GalCiv2: Dread Lords

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Caradoc
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Unread postby Caradoc » 25 Nov 2006, 06:29

Campaigner, thanks a million for taking the time to fill me in. I think I'll pass on the game and go dig up my MOO2.
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Unread postby PhoenixReborn » 31 Oct 2007, 15:18

So, if Civilization is boring, this game will be boring too? I remember liking the original civilization but when I tried civ 3, I found it a pain in the neck to micromanage every single unit.

I have vague memories of liking Master of Orion...but maybe this sort of game isn't for me.

One thing I can't find a good answer on is patching. I've gathered that you need to register your account to download the patches but I can't tell if it is required to have the game on that same computer you are downloading to...or if I would be able to transfer the patch files...

When I was trying to find this info, I saw that they are releasing a second expansion.

Edit: How does fog of war work, like Heroes 4, or heroes 3?

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Unread postby PhoenixReborn » 03 Nov 2007, 04:25

No one?

Well maybe I can stir up some attention with controversy.

The one point that comes up over and over again in reviews on web sites and fan reviews is how fantastic the AI is. I've read some interesting stories, and seen some good examples.

However, with the release of the expansion, I guess the original gal civ 2 ai doesn't measure up. If it was so great how come the gamespy reviewer wrote this:
I can reliably beat the machine on its "challenging" setting. When I started playing Dark Avatar, though, I had to turn the setting down a notch to "normal." The computer AI is now much better at selecting and improving planets, handles its economy much better, can no longer be diplomatically buffaloed with out-of-date technology and tends to make much better selections when it comes to research and outfitting ships. There are still a few AI blind spots (the computer is still a bit slow out of the gate when it comes to understanding how important engines are)
Whatever the case it seems to be better than Homm games AI.

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Unread postby Avonu » 03 Nov 2007, 12:10

PhoenixReborn wrote:One thing I can't find a good answer on is patching. I've gathered that you need to register your account to download the patches but I can't tell if it is required to have the game on that same computer you are downloading to...or if I would be able to transfer the patch files...
I don't know how it's working. My local publisher screwed something with that and I can't download patches online but at least I can downloaded them from publisher site, so probably after you download patch you can transfer it somewhere else.

EDIT:
Now I remember (I think) - you have two option:
1. Stardock Central to downloading pathces
2. Direct download from GalCiv2 site (you need code) and manual install of game patch
Edit: How does fog of war work, like Heroes 4, or heroes 3?
Like in H4 - but you can build sensor space stations to increase line of sight. Also planets and some modules in space ships can increase it.
Whatever the case it seems to be better than Homm games AI.
You are kidding? Even below normal lever AI is equal enemy (or ally) - he is not stupid - where you build space station near his territory, he can quickly react. Same with pacts between races ("we have nothing to you but you must die" - when you losing and your "allies" switching sides). Still, it's only artifical intelligence, not human (and not artifical idiot from HV).

BTW - I didn't play this game for long time - simply I haven't all day for games like this (and one or two hours isn't enough).

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Unread postby Kristo » 03 Nov 2007, 15:53

GameSpy Reviewer wrote: I can reliably beat the machine on its "challenging" setting. When I started playing Dark Avatar, though, I had to turn the setting down a notch to "normal." The computer AI is now much better at selecting and improving planets, handles its economy much better, can no longer be diplomatically buffaloed with out-of-date technology and tends to make much better selections when it comes to research and outfitting ships. There are still a few AI blind spots (the computer is still a bit slow out of the gate when it comes to understanding how important engines are)
First of all, at Challenging difficulty, you're not even up to the AI's full potential. You need to bump it one more level to Tough and enable all of the complicated algorithms. Then you're finally playing on level ground against the AI. Secondly, managing your economy in Dark Avatar is a lot more difficult than in Dread Lords. The devs made it a lot harder to just get your economy started - that's probably what the reviewer is noticing. DA kind of "assumes" you were good at DL.

BTW, they back-patch DL on occasion with improvements to the AI. I have the latest DL patches and I can tell you that the AI provides a fun opponent on Tough difficulty with all algorithms enabled. I still win, but that's the point. I am very impressed with how well the AI keeps up with me throughout the early game. Honestly, the reason I won my last game was the Iconians being my nearest neighbor. They've always been the weakest race and it shows. I quickly absorbed their empire, giving me a 2:1 planet advantage over the other players. That's tough for anybody to overcome.

