Feedback after about two weeks of testing

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hello there. Just a word of introduction, I'm 34, this isn't my first beta. I used to play Master of Orion way back. I played Civilization I, II and III, Alpha Centauri and an innumerable number of wargames, RTS, role-playing games. I recently acquired both Galactic Civilization and Master of Orion III to get a better idea of modern 4X games.

At first glance, Galactic Civilization II looks far better than most strategy games. Its graphic interface is easy to understand. So far, gameplay looks fine except for a few glitches that have more to do with ergonomics than anything else.

But ergonomics and general accessibility/user friendly nature of the interface so far isn't that good. No right click, no scroll-down menus (for starship and planet filters for example, not to mention that we could use more than one filter), no mouseovers... This isn't what we should have in a modern game. Think of Civ3 for instance, you can change a city's production with a right click on the screen, you can easilly change most relevant things from the advisor menues too. Think of MOO3 where you have more than one filter in the planet screen.
Tracking an autopilot ship isn't that easy (the trajectory on the minimap isn't exactly helpful on a ship by ship basis, while it's perfect for a strategical glance), and finding one's trade routes is really awful since they aren't highlighted on the trade screen and you have no way to see them on the strategic map.
The strategical minimap is nice, but it's sometimes uneasy to control zooms in/out. For some reason, when I count squares in the trade menu and try to go to the relevant cell on the main map it's not where I thought it should be!

Space combats so far aren't really looking that good, but since we don't know how fleet will work we'll have to see later. Compared to MOO3's lively spacefights it's clearly a development area.

So far, the map looks small even with huge galaxies.

AI: I've not tested it enough, but it seems it creates far too much colony ships so the game tends to be a race for the most planets/cities (Civ3 analogy). A little different challenge would be nice.

Game mechanics: the old fashioned reaganomics, that is less taxes=more happy people is a little old. Try a curve rather than a straight line, with an optimum tax level according to general place in the galactic race for domination, race (human, Drath, whatever), racial abilities like loyalty, war/peace etc. In the real world the Swedish look perfectly happy with a tax level that would lead most Americans to revolt a la Boston tea party. On the other hand they get much from the state. Trading ressources (or some of them) could be a good addition to tradable goods/wonders like those in Galciv 1.

Shipyard: it's a little hard to place custom hull parts so far. By the way do ship upgrade work so far?

Starports: We need a way to navigate from starport to starport...

Planets: it's hards sometimes to see what has been built and what is still a project.


Otherwise this game looks like a very good one in the makingn team. From a graphic point of view it's light years above GalCiv1 or MOO3. Starships look like starships (though may a real 3D map might be a little more immersive), planets and suns are nice.


ยจ
Potential bug:
When you have little money or ressoures, it seems some of your social products freeze or get a negative number of turns to complete.
8,160 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, Beta 3 was the first version where the AI knows much about the game, so I'm sure that they know that there's quite a bit of work to do. GalCiv was known for it's AI, and I expect no less from GC2. However, that point made, if the colony ship rush isn't an effective strategy, then you should be able to beat it easily. The initial land grab has been a major part of every 4x strategy game I've ever played, and I've never seen anyone come up with a variation that made the initial land grab less than essential while retaining the 4x elements of the game.

I agree on the ergonomics, though I'm sure that's one area that they're still polishing.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Usability is the last thing that goes in.  One has to first have the main gameplay in before ergonomics can be put in because ergonomics is based on how people play.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
BTW, you can click on planets and change what they build just by clicking on the entry.  The only reason you cant change planetary improvements is because they're not like Civ improvements, they're tile-based.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

The initial land grab has been a major part of every 4x strategy game I've ever played, and I've never seen anyone come up with a variation that made the initial land grab less than essential while retaining the 4x elements of the game.


