Several Bugs and Various Annoyances
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GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
Apologies if submitted by others.
Bugs:
(1) Ship movement points can increase when attacking inside a Super Isolationist sphere of influence. Don't recall *exact* circumstances that caused this to happen but have been able to cause to happen a few times. Useful. Having 5 MP ships reduced to 3 being able to move > 20 moves. I self inflicted a stop to my movement - it was getting too easy and felt like cheating.
(2) Start of new turn. Have observed an old DL bug where ship creation reports are not shown. Irritating when playing on a gigantic galaxy with large numbers of ship produing planets. End up with transports not being launched etc. Perhaps an auto-launch all built ships feature?
(3) Have seen some threads to this. None seemed quite relevant. At current point in current game - is unplayable - shame is most interesting game I've had to date
. Ships take around 0.5 to 1 sec to move a single space. Reducing to lowest settings made no difference. Shrinking status bar made no difference. At start of game was fine. I can only assume that the sheer numbers of ships galaxy wide has thrown internal data structures into chaos.
Normal panning etc is fine. Moving ships is poor. Messing around with drivers (tricky - laptops don't often get driver updates) made no difference. WinXP Pro.
(4) Not updating with fleets/ships. Either in battles - need to keep re-click slecting the same fleet to accurately track damage/progress. Or when trying to move a fleet out of shared squares - really painful this one. This current method is truely designed to irritate.
(5) Time to finish building differences between the full summary screen and the individual planet screen. One will say 2 turns, the other 3, for example.
Annoyances?
(A) A way of forcing ships to move *BEFORE* clicking end of turn. The existing method is suboptimal, strategically, across ultra large maps.
(B) Way of setting colony building priorities across an empire. eg Build X's before Y's, build Y'z before Z's and so on. Currently you either enter micromanagement hell - fighting the interface - or don't and suffer strategically for it. Being forced to do make work or be punished for it, loses the fun out of playing a game all too rapidly.
(C) Can miners be set to automine within my sphere of influence?
(D) Can constructors be set to autoupdate to "here". On ultra large maps one seems to build a *LOT* of starbases and keeping tabs on it all is... frustrating.
(E) From 5 & 7, a way to set how starbases will be autobuilt by automanaged constructors. Manually set constructors would obviously allow one to choose otherwise.
(F) A way of being able to select lists of planets (eg CTRL or Shift as per most GUI's) to set emphasis to Research or Improvements. Having to click on one or the other over long lists of planets is *painful*.
(G) A way of telling the interface to go and buy the cheapest to complete X's or "anythings". Leave me with 1234 bc's. To avoid click hell when buying out large numbers of buildings.
(H) Please please *PLEASE* a simplified way of buying out buildings. ****PLEASE****. The existing method is click hell with large numbers of planets. Please? The RSI in my right arm will forever thank you.
(I) A way of setting the default state of all planets, overridden locally, to focus on Research if not building anything. Save the continual back and forth toggling throughout a game.
(J) Being able to select just *my* starbases in the summary listing
(K) This was in DL, but seems to have gone walkies lately. Being able to choose a planet in the Colony Manager full summary listing, and have the interface focus move to that planet. Not the side bar summary, the full screeen one - it's where I spend much of my time. Sadly.
(A-K) Basically tweak the interface so it's less of a fight and more helpful to playing a game. Make work, especially when it could be so easily automated, is just annoying and removes the fun factor, replacing with frustration.
(L) Increase the value of trade on gigantic maps - or at least # of routes. As it is the 300 bc from trade is insignificant next to the 20,000+ the rest of my enconomy tends to be producing by the time I get to the top trade levels (on Tough). Far better to produce a few more 2000 troop transports than freighters. Evil Grin.
(M) AI does not appear to focus on (a) ship speed or (b) economy development on gigantic maps. Rather seems to follow the same build lots of ships/military style as per smaller maps. This is suboptimal. I won't bother even developing a military until someone declares war on me. By the time their first ships are even entering my zone of control I usually have a counter-attacking armada several times more powerful than they do. Assuming their ships even get anywhere near my ZOC....
(N) The AI seems to do a poor job of realising it's getting it's butt kicked. While recognising this is a game, I feel a more realistic solution would be for the AI to become more... shrill at doing anything in it's power to buy off a powerful attacker. I rarely get peace offers and usually they are "Hey lets have some peace". Urm no. Make it *really* worth my while. Handing over built up resource starbases would be a very powerful incentive IMHO. Planets is another. Ok, so they lose maybe half their empire, but that's better than all of it. Isn't it????
(O) Unsure *how* it could be improved but diplomacy is not as... engaging as it could be. Generally it's almost irrelevant. I can't bully, I can't buy off, I can't bribe voting etc etc etc. Medieval TW II has IMHO done a very encoraging step forward with Diplomacy - perhaps something similar? I really liked how they did the Cardinal/Pope voting. The UP in GalCiv seems very irrelevant - make it more painful to the players and AI's - be a war monger, it can/will enforce sanctions. Become a research powerhouse, suffer border sniping/increased spies etc. Being able to create privateers would be an entertaining option too. If one could bring minor nations into ones empire without war? Protectorates and the like.
Obviously that brings complexity.
Please do take all the above as positive criticisim, despite my growing ranting as I listed all the annoyances.
The GalCiv series is one of my all time favorites. I wouldn't have spent so much time generating the above list otherwise. I'd just delete it from my HDD and curse Stardocks name.