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Unread postby PhoenixReborn » 04 Nov 2007, 22:55

Thanks, Avonu and Kristo, for answering my questions. Much appreciated.

I'm definitely interested in the game but I feel like waiting until after the final expansion and the final patch. It seems like you have to relearn the game every so often in it's current state.

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Unread postby Kristo » 05 Nov 2007, 01:51

I would wait until Twilight of the Arnor comes out to buy it. Frankly, if you have enough patience, I would wait for the [Precious Metal] Edition that includes DL, DA, and TA in one box. The good news is, you can play any of the game versions at any time. DA and TA do not obsolete DL. If you want to wait on patches, you can play DL and DA while they patch TA.

Nothing is stopping you from playing the demo, which is pretty fun in its own right. You're limited to the Humans and the game has a time limit, but it's a good introduction to the game. Completing my first game of the DL demo convinced me that I had to buy the full version.

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Unread postby Banedon » 17 Feb 2009, 10:09

God this game is good. Too good ... I dare not start it up anymore, because if I do, I won't be able to stop playing until I finish a game ...
I'm a hypocrite because I suggested that all life is sacred and should not be wasted without good reason.

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Unread postby Kristo » 17 Feb 2009, 12:41

I can see it now...

"Sorry boss, ummm, well, I haven't been to work in 4 months because, umm, I kinda started an Immense/Abundant everything and just had to finish it." :D
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Unread postby 7h30n » 17 Feb 2009, 19:30

Banedon wrote:God this game is good. Too good ... I dare not start it up anymore, because if I do, I won't be able to stop playing until I finish a game ...
Totally agreed, and you are tempting me now to start a game ...

I'll have to postpone it for the weekend to play a game (probably on large sized galaxy)

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Unread postby Banedon » 22 Feb 2009, 22:06

Kristo wrote:I can see it now...

"Sorry boss, ummm, well, I haven't been to work in 4 months because, umm, I kinda started an Immense/Abundant everything and just had to finish it." :D
:D

You remind me of a MMORPG I play, which holds monthly tournaments for the entire world. Since most of the players are from the American / Euro timezones, the tournament takes place when it's convenient for them, which also happens to be something like 12am - 4am for me. So I've always told my friends I can't play the tournament ... until I shocked myself one day finishing a Galactic Civilizations game at 4:36am. Lol! :)

I wish I understood better how this game works. Does anyone know what allows a ship to fire at more than one foe? In two campaign missions yesterday, one of my ships single-handedly shot at three opponents, which allowed some kind of quasi-invulnerability that probably falls under 'exploiting game mechanics'. But then I tried to replicate it the next scenario and my ship would only shoot at one foe. Why?
Campaigner wrote:Linear missions - The campaign is against a superpowerful race with ships that got 100x the weapon you got but they still only got 16 hp so they're quite easy to kill with all-out offensive ships.
Superpowerful indeed lol, the game I had yesterday when I discovered the 'invulnerable ship' mechanism showed just how 'superpowerful' the Dread Lords are. What happened: I had a ship that could shoot at three opponents (as in an enemy fleet of three ships) at the same time. No idea why that happened but it's crucial. Then I deck the ship out with massive firepower and attack. The way the game works, if both ships are destroyed at the same time the attacker receives one survival hit point. So my single ship destroyed an entire invading force! It was so funny! About 20 of those Dread Lords swarmed my land and all I had were three capital ships (not a smart idea, smaller ships would probably have been better, but I was using All Labs so those took a fair while to build as well). I didn't know of this trick at that time, so I used the capital ships to break up a few fleets, then had no time to repair them and ordered a full-out retreat. Then I realized that so long as you had the cash you can instantly repair ships by upgrading them to a slightly different design. I repaired two ships this way, and used them to destroy another couple of fleets. The Dread Lords were still swarming me though, and I was on the verge of giving up when I thought, "screw this, take them down with me" and kamikaze'd one of my ships into their fleets. And won and won and won, and the entire invasion force crumbled before one ship that had only one HP remaining.

Was hilarious :D Too bad I didn't have Super Warrior as an ability, or I'd have completed the mission without exploiting this mechanism. Although the game did bug out and refuse to finish (was playing Twilight of the Arnor then and doing a Dread Lords mission), I couldn't even complete it using cheat codes. Oh well.
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Unread postby ThunderTitan » 23 Feb 2009, 08:30

Banedon wrote: Since most of the players are from the American / Euro timezones
Not WoW then...
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Unread postby Kristo » 23 Feb 2009, 14:31

I know they changed the combat rules starting with the Dark Avatar expansion. Ships fire one weapon at a time and are able to wear down defenses with each shot. I think if you can destroy another ship in one shot, your remaining weapons can fire at something else.

