This made me chortle out loud. And then read the article. Awesomeness.
As this is the Galciv 2 thread du jour…
Playing GC2/DA last night, I decided I’d really like Brad to rip off the new “No Tech Brokering” option from the Civ 4 Beyond The Sword expansion. There’s already a flat “No Tech Trading” option in GC2, but the distinction between the two is useful, especially as I like to play research-heavy games. Having the AIs round-robin all my hard work between them unless I micromanage the trading from turn to turn is a pain. This is the cure.
Also, how do you guys generally decide on a path for weapons and defense? It seems to me that in GC2, the AIs will all initially pick a path, e.g. mass driver weapons and beam defense, and then stick to it, trading the techs between them so that they are all “on the same page”. I have been looking at their techs available to trade to decide what I think they’re going for, so as to plan my own tech path - in this case I went for Armour (good vs mass drivers) and Missiles, as the AIs were all mounting beam shields. Do the AIs adapt to the weapons you use against them?
I haven’t played GC2 since the initial release, and going into GC2/DA fully patched up, it’s mighty impressive. A really strong rival for Civ 4 for the 4X crown.
Seen it happen more than a few times … seems to depend some on the AI level, and on how far along they are techwise. Seems to me that sometimes they don’t switch armors to optimal type if the defense they already mount is already very high.
But is that as a response to your attacks or because they got access to a new weapon tech? Did they research or trade for the tech and start designing ships with it for that purpose? It’s tough to tell as a player because AI weapon techs make the rounds pretty well.
If they take your primary weapon type into consideration when designing ships and do research and trade to counter you, that’s pretty awesome.
I haven’t seen a conclusive case of it in the games I’ve played, but that’s to be expected. Even when I do ultimately win a military victory, I never look like much of a threat until the final moments, so no sane player would bother to research defenses specific to my weapon types.
great read. I think you may have just sold me on GC2. The last 4x space game I bought was MoO3 so needless to say the genre has left a bad taste. Ive heard nothing but praise for this game and I need to finally get around to picking it up.
Im also a big hater when all the enemy AIs just trade technology with eachother so you can pretty much never keep ahead of them even with a brilliant society focused on research. So im glad that option is there.
I have definitely seen the AI switch up which type of weapons/armor they put on their ships based on my military dominating them. It’s both very cool and very annoying. :)
PC Gamer UK have started to post Tom Francis’ latest AAR of GalCiv 2 on their site. The whole thing is in the new mag issue but it seems they’ll put it all online bit by bit, like last time I guess.
I cannot, no matter how much I love this game, finish a game on an Immense-sized map. Either it becomes clear to me about mid-way through the game that I’m winning, and my opponents have no chance, or I’m losing horribly, and only a galaxy-wide event in my favor is going to save me.
Either way, I get disenchanted pretty quickly with the game, and end up starting up a new one. I think the longest I’ve gone on the same Immense map was about a month’s playtime.
Good luck to you, Tom.
I love AARs for strategy games. GC2 is the perfect game for this kind of story. Great work. I really need to pick up Twilight.
EDIT: Rrrgg. Didn’t realize this was the sequel to the OP. That was a great story the first time around and makes me doubly look forward to this one.
Not just “in”, it seems, but an AAR as a whole book bundled with PCG UK this month. It might just get me to buy my first print mag in nearly 10 years.
Also, how much free sex is Brad giving Tom Francis for this, HMMM?
Guess I may have to search out the mag at a Borders or B&N around here just for that!
I bought GalCiv last year, but I couldn’t get into it.
I think for me the campaign started so dull (you have to sit around for a million turnle researching the tech to annhilate a single enemy planet that you outnumber), that I couldn’t get hooked.
Did anyone else enjoy the campaign? Should I just start a random game?
sandbox is by far the better experience
Ignore the campaign. It never should have had one.
You’ll make jpinard cry, you monster. Think of the frops!
I liked the campaign in a mild sort of way. It was GalCiv2’s version of scenarios, though the difficulty curve was all over the shop, and I recall one having an enormous gap between planets. Still, it was nice to play as part of an alliance against the greater enemy rather than the usual 1v1 experience. Enough quirks in the campaign to make them worth a look IMO.
The progression was completely fucked on every level. Mission as the humans where you can’t trade? Check. Unkillable ships with stats in the hundreds appear to destroy all your shit? Check. Complete waste of your time? Check.
They were killable, though the later patches which removed the “attacker strikes first” rule made the campaign a bit of a bitch.
The campaign is so bad it makes my eyes bleed. I wanted to play through it for the story, but dear jesus it just sucks. Not because it’s hard (I started the random stuff on Tough, and I’m playing on the retard hard difficulties now), but because it is mind bogglingly dull. So many of the scenarios are just you sitting on a single planet with literally nothing to do until you’ve spent one hundred turns researching planetary invasion. GalCiv2’s campaign is what convinced me that BJB’s list was one hundred percent correct. Such an awful campaign.
The main game is arguably better than Civ4, and certainly seems more realistic in that production is paid for and a result of workers in factories, not just something that magically comes from squares out in the boonies.
The only thing it really lacks is the big modding community that Civ has. Unfortunately, that kind of following takes decades of popularity to really develop.