Horatio Hornblower

Reply to Research / Econ Treaty - trade weights too high? in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Well, when i first heard about the feature i assumed it was going to be bilateral - i.e. if you had good relations or a high diplo score you could set up a research treaty that would grant 10% bonus in both directions (like trade routes). I was kinda shocked when i realized that it was just another item you could sell for techs and such. My exact thoughts were "really?! isn't this just begging to be exploited?". In my very first game (on gifted). I sold treaties to different civs gettin

Reply to Research / Econ Treaty - trade weights too high? in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'd have to agree that the treaties are insanely valued by the AI even on higher levels (gifted). You can sell a treaty, which has no cost to you, for a huge amount of techs, ships etc. It also has the effect of massively boosting relations, so you can get an aggressive AI to back down. Also, the whole diplomatic penalty for declaring war on a treaty AI can easily be circumvented by encouraging the AI to declare war on you instead by parking a bunch of transports next to their planets.

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Could this be resolved by multiplying all hitpoint values by a certain factor? Say you multiplied all hp by 10 (easily done by editing the xml)...so hulls would have a base hp of 50, 80, 200, 420, 840. This would increase the chance of a ship surviving a round and therefore increase the usefulness of defense. Maybe I'll try it in my next game. Cheers h

Reply to DA Crash when viewing diplo report. in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Nope. 5 opponents. no minors. I *think* i was switching to the Korath. cheers h

DA Crash when viewing diplo report. in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Crashed when i tried to switch to a different race in the foreign relations window - the tab where it gives you rankings and alignment. Here's what i presume is the relevant portion of the debug.err (the last few lines): Debug Message: ForeignRelationsWnd: Cannot find OBJID Foreign_Relations_Destabilize_Slider Debug Message: ForeignRelationsWnd: Cannot find OBJID Foreign_Relations_Destabilize_Scale Debug Message: ForeignRelationsWnd: Cannot find OBJID Foreign_Relatio

Reply to Defense - Devs please read! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Wow...that's totally absurd. //Runs off to start "gifting" defense techs...

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Here's a couple of suggestions (off the top of my head) that could somewhat ease the whole "AI can't handle surprise attacks" problem that wouldn't require excessive AI coding and so forth: 1) Moving next to an AI planet with an armed ship or transport is considered a declaration of war (unless you have an alliance). 2) Moving next to an AI planet uses all remaining movement points for a given ship. This would at least give the AI a turn to respond to a sneak attack.<b

Reply to Aggression in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I've only about halfway through my first DA game, but I have all AIs set to 100% aggression (and gifted). The only effect I've noticed is in the report tab where all the AIs have: --militaristic -aggressive So AFAIK it just makes maintaining good relations more difficult. But it's still pretty easy to keep on their good side via treaties and trade. I was hoping it would turn them into total psychopaths, but this seems not to be the case. Cheers h

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

So it sounds like the diplomat super ability is the "TEH WIN!11!" button for DA... Oh well, I guess I'll just have to use other abilities to make it interesting. For those who might be interested, there's a freeware game called "C-evo" that's based on Civ2 and the idea of total ruleset parity with the computer AI. So no galciv style diplomacy where by giving gifts, treaties, and so on you can *force* the AI to act against its interests. Not that I'm saying this would be a good

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Fourth - Hit early, hit hard. As soon as my diplomacy research is done, sometimes before it is done - I pick an empire I want to take out. Figure out what weapons they use, and build a fleet to counter. Count all of their worlds, and build enough transports to wipe out the whole civilization in one turn. You simply MUST take out at least one AI in the first year and a half or you won't have enough territory to compete with the enemy. When it is

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I guess Brad answered my question about the aggression slider. So has anyone played a game on painful or higher with all AIs set to 100% aggression (without hitting ctrl-N 100 times and/or restarting after you've found all the choice planets to colonize)? Is it entertaining? btw: Do you have to create custom AIs to adjust the aggression or can you tweak the exisitng AIs? Cheers h

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Martimus: Have you tried maxing the aggression level for all the AIs? This is one of the features in which I'm most interested. Has anyone had any experience with it? Does everyone start acting like the Drengin (which to me is a good thing)? Cheers h

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for all the feedback guys. Sounds like the AI has been improved overall, but still suffers from the same weaknesses. I'm a little disappointed that the tacital AI has seen much improvement. But then that's an incredibly difficult problem to tackle. With respect to the above post, I never bothered building the Eyes as it conferred such an overwhelming advantage to the player (the AI never, ever researched sensors - do they still ignore that branch?). Still, I think I'll

Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Hi, Is the AI significantly improved in DA? I gave up on GC2 after realizing that the AI, while still significantly better than most strategy AIs, was still making some fairly serious missteps in the planetary management (3 farms on a class 6, 9 embassies, etc etc), military strategy (endlessly unescorted transports, huge fleets parked on worlds that didn't have the fleet improvement allowing you to pick them off 1 at a time), unimproved starbases everywhere, and so on. <b

Reply to GalCiv II: May Roadmap in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Sounds good guys...but here's a thought: Rather than totally removing any advantage for being the attacker, perhaps you could give the attacker a percentage bonus to their attack and the defender a percentage bonus to their defense. This way initiative would still matter, although not as much, and it would also encourage you to build slow, defense heavy fleets to defend worlds as well as fast attack craft. Anyway, just a suggestion. Apologies if someone else in the thread

Reply to Why does the AI like embassies so damn much? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

ok...so i've tried to see the "AI has so much production is doesn't have to properly develop it's planets" angle...so I played a bit more of my 'gifted' game to the point where i was the dominant civ in the galaxy on all fronts (I guess those lazy AIs with their huge bonuses should have been building something other than embassies after all). Anyway, I just noticed a class 21 Arcean planet with 3 factories, 3 multimedia centres, 6 embassies, 1 stock market, NO farms (even though it's

Reply to Why does the AI like embassies so damn much? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

@cyberj14 / knute / etc - amazingly I think I now agree with your general sentiments: I'm saying is that at the Gifted level of difficulty, where the AI gets reasonable, but not absurd bonuses, the AI ceases to develop it's planets properly after a certain point making it relatively easy for a competent player to outproduce/economy/research (or at least match) the AI. Basically what seems to happen is that the AI has does exactly what you're talking about...it's thinks "go

Reply to Why does the AI like embassies so damn much? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

@Knute112 "on the other hand if the game were to hand you 10,000 BCs per turn along with another ohh 5000 PP for research and ships. free with not having to build any improvments at all, then what would you do with the cash and free research and building points? if all your planets could turn out one ship per turn each, and your research gave you a new tech every turn with no labs or factorys built on any planet, then what would be the point to developing them further? obvi

Reply to Why does the AI like embassies so damn much? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

@Oldstatesman "At higher levels the aI does not have to build a lot of factories or banks - it gets the bonuses. So it builds things it sees it needs - morale and entertainment stuff. Why build things you don't need? That is not dumb - it's excactly what a human would do." (Apologies...quoting in the green box doesn't seem to work on my machine) Why build things you don't need? The AI doesn't NEED extra labs, production or cash? That's ridiculous! What would happ

Reply to Why does the AI like embassies so damn much? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The AI still has serious problems with planet development as far as I can tell (I was so hoping this had been fixed in 1.1)...I'm playing with all AIs set to "Genius" and the Arceans, who are the most powerful civ by virtue of starting in a corner next to most of the nice planets, have all their planets either a) mostly empty or b) stuffed with embassies (I have high espionage so I can examine all their planets). It's really depressing to see the AI still making such noob errors. <br

Reply to Gameplay Example: Epic in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Kalin, Could you upload your mod to the library? Sounds very interesting. I could edit the XML files myself, but I'm lazy. Regarding the sensor thing...sounds like Frogboy has two contradictory priorities: 1) The AI should not 'cheat' and therefore should not be able to see into the FOW. 2) The game should have good performance, so the AI should essentially ignore sensor research. So we end up with a non-cheating but tactically disadvantage

Reply to Regret buying the game? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Man...you totally sabotaged your reasonable, well written post by ending with that whiny compaint about the forums. "I expect better". Ha. No doubt Stardock feels put in their place. Anyway, the AI will never compare to a competent human player. This is a fundamental failing with any single player strategy game. Stardock has done a pretty good job. Do I think the military AI could be improved? Sure. Do I think it would be a good use of their

Reply to Gameplay Example: Computer AI in transition in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Hi, Looks absolutely fantastic. I'm curious though...will the AI algorithms take whether tech trading is disabled into account when determining how much to emphasize research? Seems like they should... Cheers h

Reply to Rotating your pieces any way you want in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Awesome. i'm stoked about the AI improvements...war with the AI, rather than being an epic struggle, is currently more of a comedy of errors. Bring it on. Cheers h

Reply to Unrestricted Tech Trade Ruins 4xTBS Games in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

you can only change how much the AI values a given tech (AIValue) in the XML - AFAIK this will affect how likely they are to research it (although different AIs will have different researching priorities as well - Drengins prefer weapons etc) as well as how much they value it in trades. you'll notice that most techs in certain branches are really low valued - like the diplomatic and morale boosting branches - which is why the AI never seems