Thinking about buying this game.

Hi, first off, I highly recommend this game its one of the best turn based strategy games around.

To answer yr question, in the original release there was kind of a bug which mean't that the AI's the majority of the time seemed to follow the same weapons tech path, this was made more noticable with tech trading giving everyone the same tech's (not a bug, really, the player taking advantage of the game rules).

Both of those have been addressed very, very quickly with previous patches. U can now play with tech trading off (optional, up to u) and the AI's r reluctent to trade weapons techs. The AI's now often research different weapons paths presenting u with interesting strategic and tactical challenges, great fun. Discourages u alot from getting involved in a war against more then 1 race at a time, as yr ships may be designed to beat 1 race but not another.

To a point it was true - no longer

Significant AI changes recently, particularly in 1.2 Beta 009. You get access to Beta builds once you bought and registered the game, and downloaded Stardock Central.

Support for the game is unmatched anywhere - its an amazing level of comittment. Dont hesitate go get it.

Zy

The AI cannot:

1. Defend its planets without Orbital Fleet Manager (early game). It just sits there and lets its ships get picked off one by one in orbit.

2. Use scouts. I mean, it uses them to find colonizable planets. But not to keep a watch on it's territory and intercept enemy ships before they attack.

3. Use Military Starbases. I've never seen the AI putting enough modules on one of those to make it useful. Ok, once in >10 games it actually put some assist modules on it, but no defence modules so i killed it in one shot.

4. Fight. The AI understands absolutely nothing about tactical combat. It will send it's best fleet to chase your scout despite the scout being 3 times faster.

So the AI is still a typical strategy game AI, thinking in scripted patterns, good at some things but breaking down when it comes to other. It might be good at keeping its advantage if it has it, but once it's losing it's losing bad.

Oh, and as of 1.2 beta a game-breaking bug (skipping a production turn on load) hasn't been fixed, or even acknowledged by Stardock.

Conclusion:

If you're a casual gamer you will find the AI challenging and should buy this game.
If you're a veteran strategy gamer, once you begin understanding the game you will find how flawed the AI is.
Personally, the AI never gave me a challenge.

did you play at the highest level?

Personally, I've never had the issue you mentioned, Draithen. The AI always seems to research different techs, although some races do seem to have preferences for certain weapon lines. I think the game is more challenging than any I've played in years, though I do agree with most of the points angryrussian mentioned. I have seen quite a few well-defended military starbases in my games, though. And I think that the skipped production turn on loading is not a bug but intended to prevent exploits, and doesn't break the game because the AI skips a production turn too. I highly recommend buying the game, even though it takes a while to get used to the sometimes quirky UI, it is made up for in almost infinite replayability once you get the hang of things.

If you're a casual gamer you will find the AI challenging and should buy this game. If you're a veteran strategy gamer, once you begin understanding the game you will find how flawed the AI is.

True to some extent, but
(a) you won't find a turn-based strategy game with a better AI
(b) the AI really keeps becoming better as it is improved by Brad based on player feedback and when the occasional loop-hole is fixed.

To the OP: There are things worth criticising, but your issue isn't.

#3, I can see why you called yourself angryrussian! Take a chill pill, dude!

Seriously, though, the AI in this game is very good, considering that it's playing under exactly the same conditions as the player (though it gets economy bonuses on the highest difficulty levels). Personally I wouldn't mind if the AI cheated in certain minor ways in order to improve the playing experience but I appreciate wholeheartedly what Stardock are trying to do and if they can keep improving the AI without having to make it cheat that's the best solution.

I would definitely recommend this game to you, Draithen.

If you're a casual gamer you will find the AI challenging and should buy this game. If you're a veteran strategy gamer, once you begin understanding the game you will find how flawed the AI is. Personally, the AI never gave me a challenge.

AI is significantly improved in 1.2.009 Beta See report below
Link

Link

I am a very experienced strategic gamer and have a lot of historical education and military experience and training.

The game has incredible support and the new AI at the higher levels provides a very satisfying experience.

If you like science fiction and strategy games, this is the best there is, adn it is continually getting better.

Well worth your money.

Are you the save and load game kind of guy? Link

Oh, and as of 1.2 beta a game-breaking bug (skipping a production turn on load) hasn't been fixed, or even acknowledged by Stardock.

That skip after load affects both you and the AI equally. It doesn't happen if you just save a game and continue. It may be changed in the future, but the way it works is as designed, IMHO.

It's not like they have just blown you off and ignored your feedback, they have literally fixed and improved 100's of things since the game was released. This is an unprecedented level of support for a game. Take a chill guys.

If you're a veteran strategy gamer, once you begin understanding the game you will find how flawed the AI is. Personally, the AI never gave me a challenge.

