1.0.4 comments

Heck, I'd settle for the last beta before this release version. That's another thing I'm steamed about: the most glaring problems with the released 1.04 were not part of the beta testing of the patch. How's that for trying to sneak one by everyone?

Honestly, I thought 1.03xxxx was well balanced in game terms, I wanted bug fixes and UI touchups. Nerfed trade goods has kind of disappointed me.

~SDC~

Seeing Staffa's tech research tree was graphic proof that Trade Goods were too strong. They negated the need to research, clearly not something in the basic game design. 1.04 is an attempt to remedy this.

Imagine if 1.04 had been the 1.00 release. We would just be complaining that they are too expensive to build and too cheap to trade for. Am confident that can be addressed (1.04a or 1.1) while keeping research integral to the game.

Staffa's post was proof of nothing. Staffa's post was an example of something you could *choose* to do that could break the game. In the dozens of games I've played I never once did what Staffa did. I played the game intuitively; what I did not do was spend time trying to figure out how to break the system like Staffa.

Yet, now, because of utter BS like this, I now have had my game fun greatly detracted from because Brad thinks that it's more important to make sure that someone like Staffa can't intentionally break the game. No, it's better that everybody's game is broken

Can't say I'm pleased with either the untradeable trade goods or the sudden bloating of clusters, even on tight clusters (Yay, two humongous clusters each stretching across the entire length of a Huge map. Mmm hmm. If I wanted there to be few borders and no no-man's-lands, I'd be playing Scattered.)

On the other hand, fixing unloadable-saved-game bugs and assorted other obvious bugness is definitely good.

Intetionally break the game?

All I did was aquire a tradegood and then tried
to trade it with every empire, getting as much in
return for my trade as I could. This is intuitive, if
your not doing it, then thats a reflection of your lack
of skill not of my lack of integrity.

Every time I try to blow up a planet with a Terror Star, my crasjes to the desktop... It pisses me off. I could blow up Planets fine 1.03... How am I supposed to discourage empires from going to war with me if I can't use my half dozen Terror Stars to level masses of his planets?

BTW, we are going to come out with anotehr 1.04 that has a few more updates and a few more tweaks in it.

I think Trade Goods will be pumped for trade quite a bit again but at masochistic level they'll still be nasty.

The AI with regards to going to war wasn't changed on iota over 1.03. But I do agree that bribing should have more affect on them.

But make no mistake, if civilization X's military is 10X yours and you're not a good guy it's going to be rough on you still no matter how much trade you do.

If I understood Staffa's other post correctly, it would seem he hit the AI planets at a rather oppurtunistic time. This is very similiar to holding out for as long as possible, until one AI hits final frontier. When that happens, you can win the game by hitting that planet and successfully invading it. You get the final frontier tech and you win by default....even though you literally have crap for technology and only one planet left.

Sometimes you get these things by shear dumb luck. Does that make a person a cheater or breaking a game? Since when is using a trade good for *gasp* trading *gasp* with other AI's cheating?

Give me a break.

SeanB

Hey force, no one said its cheating, it was just to
easy, just like getting final frontier from the AI, when your
missing everything else, is to easy.

[Message Edited]

That's not all you did. You figured out that it was possible to push to this to the extreme of using this strat to avoid spending hardly anything on research, leaving your econ for military and social spending. *That* is not intuitive.

See, when you are playing the game with your sliders actually spread across all 3 categories and you're not some jackass who thinks 5 Incredible AIs aren't enough of a challenge, you find this really incredible thing: the AI beats you to plenty of the trade goods, and because they're valued so highly, your biggest use of them is get TGs from those AIs in a more or less 1:1 trade as far as value goes. You then generally hold the TGs you don't need to trade as either a bonus or future leverage for when you get into trouble.

Now, you can be your usual conceited self and disparage my play skill some more, but my opinion is that when it comes to game balance, you are pretty much the last person in the universe Stardock should be listening to.

Hmmm. I think Staffa is right that trying this is fair enough - pushing the envelope of what the AI will do for you is a completely legitimate process. I think Code Monkey is right that the game shouldn't allow you to use this same tactic all the time - obviously the balance was wrong.

But I don't have much sympathy for the proposal that "since most of us only used this unbalanced play feature a little bit, it shouldn't be fixed". It was still unbalanced!

I think both of ya should recognise what is obvious to the rest of us - that your different playing styles require skill, perseverance, and intelligence.

I certainly appreciate the contribution you are both making on these boards.

Come on monkey, did someone piss in your corn flakes this morning? It's a bad patch. Brad just said he's gonna fix it. Chill out.

It's not Staffa's fault that he figured out an effective way to win. That is kinda the point of the game.. winning.

Code Monkey, Staffa.. no offense, but the game wasn't made just for the 2 of you. Your opinions of course are useful and valued, I'm sure.. but don't expect the game of GalCiv, the devs, and the community to revolve around 2 players.

I hope they keep adjusting, balancing, UPDATING just like they are. The devs are hardly beholden to update the game on YOUR terms CodeMonkey.. get a grip.

fleabitfox

#11 by Veteran Code Monkey - 5/28/2003 11:32:25 PM
(To Staffa): "You figured out that it was possible to push to this to the extreme of using this strat to avoid spending hardly anything on research, leaving your econ for military and social spending. *That* is not intuitive."

