Should Stardock be serving crackers, or reducing my cheese intake?

Heh, good points there

I don't think its so bad to give scouts upkeep though, some cheese just needs to be thrown away no matter who's eating it

Personally I think every ship should have upkeep, and constructors should cost more to build (though that doesn't do much for the end game madness, maybe it makes it happen later though). I also think that you should be able to send as many freighters between 2 worlds as you want, and have it only count as 1 trade route. The addional freighters would just add to the value of the route (dimishing returns though of course). Or cap the number of freighters/route based on PQ or some sci level, or whatever you want

I was concerned about this as well in another thread, that it's easy for a developer to get into a 'if players do X then we implement Y to counter X' sort of feedback situation that doesn't do anyone any good. I think any time something is being implemented the key question should be 'Does this make GalCiv a better game?' with 'better' not being equated with 'stopping cheese'. Ideally anything that stops cheese should also bring something else to the table, it should make the game feel better overall.

A good example would be the elimination of the +15 PQ pick, which was clearly worth too much for the price regardless of whether it resulted in cheese or not. GalCiv is a better game with the current +PQ picks implemented in the 1.03A patch.

A bad example would be, IMO, the elimination of the +10 PQ tech bonuses from near the end of the tech tree. See a seperate thread on this for details.

I'll restate my philosophy that I stated in another thread: I want my game to have more, do more, and/or be more after a patch, not less. 'Less' should only be for truly dire situations (like the +15 PQ one). There will always be min/max players that push the game so hard that it breaks down, I don't want them to become the focus of patching efforts.

Notice I used the word 'become', so far I think the Stardock team has been pretty balanced in their approach. What got me worried was that +10 PQ elimination which seemed to come out of left field. This got me worried that future patches might go further astray (IMO), so I brought it up in another thread (and now here). But I was much encouraged by the feature list of the bonus pack, and I think that the Stardock team has been very good at getting feedback from their customers, so I think that we'll continue to see good patches in the future and not end up in the Verant Zone.

StarPilot's use of colony ships shows why it can often be a waste of a developer's time to spend programming effort to try to eliminate cheese. People who min/max will just find some other brand.

There will always be cheese. If nothing else, if someone REALLY wants to they can get save and reload games before EVERY colonization until they get a +50% PQ on every planet.

So far I think they have spent a lot of good time on things besides cheese, but I really would be grateful if they could put in a few more major mods, maybe another tech branch?

A fewmore ships? May be evena higher level defense ship that comes after the hammer(since it got nerfed)?

You need to seperate the occasional updates from the quarterly expansions. The big game additions go into the three month expansions. This includes things like lots of new ships, techs, gameplay changes, improveements. In between these upgrades I think spending time on reducing cheese is fairly well spent.

A lot of people fail to appreciate how annoyed other players get when they play a good game and just can't compete against other players on the Metaverse due to cheese tactics. Ensuring these other players remain fairly happy is as important as releasing small updates to keep players who don't care about cheese happy. I think Stardock have been doing an excellent job in maintaining a good balance.

Cheese will never go away, but the worst abuse tactics can and are being systematically removed. So long as any player can play a good game, submit to the metaverse and think 'that was a good game' (as oppossed to why are my scores so low compared to others) they'll be content.

Paul.

~SDC~

I agree with the above. Cheese when exploited only cheats the player out a fun and exciting game experience. You cannot eliminate all of it. The focus should be on correcting issues that often fall within the gray area of cheese/gamedesign problems whereby realism and good gameplay is compromised by subtle design flaw (e.g., the alliances peace negotiation issues). While these flaws might be mercilessly exploited by cheeseheads, they simply annoy legitimate players by compromising realism.

The fundamental problem causing this problem is the limitation that prevents ships from different AIs to occupy the same square on the map. Therefore, it is possible for a non-military ship to isolate systems and regions of the galaxy unless the AI is prepare to declare war.

If two races are not at war, then ships from their races should be able to move freely past each other on the same squares without obstruction.

Depending on the how the game was designed, this may not be an easy problem to correct.

I would agree with most of you that Stardock shouldn't be focused on blocking voluntary cheese tactics. Note my qualifier: voluntary.

To Not Patch Cheese...
----------------------
We do not need Stardock to patch the game to prevent cheese tactics that you must voluntarily and purposefully employ. After all, it's a choice that is completely in your control.

[Good Example]
Ring of freighters. This is completely in your control to deploy. It's a definate choice. Choose to play legitimately and you're in good shape.

