OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Who's played Galactic Civilizations here and can make a comparison between the two? I noticed GalCiv pics in ImageMod so I thought to ask for comments, since I play both myself.

But now I only play SEIV http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif Even though GalCiv has all the nice fine controls on government spending and income, and has a (far) better diplomatic model, these are the only two things I like more.

How many people here think ship design is tedium only and should be replaced by automatically upgraded ships/fleets, etc? Other than a few cases, like PPBs, that are so overpowered as to knock out all competition, ship design imho really brings out the potential of the 4X genre.

Any opinions? Flames? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif If nobody replies I'll just assume then everyone's too busy playing SEIV to bother with GC http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Abdiel

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

I very much enjoy designing ships. I have a lot of fun tweaking the components and trying to find the right mix for my fleets. Upgrading is like Christmas! I take my newest toys down to the gents at the shipyard and they wrap them up in a hull for me!

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

honestly, galciv is not even half as good as SE 4 is. I dont like the research, i dont like the graphics, i dont like the colonizing, i dont like how your ships MUST pick up stuff in space. THere is just one thing that is better than in SE 4, and thats diplomacy. Everything else -> SE 4 !

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

The A+ Number 1 incomparable thing that GalCiv is supposed to win at is the AI. For more years than I can remember (and thats alot of years) if you joined any serious discussion group on artificial intelligence at any professional level, mentioning games got you Galactic Civilizations as a response. Of course for a long time you couldnt see it unless you ran OS2 as an operating system.

When I heard that Brad considered Windows (XP/2000 to be specific) to have advanced enough to make it worth trying to port to then I started paying close attention and bought one of the first copies he released. *sigh* to be truthful... Im still waiting to be impressed. Brad might have waited too long to bring it to the public. It seems like he is still in "catchup" mode to other games on the windows platform. At the moment Id say he is about average (of course SEIV is well above average).

BUT since GalCiv is so completely built around an upgradeable AI engine I do still have hopes that it might be able to achieve its previous high position in that Category.

[ June 28, 2004, 15:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

I have started a few games, played a few turns GalCiv and was very disappointed. Am about to resell it via ebay. Maybe I have done something wrong, maybe by using a different setup (galaxy size, percentage of good planets) the game improves dramatically. Please advise or prove me wrong, I would like to have another good stragegy game - up to now, I don't think GalCiv is one.

My impressions: While SEIV has a low complexity in rules, it has a high complexity in strategy/gameplay. GalCiv has a much simpler strategy/gameplay, but the rules and mechanics are much more complex, mainly due to the fact that they are artificially complicated by hiding even the most basic informations about the game mechanics.

What sense does a complex tech tree make if there is no visual picture of the tech tree available? If, when researching, you can't even click on the buildings/improvements/ships/follow-up techs you can choose for research and get any info about them? A technical/research encyclopedia has been standard since the earliest ages of Civilisation, there is absolutely no excuse for not integrating one into this game. I am sick and tired of games which have to be played 5 times just for learning the rules instead of reading the rules and learning the strategy by playing.

This lack of information continues for the economy. While in SEIV, you can calculate exactly how much a planet with XXX population, Y happiness and your chosen shipyard rate can produce, in GalCiv everything appears to be totally random at first. Later, you see some relations, but still you are unable to plan or calculate anything. There are global sliders for production/tech/social, you get an overview about the number of produced points, but WHERE will they be available? Why has this planet 10 production points, and the other, very similar one 20? Will a certain non-ideal planet, when colonized, have enough points to offset the added costs for non-terran planets? What are the costs for bad planets, anyway? These seem to be rather erratic, too - don't even try to calculate even a single turn in advance when colonizing them.

So you start playing, colonize a few worlds, find out that colonizing worlds of quality 15 or higher is not only "recommended" as stated in the rules, but a planet with 14 is an economical disaster (can there something be done to improve it? There are facilities which improve something ("soil") on the planet by 10%, but what do they REALLY?).

Then you find out that due to the low number of planets, all the colonizeble worlds are gone after a few turns. As the distribution is very random, and also very unequal, you can usually give up after the first turns, when you find out that you cannot reach more than 2 planets from your edge of the galaxy, while the largest empire in the middle has about 10. Rinse, repeat - play a few turns, check the number of planets you are able to colonize, trash the game if again started on a galactic island with hostile planets only.

