In my opinion, seems to be the barely playable state of The Ultimate Edition.  See external link for example.

Look, never mind updating the game executable, we've been down this road before.  What about an official data patch?  Same effect as the various mod patches, but it goes out to all the Steam customers, they're moderately satisfied, you only need to spend a moderate amount of time on it, and the issue is more or less settled.

Honestly, I don't really mind either way, but I feel obliged to point out that a satisfied customer is a good way to bring in more customers.  A dissatisfied one can put a damper on future sales.

14,941 views 7 replies
Reply #1 Top

Is why I purchased the Ultimate Edition direct from SD; a steam-free game is a good game.

Reply #2 Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 1

Is why I purchased the Ultimate Edition direct from SD; a steam-free game is a good game.

I only have the SD-version too, but that doesn't change anything. Those gripes are due to bugs in the game itself, not the Steam-version specifically.

Reply #3 Top

I honestly never noticed any issues with the steam version. I mean I do get issues when I play gigantic maps with heaps of A.I's etc but that's more due to my computers inability to handle the workload. Perhaps it varies from computer to computer?

Reply #4 Top

Quoting TinnedEpic, reply 3
Perhaps it varies from computer to computer?

No, it doesn't. Like I said above, those are bugs within the game, and they affect everyone. However, unless you are a hardcore-player, it's entirely possible to play for years and not really notice any of them.

The biggest issues are with two of the AI Personalities, AIP 7 (Drengin, Yor, and Korath) and AIP 10 (Torians and Iconians).
AIP 7 doesn't colonise outside of its own sphere of influence (though there are some exceptions). This greatly hampers the colonisation efforts of races using this AIP. However, this issue can be somewhat remedied, by making sure, that those races begin with a good amount of habitable planets in their starting sphere of influence.
AIP 10 will eventually stop building any planetary improvements (except for maybe a starport). The only workaround for this is to assign a different AIP to the Torians and Iconians.

There are also some bugs in the tech trees and other files, preventing the AI from playing as good as it could. For example, Space Weapons is categorised as Point Defense in the Altarian tech tree. This means, that, unless somebody is using Missile Weapons, the Altarians won't research any kind of weapons (though they could possibly buy those techs). The same is true for several of the other races too.

Reply #5 Top

Yeah.  I only really noticed the issue to begin with because I was steamrolling the known galaxy and not getting much of a fight, which didn't make any sense because I'd been modreately challenged in games before that.

I'm just kind of surprised that there are still players on the official forums who think that TA/UE is okay, while over on the Steam discussion board it's a very different story.  I guess, wider cross-section of players on Steam.

Reply #6 Top

It really has hurt my trust in Stardock, knowing that they left the AI of the game in this state (because how could you??), especially since good AI is what they've been saying they had created. It's what they want(ed) to be known for, isn't it?

Reply #7 Top

Well, the AI is basically solid, it just hasn't been tested and adapted very well.

Having kind of established the shortcomings of the AI and the bugs that exist in the data, it would actually be in the realm of possibility to finish the job, but it pretty much wouldn't turn a profit unless you could sell some more DLC with GC2 and well, I think that ship has sailed.