Meh, it's alright, it seems overly goofy though. If you can tolerate dated graphics I would recommend Space Empires IV over this one.
Poll: Galactic Civilizations II: Ultimate Edition - The most impossibly good strategy game in the cosmos
- Thread starter Tryzon
- Start date
So you've played it? I couldn't be sure from your comment.Tarrok said:
GalCiv's sense of humour is one of my favourite things about it, though it's obviously not for everybody.
At any rate, dated graphics will not even cause me to blink out of time, so I shall certainly investigate Space Empires IV whenever I get round to it.
You can test this for yourself easily. Set it to a medium (or higher) difficulty setting and capture every every planet of an AI civ, using traditional warfare, so you don't destroy any structures.Tryzon said:
First you will immediately see that the AI doesn't build nearly enough markets.
Then fill the planet up to the maximum population it can support (the AI usually doesn't build enough farms either and leaves too many colonies at only 6 Billion, but there it is).
Now check the captured planets and note the net revenue per planet. The total balance, if you do the sums, will be very negative, until you lower your own spending rate to patheticly low levels like 20% (your spending rate should usually be 100%).
Note that the AI would also have to have used those planets to pay the maintenance for it's huge fleets aswell, before you wiped them out.
Which brings me to the production of the AI fleets. Even at 100% spending rates, which the AI shouldn't be able to do, it's facilities cannot theoreticly crank out ships anywhere near as fast as the AI gets.
Capital ship production at a specialized planet (all factories and a manufacturing capital) should usually take you several weeks at 100% spending.
The AI doesn't specialize at all and typically has only 3 or 4 factories even at the manufactoring capital.
All things considered it should take the AI years to crank out one expensive ship.
So that means it should be buying instead of building ships, but buying costs tons of credits, which the AI cannot have.
It was a cheat code in the game Doom. It gave you every weapon with max ammo for free. I'm saying the GC2 AI gets almost everything for free.
I think the level is called masochistic.
Anyway, a while ago I tried a game on painful with a weakened custom race and it was the same thing: when there's an enemy war ship sharing a spot with an enemy troop transport it is a very rare coincidence.
The AI sends ships after your ships and tranports to your planets. It's only when you garrison your own ship at your planet, when it may seem the AI has made an escort, but I reckon it's really just both units going for different two targets that just happen to be at the same spot and so their paths converge.
When I move my ships out, it's just free target practice again.
When I think of peacekeepers, I think of this guy:Tryzon said:
And this gem (starts at 5 seconds):
Seriously, though, this looks really nice, Alpha Centauri was one of my favorite TBS games of all time, but this is looking like that + a whole ton more. I'll give it a shot once I get un-broke (I spent my last $60 in gift cards on SC2).
My oh my, you have done your homework!veloper said:
I thank you for clearly putting a lot of effort in and backing up your argument. True, you've shattered a few of my delusions, but it had to be done.
I do still maintain, though, that the A.I. protects its transports with some regularity for me. Dunno why, but it tends to.
I played both, anyway the humor is sortof jarring when you play many games over a long period of time since it's the same jokes being repeated over and over, and if you're trying to get immersed in a less than comedic experience the jokes detract from it.Tryzon said:
If you can manage the dated graphics and the learning curve, Space Empires IV has more features and replay value than Galactic Civilizations II in my mind, and it isn't nostalgia speaking, I played them both at around the same time.
GalCiv 2 has -I'm going to say it- the greatest AI in any game. In any genre. Ever. It's so smart that it's capable of playing an entire metagame on a level you're not even aware of. It can outfight, outthink you, even outright TRICK you.
Don't believe me? Read THIS [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg] article about a full-length game- and make sure you read the Final Entry where the player explains exactly what the HELL was going on. Here, let me summarise with a quote:
Don't believe me? Read THIS [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=161570&site=pcg] article about a full-length game- and make sure you read the Final Entry where the player explains exactly what the HELL was going on. Here, let me summarise with a quote:
Even if I don't consider space 4x strategies my playground so I could possibly compare any of them with other games from genres I really, really like, but I do find Master of Orion II better, maybe it's just I got used to it so much so I couldn't feel at home playing GalCiv. I played it for very long time, but I simply find Master of Orion better.Tryzon said:
Er...you mind? I can take an insult if need be, but care to point it at me?veloper said:
I do think some people are exaggerating the AI here: from my experience, when a computer race starts doing badly economically or something, all other aspects of it suffer. I don't know what you've been doing, but that's how it is with me.
I don't mind an opposing opinion, especially since most folk here seem to agree with me anyway, but could you possibly be a bit more constructive? Notice how I didn't resort to name-calling, for instance.
Ah. I see there has been a misjudgement on my part. How embarissing...veloper said:
Sorry about that, but I thought you were questioning my competence and not even having the courtesy to say it directly to me.
I didn't actually really look at the article in question, but your words have scared me off it.
I do still maintain, however, that the AI seems to be at least as fair as you'll find in most games. Perhaps there's some sneaky business going on somewhere, but it doesn't seem to become apparent unless you LOOK for it, which I've never felt compelled to do.
I am in the unfortunate position of never having played the Master of Orion series and would really like to try #2 in particular. However, I'm worried that getting it to work on XP could be troublesome, since games from 1996 have a fair chance of not agreeing with my PC.Srdjan said:
SOrry to ask a stupid question, but I'm just now starting to play on the PC (Starcraft, Fallouts 1&2) and was wondering what system requirements are there for this? I'm not sure if my cheap, crap laptopo can run it and I don't want to get my hopes up only to see them vaporize like a burnt out sun over a barren planet.
It wasn't a 24-hour marathon session, it was 24 hours spread over 6 weeks.Tryzon said:
Did you really read the article? Yes, the AI gets an economic bonus that grows as you increase the difficulty, but he pointed out that he didn't hike the difficulty particularly high because he knew he'd be eaten alive. And if the AI has no idea what it's doing, how did it manage to deadlock itself into a political conflict between the two seperate AIs of the Drengin and the Terrans so complicated that they reduced the reviewer's race to a political pawn for most of the game without him even realising it? Another story I heard in the first review of GalCiv II I ever read (Hyper magazine) saw the reviewer convinced by their friends the Terrans to declare war on the Yor by convincing him that together they could crush the Yor quickly and be home for dinner with some nice new planets. Instead the Terrans let the player struggle alone, ignoring please for help. I still remember his words to this day:veloper said:
The point is that the AI in GalCiv II is capable of a feat that other AI's cannot replicate- actual cunning. In most (if not all) other games, even the very best AI's merely go through the motions, enacting their programmed routines like automatons. They don't adopt strategies or attempt to manipulate the player with diplomatic backstabbing. For example, the AI in Medieval II: Total War isn't actually very clever- oh sure it can maneuver its entire army around the battlefield at once while you're still desperately selecting command groups and adjusting individual unit facings, but it has no strategic depth. In my last game, Spain kept declaring war on me, landing a single army and besieging a city it had no chance of capturing, getting its army wiped out and then coming to me to beg for a cease-fire -which I made them pay me for- only to almost immediately declare war on me and repeat the whole charade. Not very bright.
Although yes, I admit that Tom Francis played GalCiv 2 like an idiot, deliberately provoking races capable of crushing him like a rotten rutabaga and being completely outclassed by every other force in the galaxy by the end. Presumably he felt psychopathic craziness was in the character of the custom race he'd made up. And he DID win, albeit with difficulty.