Why I think GalCiv is gonna rule the strategy genre

"Most strat games I play are very predictable. By the 30th turn you can predict who is going to win if you find the stats."

That is still true of this game, as any strategy game without artificial "balance" correcting mechanisms. At least so far I haven't felt the need to complete a single game. I always play large maps with genius AI. 70% of the time I can clearly see the outcome of the game after 3-4 hours of playing. I would even go as far as to say that I can predict outcome of the game, with rough certainty, just by looking at the starting conditions of each race. That's about 30 mins of playing. heh I don't quit that soon, tho.

As for AI, it is pretty good at the begining of the game. They expand very fast, build military fast, pump out constructors like crazy. But they don't take full advantage of their military. They don't know how to fight a war at all. I have described why in other posts.
Also, now that new beta's have bigger maps, I noticed that AI has bad expansion rate in mid game. They seem to have colony ships buy just not sending them fast enough.

I try not to use diplomacy cause it's too tempting to abuse the poor AI. The game is pretty challanging without diplomacy. If you take out diplomacy, this game is the most challanging of its genre that I ever played. So I'm interested in it and I think it's a good game.

LOL.

typical master lame. you admit to never finishing a game but you are sure it would be predictable if it was. i concur with hamster. galciv is much less predictable. even when i am sure i have the game locked down towards victory the ai will suprrise you. i've had defeat handed to me when i thought victory was assured and it wasn't because of some random event.

i don't see you listed in the top of the metaverse. maybe you should try finishing a game.

I agree with The Hampster and JayG. I was playing a game where the Arcadians and the Yor were kicking my arse. The arcadians where the strongest military and economically. The Yor were culturally superior and I was reduced to just a few blue sectors. Then rhe Arcadians started to loose planets to the Yor so their economy suffered and eventually their military. So they sued for peace. Gave me a breather. Next the Toreans (who I allied with) became strongest military.

I could'nt finnish the game becase it crashed and I loaded 4b (both) and It would'nt reload but I was impressed with the way the fortunes of the empires changed.

I agree with The Hampster and JayG. I was playing a game where the Arcadians and the Yor were kicking my arse. The arcadians where the strongest military and economically. The Yor were culturally superior and I was reduced to just a few blue sectors. Then rhe Arcadians started to loose planets to the Yor so their economy suffered and eventually their military. So they sued for peace. Gave me a breather. Next the Toreans (who I allied with) became strongest military.

I could'nt finnish the game becase it crashed and I loaded 4b (both) and It would'nt reload but I was impressed with the way the fortunes of the empires changed.

I can easily beat the game if I want to. The issue here is: do I win by cheating or by playing fair? There is no clear cut border between cheating and playing fair. I know a number of legal game strategies that take advantage of AI's stupidity, or take advantage of certain game mechanics. It's very hard to play without thinking I'm taking advantage of AI in some way.

I wish this game would be multiplayer, that's the only fair way to play. I definitely don't quit multiplayer games.

Sure you can win by cheating. Heck, you could just change the .ship files or .tech files or whatever too.

But at a certain point one has to choose to play the game itself rather than exploiting some bug or what not like the free peace treaty or other diplomacy screen buglets. But who'se really losing then? It's a single player game.

The point is that I think The Hamster was making is that in a real game of GalCiv, the game isn't decided in 30 turns or so. The game isn't just about amassing a bunch of stuff and overwhelming the enemy. There are subtleties in the game that keep the game dynamic.

I think most mature players have little difficulty playing the game as designed (regardless of the game in question). I know something of multiplayer games and they have exploits too. The problem is that now you're dealing with people who have mastered various exploits and you HAVE to use those exploits.

I prefer, for instance, to play Warcraft III without having to build towers outside my opponent's base or memorizing where the creep goodies are on a given map.