I am a veteran strategy gamer with 20+ yrs experience. When I sit down to play a strategy wargame against a computer or other human opponents, I expect to win, I am not being big headed here its just based on experience over the years. GC 2 at the highest level suicidal is a real challenge. Its very notable to me that the AI became alot more challenging with the 1.1 patch, I suspect 1.2 will see yet further improvement. The GC 2 AI gives me more of a challenge then the majority of people who I play strategy games against.

well, given than most strategy games are either : heavely scripted (the computer will behave in one optimized way and that is all) or cheats

I think Galciv 2 AI is pretty good & flexible
for example it is able to adapt to any mod (with more or less success of course)
you can add a building and the AI should use it .....
the game is VERY enjoyable, best strategy game I played since a long long time

BUT of course there is bugs here and there, the save/reload bug is one of them Link
though patches keep coming and fixes more & more things
you could check out the wiki for example Link and the forum for patch notes ....

if I were you, I would buy it without question

also one last point, if you enjoy playing the biggest maps, you might want to check that you have a good enough computer

If you're a veteran strategy gamer, once you begin understanding the game you will find how flawed the AI is.

Well thats true for every strategy game on the market (unless you count chess, but the chess AIs took decades and thousands of developers to get it right).
Even with all the flaws, the Galciv 2 AI belongs to the best I know - a lot of strategy game AIs cheat even on normal difficulty, and are still less challenging.

Defend its planets without Orbital Fleet Manager (early game). It just sits there and lets its ships get picked off one by one in orbit.

I agree. I can't even imagine what the "one ship in orbit rule" is supposed to be good for - maybe to keep you from putting 10 dreadnaughts in orbit, forming an undestructable defense force. But the one-ship-rule is too extreme, it makes orbital defense totally useless. The AI should either not put more than 1 ship in orbit, or the rule should be changed: maybe the best ships in orbit should autoform an fleet when attacked, the size depending on your logistic skill. The orbital defense mangager could be removed or altered to give a bonus to shields or something.

Use Military Starbases. I've never seen the AI putting enough modules on one of those to make it useful. Ok, once in >10 games it actually put some assist modules on it, but no defence modules so i killed it in one shot.

I have seen plenty of AI starbases with defenses, however they are kind of useless after the early game, one small group will still kill it without problems. Again I would suggest a rule change, the ability to add a defensive fleet to the starbase. That would help the AI a lot, as it doesn't do a good job at intercepting enemy fleets.

I am considering buying this game, but I have read in a few places that the AI players either always or frequently research the same techs in the same order.

Not true I think - I have noticed that the different races seem to have different preferences, for example Drengins seem to go straight for weapon techs, while the Altarians tend to research the government/diplomacy stuff earlier.
There is also a lot of randomness from game to game, in some of my games the AIs exclusivly used beams and shields, in others they prefered mass drivers/armor, and in other games they were more balanced.

I would highly recommend buying the game. If you like turn based games at all, you won't be disappointed.

Oh, and as of 1.2 beta a game-breaking bug (skipping a production turn on load) hasn't been fixed, or even acknowledged by Stardock.

AFAIK, this has been adressed by SD. It's ment to stop people from saving and loading often to get, for example, a certain random event, or a better "roll" during an invasion.

And as long as this affects the AI I have no problem with it personally.

That skip after load affects both you and the AI equally. It doesn't happen if you just save a game and continue. It may be changed in the future, but the way it works is as designed, IMHO. It's not like they have just blown you off and ignored your feedback, they have literally fixed and improved 100's of things since the game was released. This is an unprecedented level of support for a game. Take a chill guys.

Link me to a Stardock source stating it "works as designed".

Also I don't see how "affecting both me and the AI equally" makes the bug any less of a bug.

A couple points:

1) Buy the game. If you are interested enough already to ask a question about it on the forum, trust me, you won't be disapointed.

2) Angry Ruskie: Chill out man, its just a game

3) Angry Ruskie: If you hate the game so much... why are you spending your time hanging around the game's forum? Wouldn't you rather talk about a game you like?

Peace

angryrussian: Does it cause a CTD? does it give you a bluescreen? Does it stop the AI working? It's hardly gamebreaking, you're just being melodramatic. And Stardock HAVE acknowledged it, and it's on their "needs fixing" list. It isn't high priority, because it's not really a huge issue. A lot of people don't notice it. Also, there is no scripting in this game. Please know what you're talking about next time.

And to the OP: The races don't research the same techs. Weapons possibly, but the races go on different techs depending on their strengths and weaknesses. The AI plays a solid game, and I have yet to beat it above tough, despite being a gamer since I was 7 (nine years now).

by Kosty Sunday, May 28, 2006 5:08 AM : I am a very experienced strategic gamer and have a lot of historical education and military experience and training.