The GalCiv2 Wiki has some pretty detailed info in it. A handful of people have done an insane amount of research into the game's mechanics.

What difficulty level do you play? I played most of my games on Tough in order to be on equal footing with the AI. I've been thoroughly out-produced twice by the AI but was able to get an Alliance in both cases. I'm very impressed with its performance. Do you know of any galaxy conditions that help the AI play better? I've found that it seems to play worse as habitable planets become more abundant.
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Unread postby Banedon » 04 Apr 2009, 12:41

@Kristo - I just played my first game of Galactic Civ in months today (for obvious reasons, I dare not play it too much since it's so hard to put down once you start). I'm beginning to find the game quite simple. My preferred strategy is to win by superior technology. For some reason the AI simply refuses to research as much as it can, with the result that later in the game my few ships - albeit with vastly superior weapons - crush the AI's swarms.

I think now the Altarians are my preferred race since they get an inherent research bonus. Of course when I distribute points Research gets maxed, after which it is Economics (since massing research labs is expensive). I put the remaining two points into Population Growth, except there's no such option, so I took up Creativity and Luck. I'm thinking Creativity might be a bit of a waste since it doesn't trigger much.

Anyway what happened in this game was that I poured large amounts of money into research right off the start. I couldn't build only research labs since that would be too expensive; instead I started with some factories and later converted them into labs. While the other races fought for early-game initiative I simply sat in my corner of the map and researched and researched and researched. Sent out a few frieghters and tried to befriend the guy next to me, but aside from that I didn't do much.

Somewhere into the middle game warfare started on a massive scale. Of course at this point the AI had, by the game's inidicators, many many many many times my total military strength. The Terrans decided to try to demand tribute from me, I refused. Then they and the Iconians declared war, which really is a baffling thing for the AI to do. Why would they declare war when their planets are so far away and their ships as well? I never saw an Iconian ship the entire game ...

Though I had only three planets, I was soon up the TeCH tree and researching the higher-end missiles, not to mention larger ships. By the time the Terrans first approached my corner, they were seriously outmatched - my single ships can destroy their fleets, with something like 50+ missile attack for me vs. 8 for them. Of course the game refuses to acknowledge that I was winning, persistently ranking the Terrans stronger than me in military strength. The war went on, and soon it was me invading their systems instead of them invading me. By the time I decided to stop the game, I was far and away the most powerful civilization on the map with Nightmare Torpedos and Large ships vs. the AI with Harpoons and Mediums, and I could research huge ships whenever I wanted, and the AI still thinks it's winning.

I wonder if there's a different way to play Galactic Civilizations. This one certainly seems the most natural to me. By massing research, not only do I gain a whole stack of techs I can use to trade with others, I gain lots of other advantages (eg. improved government, improved production, Soil Enhancement, etc). The main weaknesses is that I can't build ships and buildings at the same time - since I have 100% research spending and all I can do is focus production on military or social, so it's one or the other. How do you play the game Kristo?

Anyway this game was on Painful. I've lost my manual (oh my, hope it turns up soon) but I'm guessing it's giving the AI a +5% economic bonus. Since it went quite simply I'll probably try a harder difficulty next time. I've found the key to beating the AI is to survive until the technological advantage overwhelms them. Doesn't look too hard to be honest - this particular game for example, by the time I contacted the other civilizations they all seemed to have 4+ planets vs. me with only 2 (and one of them was PQ3 Wisp, too). It could be though that I'm lucky I started the game in a remote corner.

Other settings: anomalies benefit you, since you manage money better than the AI. Minor races also benefit you (or so I think), since you can attack and capture their PQ15 planets without risking a major war. Even better, just before attacking them you can trade off all your techs for all their techs and as much money as they have, and then destroy them anyway. Other than that I don't know. When I played the campaigns more planets benefited the AI, since with all my money going into research I didn't have enough to send out colony ships and they seize more planets than me. This might not be the case for different styles of play. Still, on really large maps it's a simple matter of simply purchasing the planets off the AI.