The rules are really, really bad. No numbers, facts, rules, informations about basic economy, nothing. 90% of the "rules" are informations that can be found out by reading the tooltips for the buttons on the screen. I finally gave up playing when after a fight I had a damaged ship and could not even find out how to repair it.

A pity. It looks nice, it may have potential, but it seems to be more a quick game of luck for the very casual player who does not care to know beforehand what happens when he clicks a certain button or sends a certain fleet against another. The start, where you send an exploration ship across the galaxy collecting things like shipwrecks, asteroids, and warp anomalies, giving you a number of random improvements (just don't try to find out what these actually do !), which are available in huge numbers, reinforces the impression: a nice game of chance, some kind of intergalactic bingo, but not a real strategy game.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Well, I've so far managed to figure out that Soil and Habitat improvements raise the Planet Quality, so a 14 goes up to 15 and then 16. It's percentage, so a 20 would go up to a 22, then a 24. If you luck on a 26 at the beginning (i did http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) it can go straight up to 31.

But hell that's like playing in paradise and you might as well not play http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

The strategy comes in an idiotic form. AI consistently ignores planets of PQ 14 and below, so if you find an untouched galaxy of PQ 14, you can colonize it, improve it, and use it as a base against the enemy. Or they might just take it over. That sucks.

And the research sucks, too. I was told that GC was better than SEIV, but yeah so far only the diplomatic model. Then again, would I want to see that in SEIV? In any hard mode, all you do is standard, you bribe them to fight each other, leave you alone while you grow and harvest the spoils of war. If you play easy, you simply blackmail for money right at the start and that keeps them impoverished for quite some time. I see no way of getting out of this, in any game...

Would I want such a diplomatic model in SEIV? So far, no. But hopefully someone can come up with a better idea...

Abd.

PS. Ships repair automatically. darn slow rate too. You can research Repair and Advanced Repair. Something might exist beyond that but that's as far along the tech as i got.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I suspected something like this. Why can't they just enter it in their description that clear?
And what effects does it have exactly?. Ok, 14 going up to 15 turns a moneysink into a cashcow, but what effects does improving a 15 to a 16 have? I am a strategy gamer, I like to calculate beforehand if a certain investment pays and if, in how many turns. But I guess this game just was not designed for my kind of play style. Not that I preplan every ship construction and movement 10 turns ahead in SEIV, but sometimes it's fun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ...

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

I actually like Galactic Civilizations. I think it's a good beer-and-pretzels style game.

To be honest, I like the research. The uncertainty about the benefits and how the tree is setup made it feel like.. research. Sorry, I'm a roleplayer.. sue me.

I also like how there are many ways to win. I hardly ever won through military conquest. For me, it was always about the Influence.

And I was a big fan of the starbases. I got a kick out of lining my borders with McBurgerWorld stations. But you could build stations that can speed up repairs, increase production, affect speed and combat, etc.

The diplomacy was good. I like the idea of a UN-style body, though I wish you could propose your own petitions. And the democratic government is really neat. I like there are multiple parties and you can actually lose control of the government. Unfortunately, they never made the penalty for such a loss make sense to me.

But I like designing ships too, and we all know which wins there. I love thinking up new styles, new specialties. And I always preferred SE4's way of mapping the galaxy. Rather than having one giant map, you have lots of mini-maps connected by points. And I like SE4 combat more than Gal Civ's.

And SE4 is so easily moddable. It is the only game I have ever dabbled in modding.

Now, as to which is better..
Gal Civ has been installed/uninstalled many times.
I've been playing SE4 PBW for 3 years straight.
'Nuff said.

-edit-
Double post deletion hijinks

[ June 28, 2004, 16:52: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

I played it for about 2 weeks (1 more than MOO3)and just got bored. They said it is supposed to be like CIV in the stars. CIV has far more replay and dept than this game does. I think if I never heard SE4, it would have been a great game. No matter what game I start playing, I always end up going back to SE4. I also got tired of flying my ship around in space picking things up.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree almost completey. I do like the research tree if not the mechanics of researching it. And the GalCiv AI is more challenging. I believe that is a function of the number of choices available. SEIV has sooo many things to do and so many items available to do them with (or to) that its AI seems to be incapable of juggling the legion of variables to reach an intelligent decision. GalCiv has fewer decision points, with more of the complexity "under the hood", making it easier to program the AI.

