Sins vs Gal Civ II

from Sins Forums
I find that Sins borrows a LOT from Gal Civ II, which is nice and what I was expecting. I especially liked the interface improvements over Gal Civ II. My only complaint is that Sins feels more like Total Anhilation (or some variant) in that I fall into the pattern of building a massive army to swarm over the map. The subtle difference between Sins and Gal Civ II was that the latter didn't have the ships automatically hostile against each other. Since you are automatically hostile (even public relations start off at 0) it makes other methods of victory mostly inviable. I always liked the options of winning through culture or aliances in Gal Civ II and I find it missing in Sins. Sure you can win through an aliance, but only after you build a fleet that scares the shit out of the AI. I guess I wish there was an option for the AI to start out neutral, friendly, or hostile such that other strategies of playing might be more plausible. And maybe, as they run out of space to expand, they start looking to you or neighbors as a better target over the pirates planets.

Anyone else play both games and have opinions?
33,908 views 36 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I think that new forms of victories would be nice, and blieve it's a no-brainer that these will be included in an expansion or something sooner or later.

It's also annoying when you get impossible or retarded missions like "destroy 5 tactical structures" and they haven't built any in the systems you can reach (although perhaps they should have...lol) thus essentially making the mission an auto-fail. Mission system is good, but it could use some work.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
GalCiv's A.I., mostly designed & programmed by Brad "Frogboy" Wardell of Stardock, is deeply more complex & sophisticated than Ironclad's A.I.

If Ironclad wants to develop better quality updates + an expansion, it will have to « do something » about its so-so A.I. coding.

That's not my personal opinion : the forum is full of complaints about the dumb & dumber computer players.

Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
As nice as that is, Sorceress, you must also realize that Sins AI is also quite different from the GalCiv AI. Just as an example, there were no tactical battles in GalCiv 2, so there was no retreating either.

Now imagine trying to make an AI know when to retreat and when not to in a way that makes sense, think of everything it needs to take into account, and then think of all the various player ideas on when it should or shouldn't retreat :P

It's easy to say the AI isn't so good, and true enough there's always room for improvement for any AI, but at the same time you need to realize the difference in complexity.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Both games has its merits, but I understand what the original poster meant. It would be good if it played like civilization I think. :D
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Neat, thanks for your replies. PuffyPie is right in a sense. GalCiv II had a wonderful level of depth with empire building that I find is stripped down a little because of the dominant action oriented theme in Sins. I think that this could be mostly rectified if there were different ways of winning. The AI's immediate stance of aggression forces the player to research a lot of military tech early to mid game. This makes culture tech and a good chunk of the econ tech fundamentally useless; unless you're playing on a gigantic map and plan to research all tech trees. This might be adjusted if the AI were more willing to trade or cooperate under different conditions. Say for instance, if the AI still has room to expand and is worried about other hostile races. Right now the AI's mantra is: attack my enemy on the other side of the map or die! :/

I'm not asking for major overhauls in the AI. I just want a Mister Rogers setting :).
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I find that Sins borrows a LOT from Gal Civ II, which is nice and what I was expecting. I especially liked the interface improvements over Gal Civ II. My only complaint is that Sins feels more like Total Anhilation (or some variant) in that I fall into the pattern of building a massive army to swarm over the map. The subtle difference between Sins and Gal Civ II was that the latter didn't have the ships automatically hostile against each other. Since you are automatically hostile (even public relations start off at 0) it makes other methods of victory mostly inviable. I always liked the options of winning through culture or aliances in Gal Civ II and I find it missing in Sins. Sure you can win through an aliance, but only after you build a fleet that scares the shit out of the AI. I guess I wish there was an option for the AI to start out neutral, friendly, or hostile such that other strategies of playing might be more plausible. And maybe, as they run out of space to expand, they start looking to you or neighbors as a better target over the pirates planets. Anyone else play both games and have opinions?
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Sins is far more centered around the warfare part of things. GalCiv 2 is far more biased toward economy. GC2 is also vastly more deep and complex in everything except for combat. Basically, GC2 is a pure 4X strategy game. Sins is an RTS with some 4X elements in it.

