adamb1011

It's somewhat ironic that research relics are actually not as useful in terms of research for ancient races

Yeah, the game plays like it's still in beta. It's got a long way to go luckily the devs are still supporting and seem to be maintaining reasonable pace of improvement. i think there is still big issues with AI economic management. One issue I've seen is that my pop tends to grow exponentially during he colonisation phase, while there's tends to grow linearly. I wonder if they arent building enough farms at the right times,, forgetting hospitals (bi

and it makes no sense that you preserve all the great benefits of being malevolent and benevolent at once!

Let me add a few more house rules then: 1) upgrading ships is fine, but you may not upgrade into a different ship type. Ie no colony ships to transports, constructors to colonies, sensor boats to trade, etc. Upgrading to differrent weapon load outs is fine - ie beam to missile. 2) maintaining 2 opposing ideologies at once should probably be disallowed. ie having a death furnace running while bee lining down benevolent ideology tree makes no sense. want to b

Interesting, i really think the penalties on swapping from benevolent to malevolent and visa versa should be much stronger. Maybe large permanent morale penalties. Makes no sense from a lore perspective. the 3 constructor trick is also pretty dirty. my normal tech path is something like: 1) grab opportunistic expansion techs such as the farm tech, the growth tech, interstellar travel 2) get wealth and +4 morale 3) beeline straight to the government line

Actually it would be 310 AI on my insane map - forgot to multiply by 2...

And thanks joe!

Well, based on tile volume, if a tiny map represents a balanced 1v1 duel with the AI, then an insane map at similar density would require 154 AI players! This assumption may be wildly wrong. i am currently playing an insane-abundant with 24 AI - which density wise would be like me duelling an AI on a large map! iceman, that would be the equivalent of invreasing your AI numbers from 8 to 19... over double! actually, now I'm curious - ha

It would be interesting to map the number of hexes in a map (map volume) to number of AI and try and find a density rule or relationship

I think there's a few really important things to consider. One is map density. An insane map with 4 AI in it will play very differently than that same map with 24. Another is sensor and drive stacking, and cargo ship type abuse earlygame. Id love to get some thoughts on AI density and difficulty. I think for incredible and godlike dense is undoubtably harder. But when the AI has less extreme bonuses on genius, then I'm not sure what benefits them more...</p

I think the key is stardocks commitment to continual improvement of the game. It STILL feels like beta right now, but in a way I dont mind provided they keep their sprint velocity up

Well, right now I think they've got the AI to a semi reasonable point. Still miles to go, but its nowhere near as bad as 1.2 They need to focus on adding depth to the game in a whole bunch of areas. Diplomacy, space construction (about 80% of the hex tiles in the game are useless - compare to something like civ5), economic system, spies, invasions.... etc etc etc.

Yeah Maiden thats exactly right. the issue is that as the map gets bigger, the player gets more time before the AI feels border pressure and is incentivised to invade. Normally the AI takes a big lead early due to their massive bonuses, then the humans catch up later due to superior management. Larger map = more time to catch up

This really explains it all: " I play on Godlike, Gigiantic, with 8 AI." No wonder you find it so easy. There's no density in your galaxy, meaning no competition early for planets/resources. This lets you take an early lead where godlike AI's shine the most. Try reducing the size to large (or smaller) with 8 Godlike AI. Then you'll be in for a challenge. Yet another boring "godlike is ez, i am amazing" post.

There's some guy that a week or so ago pumped out literally 20 variants of romulan ships. Most were really good too!

I actually think this is really good. Massively improves the pace of the game without changing much else. Also given population is a direct path to raw production, the most important stat in the game... I think hospitals are still worth it? I usually build one on every world! ie reaching 40 pop at turn 80 instead of 100 is much better than another crappy factory or lab!

Bribe everyone who is not their ideology*** better if they are your ideology.

With farms , you dont want to build them all at once. Build the growth building to start with, when they aren't upgrading run birth subsidies, and slowly replace your starting 1-3 factories with farms as you need to expand your pop limit. Then start replacing your tech buildings - slowly. there is a point at which additional farms hurt you - but I think for a decent size planet that's at least 50 pop depending on your tech level

what turn number is it? Build tall as possible. Surround each planet with 5 economic starbases minimum. Agree at least 1/3 of your planets should be tech focused, and they should be high pop and class planets. Then, find a weak neighbour who is not of your ideology and bribe everyone who is their ideology to attack them. Bring transports to the party, and try to take as many worlds as you can hold. Then sue for peace (or ovbliterate them) and build those worlds

I guess i meant that the majority of players don't go for alliance victories. Even hardcore! This game still has a long way to go, but stardock are moving it in the right direction I think

Yeah look I agree your post was at least constructive. But I still think that a post about godlike just to say "hey I found this cool diplomacy tech exploit" or "diplomacy win is broken" is not exactly gamebreaking stuff for the majority of players. Unlike say "hey so I killed this precursor anomaly and now I just win. Or my favourite still... "Hey so I found this precursor military manufacturing world next to my home planet. Let the colony spam begin!!!" Guess I missed

There's exploits in every decent 4x game. As you increase the complexity, and interactions between features, then inevitably they will pop up. The key is to squash the huge ones that affect the most. Diplomacy victory is not one of them. I admit his suggestions were productive and broadly made sense, although #3 is clearly a bandaid solution and a nerf to an arguably underpowered tree (when not exploited), and #1 has been posted about 100x before in the forum. <

So let me get this straight. You try as hard as possible to employ every known balance exploit you can find, go for an under-played and thus underbalanced victory type, exploit a brand new and clearly poorly balanced (but cool) new feature, then complain game is too easy? Uh huh. Game might be too easy (I tend to agree with you), but you didnt prove it in this post. Go and post a game where you get a conquest/tech victory in a non-skewed map (ie one with enough AI dens

The point you make about planet sensor range and defences is a really good one. As you put it - you defend with fleets, so planets should able to build buildings that bolster fleets in orbit. Or even add to them with fighters etc. Also mYaybe the best orbital defence you can buy is a good sensor system to see fleets coming a loong way away and respond accordingly....

SMAC did exceptional job with tech voiceovers etc. As a physicist myself, 99% of them were plausible and based on real life things that may one day occur. It really increased the immersion. The secret project movies were amazing too. Right now i feel like galciv lacks that depth of content and it hurts immersion. It's one of the things that made SMAC great. @frogboy - you have my email on file. Reach out - I work for a business that may be able to help you crowdsource is stu