Some of the AI's biggest weaknesses: it handles declarations of war too randomly - unless you're honoring an alliance or something there's no point waging a war unless you're close enough to actually gain something from it. You must also be prepared to act fast ... no point declaring a war and then waiting a year before attacking, it just gives the other guy time to prepare. AI also handles treaties badly in my opinion. I make it a point to go out of my way and acquire as many treaties as possible as soon as possible. They have really long-lasting effects after all, good for the whole game. The AI treats research too lightly, that's how I've won all my research-based victories.

Most frustrating things in the game: this game the Torians (who were my Ally) actually decided to surrender to the Arceans (who declared war on them) instead of to me. Ew. Fortunately all it does is prolong the game. Probably the next most annoying thing is that the hostile indicators in H5 are so much better: in Galactic Civilizations' minimap, it's hard to see where hostile fleets are, even though they can be seen on the main map. It would also be great to have something to indicate how far those hostile ships can move, it would help me keep my Transports alive while my capital ships hunt down errant hostiles.
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Unread postby Kristo » 04 Apr 2009, 15:00

I think you're discovering what people on the GalCiv forums have been saying. All Labs is harder to do than All Factories, so you start with Factories and flip somewhere in the middle. In the long run, All Labs is stronger. The people who win consistently on Suicidal difficulty use these techniques.

If you get the Twilight of the Arnor expansion, you can disable Tech Brokering - the ability to trade a tech you haven't researched yourself. I only have DL though, so I haven't tried it. I usually play with Tech Trading off. I've found that Tech Trading actually makes the game easier. You can trade for techs that you'd rather not pay for yourself while at the same time hoarding those that enable your military advantage. You also get to see how everyone is researching without Espionage.

Even though it costs 8 points, I like +2 Speed. It enables you to build speed 3 colonizers with no engines, useful for early colony rush. Speed is life when it comes to projecting military power. Once you get above speed 10 or so, the AI really doesn't know how to handle your fleets.

Early game is all about managing morale and economics. I drop taxes to hold morale at 100% until I run out of cash, then raise taxes until morale hits 41% on my least happy planet. I'll gladly take the global morale bonuses from the various techs that provide them, but I avoid morale buildings except maybe on bonus tiles. In the long run, a good economy means you can lower taxes to keep people happy - it's cheaper than building morale buildings.

I've tried All Factories a couple of times, and frankly it makes the game too easy on Tough. I played one medium-sized galaxy with the Yor, rushed my way to declare Evil, and it was pretty much over. The other one was with the Arceans in an abundant everything medium galaxy. That one was an influence victory in short order by building nothing on most of my colonies and simply absorbing any race that got too close. I think I invaded only two or three times the whole game.

So given that All Factories is kinda boring, I like a varied approach to my planets. Low PQ (less than 9) planets become research worlds, High PQ (15+) become filled with Banks, and mid-range planets in good spots become manufacturing centers. I usually build appropriately on bonus tiles with the exception of Food. I find more than 10B population hard to manage - I have to keep invading to keep the population in check and morale reasonable.

I do not save-load or Ctrl-N when things look bad. I still won a game where I got zero planets out of the colony rush (the AI got the other planet in my home system). I find there's usually a way out of any bad situation. Besides, it's more fun that way. :D
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Unread postby Banedon » 06 Apr 2009, 08:43

Yes, I read this highly impressive AAR where one player, also playing the Altarians, defeated Suicidal difficulty AIs with AllLabs. He ran into massive economic difficulties, as is wont to happen, but compensated by selling all his techs to all the AIs. Yet another weakness of the AIs actually, they can't refuse to trade (well they can, but hey, you get to sell off stuff like Aquatic World Colonization when the only Aquatic worlds are far, far away from their systems). This player flipped someway into the map, converting all his labs into factories, and won with medium ships vs. small and tiny ships.

I can see the logic behind it - build up a strong technological advantage with AllLabs, then switch to AllFactories to capitalize on it. It looks really strong and thus one of the best strategies you can use on Suicidal, but to be honest I don't really feel like playing to that kind of level yet. Part of this is mundane: perfect play, as I found in H5, can be really tiring. The other part is for enjoyment: so far I've only lost one Galactic Civilizations game (and when I stopped that game it might not even be a loss, considering I hadn't realized the pseudo-invulnerability you can get from a technological advantage), and I don't want to lose confidence by getting thrashed silly trying a strategy beyond my grasp yet :D

So far I've mostly played with default settings, which allows tech trading and tech brokering. I can see where you're coming from in that disabling these gives the AI an advantage - after all, almost all the time it's me trying to trade, not the AI, and I repeatedly extract favorable trades from them. Still, as far as I can tell, the AI does trade techs with each other, and besides, you have to compensate for the AI's money advantage on harder difficulties somehow ...