Actually, i believe that the team who is working on Horizon: humans in space are going into an interesting direction. The development of colonies will be much slower. Therefore, while colonies may become important, the Homeplanet will be the most important planet through all the game. Also probably it's going to be better to focus on some colonies than too many.
Knights of Honor (medieval game) or Spartan (greek antics) avoided the rush by giving fixed cities (no colonization)
Generally i would be happy to see a game where, even in the end of the game, only up to 20-30 percent of the planets have been colonized.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not sure what you mean by giving fixed cities, but if it's what I think it means, then neither of those two games are 4x strategy games by my definition, and Horizon sounds borderline.

I'll admit that the rate of colony development in GC2 is a tad unrealistic and contributes to the land rush feel of the early game, but if you make it too slow, then the game's not really 4x anymore. Regardless of the pace of colony development, most 4x games reach a pivot point where either your larger economy isn't of any help (you've overdeveloped your economy at the cost of defense, and the barbarians are at the gate), or it is the dominant force (you can create a navy fast enough that you can trade ships in combat at 4:1 and still grow).

Play balancing is what determines the factors that go into the timing of the pivot point and the likelyhood of it going either way.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
The initial land grab has been a major part of every 4x strategy game I've ever played, and I've never seen anyone come up with a variation that made the initial land grab less than essential while retaining the 4x elements of the game.


Actually, MoO1 dealt with the land rush very well. It used a variety of world types, and in the beginning, you could only colonize near Terran worlds. You had to advance in your techs to open up new world types for colonization. It really helped to slow down the "Just build a colony ship for every world and existance as fast as you can!" that is GC, and frankly, sucks. Each couple of planet advancements that you could settle was like opening a new frontier.

Unfortunately, it is probably too late for GC2 to go with such a system, but I hope it comes along at sometime in the future.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
That sounds interesting, but it's still a land rush to grab the near Terran worlds, then a tech race to get to the point you can grab the other worlds. Still, that is better than a pure land grab. In fact, that's part of my strategy in GC1. Take +5 PQ, build the Terraformer, and do a late-game land grab grabbing everything PQ 12-14, since those usually don't get taken.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Poput target said:
The initial land grab has been a major part of every 4x strategy game I've ever played, and I've never seen anyone come up with a variation that made the initial land grab less than essential while retaining the 4x elements of the game.

4X Games are 10 years old now, we can hope for a little innovation... otherwise we're basically playing the same game in different trappings.
Even though MOO1 had indeed a land rush/grab element (so does MOO3), it wasn't as visible since different races liked different types of environments and the rush wars happened later in the game since at the beginning humans went for terran planets, and etheral like heavy gravity ones. That was what made MOO quite different from civilization where basically settler-lancer-worker-settler is the win strategy. There should be alternative routes!
I'm about sure it's still possible to introduce such notions in GC2.

Frogboy:
Thanks for the information on usability, I stand chastised about the tile dimension, you are perfectly right. I hope there will be more mouseovers/right clicks/scroll downs etc. later on!
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that we can't do better. In fact, I like the idea of needing tech to make planets colonizable, though having each race have different planetary preferences doesn't work for CG (largely because the backstory explains why for the most part all the races are so similar, including planetary preferences, but also because that would mean tracking different types of soil enhancement/habitat improvement/terraforming, improvements that stop working because the current race can't inhabit that area because of planetary differences or different SE/HI/T methods, etc).

I actually wasn't as dissapointed by MOO3 as most people were (except for the idiot AI that shipped with the release version), so there's definitely room for differences.

Also, I think 4x is older than 10 years now. I definitely remember playing civ-like games in the late 80s, I just don't remember the games well enough to remember if they'd qualify as 4x.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I actually wasn't as dissapointed by MOO3 as most people were (except for the idiot AI that shipped with the release version), so there's definitely room for differences.


Oh, actually, there is one more MOO3 dissapointement, but this one wasn't at release. I wanted to fire up the various versions of MOO to try to get a more neutral view of the whole concept, and my copy of MOO3 won't install from my DVD drive. Worked fine when I bought it, but that was a long long time ago (I think I preordered it), and I think the only piece of my game computer that hasn't been replaced since then is the keyboard. And if I could find a KVM that worked with the IBM Ultranav keyboards, I'd have probably upgraded that too