According to Stardock, Sins will however get more and more 4X-like as time passes with the possible coming of Random/Mega Events, a Campaign, better diplomacy, etc.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Love GCII & DA. However, I always longed for more realistic battle graphics which SoaSE delivers. Not to mention the tactical side of it.
Eversince I played Homeworld2, I've wanted those frantic and beautiful battles.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
So far, I think Gal Civ 2 is better, but I've only spent a few hours in sins. It's really hard to get into, that's my problem with it.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
GC2's AI was much weaker when it launched, every patch improved it but yes, I agree there needs to be more victory possiblities than just military crushing.

Give it time, GC2 was great when it launched and just got better every month, I'm sure the same with happen here.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
GC2's AI was much weaker when it launched, every patch improved it but yes, I agree there needs to be more victory possiblities than just military crushing.Give it time, GC2 was great when it launched and just got better every month, I'm sure the same with happen here.
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And GC2 still keeps getting better, and better, and better. Twilight of the Arnor is scheduled for April, and after that it's Dark Avatar 2.0, and on to upgrades for Twilight after that.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Excerpt from reply #3 :

[...] Sorceress, you must also realize that Sins AI is also quite different from the GalCiv AI. [...] It's easy to say the AI isn't so good, and true enough there's always room for improvement for any AI, but at the same time you need to realize the difference in complexity.
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 ;) I did realize the « difference in complexity » between the GalCiv A.I. and the Sins A.I.

You took my post at face value (and I don't blame you for it).

My post really was a tactical ploy :

Since I knew that Ironclad designers visited this forum, I hoped to provoke them to try to match, out of professional pride, the sophisticated quality of the GalCiv A.I.

A Fraser vs. Frogboy, Ironclad vs. Stardock match.  ;p 

( On another thread, someone recently stated that the performance of NINE allied comps, on hard or unfair, against one single human illustrated that the Sins A.I. did not « suck » ! Massive quantity, in a 9 v 1, would represent a quality A.I. ?! )
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
You took my post at face value
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That I did - just because most similar posts here are criticism and meant to be :P So I blame the forum conditioning! *nod*

Brad did actually say in another thread that he was sending bits of code and suggestions to IC for the AI, so it sounds like it's more of a collaboration than a competition ;)

I don't agree with the thread that you need 9 teamed AI to have a challenging game, but that's not really the discussion here, anyway :)
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
A TB game vs. a RT game.......Hmmmmm.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I find that I have yet to find a planet named "Wardell" or at least "Fraser"... :) 

I'm too new to really comment on Sins yet but one can see a family resemblence between the two.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Both games are amazing unto themselves, but each is missing a certain something I really long for. GalCiv didn't have the territorial/space control sort of thing in nearly as satisfying a way as the MOO's and SOASE do, but SOASE is grievously lacking in the diplomacy/exploitation angle. Overall I'm enjoying SoaSE much more than I did GalCiv, because I admit, the spaceship battles are just mindblowing, and the whole territorial control and starlane setup are top notch, but lord I'd love a better diplomatic system and AI. Either game would be better merging in a bit of the other, I think. But as I said, both are amazing in their own ways, and their makers really deserve a huge pat on the back.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Excerpt from reply #12 :

Brad ["Frogboy" Wardell of Stardock] did actually say in another thread that he was sending bits of code and suggestions to IC for the AI
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At last !  :D  PTL  ;) 

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Frogboy worked to improve the AI a bit for 1.03 IIRC.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
GalCiv's A.I., mostly designed & programmed by Brad "Frogboy" Wardell of Stardock, is deeply more complex & sophisticated than Ironclad's A.I.If Ironclad wants to develop better quality updates + an expansion, it will have to « do something » about its so-so A.I. coding.That's not my personal opinion : the forum is full of complaints about the dumb & dumber computer players.
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Apples and oranges.

