Intellekt

Reply to Colony Ship Designs in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I rush build 5 scouts before I even think of building a Colony Ship. My strategy is to set 100% research at the beginning so that I'll reach ion drive in two turns. During those two turns I don't bother with any new ships, because they'd become instantly obsolete. My colony ships are then designed with two ion drives, two sensors, and one life support pod. Now in order for scouts to be useful they have to at least be able to keep up

Reply to Colony Ship Designs in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The default colony ship design has too much life support and neglects *sensors*. First priority of course is two engines, no matter WHAT you have to take out (first thing to go is the two life support modules... each colony extends your range further toward the next one). After that, put in sensors. At least two if you can fit them. Your colony ships will be doing your exploring... no use building scout ships, because they won't be faster than the colony ships and won't be ab

Reply to AIs ignore PQ 1 planets in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Well, keep in mind that planets of that quality tend to take a very long time to develop unless you are rush buying the terriforming techs, redirecting a HELL of a lot of asteroids, or your have a neutral alignment in xeno ethics. Or if you have orbital terraforming, or if you add cheap midrange factories to the first 5-6 tiles immediately after each one is soil/habitat improved. And especially if you have the Super Hiver special wh

Reply to Tell us what you'd like in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar 1.6! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

* Non-Genocidal Conquest * It seems pretty inconsistent with the idea of "good" races and such that every planetary invasion results in the extermination of all previous inhabitants (except information warfare which converts a small minority to your side). I think this could be fixed *without* radical new features like tracking seperate populations of soldiers/citizens/slaves/etc. Basically, Planetary Invasion itself or a new tech immediately after it could split into

Reply to Tell us what you'd like in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar 1.6! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

* Slow regenerating defense * There has obviously been a fair bit of trouble balancing weapons vs. defense in Galciv 2. I think a lot of it is caused by the all-or-nothing nature of defense caused by the instant regeneration. Let's say your ships have 20 hit points and can deal 20 points of damage in a turn... and you can fleet up to 5 ships. What if your defense can block 20 damage? In a 1 on 1 battle, two ships are basically incapable of damaging each other because every r

Reply to Defense Solutions in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The solution needs to be more fundamental. Defense is either worthless or invaluable. That is indicative that the band of usefulness for defense is way too narrow. Some defense must have some impact, not all or nothing. There are two main issues: 1. All firepower is automatically concentrated on the weakest ship(s) until they are destroyed. 2. Defense completely regenerates from one round to

Reply to Tell us what you'd like in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar 1.6! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

*Streamline starbases and reduce starbase cheese* Right now starbases are the source of several major problems: 1) It requires a lot of micromanagement to upgrade them. 2) Military starbases and combat-related starbase upgrades are pretty useless except for sometimes in the early game. 3) They can be an incedible source of human advantage over the AI because the AI doesn't build many starbases (and they're easy for humans to take out), whereas human players ca

Reply to Your ideas for the next update! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

*Streamline starbases and reduce starbase cheese* Right now starbases are the source of several major problems: 1) It requires a lot of micromanagement to upgrade them. 2) Military starbases and combat-related starbase upgrades are pretty useless except for sometimes in the early game. 3) They can be an incedible source of human advantage over the AI because the AI doesn't build many starbases (and they're easy for humans to take out), whereas human players

Reply to Your ideas for the next update! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

1. Make custom races actually useful. The built-in races have two powerful advantages: they have way more powers overall (huge built-in bonuses instead of a measly five extra points), and they can add bonus picks on *top* of their existing powers to stack up huge individual bonuses that are out of reach for custom races. For example the Altarians can get their research, morale, *and* economy about 20 points higher than any custom race could achieve. First, give custom races a

Reply to Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Why would you want to give Industrialist to Thalans? They already inhale money enough as it is. They need Federalist to feed all those factories. The Thalans don't have to build *more* factories than anyone else, they just build them *faster* and they can get more production out of them. Their racial production bonuses (including from the Industrialist party if that's picked) do not have to be paid for. So they don't actually need

Reply to Best DA race? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

They get 10 points (as much as any race) on top of the best allotment of inherent abilities (which cant be duplicated anywhere else), bonuses, and startech in the game. Um, I still don't see what's supposed to make them so great *to play as a human*. A lot of their abilities are mostly useful in the hands of the AI. Their super ability is basically useless, the AI doesn't build fast ships anyway so it doesn't actually limit their spe

Reply to Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

The usefulness of diplomacy depends A LOT on difficulty level and how militaristic/nasty the other races are. At higher difficulty the main benefit of diplomacy is getting the other races to go to war with each other rather than with you. In that case, the Draath super manipulator ability is the thing to have. For the player who just wants to build themselves up and strike when ready, the Thalans are a really good bet. Their super hiver ability lets them build factories VERY VERY FAS