Thanks for reading the above.
Steve
Bugs:
(1) Ship movement points can increase when attacking inside a Super Isolationist sphere of influence. Don't recall *exact* circumstances that caused this to happen but have been able to cause to happen a few times. Useful. Having 5 MP ships reduced to 3 being able to move > 20 moves. I self inflicted a stop to my movement - it was getting too easy and felt like cheating.
(2) Start of new turn. Have observed an old DL bug where ship creation reports are not shown. Irritating when playing on a gigantic galaxy with large numbers of ship produing planets. End up with transports not being launched etc. Perhaps an auto-launch all built ships feature?
(3) Have seen some threads to this. None seemed quite relevant. At current point in current game - is unplayable - shame is most interesting game I've had to date
. Ships take around 0.5 to 1 sec to move a single space. Reducing to lowest settings made no difference. Shrinking status bar made no difference. At start of game was fine. I can only assume that the sheer numbers of ships galaxy wide has thrown internal data structures into chaos.Normal panning etc is fine. Moving ships is poor. Messing around with drivers (tricky - laptops don't often get driver updates) made no difference. WinXP Pro.
(4) Not updating with fleets/ships. Either in battles - need to keep re-click slecting the same fleet to accurately track damage/progress. Or when trying to move a fleet out of shared squares - really painful this one. This current method is truely designed to irritate.
(5) Time to finish building differences between the full summary screen and the individual planet screen. One will say 2 turns, the other 3, for example.
Annoyances?
(A) A way of forcing ships to move *BEFORE* clicking end of turn. The existing method is suboptimal, strategically, across ultra large maps.
(B) Way of setting colony building priorities across an empire. eg Build X's before Y's, build Y'z before Z's and so on. Currently you either enter micromanagement hell - fighting the interface - or don't and suffer strategically for it. Being forced to do make work or be punished for it, loses the fun out of playing a game all too rapidly.
(C) Can miners be set to automine within my sphere of influence?
(D) Can constructors be set to autoupdate to "here". On ultra large maps one seems to build a *LOT* of starbases and keeping tabs on it all is... frustrating.
(E) From 5 & 7, a way to set how starbases will be autobuilt by automanaged constructors. Manually set constructors would obviously allow one to choose otherwise.
(F) A way of being able to select lists of planets (eg CTRL or Shift as per most GUI's) to set emphasis to Research or Improvements. Having to click on one or the other over long lists of planets is *painful*.
(G) A way of telling the interface to go and buy the cheapest to complete X's or "anythings". Leave me with 1234 bc's. To avoid click hell when buying out large numbers of buildings.
(H) Please please *PLEASE* a simplified way of buying out buildings. ****PLEASE****. The existing method is click hell with large numbers of planets. Please? The RSI in my right arm will forever thank you.
(I) A way of setting the default state of all planets, overridden locally, to focus on Research if not building anything. Save the continual back and forth toggling throughout a game.
(J) Being able to select just *my* starbases in the summary listing
(K) This was in DL, but seems to have gone walkies lately. Being able to choose a planet in the Colony Manager full summary listing, and have the interface focus move to that planet. Not the side bar summary, the full screeen one - it's where I spend much of my time. Sadly.
(A-K) Basically tweak the interface so it's less of a fight and more helpful to playing a game. Make work, especially when it could be so easily automated, is just annoying and removes the fun factor, replacing with frustration.
(L) Increase the value of trade on gigantic maps - or at least # of routes. As it is the 300 bc from trade is insignificant next to the 20,000+ the rest of my enconomy tends to be producing by the time I get to the top trade levels (on Tough). Far better to produce a few more 2000 troop transports than freighters. Evil Grin.
(M) AI does not appear to focus on (a) ship speed or (b) economy development on gigantic maps. Rather seems to follow the same build lots of ships/military style as per smaller maps. This is suboptimal. I won't bother even developing a military until someone declares war on me. By the time their first ships are even entering my zone of control I usually have a counter-attacking armada several times more powerful than they do. Assuming their ships even get anywhere near my ZOC....
(N) The AI seems to do a poor job of realising it's getting it's butt kicked. While recognising this is a game, I feel a more realistic solution would be for the AI to become more... shrill at doing anything in it's power to buy off a powerful attacker. I rarely get peace offers and usually they are "Hey lets have some peace". Urm no. Make it *really* worth my while. Handing over built up resource starbases would be a very powerful incentive IMHO. Planets is another. Ok, so they lose maybe half their empire, but that's better than all of it. Isn't it????
(O) Unsure *how* it could be improved but diplomacy is not as... engaging as it could be. Generally it's almost irrelevant. I can't bully, I can't buy off, I can't bribe voting etc etc etc. Medieval TW II has IMHO done a very encoraging step forward with Diplomacy - perhaps something similar? I really liked how they did the Cardinal/Pope voting. The UP in GalCiv seems very irrelevant - make it more painful to the players and AI's - be a war monger, it can/will enforce sanctions. Become a research powerhouse, suffer border sniping/increased spies etc. Being able to create privateers would be an entertaining option too. If one could bring minor nations into ones empire without war? Protectorates and the like.
Obviously that brings complexity.
Please do take all the above as positive criticisim, despite my growing ranting as I listed all the annoyances.
The GalCiv series is one of my all time favorites. I wouldn't have spent so much time generating the above list otherwise. I'd just delete it from my HDD and curse Stardocks name.
Thanks for reading the above.
Steve