I don't like +2 speed. It's a great advantage, yes, but it costs too much. For 8 points I can pump my research capabilities and economy so much better, and as a result simply add engines to my ships. With lots of research you can reach stuff like Warp Drive quite quickly, which compensates. Still, +2 speed is great for hunting anomalies, getting colony ships to their destination quickly, and so on. I think if you go for +2 speed you need to capitalize on your early-game advantage quickly or the guy with superior research will eventually beat you. It's also partly this reason why I like research so much. Population growth is another great thing to have, but with high research you can research the universal population growth techs and compensate. Sometimes I even go down the Cultural Conquest track when I'm not pursuing an influence victory because I can - and the extra influence helps with tourism income.

For economy, I agree with holding morale at 100% until I have about 500bcs. It's an investment after all; population is perhaps the most important resources you can have in the game. I do view the tax slider as a flexible thing though and change it so that I'm either making money or losing it at an acceptable rate. The approval changes a lot every time you hit a new 10% (eg. there's a huge difference between 29% tax rate and 30%), so that's where my boundaries normally are. Technically the only reason to have high approval once your populations are maxed out is for the elections, but I find that by the time that happens I'm at war quite a bit so I need approval and population growth to keep sending out transports. I noticed it's possible to cart population from one planet to another with transports and colony ships, it's just that with AllLabs it takes too long to build transports for such peaceful purposes ...

With AllLabs I have very strong research capabilities, so the universal bonuses I research quickly, even if I don't need them at once. Global morale boosts, economic boosts (even if I don't have a single economic building), social / military / research production, etc, I can get them and so I do. They only take a few days after all. That's why I'm so puzzled by AllFactories strategies ... I'm so used to researching the mid-level techs in a few days that I can't imagine it anyway else :) I've had many games where I'm at Star Federation for government and the AI doesn't even have Alliances. Just thinking of all the advantages makes me go, wow.

There're four ways to win a game, and with how much I like research you might guess I like a research victory. But I don't actually. AllLabs means low social production, which in turn means it takes ages to upgrade Research Centers to Invention Matrixes to Discovery Spheres, and then it takes even longer to go down the Technological Victory track. Admittedly it takes just as long to build ships, but with AllLabs you only need one or two ships to destroy other civilizations, and you can simply purchase or lease those. Buying the research buildings (and there can be over 20 of them in a small map) simply takes too much money.

Of the remaining three ways, conquest takes too long - somewhere into late-game when you're the strongest civilization on the map, killing everyone else is just a matter of time. Alliance victory is great. I had some difficulty figuring how to get people to ally with me, turns out you both need the Alliances tech and close relation. Only problem with alliance victory is that I usually can't be bothered courting a civilization. You're either with me or against me! If you'd rather me not wipe you out, get close to me and ally Lol.

The last method, influence victory, I don't understand. Sure it's doable, but why would you want to? To take over other civilizations by influence you need to mass influence starbases in their starsystems. That angers them, which in turn will lead to war unless you have a much superior military. But if you have a much superior military why not just invade the starsystem and win it by force? Especially since the influence starbases you build in other civilizations' starsystems tend to be destroyed easily during wars (they're on the frontline after all) and that high-level influence starbases take many constructors (not a good thing with AllLabs). Even more so, conquering a planet by influence takes time. The AI responds with its own influence buildings, and while you can see the pirate symbol there it can be a while before they switch sides. Maybe it's something for immense galaxies, which I'm not going to try anytime soon since it's, well, immense :)

What technological rate do you play at? I normally do very fast, since if you've read what I felt about Civilization IV: Colonization, I find myself pressing the end turn button with nothing happening too often. Even with very fast technological rate there're still turns where nothing happens, but it's not often.
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Unread postby Kristo » 06 Apr 2009, 14:24

I play at Normal tech rate. I played Very Fast once just to say I was able to win a Tech Victory. It was boring. Even at Very Fast, it took me 80 turns to research the last tech. By that point I had such a technological military advantage that no other civ dared to oppose me. So basically it was a click-fest.

