deweyjohn

some annoying diplomacy stuff from GalCiv2 which I hope won't be repeated in GalCiv3 in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Not long ago Brad requested feedback on diplomacy, basically asking what diplomatic features from previous 4X games we most enjoyed. I'm not a founder and don't have early access. But, I still play GalCiv2 regularly and had a few thoughts about shortcomings in diplomacy that I hope won't be repeated in GalCiv3. 1) I was just playing a game where the Korath Clan declared war on me. Several turns later, the Altarians contacted me, and said something like "Your war against th

Reply to list of civilizations - what do we know so far? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Ok, thanks Charon. I guess I can look forward to the inevitable expansion then. If there are only eight to choose from, I hope the developers will at least take extra care to make them all very distinctive.

list of civilizations - what do we know so far? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere. I only visit here infrequently and couldn't find any recent posts about it. So far, we seem to have: Terrans (maybe two variants, loyalists and pirates), Altarians, Drengi, Krynn, Iridium, Thalan, and Yor. That's potentially eight civilzations, which is ok but not up to snuff with GalCiv2. Furthermore they killed off some of my favorite races, so I hope there will be a few more exotic new alien races. Does anyone have

Reply to 3 questions from Stardock to you in GalCiv III Dev Journals GalCiv3 Forums

I'm just going to focus on question #1. My favorite feature of diplomacy in 4X games is forming alliances with computer players against mutual threats. I especially like it when the galaxy is split along ideological lines, as in the GalCiv2 campaigns and some scenario maps. Unfortunately, it rarely seems to work out that way in sandbox games. My major problem with diplomacy in GalCiv2 was that perceived military might seemed WAY more important than anything else in determining the

Ship-to-ship combat - another thinkbox thread in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Since war is a huge part of any 4x strategy game, here are some changes to the combat from GalCiv2 that I'd love to see implemented in GalCiv3. -When I first encounter an alien spacecraft, there's no good reason why I should be able to right-click on it and see its exact weapon and armor specifications. This should require some espionage, advanced scanning technology, or first hand experience fighting the ships. It would make you think twice about declaring war on newly encoun

Reply to Diplomacy: The great "thinkbox" thread. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Some ambitious ideas here. I like the idea of ship-to-ship diplomacy though. (Hail them Mr. Worf! :) ) On the topic of universal credibility, it would be cool if the United Planets was a little more important. In GalCiv 2, the resolutions to be voted on seemed pretty random. Sometimes a resolution would be proposed to limit evil races' trade routes, or to force the richest civ to give money to poorer civs. But whether or not these issues came up seemed totally unrelated to what wa

Reply to Please Create a Living and Breathing Galaxy in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I absolutely agree with the OP. Random events, and lots of them, would help to give individual games more personality. I could do without the GalCiv2 style "mega events" however, which frequently threw things out of balance so much as to be really frustrating. I also agree with the idea of having tensions with conquered planets. It would be cool if the game kept track of the racial composition of each planet, similar to Master of Orion 2. So if the Drengin conquer a Torian planet, the

Reply to Bugs found in TA 2.03 in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

65) Sometimes when the ai makes an announcement that it's going to war, it will immediately repeat the announcement at the start of next turn (maybe two go-to-war rules satisfied their preconditions?). 66) Sometimes it seems as if I'm being attacked by invisible AI ships. This might be caused by enemy ships somehow occupying the same tiles as starbases I control. I say this because my starbases look like they're firing on themselves. 67) There's an annoying bug with the priori

Reply to Conversation Ideas in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Some of the most commonly encountered diplomatic encounters are AI_CRY_FOR_HELP, AI_TEAM_UP_AGAINST_CIV, and ANNOUNCE_RESEARCH. So I would suggest focusing effort adding new race-specific conversations under those tags.