To Patch Cheese...
------------------
I _am_ in favor of Stardock patching the game to prevent cheese tactics that are not voluntarily employed; that is to say correcting those "loopholes" in the AI that the player must consiously avoid exploiting.

[Example] Never-ending wars. The behavior of an allied AI to make peace with your mutual enemy one turn, then the next turn come back and remember you're allies and say they'll support your alliance and make war again. This is a short-coming that makes sense to correct. Here you have to consiously avoid taking advantage of the situation, which is a distraction to game play.

Summary
-------
Keep in mind the number of people who enjoy the game outside of the participants in this forum. Safe bet that most of them didn't consider the "Ring of..." cheese and will find little value in a patch that prevents that. Give them a patch that adds in a few UP events and a few more snazzier sounds and you'll keep them coming back for more...

-Anxiety

Well uping upkeep on scouts (or all ships) doesn't prevent this particular kind of cheese, it just makes it more expensive. A better fix would be to allow for ships from races not at war to pass through the same sectors if its too difficult to allow them to coexist. Though the chesseheads would just build deeper rings I suppose, but eventually it becomes tedious enough that the cheese is reduced in efficiency.

Personally I think all ships shuold pay upkeep, and that's got nothing to do with fixing cheese, just an opinion.

This thread is practical and important. I agree with the jist of it, which can be summed up to a plea to Brad and company: Please do not fall into the trap of "upgrading" the game with cheese fixes to the point that it hinders a balanced and true upgrading of the game that will add to the majorities' enjoyment. There is definately some balance to be maintained, and we all hope Stardock has the wisdom to walk the right line.

Happy gaming.

Gord

~SDC~

I agree with the general point that cheese lovers (no offense to France) are only hurting their own game experience and the devs should not obsess on it (which I don't think they are). The one difference with GalCiv is the metaverse. I'd hate to see the metaverse become irrelevent due to scores inflated by the use of cheese tactics, which (IMO) is a good reason for making a resaonable effort at limiting over-the-top (i.e really, really stinky) cheese tactics.

Personally, I hate 1.03. It reminds me of Civilization 3 - so focused on making it hard to win that it's no fun to play. The game got so hard I had to drop back down to painful from crippling. And, despite the fact that I am winning my current game (I think) I'm seriously considering not finishing the game - with 1.03, GalCiv lost the "just one more turn" effect.
Tho, for me it was mainly the change in tech trading. When I offer 12 techs to a race, I expect a hell of a lot more than 20bc for 10 turns. I still don't know why Brad was so insistant on nerfing this strategy. It's what the US does, and what Europe did, after all. We come up with new technologies, sell them to other countries, and use that revenue to come up with even more new technologies. I hate being ahead in techolology and not having enough wealth to keep my economy wrunning. You'd think the other races would want a chance to catch up. But 200 BC for techs that took 24 turns to research at 30% of my economic output is .
Why was this strategy nerfed? What was so wrong with it?

It got tweaked because you could multiply your income with tech trading while simultaneously trashing the economies of the AI. Honestly, what percentage of your income was coming from tribute? 20%? 50%? 80%? Even if you use the "realism" argument, you'd have to come up with a real example, and I'm afraid there is none. The unlimited tribute was seriously affecting gameplay balance, so it had to be fixed, especially on higher difficulties. You just have to swallow your pride and come to the realization that anything above "intelligent" in GalCiv will be a lot tougher than "deity" for the Civ series, "transcend" in SMAC, and whatever top level there was in the MOO series. It's not as if toning down the AI one level will make you the laughing stock of the GalCiv community. The AI is kicking most of our butts too after all.

I did come up with a real example. The way Europe and the US were able to wreck other economies though technology trade. The way the first world STILL engages in economic colonialism to loot third world countries for the profit of the multi-nationals. I mean, hell, the reason Japan and China are ignoring American IP is because it was too expensive to keep up licensing the technology.
The present trading offers are so low that I don't even want to bother to trade with the AI, like in Civ 3.
As for how much was I getting from tribute? Probably no more than 1/3.
How else am I going to keep spending up? Ignore the intent of freighter trading (further away = more revenue) and build all my trade routes with one near by minor race and plant star bases all along the route, which will have to be in a straight line to ignore the parallelogram effect?
I can win the game, dude. Even at Painful. I was winning it (afaik) when I gave up. The problem, as it was with Civ 3, is that the game is no longer fun to play, much less win. And if the what I was offered in 1.2 was too high, what I was offered in 1.3 was laughably low.