A nearly complete game of 0.77b

I put in about 12 hours with the Onyx Hive this weekend. I'm about 75% to victory. I'll finish the game next weekend if there is not a new release this week. Some notes follow:

  1. Even after getting this far, I'm not entirely sure how to best play the Onyx Hive. They seem to be a good middle-of-the-road race with good production, but maybe they are undercooked or maybe I don't understand them.
    • The intro said something about asteroids but I never figured out how to really exploit that.
    • The intro also said that they're basically addicted to promethion and having a lot of it will help growth. But how much? Now part of the problem is that I didn't even find my first promethion source until 5 years into the game and I didn't get a starbase there in time. No matter how much I bought from the galactic bazaar ($$$) or from other races, my growth rate was always 0.5. Yet another mystery mechanic. 
    • Observation: Not providing access to race details in the middle of the game (myself or others) is an oversight.
  2. Praise: Can I just say how beautiful the galaxy and the cut scenes look? It's cool to look at.
  3. Idea: I hope cut scenes are eventually added for galactic wonders.
  4. Feature Request: Add the ability to repeat shipyard projects, not just ships.
  5. Warning: A number of times I formed accidental fleets. I'm not entirely sure how this happens. All I know is that I occasionally had a freighter or asteroid miner wandering around the sector with my survey ship. This might not be a bug, but it is something for players to be aware of.
  6. Minor bug: When you conquer a core world, you can see the surface and do stuff for a turn (under the previous governor) before it turns back to a colony.
  7. Idea: When you take over a core world, I think a cool event would be what to do with the leader. Recruit/exile/execute? (Assuming the leader doesn't have the flee trait, whatever it's called.)
  8. Idea: A militaristic / pacifistic ideological spectrum. One reason for this is that I think there should be an event if you take out a pirate starbase. (If eight is too many spectrums, you could easily collapse two of the existing ones into one. There are so many garbage ideologies out there that no one in their right mind would spend a point on.)
  9. Idea: Fewer goodie huts but more things for survey ships to do. I never understood why they couldn't scan worlds, especially when the worlds are known to have something.
  10. Warning: It appears that traffic jams can sometimes occur at slipstreams. At one point it took me a few turns to get through. It also triggered the "first slipstream" movie even though I couldn't actually get in the thing.
  11. Observation: I'm surprised galactic events don't have more of an impact at getting you closer to the finish line - only 25 prestige points out of 1000 required. I was thinking that a galactic improvement would be worth something towards prestige but they aren't.
  12. Observation: The Baratak Grove kept using their artifacts to awaken planets then never colonize them. The bug that makes them show up as 0,0,0,0,0 means no one else would colonize them either. Except me, of course.
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Reply #1 Top

I'm going to add to this because I was able to play a little more last night.

13a. Feature Request: Indicate how long a trade deal lasts for. Yet another mystery mechanic. You have got to get rid of these mysteries before the game gets to the release candidate stage.

13b. Feature Request: When the agreement expires, indicate what the agreement was, not just that it expired. No, forget that. Instead of offering insulting trade deals every few turns, how about using that opportunity to make a trade offer. You know, a real trade offer, not a "I hope the player isn't paying attention because this is a ripoff" kind of trade offer. If I had open borders with another race, it's fine for that to expire but if relations are still good then we will probably want to renew the agreement (if not expand on it) so let's just get right to the bargaining table.

13c. Feature Request: If the AI is offering a good deal (quite reasonable with a friend), then there should be some indication that this is a take-it-or-leave-it offer OR the player should be able to provide counter-proposals without penalty. I'm Onyx Hive. You can pry my promethion from my cold, dead hands.

13d. Feature Request: In addition to the "I accept" line being more clear and other things to make trading less tedious, how about a second marker on the trade bar to indicate the point where "I accept this as a gift" that would be sufficient tribute to give you a + in diplomacy.

13e. Idea: When a race tells you "Hey your X has been really improving our relations", how about some additional choices: A. Thank you. B. Maybe we could do something to improve relations further (opens trade) C. You know, I've been meaning to tell you, it's time for us to destroy you. No time like the present.

14. Warning: I hit 75% am apparently approaching an Ascension Victory (see 17/18 below) and the entire complexion of the game turned on a dime. Every race turned on me (instant -3 diplomacy plus an automatic dislike that seemed to go beyond that) and this includes races that were declared friends most of the game. Eventually everyone declared war on me. Since I was not focusing on building up my military, the game is probably unwinnable so I am abandoning it. This experience suggests that a diplomatic/pacifist game is untenable, at least for most races. Culture flipping takes too long and there is no obvious counter to the entire galaxy turning on you other than having an overwhelming military. Since the combat system is too opaque at this time, there is no point in attempting it.

14a. Idea: Make the effect of reaching the ascension threshold dependent on the difficulty level so that at lower levels the game helps you win and at higher levels the game makes it harder to win.

15. Intermittent bug: There is a situation where the planet screen draws incorrectly and the left panel gets cut off. I had to save, exit the game, and come back in. Alas, I have no idea how this happened or how to reproduce it. It has only happened once to me. If it happens again then I will take a screen shot.

I have concluded this play-through and will wait until another revision is released to play again.