....at least, I think so.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

GalCiv comes up on these forums once and a while, it has a few fans who like both for the different reasons you mentioned.

Now, I played it back in the OS/2 days, and really enjoyed it back then. But when Stardock came out with the shipsyards expansion pack, I was really excited -- it allowed you to design ships, instead of accepting the prefab ships the game came with. They didn't remove that function for the latest Version, did they? At any rate, color me too interested in ship design to get bored -- yes, its repetitious at times, but that just means you have to vary the design, even if it seems useless. You may discover an improved design you hadn't thought of.

The diplomacy model in the new GalCiv is much better than SE4. But I remember, in the old days, how you could just barely appease the AI, then whenever you wanted, quickly ramp up production for the kill. SE4's "suddenly mad at you for no reason" model at least keeps you on your toes.

[ June 28, 2004, 12:33: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Here is hoping SE5 stays true to form without getting over commercialised and underpeforming like MOO3 and GalCIV.

Looking foward to it when it does come out.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Me too! SE5 is gonna kick ***.

I was so pissed when I read the reviews of MOO3. I love that series, and was eagerly awaiting it. Not to go way off-topic here, but is it just the AI that's broken? Or is it a horrible game thru-in-thru?

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Oh yes, there are quite a few threads on MOO3 and how it sucks. It was just bad through and through. And don't get Attrocities started either!

Gal Civ is not as bad as MOO3, but I won't be playing it again that's for sure.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

*smacks forehead*

duh! Of course there would be MOO3 threads here. Hell, I probably read them when the game first came out. My brain is swiss cheese today.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

While GalCiv seems to be a "stragegy light" game, MOO 3 is not a strategy game at all. You can move a few sliders, make a few adjustments, but mostly you keep pressing the TURN button and watch the AI build your empire while you are unable to prevent it building research centers on farm planets and farms on mineral rich planets. But, the AI you play against is as dumb as the AI you are forced to play with, and it is no problem to win a game by setting it up and placing a book on the keyboard that makes sure the TURN button is pressed continuously. Start in the evening, come back at morning to see your victory screen.

If you like SimCity, this is probably for you. But it is not MOO3, it is a bad over-complexed form of SimGalaxy.

[ June 29, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Roanon ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

For me, the ship design and combat are the main reasons for playing SE4. The value of the rest of it is mainly to give the ship designs and battles a consistent context for the fleets to maneuver around. Galciv demphasizes to nonexistance ship design and tactics, so it is not really the same kind of game to me, and has little interest. Also although I have gotten hooked playing Civ and Civ II a couple of times, I don't particularly like those games. There are many many design decisions I would do very differently. Mainly it's just addictive because there is so much stuff in the tree, and they give you a steady stream of new toys. That gets people, even me, to play compulsively for a while, but shortly I stop and don't go back to finish even a single game, because I realize that I don't like the implementation of most of it. Heaps of game design choices that I find blah. Too much aimed at the casual audience, for me - I'm not the casual audience.

As for Roanon's comments about not liking complex mechanics and opaque results... well I actually do like games that have those, when they're done well. The real world is so complex that you never can just calculate to figure out complex things like the production of a nation. But there are some cause and effects which can be figured out an applied. I have no confidence however that GalCiv's "complex" mechanics would interest me very much, though, since the Civ game mechanics have generally disappointed me.

But not having detailed ship combat stuff makes GalCiv a genre I'm not particularly interested in.

PvK

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. Therefore, I do NOT want to have this in a game, I already have it in life http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . Call me a spreadsheet fanatic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Ok, serious, I can live with a black box somewhere, but cause and effect have to be clear. And this rarely is the case; most of the game desingers are too sloppy to reveal their logic. And it is also much easier to hide otherwise obvious flaws in that logic if everything is hidden.

Yes, there is much complexity in the real world, and every designer has his own - more or less weird - opinons on how it works. If you are able to think along the same lines, a given game may be excellent for you. And if you do not agree or expect that this newly built Big Machine of Happiness (or whatever) increases the migration rate but expect a production increase, then the game just sucks for you.

