Gameplay, balance, etc

I believe that planets should only be traded for other planets because its all to easy to take advantage of the A.I in this matter.I would like to have claims to resources in my sectors included in the diplomacy.

while thats true, the AI can be incredibly stubbon. For instance in one of my games i was beating up the Yor and after taking all but two of their systems and destroying every ship they had as well as having dreadnoughts, avatars and battle ships surrounding them they wouldn't even trade peace treaty for thought police let alone one of their planets.

Starbases should have more hp. My starbases usually have 100 hp but the alien starbases always seem to have about 200 hp and this is early on in the game. Whats with that?

Reaver9 : maybe they are from the war party, doubling their HP ? Just a wild guess. I thought that the alien were not benefitting from the political bonus but I may be wrong.

Starbases should have more then 100 HP. The initial posts about them and the draft docs state that they should have 500 HP and while this may be too high 100 HP is too low. We're talking about a fairly massive construct here and I think it stretches things quite a bit to say that a single starship can have more HP than a Starbase.

I would like to see passage rights in diplomacy,it does'nt seem right that when at war the alien empires can just send there fleet's through your territory even if there attacking an important trading ally.Also minor races are to weak in my experience there pointless if they cant make it past the first 20 turns.

I'd prefer to see that star bases can be UPGRADED to have more than 100 hitpoints.

Balance is great at this point. Much easier for the Terran to stay alive and not get attacke early in the game.

One suggestion - increase the size of the galaxy to the
enormous level as in GC Gold OS/2.

having played one long game in b3 the balance seems much better than before - so dont mess with it too much in my view. I got a long lead-in before the first race declared war on me (guess who!) and was able to fend them off - until they offered me peace. This time the Arceans even befriended me and we became allies. I also allied with another race, so it really became interesting and was set up nice.

Once comment - One planet i was trying to take had an orange glow around it (advanced space defences?)

I must have literally hit it with 20 battleship class ships lost em' all and could not take out the defending ship(s) this I think needs to be at least looked at

s

also alien ships should not be able to take down about 5 other ships of the same class. This always happens to me, i would create a fleet of battleships say and the enemy would be able to take them all down with one or two battleships even though i have weapons, defence and hitpoints upgrades.

The game makes no distinction between humans and alien ships in battle.

Take a look at their ship hitpoints and such before going into battle. They may have more upgrades.

Also, use spying so that you can see what their ability ratings are.

In the first beta2 game I played, I placed starbases near star systems that had lower quality planets. I figured they had to have nearby resources to exploit. By sheer co-incidence, a number of those star systems soon had habitable planets that the UP assembled to divvy up.

I say sheer co-incidence because it hasn't happened in any subsequent game. BUT, would it be possible to make this a feature?

That is, once a culture has researched Terraforming, would it be possible to give their starbases the option of terraforming the best planet(s) in a nearby (2 tiles?) star system? I suppose you could also give starbases the option to use espionage and money to downgrade a nearby planet without requiring Terraforming. Cost and time could depend on how much terraforming had to be done, so that if you had an insane amount of money and patience, you could turn Pluto into a pilgrim's paradise, or vice versa.

As long as you've got nothing but time on your hands, you might as well spend it all coding...

End transmission.

Brad said:
I'd prefer to see that star bases can be UPGRADED to have more than 100 hitpoints.

This works for me.

"One planet i was trying to take had an orange glow around it "...Um...I have no idea...do you have a screenshot or anything?

Cari

My saved game does not work so I cant load up again LOL

I am slightly surprised as I assumed it was a graphic representing the advanced space shelds (or whatever they are called). 20 Battleships latter I was most impressed and wanted to know where I could buy one!

If I get my saved game running again I will take a snap. You are also welcome to my saved game of course if you like, just send me a link

s

I do have one question about balance -- I just started playing this weekend, so I am probably just not playing very well, but it seems like the computer can always outproduce me and that their population and production grows like crazy, even when I put a significant amount in social development.

Normally, I would just assume that I suck, but it also seems like there is some sort of balance problem between the computer players -- one computer will start crushing its neighbors, and quickly turn into a giant juggernaut no one can stop, "early" in the game (at least, it seems early to me). Often I tend to be the last or second to last in the group to die, but none of the computers seem to be very proactive diplomatically in this release, so they don't ask for help from me or anything like that, they just take their lumps (and die). That is probably something that should be fixed -- I would like to see the AI do what they can to favor the status quo. If someone gets big, they try to ally against them (especially if they are of an opposing alignment and/or growing mostly by conquest), and if someone gets small, they try to protect them (especially if they are of the same alignment). I find that to be the more enjoyable games, when everyone lasts until the endgame.

When a foreign power attacks one of my trading partners, it would be nice to have the diplomatic option of asking the aggressor to make peace with the race they are at war with, hopefully using your influence over them. After all, what good is it for if you can't do such a thing? I could find no such option. After several games, I was wanting to do this.

Also, I found that during a game, the Arceans all of a sudden were allied with me, and I hadn't even researched alliances yet. That's the most detailed info I have.

Hope my free beta testing advice is profitable!

Excellent game. I never enjoyed losing so much in my life.

I am sharing Necromncr's view on Diplomacy and Balance as well as Sidesteppingsuperman's view on the "ask for peace" option. For instance in MOO1 you had better chance to find all the races until the end...this was not the case in MOO2. And i do not wish the same lack of Balance in Galactic Civilization. Really. :notsure:

Actually both aspects are bound...in MOO2, i always try to keep the balance by using heavily the Diplomacy (including the "ask for peace" option)and most of the times it works (it's sometimes very difficult as the races are very unbalanced).

I have just tried to use sector sweep. It was'nt what I was hoping for. I was hoping for an Auto explore function that you could send the scout to a point and it would reveal space from that point out or perhaps have different search patterns.

Looking good though

Steve, does your saved game with the orange glow work again?

One balance problem I have at the moment is the suicidal behaviour of the minors. They constantly seem to attack me when I can easily wipe them out. Why? It would be nice to see some relationship data with the minor races.

As an aside, I had the Arcadians surrender to a minor race today. Very strange! (though nice). The minor then had 6 systems. This made it the second largest empire!

Paul.

Another balance issue is the AI's ability to detect a threat. The Ai sends it's ships after my fighting ships and often ignores the approaching transport. It needs to go for transports above all else if the planet can be captured, otherwise go for the military ships.

Paul.

The AI should also realize that without space cover, the w ar is really lost. I had reduced the fleet of the arcadians to nothing leaving all is planets untouched but unprotected. My fleet was surrounding his planet, with enough ship to kill any newly build ship, and I was reducing its morale to 1% through destabilization, to prevent him to make new ships.

When spoken to, the guy still taunted me that the war had just begun, and would not accept to surrender ONE little planet (among 10). So, I build transport and genocided them all.

' It needs to go for transports above all else if the planet can be captured, otherwise go for the military ships.'

It'ss funny you ssay that. I find that the AI only targets colony ships and transports. I have yet to see any AI attack anything more capable than a defender except for one battleship that was attacked by a third-hand avatar.