2.0 Feedback (Admins and Diplomacy)

from GalCiv3 Forums

Good morning! Here in California we had such rain! Amazing Rain! As such I just sat and listened to the rain on my roof for two days while playing Gal Civ III. 

My settings: Insane, Abundant Stars, Uncommon hab, rare hab, common nubulea, occasional on all other resources/anomalies. Pirates ~rare, no tech brokering, AI on Gifted, Minors on Abundant, and I had 17 Ai majors. Here are some thoughts on a great game. 


  • I get 90 Admin on an Insane map. While there were tons of resources on the map, I felt that it was too many admins. I discussed this with a friend and also Horemvore. I liked his idea of cutting them down  (I say to 30) initially and then after you get admin tech you would get 150% more. My other friend was ADAMANT on thinking it was not enough Admins as he likes to build MANY mining and influence starbases. So the Jury is out on that. I never ran into any problems on having enough admins on this map. 
  • Diplomacy is improved. Trades were now a haggle point and are in my opinion better than any previous build. It is still possible to bend the ai too much by stacking Diplomacy buildings (Thalan and Diplomo line) and using starbases to multiply that effect. I think polar opposites should have a feature which 'cancels' out my good diplomacy by at least 75% to keep the hostility which would be normal, say Altarians vrs Drengin. Trades were much better and more 'fair'.
  • Ai building placement needs a bit of work, however I did see the Drengin placing 'hub' buildings and then the correct buildings around it. I saw this on EVERY planet I invaded. Ship building on the ai part is far better and fleet organization is also good. The ai needs to use the ship roles or be taught how to do that. My 'Capital/Escort' combo can usually hold up very well. I use a tank to block the attackers and my capitals behind to burn them down. I would like to see more different uses for the ship roles. I know there was an 'ai improvement'that really changed the roles and after learning it, I simply changed my capitals to guardians and my escorts to assault. Did the same thing. So what we need is the Ai to actually do the same thing as the player. Make strong capitals and pair them with 'tanking' escorts. This actually will go a long way to giving a human player a run for the money. 
  • Tech snowballing. There is nothing I can think of with the exception of making the cost of techs soar about half way through the age of war. The entire last 3rd of any tech line should be 3 or 4x the cost of all previous techs. The reason is by this time the player has likely had at least one war and if not eliminated has absorbed the enemy planets and is producing MORE tech points and thus will outpace all other ai. Its either that or have some kind of repugnant diminishing returns soft cap which I am against ....but may work. 

Thanks for reading! 

 

55,731 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nice summary, I have had a similar experience with 2.0. Personally tech snowballing is the biggest issue as it spoils late game.

I have tried the slow research option to try and minimize this snowballing, but this option doesn't really seem to have much effect on the research speed.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

All of this is building to an expansion. Keep in mind we only know a couple of points about it. 


  • It will have espionage. Ok there is so much here in that one feature that I could write an entire piece about it. 
  • It will have a better invasion game. << This is good as the ai does not use its defense buildings on its planet. 

Personally I think Frogboy is writing scripts. I think the humongous effort he put into GCII for the ai scripted behavior is perhaps the best I have ever seen in any single player game. Early in Beta and at release several folks had stated that 'building a better ai' is something that we are years off in the making and the best way to give the illusion of a good ai is to go back to scripts. Frogboy wrote some of the best scripts and I would love to see some of that action here in GCIII. The problem is time. 

Which leads me to this point. We have a devoted community here. Why not offload some of this work on us? If we had tools to write such behavior scripts why cant we? Do we need an 'SDK' like Civ V had to do so? What is preventing me from doing this? 

I know nothing about game code, but I am a very fast learner. What language do I need to study and how can I help?
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The administrators are a step in the right direction but for my taste I just don't think it goes far enough. I'd far prefer it they were required for new colonies and shipyards, not just starbases. Any chance of this happening?

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I count 105 starbases on an insane map.  60 + 75% = 60 + 45 = 105

It is turn 160 and I have 19 of those left.

About 35 of those are econ starbases wrapped around 3 key worlds, my homeworld, a precursor factory world, and a bread basket world.  I am trying to evaluate which ones deserve the full starbase treatment.  So far, the bread basket world is not the optimum place.  I also have a place I couldn't resist where 3 starbases cover 3 nice planets, classes 14, 11, and 14.  That was too good a use of administrators to resist.

The rest of them have gone to claiming relics.  There are more of them than I expected with these settings, but then again, I am randomizing a lot of stuff and unexpected is what I expect.  The AI seems hesitant to spend administrators on relics, but will put like 3 starbases next to a single planet.  I am still finding unclaimed relics at this stage, or else I would have planted the rest of my econ bases.  

