Icemaniaa

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="68" id="3560984"] Having fun comes from breaking games. [/quote] You know, I agree, that's very true ... for a while. How many hours did you say you've played ... not many right? Now if you enjoy these games and want to have a closer contest while min-maxing you have to look inwards and ask yourself ... how do I set-up the game to have fun after you've figured out what to break? Looking across 4

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="64" id="3560974"] Silly idea. When you play chess for fun, do you restrict yourself? Answer is no. When you play multiplayer against another person, do you restrict yourself? Answer again is no. I see no reason why Gal Civ III PvE is any different. IF THE DEVELOPERS ADDED SOME NON-CHEAT FEATURE, THAT MEANS IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE USED. AND I WILL USE EVERYTHING THE DEVELOPER OFFERS ME. IF THEY DIDN'T INT

Unlike others I never doubted you were going to win because I've won myself on Suicidal without even using the colonizer trait. How easy it will be in the end I'm not so sure. What you are missing in your mental model is that in EVERY 4X game, particularly at this point in the lifecycle, there are things that are easily excessively exploitable. The REAL question is ... how can you have fun AND min-max (noting I have similar affliction in this respect)? For

Interesting post Raisinthehouse. As a fellow winner on Suicidal I also agree those that consider it an insurmountable challenge are wrong. Balance changes and AI improvements are needed ... I'm sure they will come ... and perhaps some of this will help with that. But I also don't find Suicidal "easy". I've had to reload before those wins. Do you find you need to reload occasionally and change up your strategy to win (my experience)? Or

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="55" id="3560906"] If the only way to have fun is to restrict yourself [/quote] Welcome to almost every 4X game that ever existed. Few offer a challenge on the highest difficulty as strongly as Galactic Civilizations does. The real question is ... can you setup the game to help ensure you get a challenge and have fun? The answer is Yes.

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="53" id="3560895"] Should I finish this game? Because at this point it starts to get boring. [/quote] Dude, the last screenshot I can see is on Turn 39. While I agree some balancing is needed, you haven't proven anything except you can fast expand, which isn't news. The game has hardly started. Even with vastly fewer planets the AI will be able to produce and research faster than you when you are surrounded b

Wake me up when you get to Turn 150.

[quote who="marigoldran" reply="56" id="3560430"] Should be sufficient, I believe. [/quote] Wait. Your saying it's too easy ... but haven't even played through a full game on Suicidal? Dude, it doesn't matter if you have a lot more colonies than the AI, with the bonuses they get the game will be tough anyway. But you won't find that out until LATER on. I look forward to seeing the Let's Play thread at a much later stage. &nb

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="42" id="3560259"] No one is winning on Godlike unless they're exploiting the system massively.[/quote] Suicidal is not easy, it's extremely tough, I don't agree with the OP it's easy. But I'm really surprised by this particular statement. I've won twice on Suicidal without using the sort of tricks you mentioned (e.g. stacking with weak custom races) ... beyond reloading ... and I expect so have many others.

Completely agree. While some scores are obvious cheats/mods, others are more subtle. I'm in that group interested in seeing how my scores stack up against others that are not cheating ... which isn't possible at the moment. While it's going to be difficult for the scoring to be be completely fair even within valid games (due to the patches and changes) they should certainly be considering having a system which confirms it was a valid game for a score to be reco

[quote who="SBFMadDjinn" reply="1" id="3535112"] Wrt ai strategies, if one type of strategy is failing constantly, perhaps there is a balance problem in the design of some mechanics . f there is, then it'll show up in multiplayer as well. [/quote] Great point, hopefully the AI and balancing are being done hand in hand

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="16" id="3533822"] One advantage we have in doing AI for so many years is that there are some simple AI testing methodologies that help a lot. Let me give you a straight forward example: If you let the AI fight each other, will someone conquer everyone else? Seems simple enough. But most games, no AI player will actually ever "close the deal". Usually what game devs will do is create an AI victory option that essentially involv

Hey Omega, it must be I'm Spartacus I take it! I wasn't sure until that post. Thanks for that clarification, I'm interested in Brad's response on the late game in any case, given the 100 turns in the OP. It's reasonable to expect a C AI to focus on appropriate victory conditions and adopt a suitable strategy rather than bumbling along. Your Stardrive example earlier was a good one and hopefully not relevant to GC3. I only played two games of

@Brad Please understand I’m just really nervous after some recent 4X entries. I appreciate your background and passion for AI and share it in my own line of work. C is fine at release with your definition of

[quote who="The_Poena" reply="4" id="3533378"] Brad said in his original post, "However, not all these choices were good choices. It should have picked a single weapon system to focus on." So that will be at least one of the things they'll be fixing to improve the tech picking to a C. [/quote] Sure but that is the tip of the Iceberg when it comes to what a "C" would look like. Brad may not want to reveal too much to us humans but as a result of Br

Hey Brad: Just to introduce I'm the author of the AI Improvement Mod for Distant Worlds and a long time fan of Stardock games. Hell I'm still playing Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion thanks to the amazing Star Trek Armada 3 Mod. On the one hand I like what you've done to help Modders but I'm firmly in the "bitter pill" at release camp to hear that the goal is just a C. We really need a game in 4X where the AI at release sets a benchmark for others t

Significant news here regarding Distant Worlds Universe, which will be available on Steam and released May 23 For more information visit Space Sector

1. Master of Orion 2. While it's dated, like many, I was completely and utterly addicted at the time. 2. Distant Worlds Shadows. This completely dominated the second half of 2013 to the point where I struggled to remember any other games for a while ... 3. Imperium Galactica 2. This game was brilliant. A real pity there were no more. iPad crashes still make me sad ... 4. Civilisation 5 (with all expansions).

Gal Civ 3 Distant Worlds Universe (I've just doubled their marketing effort with this one post) Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void Star Citizen Elite Dangerous Probably not 2014 but Mass Effect 4

Excellent thanks Gaunathor, they have made the right choice. Let's hope there is depth to the strategy in the design which leads to plenty of debate on these forums. It certainly sounds like we won't end up with the rock-paper-scissors of Endless Space thankfully.

To quote Frogboy (again): "We don’t want to turn it into something like Masters of Orion, where you have like fleets of thousands of ships and you have to command every ship in the fleet and tell them what to do every turn because that would be... I know there are plenty of gamers who want that, but at some point that’s what your game becomes about. When it comes to games like this it’s always abou

Distant Worlds also has automation and policy options to manage large empires. As GalCiv 3 will allow larger empires this needs to be considered as an option. Unfortunately in Distant Worlds the automation for colony management is focused on colony size with one approach for all planets. As a result I always play manually even on the largest maps as the benefit is so great. Rather than sectors I would prefer to be able to custo

I completely agree research is a big part of 4X games, indeed it's one of the reasons I enjoy Distant Worlds. You might want to play the game a little more before jumping to conclusions. In Game ... Open Empire Policy screen ... select Manual Control for Research. With that you can choose what to research in each field. Yes you have to build research stations (and/or include labs in spaceports). On manual this brings another dimension to the game as ch

[quote quoting="post"] I was playing a little of Distant worlds, and one thing I didn't like was that I couldn't decide on what techs to research. One of the biggest reasons I play 4x games is tech research. I thought the private sector was a nice theory until I seen it. If Galactic civilizations does have the private sector then I hope it doesn't have private research, or the private and the public sectors share research. Another question is does a living breathi

While I have no desire to play a tactical combat game in the sense of ship by ship micromanagement, I really hope there is a lot more strategy to it than just fleet makeup alone. C'mon Frogboy gives us some more hints!