ACS_Solver

Reply to Are Defenses Worth Their Expense? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Today, I had the AI attack me with very defense-oriented ships. Drath had frigates with like 4 beam attack and 12 shield defense, or somesuch. And guess what, fleets of similar ships quickly dealt with my fleets of all weapons no defense ships. So I decided to counter by building my own ships with lots of defense, and they were effective. It's funny when you have two fleets fighting, one like 16 attack 40 defense, vs. another with 20 attack 54 defense, or similar numbers. Battles of suc

Reply to Has anyone gotten an Alliance win with 1.31? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Acrecians are Arceans that have been taken over by Netro Mancer . I just tried to see what happens if you set up all trade routes with the same civ - it's a pretty good way to ally with them, even now. A pretty massive relations boost. So it's something to keep in mind for when you really want an alliance.

Reply to Minors need a mjor revamp. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You get more money from traderoutes with minors, and they can sell you tech that no one else can or will. Isn't that enough of a reason to keep them around, in some cases at least?

Reply to Minors need a mjor revamp. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Ah, yes, those guys get declared on before they can do anything. It's an element of luck. If they appear near you, you can take a nice planet quickly. If they appear near someone else, they likely will do it.

Reply to Minors need a mjor revamp. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Nah, they do sometimes build stuff. You can encounter a fleet (albeit smallish) of a minor civ's high-tech ships. More often than not, though, they'll just have a bunch of Freighters, Constructors and few warships. But hey, at least they do have the tech, which means you can trade for it.

Reply to Minors need a mjor revamp. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've seen, albeit rarely, minors emerge as a pretty significant power. Mainly because of their tech stealing ability, they can actually kick the butt of some technologically backwards major civ. What I don't like about majors is their emergence - I've never seen the ones that emerge during a game last. Someone (sometimes even other minors) end up declaring war against the newly-appeared minor very quickly.

Reply to Has anyone gotten an Alliance win with 1.31? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well, but alliances at "Friendly" were too easy. It's easy to have 2-3 civs Friendly by the time you even research Alliances, and then it becomes sort of ridicilous. Had to wipe out Yor, Korx, Altarians and Torians in the same game? Interesting. I'd think that if you went, say, Good, you'd wipe out the Yor and Korx, but the good Altarians and Torians would love you. At Normal, I guess allies can be quite useless - the AI isn't really much good at fighting there. On Challenging

Reply to Questions about minor races in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Ooh I love minor civs. Only problem is, they are often too tempting invasion targets. If you let them be, they'll always have good technology, so they make good trading partners for it. Also, freighters seem to give more income for trade routes with minors, plus you are not going to lose them if you go to war with majors, so it seems like a good idea to mainly trade with minors. But admittedly, if they start somewhere close to me, I can rarely resist the temptation to take them over - a

Reply to Has anyone gotten an Alliance win with 1.31? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I have, though it was an arguable one. Basically, I eliminated everyone except the Terrans, and didn't quite have enough for an Influence Victory. Certainly not a "pure" Alliance victory.

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You're quite wrong, there is a Normal AI level - it's a level below Bright, and two below Intelligent. Normal game difficulty means all Normal AIs, whereas Challenging means all Bright AIs, and Tough means all Intelligent AIs. But the way, I have a screenshot (Tough difficulty) of the Arcean AI surrounding its star system with three military starbases, none of them having any modules - hence, all three bases being pretty much a waste of money at that point in time. Agreed on th

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Some notes on galaxy setup & AI performance. (This may be one of those things that is obvious to GalCiv2 veterans and, if so, my apologies.) I played two games which varied in the number of stars and planets greatly, on Huge galaxies. The first game was with the largest amount of stars and planets, and a high amount of habitable planets. The map was literally full of stars, most with 4 or 5 planets, and habitables in almost every star system. The AI colonized like crazy, and in the end,

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I personally feel it's somewhat of a never-ending journey. I'm playing, I hope to get more of a feel as I do, but it is something that really takes years. Take Civ4, I've played that for about a year and a half now, in many different ways and the game's iterations, and I still don't think I have a complete "feel" of the game, even if I have spent hundreds of hours on it. [Nostalgic notice] The fact that I've been, so far, playing GalCiv2 without reading the forum discussions, brings

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I'm planning to start playing the Metaverse soon - just seems like a nice feature. So far, I've been going pretty nuts with AI testing, playing Normal, Challenging and Tough for observation of the AI. Normal is surely a cakewalk, Challenging is easy much of the time, but at least the AI can keep up somewhat, Tough seems fair to me, with my current skills. Brad - the official descriptions say that Bright counters "most human tactics", while Intelligent counters "all human tactics". Is th

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've updated, but thanks for mentioning it - the post's a bit old. In 1.31, I have not encountered that issue anymore.

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You may have partially missed my point - I am not being critical of GalCiv2 (at least not anymore), I am merely trying to highlight what I think can be improved. I had not, prior to a few days ago, read the debates on this forum, and am looking forward to doing so - but please do not mistake my lack of experience here for my lack of experience with GalCiv2. While I won't claim to have played GC2 as much as many of the people here, I humbly believe my experience to be sufficient for having at lea

Reply to Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

What's that in the screens? Could you change the rival civ alignment in the game set-up back then? Also, why does the Altarian description say they're incredibly evil - did they use to be? I'm fairly sure they're a Good race in GalCiv2.

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

[What follows below is an update I originally posted two days ago. These tend to come as I play.] Time for an update! Gah, what have Firaxians and Brad turned me into, some crazy analyst who can spend more time writing than playing . Getting straight to it, comments on minor civs. I like those folks, even if they are just asking to be eliminated when they’re located close to you – what not with the high planet quality they always have. But they can actually be go

Reply to Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

[Please forgive me for making many posts in a row, I have tried many times to post the entire first part of my thoughts as one post, but have been unable to make it work here]. Still, the new AI behaviour caused me to use some new ship designs. I designed a recon ship with good speed and sensors, and used these at my borders to notice possible troops buildups or approaches. The fact that I found this useful clearly shows that the AI has improved. By the way, a badly needed feature is a

Extensive 1.3 thoughts in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Greetings everyone on the official forums! Since most of you probably do not know me, a short introduction might be in order. I'm Solver, a long-time Civ veteran and member / staff of the Apolyton Civ site. I'm also a consultant and tester for Civ4. I have never played GalCiv1, but shortly after GalCiv2 came out, I got interested in one of the debates on Apolyton. Another poster convinced me to give GalCiv2 a try, which resulted in me writing my thoughts on the game. I actually was quite critica

Reply to Forum Stats in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Kudos to that, Kryo. A pretty original approach that I'd be glad to see at more forums. (also testing if I can finally make a post here)