Was playing a bit of Gal Civ II again. Drath Tech is HORRIBLY overpowered on larger maps. War Profiteering. (Shudder). Once you bribe the AI to war, the tech generates at minimum 20,000 credits per turn.
Gal Civ has several issues in all three iterations:
1. AI doesn't put enough engines on its ships.
2. OP combinations. For example, in Gal Civ II War Profiteering + ability to insta-buy starports, colony ships, and factories on your planets = Insta Win.
Right. Does anyone still remember the Drath from Gal Civ II?
Exactly how was War Profiteering "balanced?" It was either useless (very small maps) or absolutely overwhelming (very large maps).
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What we need is an AI or a system that allows the AI to beat you when it's behind. That would make the game fun.
ROFL stomping the AI gets boring after a while.
War Profiteering is well balanced to my eyes, there are SuperAbilities ingame which are even stronger, and because there are several power-restraints in place which may keep War Profiteering low:
- Presence of Altarians or too close proximity to evil-factions. Profiteering only works when Drath aren't at war with the target faction themselves. If Altarians are present their SA usually throws Drath into their own-instigated wars, nullifying War Profiteering. Of course there's a huge difference in between AI game & player game: As a player you can choose to not getting involved in any wars incl. if Altarians ask you to come to their aid - which is something the Drath AI will never do.
- Mapsize, you mentioned it already. If something is just situationally strong, or weak, that can be considered well-balanced on average. And it's so much better than to just average it out for all different setups because that would be boring - think about replayability.
- Profiteering is a late-game bonus, thus it must be strong once it kicks in otherwise it would be irrelevant. There are SA such as Breeder, Diplomat or Dominator where you can effectively win the game right during the first Colony Rush - they're much stronger. Therefore I don't understand how you can write this:
One of the things Gal Civ II did well is that it made the humans suck at the beginning. We couldn't expand like the way we can in III. Well, unless you got Drath tech and War Profiteering.
The Drath & Terran tree is similar in most regard (generic) with the Terran tree (apart from War Profiteering, which is an addition to their SA) being better because they have more extras (best HP-mod, Warpfleetmods, best sensor-mod, et pp). Drath are even handicapped morally. The gamebreaker however is SuperDiplomat which enables a player to buy freshly colonized planets from all AI (except Torian) for a really small amount of tech + bcs thrown in. I once tested out how far this could be driven in a large galaxy versus suicidal AIs - result at the end of the colonial rush I did have ALL habitable planets under my control (+200) with all AI being left with only 3 (the AI is hardcoded to refuse to trade away more planets except for peace-deals).
So from a player-standpoint the Terrans are the very best race to expand if you know how to do it. Ofc the AI won't utilize this but the Terran AI does well in early game with their +1 bonus to speed.
The only thing I find unbalanced on the Drath is their inherent high diplomacy rating: It's too strong esp. versus races that have an inherent diplomatic penalty, like Thalans or evil-factions: a difference of ~+60% right at gamestart is huge, and seeing that Drath can get the most diplo-bonuses from techs this is only worsening as the game progresses: sometimes causes the Drath to buy all warships away from other factions, and when these are at war with someone they'll get conquered. I've observed a Thalan AI giving away his last remaining defence fleets for his last remaining planet while hostile forces where adjacent to it - defeat.
But the problem here lies more into the evaluation system for ships: outdated designs get degraded in value too fast, plus the AI shouldn't even consider to sell ships when it is currently involved in own wars (ie. actually only when at peace and his development is stiffled by high military maintenance)
Diplomacy is actually the source of a large number of problems, because the AI makes choices just dependant on values of worth for specific items when a player can intelligently & strategically agree on deals. And that's actually the problem in a nutshell:
What we need is an AI or a system that allows the AI to beat you when it's behind. That would make the game fun.
You're asking for something impossible. A computer is only a counter. They cannot even really subtract, they use negative addition to come to it and all the other mathematical methods are deriven from addition as well. That thing is braindead stupid, the term Artifical Intelligence is grossly misleading. You're asking for something which the best scientists currently wouldn't be able to pull off (if you combine all available variables in a GC3 map at any given turns Go pales in comparison) so just tune down your expectations. Especially under a commercial environment.
4. Economic starbases provide large FIXED boosts to all planets in the system. None of that percentage silliness.
if you're having just a tiny little non-developed planet somewhere its power should be boosted into large numbers from SB support? Then the question would arise what you actually need planets for, just live in space directly.
A system depending on % modifiers promotes the utilization of big developed planets, a fixed boost simply calls for as many planets as possible no matter how they look like. I'd say an interesting approach would be to combine both approaches - if some modules would give a fixed amount that would help to close the gap between tiny & large planets in terms of direct raw output numbers.
2. The number and type of buildings you can build on a planet is limited by its population. Not enough people? Then there's not enough population to work the buildings.
In a future uber-industrialized civilization that shouldn't be a problem. Limiting factors are more likely to be space & energy-requirement.
8. Space is dangerous. Traveling into dark, unexplored areas far from your cultural boundaries can cause your ships to die for no reason.
Apart from the cosmic radiation (and a future civ would've to solve that problem otherwise space travel wouldn't be possible in the first place) space is nothing but vastly empty. Though I agree that exploration can be fun if there would be more to it than just unveiling the FOW. Though I think this should be more related to uncover stuff in asteroid belts or planets themselves.
7. Make everything that travels in space super expensive relative to buildings on the ground. Make constructor and colony modules ESPECIALLY expensive.
I think I understand why you're asking for this: If something holds a great deal of potential future power one shouldn't get it so cheap as now. Otherwise you just master to get as much out of it as fast as possible and most likely win by this [The Grand-Marigoldran-Strategy 
]. The problem is that the GC flow actually foresees it to make a colonial rush at very beginning of the game. If you throttle that down too much players may find themselves into a situation of too empty turns. One possible solution could be to dynamically change the cost of Colony Ships - let it be increased by a % factor for any planet that has been colonized in the past (FreeOrion uses this IMO to great success)
Make constructor and colony modules ESPECIALLY expensive.
IMO constuctors should see a large overhaul. Something along the line that a constructor is only needed to initiate a facility, all its upgrades/improvements should be built according to rules specified by a player, its costs simply taken off from existing planetary production, in a way like the Freighter system in GC2 worked.