I figure if I ever get in a bind and absolutely need an administrator, I can destroy any one of the present bases.  Quantity becomes its own quality.

So, contrary to others, I am finding the administrators a limiting factor and would not appreciate having even less.

The most interesting effect so far, is that all the military manufacturing that would have gone into putting out that flood of constructors and starbases now has no where else to go, so I am building early military.  This is a big change for me.  I have all these war ships!  They are not the strongest things ever, but I have lots of them and invested in logistics.  Some faction has declared war on me and I think they are in for a very rude surprise.  It's not so much what I have fielded so far, it's the fact that every one of my shipyards was already building the next latest and greatest model.  They take 5-15 turns to build according to shipyard capacity, but somebody is gonna feel the pain real soon.  Then comes a wave of transports from 28 different shipyards. (Large Empires At War)  I am using the Govern Commands for the first time and will set all shipyards to release a transport within one or two turns of each other.  It'll put a divot in my population graph, but it will be worth it.

Diplomacy is great!  I actually made friends with the first faction I met.  I am not used to making friends.  I am used to getting threatened.  We exchanged mutually beneficial trades and everything.  We're not as friendly as we used to be, but she still gives me better deals than anybody else.  It adds a lot of character to the game.  Plus, the trades are indeed much more interesting.  

I ran into one clumsiness with the redline system,  I was offering Promethion from my early discovery of a Promethion planet.  I think Promethion was considered particularly valuable because there was no other source for it yet.  When I offered the Promethion for a low level tech, I got told my coffers could not afford such a deal.  I had about 1000 cred.  I think I was being told the deal was too lopsided against me, and it would have made more narrative sense if I had been offering cash.  Still, it is a remarkable improvement on "no".

I agree with the comments on tech snowballing.  That is still a major flaw.

Overall, I hate administrators a little less than I expected.  :)  The rest of it seems pretty darn good.

+2 Loading…
Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

It is still possible to bend the ai too much by stacking Diplomacy buildings (Thalan and Diplomo line) and using starbases to multiply that effect.

Looking at the tooltips in my current 1.9 game, I don't see a Diplomacy bonus to the Diplomatic Office starbase module, it's just +100% influence (I think Frogboy mentioned he had nerfed this deliberately).  Are the bonuses back in 2.0?  Would make sense given the new cap on starbases.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I am playing with 2.0 and if you go further up the diplomatic tech tree they show up right after 'diplomacy', two modules both give +1/turn.

+1 Loading…
Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Does tech cost scale with map size? I ask because my games on Medium maps are often over before the advent of Large ships! lol.

On the new cramped maps, it's much harder to get massive amount of Research early in the game (it's not uncommon to have only 3-5 'real' planets until you go to war). I already find the tech costs for the mid-game techs to be stifling. In my current (Medium) game, I own the majority of the map now (eliminated 2 AIs and 2 more are rump states) and it's 16 turns for Large Ships and all of the more advanced weapons are 12-20 turns. The game will be over long before any of that comes into play.

So I think there really needs to be a scaling factor rework to account for tremendous difference in maps sizes. Without that, the game will NEVER be balanced for everyone. 

Just my $.02. :)

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Now I am back and bought all missing DLCs, as I stopped to play, because of that insane amount of starbases ... I really hate them ...

ooohhh over 90 admins THAT IS STILL TOO much for me.
I like the largest maps, as possible, but with the fewest habitable planets and rarest resources ...

So does anyone know, where in the game files that value could be reduced, would be nice !

AND PLEASE DEVS, make an option in the setup to change that value, also to rare.

Thanks and will try it now in a MP game with my brother, he also hates too many from the same (starbases, planets etc.)

 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Sounds like you may want Spiders Map MOD to reduce Admins

 

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting FlashXAron, reply 8

So does anyone know, where in the game files that value could be reduced, would be nice !

<BaseAdministrationPoints> in MapSizeDefs.xml

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting lyssailcor, reply 10


Quoting FlashXAron,
reply 8

So does anyone know, where in the game files that value could be reduced, would be nice !



<BaseAdministrationPoints> in MapSizeDefs.xml

 

Good, I can move it up to something sensible.

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow! 8C   I don't know what has changed but whatever it was it nerfed the heck out of one of my custom races! This race had a bunch of intelligence and was able to start the game with having a few techs you can choose to have researched right away. After the current changes this race doesn't even get one tech researched! So to the trash bin this race goes as that was one of its' main perks being able to start off a little tech heavy... Wasn't pleased to discover that... Have played more than 3 turns so I can't comment on anything else at this point and I'm going t o go in and redo this race so it's not a complete waste of space. (pun intended ;) )