Reply to Conquering Suicidal in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I have been complaining for a year that the AI's lack of interest in sensors places them at a disadvantage. Brad/Frogboy replied it is intentional due to performance concerns (e.g., expensive for the AI to analyze the data from good sensors). Um, wow. We have sliders to set super-high AI CPU use, though. I wonder why that couldn't trigger the AI to use better sensors. Heck, I know nothing about modding this game, but

Reply to For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

To hold a planet until help comes, you need to inflict enough damage on your attacker so that his ships can't fight the next turn, or the turn after that. Otherwise, you're just as well evacuating and nuking the site from orbit. I'm not sure what you're talking about. In the Galciv 2 combat system I've used, either you kill the enemy or he kills you. If you split your fleet into a bunch of little ships you are going to lose worse, it is just

Reply to Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Some important things to remember, for the medium-large range of galaxies with "typical" settings. COLONY RUSH: Early in the game it's important to colonize as many decent planets as possible, the good ol' colony rush (ignore PQ 1 and probably PQ 2 planets... probably useless the AI will be ignoring them too, so no need to grab them right now). Get some more factories on your homeworld and send out some colony ships. You want to send them *outward first* to get worlds before

Reinventing the Wheel: Diplomacy in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

(By "reinventing the wheel" I mean freely brainstorming for future games) I've been thinking... there is a fundamental problem when trying to create both a challenging and versatile AI, and a game system where "diplomacy" is an important attribute. Basically, if the AI acted like a human player, they'd totally ignore your diplomacy score and just trade in their own interest. You can see a bit of this when trying to trade with the Terrans if you have a low diplomacy score... it

Reply to For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

You know, the mere fact that there's as much disagreement as there is is a rather solid endorsement of leaving it free choice. The AI needs to understand when it's advantageous to build an OFM and when it's not (and no matter what the detractors say, sometimes it's definitely not). Forcing fleeting upon it in all circumstances doesn't solve anything. If you look at the thread there's strong agreement that orbita

Reply to For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Everyone that's made a statement like that apparently doesn't understand how to use non-combat ships to delay an invasion force. Notice that the thread title starts with "for the AI's sake". The AI isn't typically going to get any benefit from delaying an invasion force by a couple of turns, nor does it keep bunches of freighters and constructors sitting in orbit as far as I've seen. And as for using freighters and constructor

Reply to For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think this is a bad, bad, bad idea. 90% of the time it is better for the AI to NOT have their ships in fleets in orbit. Except the AI *does* leave loads of ships in orbit. So this simple rules change, which is good for a bunch of other reasons as well (including just plain making sense), also has the effect of making the AI more competitive. The fact is that without a *major* brain transplant, the AI sucks at

For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

So, just why exactly do ships not automatically fleet up in orbit? (They only do so if you build the orbital fleet manager whatsit available midway through the game, thus spending money and space where you may not need to). I can think of a lot of reasons why fleeting in orbit *should* be automatic: 1. It would help un-cripple the AI. Even at tough level, the AI obviously can't keep up with a human player's manouvers, and as a basic fact it keeps multi-ship forces in orbit ar

Reply to Scrolling bug (Dark Avatar) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I have experienced a DA specific bug related to scrolling while zooming in/out with the mousewheel. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes while scrolling the map in one direction while zooming in/out, I'll be left with a perpetually scrolling map. The only way to stop it is to scroll the map in the same direction and then scroll the mouse wheel madly again.

Reply to Best DA race? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Hm. On the one hand I'm only on my third game of Galciv 2... on the other hand I'm winning it without much trouble on Tough (large map). I did read the forums for tips. I've been playing Altarians and it's worked *really* well. From what I can tell, Galciv 2 is like other 4x games in what attributes are important to win. Generally it's biased toward productivity being more important than combat bonuses. And if you can keep a technological lead, you can make up for most racial attri

Reply to Custom races are broken in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

And no matter what, given the way things are scored fifteen points is just *not much customization*! It's no accident that the stock races have scores that usually add up to more than that *before* their bonus points are added. It gives them the ability to have big differences from the other races, to be specialized and distinct. As for "mod it", that's never a valid answer to a bug or balance issue with an official game feature.

Custom races are broken in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

This is more of a major balance issue than a bug, but I haven't seen it mentioned here. Why are custom races so utterly useless and broken? With some games under my belt, I finally decided to try a custom race and indeed to try customizing my opponents. I quickly realized that if you customize a built-in race you get a package of abilities that would cost 20+ points if bought directly (though in many cases they're impossible to buy), plus 10 freely chosen points. With a custom race y

Reply to To all the New Players Concerning Mega Events in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Speaking as a new player... TURN THESE THINGS OFF BY DEFAULT! I agree they should be off as default, but is it that hard for any player new or old to simply turn it off? It is not going to ruin your game experience by having to dis-select the Mega Events. I'm not sure how I could put this more clearly. Yes, it is hard to turn something off when you have no way to know that it s