Why Was Achilles' Heel So Easy?

Did I break my campaign mode?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Something's wrong with my Dread Lords campaign. The computer is barely fighting on Masochistic. I turned it up to Suicidal and it seemed like it went to Cakewalk instead. What is this I hear about the AI failing to "initialize"? There is thread after thread about the Achilles' Heel campaign here with people struggling and having big battles and fun. Whereas I just beat it with no challenge on the first try. Here's my finish times for each scenario on Masochistic:

#1: Sep 2226
#2: Oct 2225
#3: Jul 2225
#4: Jun 2225
#5: Sep 2225

I know I threw it off by figuring out the exploit of putting one beam weapon and five engines on a cargo hull to take out constructors. You can just sit by the planet and kill infinite 0-power defenders. In the "Achilles' Heel" mission, I did something similar by putting four plasmas on cargo hulls and banding them in 2-strong fleets. They can kill a 204-power small hull with first strike. Is that just so broken that I should expect the Dread Lords never to even send a ship off their home planet before I kill them? Or is there some other reason why my experience is so different and less fun than all the people who posted, including Brad's walkthrough? Link

Is there a way you can check the difficulty level and make sure it's at the same level it's supposed to be? I want to start playing Apocalypse but if it stays this easy it's not going to be any fun.
13,638 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Apolycalypse is not easy.
Exempt if you play on normal or lower (then it happend that Torians conquered while I just sit on my homewole and doing research and gifting it to allies).

But I had serious problems on Painful. Most probably becuse things are so random. For example in one of the tries it happend to me that 3rd encouter with DL ships had 44 poitns in shields. It was pretty much game over.

In other attempt I was just too slow with military and when I actually good military might to challenge them, the map was full of DL ships with all allied ships obliterated, so it was impossible to do anything. In that game, they haven't got shields on their ships, but had logistics and made some fleets.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Btw, I barely won Achilees Heel. Most because near the end they also got shields on thier ships I could not counter. But due to sheer luck Torian invasion happend few turns later.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Why do the exploit ? If you want to have fun, don't arm cargo ships. This isn't a contest. It's a 1 player game. Have fun, and don't ruin for yourself him cheese...
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Gallagher, I'm not sure if it's the exploit or something else that's the problem. Ideally I want the game to be so hard I need every single exploit to survive.

p22, according to Brad the Dreads can only retool once per scenario, so at least you can instantly cut that 44 defense to 6.5 by switching to missile weapons. But this should have already happened to me on Achilles' Heel.

So far the only ship of mine they've killed offensively was one starbase as I was doing the one where you colony-rush across the universe to get to the Drengin planet. That was the one where I turned the difficulty up to Suicidal. I think of all the six races only one colonized another planet by the end of that game. But on Achilles' Heel they colonized fine, and in fact the Torians provided the invading force for me too. I don't know how they get past those 80-1 odds, but I appreciated it.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Torians like tiny ships and logistics.
With proper techs, they either win against DL with first stike, or get one of their fighters killed if DL strike first.

Of course, this only wrorks until DL get defense boost.


P.S.
And I did swtiched to other weapon type as soon as possible.
But even 6 in defense is too much for tiny fighter strategy (too low damage per ship), especially, if non-beam weapon is not at high level.
And in Apocalypse they sometimes get those 44hp ships, which would be pretty difficult to take out if they have any kind of defense.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ideally I want the game to be so hard I need every single exploit to survive.


Depending on how you define "exploit," I'm not sure that I'd agree with that (I'm not saying that you're not entitled to your opinion). By my reckoning, an "exploit" is a way of taking advantage of a game feature that the AI can't really counter. So, basically, you're gaming the rules to your advantage. Personally, I'd prefer to beat the AI with pure strategy rather than by gaming the rules.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's not like it's a computer chess game that plays perfectly except for the fourth turn "fool's mate." The whole game is full of loopholes and exploitable AI behaviors (which are inevitable). Instead of fixing or ignoring each and every strategy hole, I'd rather just turn up the difficulty to solve all of them at once. If I give the computer eight extra pawns, it will solve the fool's mate strategy and the fact that it doesn't know how to use en passant and the fact that it doesn't respond well to King's Pawn to King's Pawn 4 gambits.

All I know is I used this strategy on GalCiv I and I had awesome, awesome games playing at the absolute utmost of my ability. I don't know if that game was simpler or less exploitable or what.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ideally I want the game to be so hard I need every single exploit to survive.


So what your REALLY saying is you want the game to be so hard you have to cheat to win which in turns makes the game no fun at all.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
ding Brad's walkthrough? Link


the link isn't working for me for some reason as it refuses to load. and I want to check it out.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That link has been in my bookmarks forever and yesterday it worked, but rught now it doesn't. Firefox says it isn't redirecting correctly.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/index.asp?aid=104115
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
works now though, must have been something with that webpage.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ideally I want the game to be so hard I need every single exploit to survive.


So what your REALLY saying is you want the game to be so hard you have to cheat to win which in turns makes the game no fun at all.


As long as the game is *challenging*, then it's fun

If you were using every trick in the book and the AI was still giving you a hefty challenge, wouldn't you think that was still fun? I think that was the point of the his remark.