Designing an AI for a turn-based strategy game is a whole different beast than designing an AI that operates in real-time.

There are a lot of concessions that you have to make for performance reasons when you have to operate in real-time; you can't spend a whole bunch of computing cycles branching out thousands of moves in advance in real-time because it'd become a slideshow whereas you can in a turn-based game.

In addition, a turn-based game has predefined starting and stopping points for player actions. There are a finite amount of possible actions that a player can take during turn X which makes it much easier to analyze player actions and to draw out a plan of action. Sins, being real-time, allows the player to do anything at anytime; there are no finite points in time.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I just wish I could play Galactic Civ2. Every time I tried, it would lock up on me. Quite Frustrating. IF anyone has any ideas on why it might be locking up on me, sending me a PM please.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Hmm...you know what would be interesting: a peaceful unfair AI. One that expands quickly, has HUGE culture, and a reasonable fleet to fend off attacks. That way, if you attack directly, the AI retaliates hard. If you do nothing, it sucks up your planets through culture and intimidation. Countering would require doing a little espionage and allying.

Also, tech trading would be interesting, though, there isn't a 1 to 1 mapping so that would be hard to do. Though it would be cool to be able to build your ships AND the enemies ships.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Frogboy worked to improve the AI a bit for 1.03
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 :SURPRISED: 

Well, then ... it must have been a tiny bit.  :NOTSURE: 

( I'm really just a SP sophomore noobette, and I beat « hard » comps with my non-competitive SimCityInSpace approach ... as long as it's not a A.I.>1 v 1 )
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
I enjoy Sins quite a bit. However, I have to admit the approach is pretty much one sided, build ships, kill everything in your path. In GC2, there are a number of playstyle options. Although I've fallen into a single playstyle for the most part with GC2, options are always there if I feel like a change of pace. I've gotten a ton of play off GC2 and expect to get a ton of play with the upcoming expansion. Without additional material, I can see myself losing interest in Sins eventually. Even so, I think I've already gotten my money's worth out of it. GC2 would be a bargain at twice the price.

Twilight of the Arnor is scheduled for April, and after that it's Dark Avatar 2.0, and on to upgrades for Twilight after that.
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Actually, TA is the last expansion for GC2. After that is the so called not-MoM fantasy TBS game. After that is GC3. That's not per any posted road map, it's just what I've gathered from dev comments in the GC2 forum. I don't think we're going to see any major GC2 updates after TA, probably just fixes/tweaks as necessary.

Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
[...Stardock will eventually finish to develop a] so called not-MoM fantasy TBS game.
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I'm a huge fan of Fantasy TBS Strategy games (such as the Heroes of Might & Magic, Age of Wonders, and Disciples series).

I hope that Stardock will not be « out of its depth » with that new type of game it is designing.

Even with all its flaws, Heroes of Might & Magic 5 (version 3.0) is currently the very best in the genre. Its A.I. is mediocre, but the visuals are awesome.

Stardock is confronted to a huge challenge, here.

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
I hope that Stardock will not be « out of its depth » with that new type of game it is designing.

Even with all its flaws, Heroes of Might & Magic 5 (version 3.0) is currently the very best in the genre. Its A.I. is mediocre, but the visuals are awesome. Stardock is confronted to a huge challenge, here.
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You have to be joking. Stardock could code a better game than HoMM5 in their sleep. Decade old gameplay with some new pretty graphics (hardly essential in a strategy game) does not "the very best in genre" make. HoMM3 was better, AoW:SM much better and (albeit it a different style of TBS game) Dominions 3 vastly better.

I'll be very disappointed if Stardock doesn't excel all of them, although what is most important are some fresh ideas mixed with the best of what we have seen before.



Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
I did say « Its A.I. is mediocre », and you did quote me on that point.

You want to argue that the visual quality of AoW:SM & Dominions 3 is better than HM&M 5 graphics ?!

You have to be joking.