GalCiv Play example: Triumph of evil..

A most excellent article!

A Torian dreadnought was named "Die Humans"? Interesting.

In SEIV, my little scout ships with minor armament I call Dreadnots..

fleabitfox

I bet your heart is as black as mine Brad

/Andreas

i'm sure the ship's name was translated into german - thus, "the humans"

Excellent, I would like to see all of your AAR in the Galatic Encyclopedia so I can easily find them.

Yep, it looks like this project has consistant focus, excellent art work, deep AI, and lots of modifiably flexability.
I would bet $20 (2.75 to 1) that I am going to really like game. Any takers?

Really captivating ! I WANT THIS GAME !!!
The AI races really seem to play as if they were sentient, with goals, memory, strategies ...
I wonder in what measure it is "hard coded" and thus predictable, will have to see that !
The most disturbing is however that they can end up beaten by their own overconfidence - freaky !

Very nice AAR again; really wetting my mouth! One can clearly see that, with Galciv, we TBS players are getting a complete, polished game for a change. LOL

I have already pestered my local shop to order it, and will have the game a few days after release, if the customs office doesn´t mess things up!

In the meantime, I check this site daily, so don´t forget to add some goodie each day. LOL

FrogBoy, can you turn Good and try the next challenge ?
PowerFlower Federation !

Pacifists, abilities in Social, Pop Growth and Trade, Political Victory, random enemies ethics/level

Always make "Good" decisions and ... NEVER ATTACK ANYONE - better yet, don't build a single warship ! :eek:

Could be fun at least (even if not really winnable...)

I have never been able to survive w/out any war ships... NEVER... the other races are smart, and they know picking on the weak will lead to their strength.

~SDC~

Wow, that was beautiful. The drama, the humiliation, the despair as the Yor swept across the galaxy, and the final victory. Great stuff! Hope to see a few more of these before the game comes out.

Pdifolco did say said "dont BUILD a single war ship"...I wonder if it'd be possible to win a game as a trading empire...acquire the necessary fleets through trade with friendly civs. By focusing on social projects (tade goods and wonders) and technologies (diplomacy techs) I bet you could get pretty far with this tactic. It'd be difficult, but interesting.

~SDC~

You know, I might try that.

~SDC~

Hey... it was kind of sad what I was going to the Drengins earlier... they had 2 planets and I was playing as good for a change but when they got one of their planets upgrade to class 35 I couln't resist. This was early on in the game so all I had was a bunch of BattleCruisers... they had a few Battle Axes(high def). They knew I could kill them but I was having a hard time doing it... considering my military was about 10x more than theres in numbers I simple did not want to take the time to kill off their ships. Instead I demanded a peace treaty with alot of their ships... the next turn I went around and attack them with all their ships and took over the planet, and gave them back their ships... it was very funny... it is hard for me to switch between good and evil... I usually like to do evil things

~SDC~

I suspect random events would make it possible. 1 in ? games depending in opposition polotics. You could make it easier everybody loves everyone, then ramp it up. But even nurturing countries use aggressive tactics to ensure the long term health of their own. Right on! This game might finally such me into actual modding. Thats all I need another obsession.

Tell the truth. Do you have a Darth Vader helmet in your home?

I wrote a paper on Stalin... at the end my teacher wrote "I hope you never become the prisident... " hmmmm.... It was wether Stalin's brutality was needed to obtain the production they acheived... and I said that it was needed... I think it sounds alot more sinical then I wrote it to be, it is funny to read....

In real life I wouldn't hurt a fly... well maby a fly(I eat meat....) but I do respect life. Just a game, not hurting anyone anywhere(or did SD forget to mention something?)

~SDC~

I see well they have medicine for such people.
But seriously DarkHelmet try not to sleep with it on. It'll probably cause terrible ear chafing. LOL Just kidding.

~SDC~

Great AAR, Brad. Got me revved up to play tonight. It was also interesting to see a seemingly hopeless game turned around like that.

