adamb1011

I slightly disagree on the upgrades. Its not a bad idea to upgrade - its just a bad idea to upgrade earlygame . Lategame you will have a whole bunch of +manu techs, improvements, trade resources, etc, that make upgrading a much better deal and cost you far less in terms of relative output. You'll also (typically) won't have room to expand - so it will be the only way to improve your tech output. I think xeno probably needs a buff to 10%

Ah cool. I must have missed the gross income bonus on the tooltip

Why is the pleasurepark useful? Approval is really easy to get. 2-3 techs for the starbase upgrade and you are in at 100% until mid/lategame... then just trade for the approval resource. Problem solved. Refinery is kind of useful on occasion, antimatter plant (while nerfed badly) is great for boosting Hyperions... Particularily since you can still build multiple antimatter plants Thulium is borderline worthless.

The Krynn are dominant in my game too. Although manageably so. They outclass me in pop quite a bit, but I have a big tech lead and better core production. That said, I actually find the "ancient" trait to be more overpowered. My race holds 5 relics and 3 crystals right now, and it makes me a complete tech powerhouse even on planets with no research buildings!

We aren't asking for an AI as smart as a human player. that's unrealistic - at least today. What we are asking for is an AI that is reasonably "intelligent" and executes basic build orders and economic setup so it doesn't need to cheat quite as blatantly to keep up with a human.

And I love the fact you are reluctant to resort to cheating - it's what made galciv2 so good!

I've said this before Frogboy - if you fix the economy issues it will have a whole bunch of knock on effects that will make all the other problems seem less serious. As such, I'd drop what you are doing with the other stuff and fix this pronto! Ie, lets imagine the AI does something really stupid with a colony ship - running it right up next to a pirate ship and getting it killed. If it's economy is weak, it could take 5-10 turns to recover the popul

Yeah can't wait for the patch. Sounds really silly, but I actually want to lose a game!

my core strategy was much the same. Constantly induce everyone else to be at war, while I quietly built up a big econ and tech lead.

I mean, humans can kind of guestimate it based on how much land in the tile... but its in no way a perfect science. Unlike the AI who can calculate up front...

AGreed with Jorgen. While he and I differ in exact strategies (I will tend to upgrade a bit more than he does), I think what's really important is that you implement a simple rules based system for developing a good economy. Doesn't have to be perfectly optimised, but Does need to be functional and competitive with the player which it is not right now. For example, when an AI colonies a world, it should decide up front a specialisation for it, based on planet bo

I tend to play altarain. there's a few similar techs there. Particularly one late in the logistics tree, and the ones that it shares with the terrain tree. Also the social matrix thing is really underpowered. I would argue it has very little use right now. Finally, is there a reason why altarians have less terraforming techs? This can really hurt them late game and seems unnecessary...

That's awesome news. Check out my post in the AI thread if you need some ideas. I actually think the AI will feel much smarter once you fix the economy issues. I see a lot of people complain that the AI does stupid things like run its colony ships into pirates and send in tiny ships 1 at a time vs fleets. All of these things will be less noticeable once the Ai builds colony ships every 1 turn instead of 10, and once the Ai reaches medium ships at a decent pace so se

Build planetary improvements in a ring with a capital or solar power plant etc etc in the Middle*

I want to start by giving a massive shout out to how awesome this game is already, and how my expectations are somewhat inflated by my experience in gc2. My first experience in 99% of 4x games was that the AI on normal was terrible and I would normally win my first serious game. There would be setbacks and I'd do dumb stuff as I learned, but the AI for these games was normally nowhere near aggressive enough and made lots of dumb errors. I was

The single greatest AI issue right now is its economic management. It's just really poor at developing a strong economy, which causes it to fall substantially behind in terms of research and production to the average player. Subsequently the AI is still running around with medium ships with 20 attack when I have huge ships with over 400 attack. It's a whitewash. Surely this isn't that hard to fix? The second biggest issue is its

Great patch. Love the economy balance changes. Any news on improving AI economy decisions?

Ascension crystals are awesome if you have the ancient trait. I have 3 in my current game and it let's my non research world's each add about 100 -200 ish RP. Which isn't bad when you have 50 world's!

Great to see FrogBoy in the thread! As everyone else has mentioned, the research and wealth projects introduce some pretty silly effects into the economy as they currently stand. The primary reason for this is that normally your improvements scale additively. That is, when you make 2 labs worth 50% bonus research each, the total added research is 100%. However, the research project allows you to scale your improvements multiplicatively. That is, your produc

Very nice

" When you 'go into negative spending' the game stops all production of building/ships and all research and resets GLoBAL output to full economy. What this means is all planets are put on 100% economy until you get back into positive numbers. What used to happen is it would Stay that way after you fixed your debt. Now it will go back to each individual planet as it as before. Much better now. " I love you stardock. That said, I was

This is kinda silly. Cant wait to do the same thing with logistics and hp! Large hulls have 350 capacity in my current game. Huge should be fun! Probably needs a big swing with the nerf bat :)

Techs are a LOT slower to research now too. Makes it much better

Nah Frogboy they are perfect! This patch is by FAR the best you've released. Whole game looks and feels 100x more polished, and its now MUCH more balanced. Except for maybe resource buildings :)

Well, I think an easier solution is to just apply the bonus research / wealth AFTER the multipliers from labs / markets are applied. the issue stems from it being added before as raw research/wealth - meaning multipliers from labs and markets blow the number way beyond what is reasonable. I actually think the growth project is kind of cool - and an interesting addition. Not sure how it works from a lore perspective... cloning factories?