As I said, there is no definition for what is considered "fair play". It's not hard to avoid the obvious cheats, bugs in the game. The way AI operates, I know how to take advantage of it. But how do I know whether the game designer intended me to take that action? Same thing for game rules, the way ships fight, the way star bases work.

As a player I shouldn't have to worry about avoiding cheats. I should be able to think of any imaginable strategy and know that if I win, I win fair and square. It's not my fault that the game designer left some loop hole or bug that can be exploited. I just do my best of beating the game.

But it's a BETA! They've said so many times that the game isn't finished! All Brad is trying to say, I think, is that some things at this point should be obvious that they're not going to stay that way. Things that you think are "loopholes" are just things that havn't been polished yet.

The only things I've seen you mention ML are things in the diplomacy screen which are pretty obvious.

To be candid, most of your "Feedback" revolves around extremely vague criticism about the game.

Does it REALLY need to be pointed out that de-selecting one of the peace treaties from the diplomacy screen which allows you to get peace is a bug? A good bug to be reported but I don't thikn most players would wonder whether that was a cheat or not. Or making deals where something gets messed up in the X dollars per month for Y months.

There will ALWAYS be things in a game that human players can exploit. In the OS/2 version, you could leave a planet undefended deep in your civilization and the AI would send transports to take it out. The player could then pick off the transports as they came.

Does it really take a leap of logic to guess that the player is really cheating themselves? That kind of thing would require nearly doulbing the time between turns to address because of massive threat analysis being required.

In MOO2, I coudl win any game at any difficulty level by taking a straight genocide strategy. Did that make the game bad? No, I simply chose NOT to pursue that strategy.

The game doesn't care if you cheat. It's supposed to be for fun. If you choose to take the fun out for yourself, that's your business.

Brad,

Don't worry about ML. We all have his number. He has already admitted in another thread that his main reason for being on this forum is to bait and taunt. If you can just ignore his baits and taunts and glean what little useful information he posts maybe he will change his attitude.

I know the type.

In the Warcraft III beta there were those who would yell "noobs" whenever someone complained about a cheese tactic. If anything, all this just shows why it was a good idea not to have multiplayer. We'd be hunting down obscure cheese loopholes forever.

Concerning the game, at 30 turns i'm still sweating out who i need to be friends with and who to try to destabalize. At 100 turns i'm really sweating. at 150 turns my economy is going great guns, but if i don't have enought sector influence, they are still going to blackmail me for techs or money. At 300 turns the wife wants to know if i'm going to be on all night and i'll say " No just until i kill the yor" 2 days later the outcome is still in doubt so i say this game rules!

I'm trying everything from good to evil, to no +in research to full on espionage. I've played with the ai's from idiot to genius. Every game is different, every game take me to a place i never would have imagined. Of course i'd like more variety in random events, but they will come.

Pardon my reverting to work terminology but galciv seems like a big budget movie picking up a head of steam heading into it's premiere. For a while the changes seemed somewhat minor, the crashes still there. Then all the little bits and pieces from all the people working on the game start coming together. The special effects are finishing, the audio is being worked on. (have you ever seen an a action picture without a finished sound track, miss, miss, hit him now, now duck,ok gunshot now, here's comes the ring of the phone, ring!!!)

the performancw of the game has been tremendously improved, new things are being added and eventually it will be done for it's release.

What is wonderfully different about this game is that when it's released it's not the end of the story. Can you imagine a film that could continously be evolving like this game will!

that's my 2 cents for now

rich

I've been playing strategy games probably longer than Mr. Lame has been alive. GalCiv is probably the first game that keeps things interesting. As long as there are multiple races still alive with a decent economy it's anyone's game.

The surrendering feature that the ai's do is something i wish More games would do.

before I was alive, there weren't any computer games! other than something like Pong. So hush! heh

Hi TheHamster

my first computer game was coded into assembly language with a z80 and 48K of memory . You're right about the game. I haven't played muany gamesin the last few years, but this is definately addictive

rich