GCX Beta 4 Commentary

Hopefully people like the retire option. In hindsight, this should have been in 1.0.

Well, I like the new better scoring for the higher levels *alot*.

Am I hallucinating or did the Yor get a little work done on their AI? They are no longer the chumps of the universe in my games. It might be just that when playing on Crippling + Maso the bonuses help cover up the Yor's failings, however.

~SDC~

I've just tried it the Retire feature but at the very beginning. The submission screen popped up and the status of the victory/loss was Retired. Obviously, the score was zero. I think a reason why people don't submit losses (other than for the obvious scoring reason and I'm assuming Retired=Loss here) is that they don't want to wait around until the AI conquers each and every remaining planet. This feature would enable them to go to the game summary screens to take a look at how they did relative to the AIs and if they want to, submit a game.

I like the random/need-based tech tree for Arceans alot. This is because experienced players soon get a hang of the research paths of the AIs and this foreknowledge reduces the game difficulty. Maso players especially gun for certain techs which AIs are slow to research and use them for trading. The Arceans trade these techs as well so AIs typically advance quicker in terms of tech research.

Hmm, I should try the Retire function now at the middle of my Maso game and see what the results/score.

Oh yes, I love the higher scores too!





Score for retiring mid-game of a Maso Gig = 486

Frogboy is too modest in his stating of whats been fixed.. i've found that quite a few other little things have been fixed to.

In my game I played
universalists +moral +peed +range
large abundant tight
5 AI's set at default allignments
3 on normal and 2 on sub normal. giving game difficulty normal

I noticed a lot more space sharks
as usual i took the evil path first then when i'd built all the evil stuff i worked my way back to good

however before i got to good I was able to trade for the good techs.. (which didn't show up in my techs ) so i kept going down the path to make myself good. When i got there the only tech i could research is benevolance. (still didn't get anything new to build though)

I ended up with 118 colonies,all trade goods and wonders. and over half of my colonies up at full population. (which seems strange to me that no mayyer what the PQ is that it can support the same number of ppl. strange? I expected that the PQ's would support different max pops)

there still needs to be a scrollbar for quick scrolling of researched techs as opposed to just the single scrolling arrows

It CTD on me once then i ran smart exception and reloaded the game. after a while it locked up on me (it didn't CTD it just locked up.. so nothing got sent to smart exception)

10 improvements that I think can should be made.

1. on the info screen for freighters if it could tell you where you built the freighter so that you don't send it to a system too close. Alsy when you get freighters from AI's where does the trade route start from ???

2. a way to reset allignments and names of AI players back to default.

3.Scrollbar for researched techs archive

4. when ships are grouped together and you cycle theough ships to move it goes theough 2 ships in the stack not just one

5. Notification of anomolis scores prior to playing (ie: bad mods.. and telling you which mod so that you can get rid of it) and prior to submitting (over limit checks etc)

6. when you have stellar chartography the habitable planets show up in white which is too close in colour to the other stars.

7.there needs to be a marker like there is for "rally moint set" for if you have set any propaganda for the planets .. (in planet view panel on the right) for easier management

8. Have the date toggle between number of turns and date

9. One thing that I think that needs to change is the amount that tou can spend in government spenting.. eg: I can't allocate all (or more) of my income to spending. a lot of times i have excess money still going into my treasury even though i set gov spending to max. Is there a limit on how much you can spend on all developements/research ? if so can it be raised. this could make for quicker games

10. An option to bypass the intro screens in preferences . so that the next time you play it'll come straight to the menu screen

Seven improvements I like to see,

1) You can not bribe anybody to go to War against somebody else when they are both stronger than you.
In fact on higher levels Humanity is always far behind and all Alien races should be invading Human worlds.

2) The game is too dark. I may be old but I can not see the tiny white dots on the black mini map.


3) The game gives no room to expand before meeting Alien races. On a Gigantic Map it should take me along time to meet another race.


4) Every race loves war even if when you start the game you pick all nice Alignments.

5) Too much micro management is required.

6) Too many Space Sharks.

7) You should have to have the wheel before the car. The Tech Tree is way too loose. I am not sure the new "Feature" that Arcean race does not have a set tree makes sense. Does the mean the first Tech they can build is Battleship !! ?
[Message Edited]

I think it just means they can diverge from a preset path through the tech tree, but they still have to research all the prerequite techs.

I like the new version. The retire feature is very useful for when you just know the game is lost and are interested in just seeing how you compared. The Arceans seem to work well with the more random tech tree. Another suggested improvement,

- send ship to rally point (a ctrl+1,2,3... would be perfect)

Paul.

~SDC~

Yes, I second that. It's tedious to change rally points on a planet basis.

This feature would make rally points so much more useful.


~SDC~

Is there any way to move existing rally points? I thought there was, but I cannot figure it out any more.

This would ease up the management a lot.