Maiden666

[quote who="My Views and Muse" reply="49" id="3562010"] Oh, one other thing having said the previous. I was surprised that Brad did not feel the Twiight of Arnor AI was as good as DA. Any particular reason for that? [/quote] TOTA introduced alot of new stuff (mostly from new technologies, example: Atlas modules, stuff that enhances your attack/defense fleet- or shipwide) and the AI was never coded to use it. In that particular case the ship designer would totally

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="76" id="3561745"] 2. Empire management with 100+ colonies quickly becomes busywork. At immense, where it's quite easy to get 200+ colonies halfway through the game, each turn would take 20+ minutes. [/quote] 100 colonies half midgame through that's a quite reasonable setup. Such a mediocre game should, at least, take 2 weeks to finish off. Back in DA I remember colonizing up to 1400 planets, one particular game had me produ

There's a few bugs here and there that won't get fixed at all because they mostly revolve around using the knowledge of some game mechanics to create a exploitable setup/situation, and only a few min/maxers are using it, and only a little percentage of all players are actually showing at the forums or reading about gamemechanics and all this stuff. So in other words, closing some of the loopholes would drag away from the fun that the other ~~95% of normal players are rece

[quote who="Bamdorf" reply="34" id="3561051"] And lastly and most difficult, does the AI, seeing a threat, organize against the threat by trying to use cooperation with other AIs or with the player? That's a tough one. I am not sure that really worked so well, but I don't have a clear picture. [/quote] Let me help you here a bit. In GC2 there were a few mechanisms at large that could do this. Most of this was based against the leading factio

[quote who="naselus" reply="48" id="3560850"] On turn 40? Yes, I do. The pirates just single-mindedly churn out military ships from half a dozen shipyards that completely surround my empire. They have me encircled, they never waste time building a colony ship or a constructor, and they produce a new warship every few turns. They are a threat very early, and not a threat later on. Players, even militarily-specialized ones, are a threat later on but not this early. Among other things, you

I'm going to address some stuff you mentioned. [quote who="leiavoia" reply="9" id="3560830"]Declares wars but makes little or no effort to invade or take territory. Starts wars with unreachable opponents.[/quote] War was mostly the result of a really good and complex diplomatically interplay. When it appeared randomly it might have been the Drath with their SA. Even war without being able to reach an opponent can do certain things, War Profit, blocking trade,

I'm going to agree with MottiKhan that a suicidal GC2 game without using any of the known exploits is impossible to beat on most settings, although this is due to the brutal bonuses the AI gets (+100%) and not because it's so smart. Still, it's better than any other 4X game I know, most probably because there's actually 4 main AIP that do things quite differently in certain regions. And I still have some hopes that you might get back to it one day and close some

[quote who="naselus" reply="46" id="3560778"] In a smaller map size, he already owns half the planets by turn 40 [/quote]and you think I just wait 40 turns and do nothing.... [e digicons]:troll:[/e] simply believe me, an early military threat counters this tactic easily. all it needs is a certain proximity to the targets, and of course, just like him, I'll pick my starting conditions to totally specialize me into this as well. his tactic actually also requires some

[quote who="naselus" reply="30" id="3560781"] Speaking of which, does anyone else suspect that Kanvium Laminate armour may be bugged? It gives twice the armour of the previous component in the tree, and the next level up is only 2 points more (for actually more mass); it's also got 300% the mass-per-value than the equivalent kinetic weapon. [/quote] Was more or less the same also in GC2. I suspect this is being done intentionally to introduce chaotic fluctuations to the

[quote who="frankjordan" reply="28" id="3560752"] You spend your 10 points on 3 defense on all and 1 attack. Take any amount of hitpoints. I get 10 attack and no defense, with the same hitpoints. Maybe a bit less attack, but not much in the current state of the game. Early in the game we do not have those kind of hitpoints, but also not attack so see it as percentages [/quote] Although I agree with your general conclusion I think this example is a bit extreme. The defense sh

[quote who="naselus" reply="27" id="3560748"]As with lolpurple, you presume the enemy is just passively picking a weapon and type never changing it, so that you can always fight them with the correct defense in play. It also presumes that you won't fight 2 or more enemies at once, who have each picked different specializations. Again, this is only true if the player also CANNOT pick attacks correctly to target his enemies weakness at a better-than-average rate. This probably works