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Tolmekian, what galaxy settings do you play on? That could be useful to know if the effectiveness of different AI strategies interacts with things like galaxy size, which I suspect it does. There seems to be a consensus that AI 7 and 10 are not even competitive. But I've gotten both the Drengin and Arceans to win games via military conquest of the entire galaxy using AI 7 combined with a high aggression settings, and I've also seen the Torians and Iconians do very well using the supposedly br

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Hey all, I can now confirm that if you change the branch id for the starbase line of techs (starting with advanced starbase construction, through all the starbase fortification upgrades) from 'defenses' to 'weapons', at least a few of the AI opponents will much more eager to research them. This was true even though I left the aivalues at 5. I gave this treatment to every race's tech tree. I started a 10 player large map, did a ctrl+z and let it run until year 2233. At this point, the

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for reporting your findings, Tolmekian. Meanwhile, I haven't had much success getting the computer to construct powerful starbases. I got the Korx (on ai 11) to research StarbaseVictoryStrategy and StarbaseSupremacy by increasing the aivalues to 50, but they didn't build any starbases so they got no benefit from it. I'll try this with ai 8 next, since the Terrans and others who use personality 8 seem to build lots of economy starbases.

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Hey all, Another thing for the Korx: they will research Super Trade Starbases if you switch the category from starbase to economics. Which leads me to comment that, in general, the ai players seem to undervalue starbase upgrades. I would be interested to see if AIs would start building powerful starbases if they were categorized according to what they benefit (military, economics, or culture), since anything in the starbase category seems to be ignored until there's nothing else to re

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Also note that in the Drath tech tree, healing pools are categorized as "Medical" instead of "Entertainment", explaining why they never research it.

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Interesting post, qrtxian. I would add that ai 7 is the "transport/spore-ship rusher", or something along those lines. They have to conquer another race relatively early in the game to compensate for their failure to colonize aggressively. But if they can do that, they can be very tough. The Drengin can do very well on personality 7 provided you turn their aggression very high (I'm using 80) and increase the aivalue of their manufacturing/research techs to 25. Since making those cha

Reply to Conversation Mod 1.1 in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

No comments? I recommend everybody download this mod. Good job. [e digicons]:beer:[/e]

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I suspect the Iconian's problem with researching hulls is specific to AI 10. That's the same one used by the Torians, who are known for their swarms of tiny ships. Have you tested them on 11 or 8?

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I test games with the following steps: -start a new game in cheat mode -use the reveal map cheat (ctrl+u) -create a new minor (ctrl+shift+d) -take control of that minor by selecting their planet with the mouse, and hitting ctrl+shift+z -go to the foreign policy tab and leave the u.p. -destroy your colony -click on a nearby sun, and hit ctrl+z -hit the next button, and the game will play out as if you had hit ctrl+z at the s

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Let me clarify, in the above post I'm talking about adjusting the parameter for manufacturing and research improvements in the Drengin tech tree, not the values in planetary_improvements.xml (although it's fun to tweak those as well).

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Hey qrtxian--in a test game, I changed Xeno Geology's type to Colonization, and increased the aivalue to 50, and it was then one of the first techs the ai researched. In general I'm getting good results from cranking up ai values to 25, 50 for race-specific techs that you want to 'force' the ai to research for its own good. Here's a technique for deadlier Drengin: set their ai personality to 11, and increase the value of their unique manufacturing (Slave Pits, Slave Canyons, D

Reply to So Twilight is broken... and there seems no real interest in fixing it in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I use 8 for the Yor and 11 for Drengin. The Yor on 8 do a good job getting to the Barren planets.

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I'm trying to get the Krynn ai to pursue an influence strategy, instead of just filling up every planet with generic factories and research labs as they do in ToA. On my first try I increased the ai value of all influence techs in their tech tree from 5 to 15, and increased the value of the consulate to 50 in the planetary improvements .xml. They built consulates on all their planets so that part worked, but they still didn't get JihadOfKrynn until after planetary invasion, so the research te

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II news! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Fix the bug that makes enemy fleets turn invisible!

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Bumping this thread.. It seems worthwhile to experiment with the tech tree categories, as it's already had a big effect on my games. For example, I've always wondered why the computer Korx player doesn't research Mercenaries and Fortified Freighters (in ToA). I noticed these techs were categorized as 'trade'. I tried switching the category to 'economics', and now the ai player will get them. There could be many more examples, we all know how buggy this game is.

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

This is very interesting. Once I started looking at the tech trees, I saw many other techs that were in odd categories. For example, take a took at the Iconian tech tree--at least on my machine, many techs appeared mislabeled (e.g. Advanced Logistics is categorized as "Biological Warfare"!) Of course it's hard to know which of these are legitimate mistakes, and which were intended by the programmers as work-arounds for undesirable ai behaviors.