Quote:
Originally Posted by JimMorrison
This one I don't get. As long as I could trade technology with people, I could keep my horse in the race, but at higher difficulties I don't see how you could ever be on top of the game, the AI just expands so fast, and produces so many ships all the time. Actually, it reminds me of how I feel about Dom3 SP. :P There reaches a point where one on difficulty setting, I can bulldoze the computer in my sleep, and on the next they just enact super-alliances that I can't find tactics able to defeat the 10-1 odds coming down on my head.
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Well I've played it both with notech trading and with tech trading, and tech trading only makes it easier.
The point is that you can completely ignore building any war ships at all until you see someone has researched transports, and even then, if you have kept up your engine tech you just build some fast ships and pick off the AI transports when they do show up.
The AI was terrible at defending them, and terrible at hunting down your ships. So who cares if they have 100 ships and you have 10, they cannot take your planets and you will eventually out tech them (since you aren't wasting credits on ships) and be able to plow their fleets with a couple battleships or whatever you need to make to counter them.
Its also fairly trivial to keep on buying them off so they don't even DoW you, and then you just let them screw around with the other AIs while you tech up to some decent military techs and have a small fleet of FAST ships to deal with whatever you need to deal with.
Mostly my issue with the game is that space is completely open, and the AI cannot handle that strategically or tactically. You can yo-yo their fleets with your faster fleets, you can draw them out then jump their underdefended planets with your fast transports. You can Culture bomb them and they don't retaliate effectively.
Like I said, its cool to have alot of tools to use, but if the AI cannot counter them effectively then the game is pointless once you finish the initial set up for your end strategy.
I had this discussion with Brad waaaaay back when, and advocated that they move away from open space to node lines, or at least something which let the AI focus its fleets more easilly. He rejected it for what were good reasons to him, but ultimately the decision made it impossible for the AI to deal with your fleets. He admitted as much latter when I kept on asking why the AI seems to not see your fleets when it should. Well it turns out it saw them, it just had no way to actually process the threat they posed. So it continued to leave transports undefended, and leave planets open to lightning invasions by speed 20+ ships...
All of that would have been moot if the design forced you to use nodes or warp lines, or whatever.
And i've played GC2 on the higher difficulty levels, it makes no difference, just takes you a little longer to achieve dominance. Oh, you can play with different galaxy settings and such to make the game more or less challenging, but ultimately it always comes down to the same thing. The AI cannot handle its fleets, so once you finish your economy set up, and survive (nominally by paying off a neighbor not to attack you, which is dirt cheap compared to actually fighting them), you just pump out a few teched up war ships, conquer someone (if you feel like it), or use them as active defense while you go for culture or tech or alliance, or whatever vic condition you think is fastest.