A Few of My Observations on Beta 4C

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've been playing both the Terrans and the Arceans in Beta 4c now and have a few observations. First, the invisible ship bug is far from fixed. The most notorious culprit, the Drengin invisible super dominators are still there in great numbers. Second, the Arcean ship designs generated by the AI look like a car that just got hit by a train-they are a mess with parts randomnly hanging at unsightly angles. This was not the case before, is it intentional? I would like to see that fixed before the final release. Third, the AI surrender mechanic seems "off" for lack of a better term. The AI just surrenders left and right, far too easily. They also tend to repeatedly surrender to the same empire resulting in a completely lopsided game. I've even read of the Dread Lords surrendering in someone else's post, which in my opinion should never happen. Fourth, although I have spoken out in favor of the changes to the economic system in the past, it is clear to me that there is still some tweaking needed. When playing the Arceans with no economic bonuses, it is nearly impossible to not go into a death spiral of debt that eventually results in the entire empire shutting down and collapsing. In my experience, the only way to avoid that is to have some luck finding treasure hordes with the survey ship and/or researching straight for trade. If one is lucky and has a research bonus tile he might just make it before he goes broke and then can't build the freighters so desperately needed to get out of debt. Usually, that is not the case. Another part of the strategy appears to be limiting expansion to just a few planets, three or four. Unfortunately, that leaves the Arceans in a bit of a trouble by the latter part of the early game. Now, I'm sure there will be suggestions about this from other players and I welcome them, but I have serious doubts that they will change my mind that the new economic system needs some tweaking. Finally, the game is coming together well. This latest Beta is more stable and is not having the pathfinding/freeze problems that plagued earlier betas. I am, however, still experiencing some "random" crashes on immense galaxies, which I've reported.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the future, could you please use CR returns to break up your thoughts? Reading that giant BLOCK OF TEXT is kind of difficult. :)

As for economy, I've noticed that every race seems to have a economic crash. This happens when all your first generation colonies have maintenance costs that outweigh the amount of taxes they are generating.

You can handle this with a couple of different methodologies. You can slow down your economy to begin with, so you are spending less. This slows down your production level and in turn, slows down your colony rush. You can also limit your expansion, as you said, until your first gen colonies are ready, then move on.

I've noticed that the Arceans have a slower start than some of the other races, especially due to their speed penalty. I noticed that they tend to get left in the dust if they are in a highly competitive environment where another race is snapping up planets all over the place.

So I would tend to agree that a lot of the races' abilities need to be tweaked a bit. Some more than others, certainly.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree that the invisible ship bug is still very much alive and well within the game. That and the "wire form" asteroids after terror-starring a system. A quick reload of the game makes this go away, so it hasn't been a show-stopper for me (since it's a Beta.)

Can't speak to your problems with the Arceans, though. Never once, in all the iterations of GalCiv, have I played that race.

Playing the Korath for the first time right now, and I am really liking them. The game is going so well, it makes me think that they might have a balance issue...

...but not one that I'm going to complain about. :CONGRAT:
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That speed bonus is very hard to take as is the lack of decent research up the engine tree. You can get up to +2 speed I think, without building those +speed buildings, which leaves you a long distance behind say the Altarians who get +3 and don't start with a negative.

The secret project is a wash of course.

With tech trading off, which I like for now because I don't think races should share their unique technology with anyone they are not at least close to (but maybe only when Allies would be better) the the Arcean's end up being so slow it's laughable in a large-immense galaxy.

Arceans are very nice in small maps though.

Econ wise, they don't get any great boosts but I didn't have too much trouble with economy for some reason.

Try them on a smaller map and see how you like them. I don't know if every race can work on every map size without becoming too generic.

Edit, sorry, maybe the trade off is you don't need defense because you get first attack in combat, with no chance for a reply if you destroy the ships outright, so you can chuck another engine or two on your ships for less than the defenses would have cost, maybe I will try that out.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah I'm aware of the reload solution for invisible ships, but wanted to post on it one more time in light of the fact that we are getting close to final and I would rather not see this swept under the rug-it's been around for a LONG time. Further, reloading does not always take care of the problem.

As for the economic problem, the Terrans do experience it but it can be overcome. Moreover, they have multiple ways of getting out of the crash given their tech and economic bonuses. I myself have defended the current econommic system and listed the myriad of strategies that work for the Terrans in other threads. The Arceans have none of those advantages and the economic problem affects them (and other races I suspect) to a greater degree. Once the death spiral starts and one enters into the red on the balance sheet, population growth shuts down and unhappiness follows until one's empire falls apart. Generally, one can grow out of the economic problem by limiting building on planets and just letting the population build up, but if you enter the red then population growth stops and often goes in reverse in my experience which eliminates that possibility. If they (the Arceans) don't have a good startiong position or some luck (position is likely a function of luck), then it is virtually impossible to avoid going into the economic death spiral without limiting initial expansion to just a small group of planets. That strategy virtually gurantees defeat around midgame when other races with far more numerous star systems start declaring war (I'm playing painful and above). Some of the "luck" I'm referring to includes (a) a really good starting position/planet with a research resource; (b) having one's survey ship find treasure; (c) having an AI surrender to you (may or may not solve the problem); (d) having an AI enter into an economic treaty; and (e) having an economic resource (although that has been shown in my games to be insufficient by itself). The Arceans don't get the Recruitment center in their tech tree so they don't have that little gem that might enable them to at least mitigate the economic crash (unless an AI will trade it, which doesn't always happen.)

I've played the Arceans on maps of all sizes and see these problems to a degree regardless. While they manifest themselves on smaller maps to a lesser degree because overexpansion is not usually possible (I play uncommon planets and rare habitable planets), it is still there. Unless they can make it to the trade tech before they run out of cash, they are toast. Making that happen requires a resource square for tech and/or having your survey ship finding treasure hordes to keep you going/. Rarely will the AI trade that tech. In any event, each race should be more or less playable on any size map without the need for divine intervention to avoid the economic crash. All that being said, the problem might be with the Arceans. Even as an AI I've noticed they rarely do well. Perhaps some rebalancing is in order.

I've got a game right now in which I'm playing the Arceans in an immense galaxy and things are going well. The planets aligned for me and I've avoided even going into debt. That is a rare event. In my opinion, it should not be that way.