I, personally, am tired of games that have to be played several times just to find out how wierd the game designers brain worked. Either give me clear rules, or trash it - if I want a no-brainer game without rules, I'll play Unreal or Counterstrike. Don't misunderstand me: I don't think GalCiv is that bad. But it is somewhere in the middle between real strategy game and black box, too much in the middle for me.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Sure. Wanting to know the exact rules is a thing some players really want, and others don't care as much about. And yes, it is lame when a game does things in a way a player doesn't agree with yet it takes players a long time to learn that it doesn't work well for them.

Myself, with decades of game experience and specific tastes, I can often tell just by looking at screenshots or some seconds of gameplay, the kinds of things that are and are not going on, and decide not to bother with a game. I can usually figure out the gameplay is going to have have no real interest to me in less than a minute of scrutiny, and this turns out to be the case for perhaps 98% of the stuff I see. Of course, I'm a definite exception.

Even so, there can be games that seem to do things to taste, but then turn out to have major things that aren't to taste. It's a matter of specifics (and sometimes, attitude) whether such games are thus "fun for a while, until you figure out that they do some things badly", or "broken once you figure it out."

PvK

[ June 29, 2004, 20:21: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Why play GalCiv if you already have SEIV http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Well, I would prefer to know exactly how things are calculated, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif It helps when planning strategies.

Like how is fleet experience determined, has anybody figured it out?

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Simple. The more ships you kill, the better you get http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .
Would similar combat and experience exist:
- in GalCiv, ships would pick up experience by moving through certain squares of the combat grid.
- in MOO3, the game would calculate by a very sophisticated algorithm function called random() which ships get how much experience after combat, disregarding any shots fired, hits or the side who won the combat.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

"- in MOO3, the game would calculate by a very sophisticated algorithm function called random()"

Thats horrible. They didn't really do that did they? Just that alone would turn away most strategy gamers if they found that out.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

MOO3 was a horrible game that even the word horrible is barely enough to describe it.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just curious, what did you think of moo2?

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

There is no basis of comparison whatsoever between MOO2 (or MOO) and MOO3. MOO2 and MOO are very good, classic space opera 4x games. MOO3 is, well, something else entirely... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

MOO1 and 2 were milestones and some of the best strategy games ever made. I think MOO1 was even better, considering the standards that were available then, because MOO2 was too much influenced by Civilisation and has a tendency to unnecessary micromanagement. The slider system and the more global research effects in MOO1 were far better than having to move around every single colonist in MOO2, and having to build a specific building on every planet every time a new research has been made.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually I don't think this is entirely accurate. I haven't done a sandbox or anything, but based on my Last several games, killing ships lets you gain SHIP experience and destroying fleets is how you gain FLEET experience. It's the only thing that explains the behavior of having fleets kill hundreds of ships without gaining any fleet experience points and have a fleet have one big battle against a lot of ships garner 10+ fleet experience points. It's not tied to killing X number of ships equals a fleet experience point, but whether I kill all the ships in a single fleet. I checked my current game and I have several fleets with only 21 or 22 fleet experience points (20 of which they got training)that have a large percentage of the fleet being legendary (many maxed at 50) indicating a lot of action, but most were, IIRC, against small stacks of ships and hence would not have been fleets. This feeling is further buttressed by the behavior of several recent battles where fleets have engaged enemy stacks of 250+ ships, win the battle without being able to kill all the ships and receive one or two fleet points and have a fleet re-engage the remaining enemy ships and gain 5 or 6 points having only killed 10-15 ships. The first fleet clearly was unable to destroy very many enemy fleets while killing a lot of ships and the second was able to destroy a lot of fleets while killing only a relative handful of ships. My fleets have been engaging a lot of 150-350+ sized ship stacks and the fleet experience points received has varied from 2 to as many as 16 which again makes it appear to be dependent of the fleet makeup the AI is using or has in the stack and not on how many ships are killed.

Re: OT? SEIV vs GalCiv
 

Regarding fleet experience, nothing will beat parking the fleet over a training facility for a year. It's unusual to have one fleet, even through the entire game, meet enough fleets to get up to 30% fleet experience. So maybe that needs to be changed in the future.

Ship experience is simple. +1% for each ship that ship gets the Last hit on. I've got no complaints against that one.

Abd.