[quote who="naselus" reply="40" id="3560709"] It does not matter what size the map is, because it is the RATE at which he can expand which is the point, and that rate is not determined by map size. Sure, he'll run into other civs sooner or later, and might even have to fight a war. But he'll have more colonies, more shipyards, more production and (if he needs to set planets to it) more research when he bumps into them. He can build up the colonies to parity with his opponents lat

I find it somewhat awkward to evaluate the worth of defenses in an offtype scenario - because they should always be ontype. If not, then there was one or more false decision made previously (in not matching the enemy's weapons in the ship designer) and this has to take its own responsibility and mustn't mean that all defenses are automatically too weak. The 1.3 ratio in the above formula only occurs if defenses are either picked totally randomly, OR if the enemy will always us

This is exactly what I want to find every mourning in between getting my shoes on and a cup of coffee: Another thread by marigoldran!!! May I be allowed to call you Sensei? (sorry still a bit drunk I guess) But to add at least something constructive - you can add pictures directly to your post by using the Insert Image thingy that is 2 pieces to the left from the Add-Smiley function above. I think you need to host these pics beforeahead and use a directlink to them, but don&#3

Went to the wikipedia sources named on the first page and added many of the starnames mentioned there to the list, it's up to 407 entries now (including the above posted list). I've tried to look out for common or historical names mostly with only some of the generic names from the "big lists" in order to spice it up a bit (there's alot of similar sounding Al-blabla names because of the arabic historical roots of astronomy) or if the generic name was an interesting e

[quote who="naselus" reply="14" id="3558715"] Sure, but you also can't balance it against the smaller setting when other players might never touch those. It's another case (like LEP) where the map size ought to be taken into account - ship range is already modified by map size, sensor radius should be too. [/quote] you're right, and surely a tiny galaxy also qualifies as a "most extreme setting" as well. the best way to start is to look at how things play out on

here's a list of 175 name of stars that exist for real, most of them in our very galaxy Achernar Acrab Acrux Acubens Adhafera Adhara Ain Al Niyat Albireo Alcor Alcyone Aldebaran Alfirk Algenib Algieba Algol Algorab Alhena Alioth Alkaid Alkalurops Almaak Alnasl Alnath Alnilam Alnitak Alphekka Alpheratz Alrakis

[quote who="naselus" reply="10" id="3558588"] Once again, see what it looks like on Insane. You're playing on the 3rd-smallest map size, out of 9. Insane maps are like 300 times the size.. [/quote] sure, but otherwise comparing Insane to Immense isn't a big deal and in Tota you had a sensorcap of 15 there.... it simply doesn't make sense to balance a game to the most extreme settings, esp. when the grand majority of players don't even touch these scenarios...

Stuff like this most likely will never see a fix (just like in GC2 nobody did care about these discrepancies)

The reason for the trade delay is to guard the AI from some exploitive stuff the player could do (like, declaring war, militarily taking stuff from the AI like resources, then sueing for peace the very next turn for far less than the damage done/bonuses gained, or other stuff like buying colony ships the turn they it a planet etc); although I agree right now it is too long. Actually it should be tight to the mapsize, because, the bigger maps are the longer wars are going to take, as well as o

here we go again^^

[quote who="J5S" reply="56" id="3558155"]What do pirates want with a colony ship? [/quote] They take the women to sell at the Orion Slave Market. Seriously, the realism-argument is void. Simply use your fantasy.

Instead of looking at good & evil, which is just moralistic nonsense, and at that, totally irrelevant esp. if alien cultures & races are added to such a hypothetical situation, it would be more informative to determine if a co-existance can be established if Races (or Players) do make choices that are either cooperative or exploitative . The best reason for being cooperative is that, as a whole, it will net the most profit (monetary or otherwis

[quote who="00zim00" reply="17" id="3558082"]im not sure if that's the case but if it is then i guess there should be a way to talk to other Ais who already have UT when you yourself dont.. i think it was like that in galciv 2 but im not 100% sure. [/quote] in GC2 you had to have researched UT on your own, otherwise the game gave you an error message ("We need a Universal Translator to speak to this civilization") regardless if the civ you'd like to contact already

Guess you have a point here. To be more specific, the Universal Translator tech enables only its holder to initiate a dialogue. At least, this rule is set for the player so it should be in place for the AI as well. Also I suspect the AI isn't bound to the time closing prohibiting him new trades for a specific time after a successful communication has been done.