• Added new hotkey for building asteroid mining base (defaults to "B")
• Added tooltips to the fleet stats entry in the main game window saying what each stat represents
• Fleets now use the closest star system plus roman numerals for their name when 'creating' a new fleet ('creating' meaning when a single ship becomes a fleet)
• Fixed small space at the bottom of the command buttons list in base game mode
• Added Design Author field to the ship style set editor that shows the ship design's author (hides if it's a core ship design)

Bugs

• Added checks to prevent asteroids related crashes.
• Updated research video for base game tutorial.
• You can longer upload cheesed factions to the workshop
• Fixed issue where when the AI would fall-back to governors, the governor would queue up durational projects as regular improvements, causing the icon to show up on the colony map
• Made it so that whenever a new governor is assigned to the colony, the governor takes action immediately, instead of waiting for the next turn
• Added new checkbox to the Govern Planet and Govern Planet With Production Wheel windows that enables/disables allowing the governor to clear the production queue whenever a new one is assigned
• Factions that start with techs no longer start researching a high level tech without your permission.
• Fixed issue where you could click a tab in the civ builder a second time to de-select it, which would then prevent the line next to it from un-highlighting whenever switching to another tab
• Fixed a MP crash related to the godlike AI
• Fixed issue where pressing the "save" button in civ builder wouldn't leave the civ builder when it finished saving
• Optimized UI code to get a perf boost

Heh. Let's hope the errors in the log aren't representative of errors in the update.

I'm not familiar enough with those announcements to know whether this sentence is a joke or not:

Rework to various colonization events to give the evil choice more goodies because evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

While I appreciate the philosophical question behind this, I'm not sure whether unbalancing the game would be a good trade-off for making a statement like this. The evil choices have already been superior before this update.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

that's a space balls reference.

 

[Turjan]

that's a space balls reference.

Well, yes. My question was more whether this statement has actual changes behind it. Given that they mellowed some of the other "evil" bonuses, it may just be a joke. At the moment, the "evil" answers are the min-maxer's friend already.

 

[coldcrow]

I played it for a bit. I don't like their systems too much, but the engine is the best you will ever see in a 4X of that kind. They really optimized for multicores with that exp pack update (should be in the base game too, now). If you have an 8+ core, you can play impossibly large maps fluidly. Also the AI is quite good.
Shame that the economy and ocmbat of this game is really not my thing.

 

[Frogboy]

The economy of the base game and the Crusade expansion are fundamentally different which creates all sorts of interesting challenges for balancing.


In the base game, you have a production wheel to control the whole economy focus.

In Crusade you have citizens that you can assign to work globally in a particular area or send them to worlds whose production in a given area you want to boost.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Stars! 2 and MoO 2.

Replying to a six month old post because I'm genuinely intrigued by the notion that MoO 2 had good AI. I mean don't get me wrong, it's a great game. But AI is not its strong point.

 

[whatevername]

Stars! 2 and MoO 2.

Replying to a six month old post because I'm genuinely intrigued by the notion that MoO 2 had good AI. I mean don't get me wrong, it's a great game. But AI is not its strong point.

I lost to AI like 40 times in MoO2 and 0 times in GalCiv 2. In GalCiv 3 I just build useless ships packed with sensors and sell them to all AIs.

 

[Endemic]

Trade is exploitable in MOO2 as well. The AI is poor at using special systems on their ships. Their research priorities can be a little strange as well (eg Psilons failing to research better computers if they get Autolabs from trade or a leader).

 

[whatevername]

Trade is exploitable in MOO2 as well. The AI is poor at using special systems on their ships. Their research priorities can be a little strange as well (eg Psilons failing to research better computers if they get Autolabs from trade or a leader).

If I told you that jews were burned in concentration camps I'd totally expect you to reply with "Uhh I once burned my tongue by sipping hot tea"

 

[Endemic]

C'mon, you've never traded the MOO2 AI useless stuff like Quantum Detonators before?

 

[MilesBeyond]

I lost to AI like 40 times in MoO2 and 0 times in GalCiv 2.

Okay but how often you lose isn't necessarily a measure of how good the AI is. I mean the MoO 2 AI can be harder to beat but that's because it cheats outrageously, not because it's smarter. In fact, IIRC in MoO 2 the lowest difficulty setting (Tutor) is the only one where the AI doesn't cheat.

I mean don't get me wrong, I think MoO 2 is the far better game. But AI-wise it doesn't hold a candle to GalCiv 2. Or hell, many 4X games.

That being said, I seem to recall you mentioning a few times that you feel Civ 5 is one of the few strategy games with tolerable AI, so I'm not expecting a rational conversation to come out of this.