Well, trying to specialize your empire (in trade good manufacturing or in starship manufacturing) seems to be pretty reasonable strategy and the fact that AI doesn't recognize it allowing human player to triumph easily is not a player's fault. So now when this weakness is fixed, it's time to see for other weak spots. Given the big bonuses incredible AI has, there's no other way to win, but to find AI weaknesses and use them.

Developers are doing good job improving AI and at some point they should be able to make AI good enough so that it will become nearly impossible to win vs it with current bonuses. Of course, making AI impossible to beat without bonuses is different story ;->

I'm surprised about the number of quick judgements on how the balance has been broken by the latest version. Was it really broken? I thought that the better method was to forbid trade goods buying, but I won't make any judgements until playing few games. So far the incredible game which would have been easy win in
1.03 is going pretty tough, but that's a good thing, in worst case I can step back to genius AI. IMHO let AI play as well as it can on higher levels, if incredible will be getting too hard for most, it's better to add intermediate level between genius and incredible with somewhat smaller bonuses than incredible.

That's exactly that i did in my 3rd game in Civ3 there i figured that i can't outresearch 7 enemy civilizations with shared research. So i just set all to money and gg (game was at maximum difficulty of course). But there is a bad thing - that was a last time i played in Civ3. I don't want to play a game there you can't win w/o a lot of cheese. Now i see same situation with GalCiv.

Why just not rename masochistic difficulty to cheese difficulty? Developers using this difficulty to find cheese tactics, so it will be a logical thing.

~SDC~

That's funny Ellestar. Imagine the sense of fulfilment one would get after beating the Cheese level.

Yes, the Pope strategy for Civ 3 emerged quite quickly once people discovered what you did.

There is a bad thing with using cheese - it reduces your overall skill.
1) Cheese tactics is a tactics which is ALWAYS efficient in some situation, and there is no efficient alternatives. So, using cheese isn't intelligent action in most cases, because you don't need to make choices (maybe with the exception what cheese to choose, but see (2)).
2) Cheese working in one particular game and/or later paths closing cheese. So it's in-game expirience instead of metagame expirience.

Yes, it's good that developers testing game to find cheese, but maybe it's better for me to stop playing and wait for several months then most of the cheese tactics will be closed.

Playing on Intelligent is ridiculous because AI isn't intelligent. I tried to play on Tiny (1.04, 5 Incredible Pure Evil, Rare, Scattered). In tactical combat AI still as dumb as rock, but has Incredible bonuses - more than in other games. Also, it don't responds to possible treats.

~SDC~

The temptation is always there to use cheese tactics but let's remember that we have the choice whether to be cheesy so I don't see why you have to wait till all such loopholes are closed. It could be a long wait as I don't believe too much resources should be spent combating cheese as this is a single player game (metaverse aside).

I used the ringfence cheese once when I played my first post-PQ15 maso game. However, I realised that I was spoiling the fun for myself and stopped doing that. As far as I know, the only tactic that I am using now that could be considered cheesy is the "Shadow Hand" - gifting/selling AMMs to knock out SBs. Arguably cheese but I would be guarding my SBs in wartime if I were the AI.

Ok. Developers are clearly using masochistic difficulty to find cheese. I think that cheese tactics is any tactics that's always efficient no matter that - so you don't have strategic choices. Another cheese is using tactics that AI can't use (or use effectively) - that's singleplayer only cheese.
If you can win vs. comp that has a BIG bonuses and not a bad economy, really it means that comp is falling to some kind of abovementioned cheese tactics (one or more). So if devs finally get AI that they wanted to have then it will be a good game.

Say, now i'm playing Gigantic/5 Incr/1.03.057/Tight, using diplomacy only for declaration of war (rejecting any tech trade) and w/o culture flipping. I wanted to win military in xx00 year. But still i'm starting in a remote location and using ship catapults (Trade Catapult(tm) and War Catapult(tm)).
I'm surprized that my stack of 100 combat transports didn't get bonuses then attacking planet with 25 population. 20x advantage - i thought that i'll lose much less than standart.
Well but it's still not that fun. Just a lot of micro.

On 1.04 Tiny i see that i can rush 2 AIs so 2 Incr and 3 Genius is a way to go. But is it interesting? No. Comp can't defend effectively.

On gigantic old strat will work too because there is no changes affecting it.

~SDC~

I think we can agree that we would rather see resources being spent to improve the tactical AI than in combatting cheese because unlike the AI, we get the power to choose.

Are you still working on your Maso GOTM? Though I don't think you are going to get many participants now with the difficulty of 1.04 maso.

That's exactly that i'm talking about. Then AI will be improved, this will not be a cheese. Then AI bonuses may be reduced, and it will be a normal kind of a game istead of cheese.



Well Cheese GOTM? 1.04 is out. I think we need to play a little, and then we'll start a challenge. But i want to hear some suggestions - starting conditions etc.

~SDC~

Frogboy,
As long as I can bribe I am happy (too lazy to fight wars with an AI that kan kick my a$$!

Did anyone experience the AI random trade offer in 1.04? Like offering dreadnought for sensors? All they did in my 1.04 games was offering photons and drones.

yes, VERY weird an AI offered Dreadnaught and Battleship for some low level tech, (not on the same trade)is that a bug?