Thoughts on the victory conditions:

Military - my default strategy, probably because I've spent way too much time playing Heroes to think any other way. You can usually get weakened civs to surrender before you have to mop up all their planets.

Influence - the victory condition you get when you're too lazy to defeat that tiny civ in the corner that did nothing the entire game. It can also be fun to do this one on purpose if you're playing with lots of habitable planets. AI civs' territories tend to be meshed together after the colony rush. If you conquer one, you can usually absorb part of another without building Influence starbases.

Diplomacy - the way out when you're soundly beaten in military strength. For some reason I always end up with Close relations with the civs that out-produce me.

Tech - too boring. Just make sure one of the AIs doesn't get it.

I don't have Twilight of the Arnor, so I haven't tried an Ascension victory. I suspect it's less boring than Tech given that you have to actively defend all your resources.
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Unread postby Banedon » 15 Apr 2009, 14:11

I've got a question to ask you Kristo. It's a really obvious question, and you probably saw it coming, and you might wonder why I haven't asked it earlier, you might even have your answer ready, but I just got to ask it anyway.

Why on EARTH haven't you bought Twilight of the Arnor???
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Unread postby Kristo » 16 Apr 2009, 11:34

I switched my computer from WinXP to Gentoo Linux about a year ago. Wine doesn't really support GalCiv2 yet (they use some pretty fancy DirectX stuff) so I haven't played in a long time. GalCiv1 works though.

As such, Heroes 2 is my go-to game when I need a strategy fix. I plan on installing GalCiv2 on my wife's laptop (Vista) but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
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Unread postby Banedon » 05 May 2009, 03:14

Heroes 2 is clearly inferior to Galactic Civilizations 2 :devious:

Anyway I'm beginning to hope the AI in Galactic Civilizations 2 gets seriously upgraded. It's definitely not bad, in fact it's way better than the AI from the Heroes series, but it's a long, long way away from being as fun to play against as a human opponent would be. Aside from the problems I mentioned above, I would rather have the AI smart enough to form alliances to balance the power distribution in the game.

For example ... on Earth right now the US is clearly the strongest nation. If the US suddenly decides to annex its closest neighbours Mexico and Canada, then the rest of the world will notice and probably come to an anti-US alliance, just to avoid getting conquered piecemeal. Some other countries might choose to join the US in world conquest, the so-called bandwagoning. It's already happened in ancient Chinese history during the Warring States period when states either curry-favoured with the strongest state (Qin) or allied to oppose it.

But the AI in Galactic Civilizations does neither. Of course in the game itself the aim of every civilization is for ultimate domination, so bandwagoning isn't as effective - after a successful war, the stronger civilization becomes stronger. If you bandwagon you improve your position as well, but sometime you have to destroy the stronger civilization. I've not yet played a game where I win an alliance victory where my allies wipe the enemy out for me.

On the other hand, the opposite - allying to defeat the aggressive race - ought to be practiced wholesale. It's the only thing that keeps you alive and balances the power. It'll always happen in multiplayer; it certainly has in the Heroes games I've played with my brothers. It doesn't happen. The last game I played, I became the strongest civilization in the game and that's it. Game is over. There's nothing more to play for, it is pure mop-up. I remember one of my earlier games where the Thalans started conquering the other races at an alarming rate. I notice of course, but when I try to contact the remaining races, none of them seemed alarmed, none of them cared, we did not form an alliance to oppose the Thalans and they pretty much all got conquered separately (although I did sneak a Technological Victory before the Thalans declared war - at that point there were just 3 races left).

The AI is of course a lot better than the AI in the Heroes series, as well as most other games I've played. H5 games for example pretty much end once you repel the AI's first assault. But this alliance-making and breaking diplomatic intrigue I seriously miss. So sad ... :(

PS: The way my games are going I might go for Influence victories more, since Transports take 2 months to build with AllLabs and it's probably faster to make peace with everyone and win by influence. That said, I do find it kind of hard to make peace with someone who declares war on me. Call it retribution ... for the same reason, I find it hard to pay anyone who demands tribute of me.

PPS: I hate having to upgrade all my Invention Matrixes to Neutrality Learning Centers manually. Come on ... make it automatic!

PPPS: I hate how long it takes to subjugate another planet culturally ... several weeks it seems, so annoying!
I'm a hypocrite because I suggested that all life is sacred and should not be wasted without good reason.


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