.com.unity Forums - Galactic Civilizations II impressions

Having been an avid Space Empires player since III (though not such an avid poster...) I thought I'd weigh in here real quick. GalCiv2 has been my life blood here for weeks. I really really like it. That being said, it's winding down for me... it might be a game that I can pick up in a few months and have just as much fun with - only time will tell. But right now I've tried different and custom races, bigger maps, smaller maps, and I'm kinda sick of it. I already feel like I figured it all out... meanwhile Space Empires 4 remains as playable as when I first borrowed it.

Here's a few things that I REALLY like about the game:
-diplomacy (aside from the tech-trading frenzy aforementioned)
-trade goods (wow!! diplomatic translators are a MUST for tech trading -- go $2000 in the hole if you have to rush them!! same for galactic showcase)
-graphics
-music (amazing!! arceans in the diplomacy screen especially! i turned off bach for this...)
-eye candy on ships + hardpoints
-map interface (i love being able to zoom out and see more strategic icons).
-other races offering tribue to you if you're doing well. this drove me nuts in civ games -- powerful civilizations demand tribute when you suck and offer none when you rock their sox... and you couldnt punish them for it sometimes due to intricate alliance dependencies. you can successfully request tribue as well. I can't stress how much I appreciate this.
-interface is beautiful and helpful. exception: see below.

Things I don't like:
-i already feel like I've discovered all there is to discover. moo3 lasted longer than this. I'm talking discoverability factor only... putting all its flaws aside, I insisted on getting far enough into moo3 to take out the new orions and also find the antaran X's!
-inability to improve planet quality (no, terraforming doesn't count cuz there are only so many squares you can terraform... I want the whole damn planet!)
-awkward interface when selecting ships. For example, I have yet to figure out how to upgrade a ship in the same sector as another ship without moving it to its own sector. When ships are clustered (note I said clustered, not fleeted) in the same sector, the available information on individual ships decreases drastically. If i'm overlooking something please correct me... I couldn't stomach the tutorial and I figure after weeks of playing and not figuring it out, if it's doable there are some intuitive design issues...

Let me just elaborate on a couple things I noticed in the posts:

Quote:

Sandstig said:
Good post Tampa_Gamer, but there are three points you mentioned which I think may need some clarification.

1) Diplomacy/Intelligence - "The AI currently does not treat any techs as strategically important and will trade all of them away the same turn they are finished. This quickly forces games into a race of who can meet the highest number of races quicker so that you can get that many more trades for each tech you put on the market."
- I've had many experiences wherein even allied races wouldn't trade me some of their weapon technologies when I'd offer them a lot of my own weapon techs and some cash to go with it so this could have a lot to do with the difficulty setting used and your own diplomacy skills.

No one will trade you weapons for _anything_ if your military is ranked #1 and you're offering the trade. And i mean _anything_ -- I tried to stack the trade with all my cash, all my planets, all my starbases, all my trade goods, all my influence, and all my pet monkeys!! Their reply hints at that ("my advisors insist that I not trade weapons to the most supreme force blah blah"). However comma another race might initiate a trade with weapons in exchange for something from you. This appears to be an oversight and may be corrected soon. This is the only time you will be able to acquire a weapons tech diplomatically as the most powerful military force. Incidentally, if you decline that trade to check out the techs and make sure it's a fair one, the same race will not accept the trade when you initiate it after doing your homework. Sucks, dont it? I liked how Civ4 showed you the beaker value... then you could accept it right away if it was a good deal.

Quote:

PrinzMegaherz said:
The same happended to me, but I ended with 6 Lucky Ranger ships pwning the galaxy. It seems that the odds of receiving one of those things depends on how much your empire sucks. In my case, I was very weak and short before being annihilated very early in the game. I was given a Lucky Star and secured my home planet, but could not expand as I was missing the "planetary invasian" technology you need to construct troop cariers. So I remained with my lousy planet and got more and more lucky stars.

Try flagging the "lucky" attribute at race creation (only takes 1 point) -- and yes they are overpowered if you get them and the AI is set to a level too low to compensate. However, I can think of a few games where I could have taken a couple out with my fleets of medium ships, for these reasons:
1. lucky rangers are horribly inequipped to defend against beam weapons. For this reason I research beams almost exclusively every game, and chafe/ecm/PD and armor as defenses. Lucky rangers have awesome missiles and missile defenses, awesome guns and gun defenses, but no beam weapons. And no deflectors, shields, or pick-a-beam-defense *at all*.
2. Also keep in mind they are very slow. Until warp drives they get only 2 speed!! and with warp drives, only 3! my medium class fleets had 4 or 8 until warp drives, then 5 or 9.
3. Bear in mind, you can put two engines on a ship and make it much more mobile... with a not-so-bad penalty to fighting ability if you research weapons and defenses and miniaturization to decrease their size. Use that to your advantage. Remember: whoever loses initiative in a war is bound to lose. Outmaneuver and conquer.
4. My advanced transports could carry 3000 troops and move even faster than my fastest medium class... 5 of those with a good fleet of medium attack ships and you can blow right past the lucky rangers and sack their homeworld. Hurt them bad enough and they'll offer peace. Don't forget to protect your planets, though, in case the ranger charges straight to them... which brings up another point I forgot to mention earlier:

If you're using the game's defender "core design", you might as well retire the second war breaks out. Those things have poor defense and poor weaponry. I tech straight to laser 5 and medium hulls and make a defender design with that. I can't stand how you can't upgrade a "core design". What's worse, the game does not upgrade it when you get better weaponry. I delete core designs every single game. It still makes me shudder that during my first games, I had constructors going around with 4 movement under the core design, while in my recent games I've added engines (which there was always ample room for) with little added construction cost and a lot of added speed. Why does the game not clue in to new technology and take advantage of it? Enough of that rant. I spent too much time on it already.

Don't think you have the production to handle lucky rangers? build some economic starbases and heavily upgrade the production boosters... those things are insanely valuable. Took me a couple games being pwned by the Drengin to realize that... Racial boosts to military production are also extremely useful.

Reality check: if you're behind already and find yourself fighting these things off, you're probably done for. This possibility is not far from reality. I found a lucky ranger while I was only weeks away from a cultural victory, controlling about 80% of the galaxy, and my enemies just lost their ships faster as a result. In fact, I can't think of a time that I found one when I *wasn't* doing well.

Hope this helps!

Edits: cosmetic.