Oh...wow! We are soooo lucky that you take the time & trouble to grace us with your presence & wisdom.

Its an excellent strategy game and well worth getting in my opinion, i prefure it far more than civ4 *dives for cover* thatsjustmyopinion!!

All games have their problems, its just nice for once to see that the developer is actually doing something about it, listening to feedback, trying to make changes... no they wont do everything no ones perfect but i love the game and im glad i got it.

I understand that some people may get angry because the game doesnt do this, or that, or this is a bug and why arent they doing anything about it... and sometimes i wonder if people wont be happy with the AI untill it becomes truely sentient takes control of the worlds stockpile of nuclear weapons and wipes us all out, and then there will still be horrible aradiated mutants logging on to complain that the AI only managed to wipe out 99% of humaity, and when are the developers going to address this issue.

Its not a totally bad thing because its obvious people really enjoy playing this game... hell, if they didnt they they wouldnt point out ways to make it better.

Thanks for the insight everyone, it is appreciated!

It is always nice to see both sides of the spectrum.

Hmm, maybe this is trying to point out the obvious, but have you tried the Demo for the game? If you haven't, it might be a good place to start, just to see how you like the overall feel.

I agree with AngryRussian. The tactical AI is terrible, and strategic is non-existent. It does pose a challenge on the very few occasions when they build fast hard hitting ships in large numbers and has the economy to back up their military. Usually only two or three of the races ever field these advanced kind of ships. The AI typically needs several tech levels advantage plus a 3-fold ship numbers advantage to take me. In my opinion, if it were really a good AI, it would give me a fair fight at even numbers, even tech and it doesn't come close.

An example of strategic AI would be for the AI's biggest fleet to go after my homeworld or best one or two planets with transports in the stack. On higher difficulty levels, it would be difficult to recover from that kind of strategic loss. Instead they often send their best attack fleet after a relatively meaningless starbase or even one small ship. If they do come for a planet only one time in ten are the transports properly protected. Another cool AI gambit would be an early strike, leaving all its planets virtually unprotected to fling all available military ships at one enemy. Could be fatal, could also be brilliantly victorious, especially if done early. It would be stupid AI if it did it every game, but would be cool 5% or 10% of the time.

Most of the time, the AI builds slow, expensive ships that allow an intelligent human with a grasp of tactics to outfight five times their value in enemy ships.

I also agree with AngryRussian that the vast majority of players that have defeated other 4x games on their highest levels will make short work of the GC2 AI just as I have. For people that have struggled with other games at the top level, or are new to 4x games, the AI will provide an excellent challenge.

GC2 is probably a bit easier than other 4x games because of some unique game mechanics, such as being able to focus on one section of the tech tree while ignoring others, and ability to have planets specialize in one area with multiple buildings of one type plus capitals.

I feel like I am playing at maybe 60% of optimal because I am a newbie to GC2 and still have a lot to learn. I believe I am average or slightly above average for a 4x game veteran (has at least two other 4x games mastered at top level). I hope 1.2 is better and initial reports show a flash of promise.

Despite all this, the game is well worth buying. There are a lot of good, fun things about the game, but don't expect tactical or strategic brilliance from the AI--I haven't seen it.

I believe I am average or slightly above average for a 4x game veteran (has at least two other 4x games mastered at top level).

What do you mean by 4x games?

I would also highly recommend this game.

The game offers a huge amout of flexibility to a player, such as complete freedom to highly focus on parts of the tech tree, design ships which can move nearly a 1/4 of an entire large map in a turn, build any number of any improvement on a planet (within space limits), the ability to shift your focus to any extreme on one type of production, and i could go on.

this makes for a really fun game, however it also makes designing a good AI very, very difficult. The galciv AI does an excellent job given the difficulty of the task, and yes there are things it will do badly sometimes as mentioned in previous posts, but this is only to be expected, and compared to the AI in similar games this one is very good (and improving!).

@shirt: 4X is the type of game - Xplore, Xploit, Xpand, Xterminate or some such thing.

I believe I am average or slightly above average for a 4x game veteran (has at least two other 4x games mastered at top level). What do you mean by 4x games?

Like the other answer already said, explore, expand, exploit (?), exterminate. All the Civ games, and the Master of Orion series are 4x games. There are many others, but those two are the most famous.

There have probably been several dozen big sellers in the genre during the past decade, so there are a LOT of veterans of 4x games who have now bought GC2. The top players have an attention to detail that borders on obsession. For example, some of them plot out their initial moves on graph paper to find optimal strategies. To my mind that takes some of the fun out, but it does make for better players. The top players can kick my butt up and down the block.