I once had a fantastic game of MOO that was very similar, though I don't think I ever got as bad off as you did. I was the humans, got boxed up in a corner early on. Took out some Silicoid worlds, some Alkari worlds, but the Psilons were wiping out everyone else - Mrrshans, Klackons, etc. Then I met them. They would take one system, then I would sue for peace, they would accept. Or I would desperately fight them off, just barely from taking a couple of worlds. Finally, I got some key tech, and I got a truce with them. Can't remember, but truces in the game lasted x number of turns. I took my rich former Silicoid worlds, designed a dreadnought planet buster, and set those worlds to building them.

Then I massed them at several points on my border worlds. When the Psilons declared war again after the prescribed number of turns (like I knew they would), I struck. My planet busters went from Psilon world to Psilon world reducing them to radioactive rubble. He took a couple of my worlds, but he was focused on conquest, while I, in desperation, was committing genocide. When the radioactivity cleared, the Psilon core systems were radioactive hulks, and I was left to mop up their frontier worlds, and retake my captured systems.

Great game, one I still remember . . .

Grifman

While I've been quite enjoying the little play example stories, there is one thing about this one in particular, and the promotion of the game in general, that is annoying me.

The AI does not play by the same rules as the player. While it does sound like it's quite clever and has some interesting techie bits (pondering it's next move during the player's turn, that multi-threading thing that gets mentioned) it is still using the old AI programming fallback of giving it an economic boost to make the AI more challenging, or only giving them a percentage of 'normal' income to make the AI easier, and so on.

As I've seen other people saying in another thread - if there's an easy slider/switch to either allow or disallow AI economic adjustments then that's something that will put the AI a cut above most others. As it stands presently, no such switch/slider is available?
So please, stop bragging about the AI if part of the "balancing" of it is to change the rules for the computer players.

From what I've read of the game, it sounds great, and exactly the kind of game I'm after - but if something like the AI is being misrepresented, what else are you falsifying? :notsure:

Mythor

P.S. If it sees an Australian release date, I'll be buying it regardless; I'm just tired of seeing virtually every game bending the truth or just plain lying about it's features. You guys are open to suggestions, obviously, and this is something that is important. But if you ignore me, I'm not going to be petty about it. A fun game is a fun game.

What I think Frogboy meant by "playing with the same rules" was that the AI has to build, develop, research, fight, just like a human player would. Their income comes only *directly* through their skill at managing the economics of the game, not some inexaustible pool of cash with which to build stuff. When froggy destroyed those star bases, it *hurt* the AI, because it depended on them. Nothing in that game was falsified, and I find your assumption of that rather disturbing when SD has dealt with absolute openness so far.

As for the economic bonuses for the AI, those appear only in the highest levels of difficulty, which exist specifically to give a challenge to people who can beat the AI in even terms consistently (all 3 of them) Then you have Intelligent, which is the AI at top settings and with no bonuses whatsoever. Beat this level consistently and you can claim greatness. Below that the AI will not be so bright, BUT it will still have a huge advantage over a human player: it has the patience to be infinitely anal-retentive and tweak every single aspect of the game to their advantage (there is no code in the AI to see if something would be boring for a human :)) So, while probably being worse at strategic thinking in the dumber settings, it will still be incredibly efficient. Thus, to counter that, it's given a slight penalty to the economy. Not to make it less efficient, but to COUNTER it's efficiency and allow it to be on par with the less experienced human playing it.

Still, this economic adjustment has nothing to do with it not playing by the rules once the game starts.

Astro

If it gets a bonus, or has a penalty, it's not the same rules. Period.
It may be that it's not as rule bending as other games, but them rules are definitely bendy.

If you don't want to play with the rules bent, set all the AIs to Intelligent.

End transmission.

~SDC~

Back to my FlowerPower game idea : as BoogieBac says, the challenge should be not not build warships, nor to attack. In a political game, you can however use others to puash aside the burden of war : alliances, gift to enemies of your enemies, even trading of ships (see it as buying mercs in case of extreme need )...

And the FP Empire should be quite good at diplomacy, social projects and tech. As it will focus on "useful" items, you will skip entire tech families (weapons)and put back almost all your income in production and trade... And people should be happy too
But well, I still don't have the game, damn !!!