Reply #2 Top

wow, #14 sounds like a big issue. I'm curious, did you have any treaties with the other civs in the game? more than just open borders treaties? was there any civs you had actually been able to form any alliances with before they all turned on you?

Reply #3 Top

I had open borders, at least one non-aggression pact, and declared friendships with multiple races outside my sector. I didn't investigate alliances. That was a failure on my part - I just did not check out that screen like I should have. The open borders and non-aggression pacts expire (see 13a) and I have no idea how declared friendship works.

Reply #5 Top

@14 Maybe a balance issue of GalCiv4 but in GalCiv3 you were able to generate a big enough diplomacy buffer to carry the lead to the finish. In general I like this mechanic.

Reply #6 Top

I turned ascension victory off in GCIII   I find it the single most annoying victory type...

But yeah the everyone declaring war on you at once mechanic is.....   not cool

 

Reply #7 Top

I went back to an earlier save to figure out the exact mechanic. I was partly wrong. I was about 75% on prestige victory, not ascension. I went and re-established my friendships to see what happens.

16. Observation: Alliances require +9 diplomacy which is pretty hard to achieve. You have to really pick sides because if you befriend two races that are at war with each other, the ensuing penalty (-2) is greater than the friendship benefit (-1).

17. Question: How does ascension work? I am mining 4 ascension crystals and making 40 ascension per turn, but I can't figure out the mechanic. There is no screen that tells me how what constitutes victory or how many points I have.

18. Observation: A -3 diplomacy when with everyone overnight you are approaching an ascension victory is a pretty steep penalty. It will almost certainly put you negative with everyone, which would then make it impossible to reestablish even open borders when they expire. But if I'm close to victory, maybe it doesn't matter.

19. Question: How does Penultipox work? When I unlocked the Galactic Challenge, I was given the option to create a Plague Research Center which I did. However, that did not end the challenge. Is that just one step in the challenge? If so, then the UI is wrong. It appears this is a bug one way or another.

Reply #8 Top

#14 reminds me of an old joke.

"The meek shall inherit the Earth"

Whatever, they're a bunch of meeks. We will just beat them up and take it back...

XD

But yeah, even if you aren't playing an aggressive warlike civ, you kinda need at least a mediocre military just to discourage others from getting hostile.

Happy Tuesday!

 

Reply #9 Top

Quoting Jeff, reply 7

19. Question: How does Penultipox work? When I unlocked the Galactic Challenge, I was given the option to create a Plague Research Center which I did. However, that did not end the challenge. Is that just one step in the challenge? If so, then the UI is wrong. It appears this is a bug one way or another.

It doesn't work. I've been reporting it as broken for the the last few alpha releases and now the beta.

Reply #10 Top

Quoting Publius, reply 9


Quoting Jeff Yutzler,

19. Question: How does Penultipox work? When I unlocked the Galactic Challenge, I was given the option to create a Plague Research Center which I did. However, that did not end the challenge. Is that just one step in the challenge? If so, then the UI is wrong. It appears this is a bug one way or another.



It doesn't work. I've been reporting it as broken for the the last few alpha releases and now the beta.

thanks

Reply #11 Top

Quoting Jeff, reply 1


15. Intermittent bug: There is a situation where the planet screen draws incorrectly and the left panel gets cut off. I had to save, exit the game, and come back in. Alas, I have no idea how this happened or how to reproduce it. It has only happened once to me. If it happens again then I will take a screen shot.

 

I think I had the same thing happen. I believe I got it to happen when clicking on one of the notifications on the galaxy map. I believe it was something like planet X is unhappy. That would then open the planet window, which would be blank except for the toolbar up top. Esc didn't work, and I was able to get out of it by clicking on the research bar in the toolbar. But then after that, the planet screen had the issue you speak of. The menu only stuck out a little bit, so you couldn't see everything.

Reply #12 Top

If an ascension victory is close the computer should flip out on you unless you are like allies. You are about to sail to victory. Did the Dutch sail to victory when they got rich as F and were making bank. Negative they got invaded by everyone. Why? They were winning and they didn’t have a big enough army. Sectors make it easy enough to turtle I don’t think you should be able to cruise to victory. In 3 I started getting close to an ascension victory I made damn sure everyone knew I had most guns and the ability to run amok with em. Even if I hadn’t declared on anyone all game the AI was aware I had a big damn fleet.

 

In fact most of my victories with ascension where because I couldn’t get enough damn legions to get a military victory. Peaceful players IMO should be pursuing a Diplomatic victory not an ascension one.

 

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Reply #13 Top

Quoting ForgottenSlayer, reply 12

If an ascension victory is close the computer should flip out on you unless you are like allies. You are about to sail to victory.

I'm not saying you're wrong and that's why I specifically called it a warning and not a complaint. This feedback is as much for other players as it is for the developers. The problem is that ascension is a mystery mechanic (see #17). I didn't even know I was approaching an ascension victory.

Quoting ForgottenSlayer, reply 12

Peaceful players IMO should be pursuing a Diplomatic victory not an ascension one.

I think Diplomatic Victory is untenable if you spawn in a crowded sector as I did in this game. Even getting a single alliance is difficult (see #16).

Reply #14 Top

yeah Victory Conditions are hard got into a similar mess, I just happend to reach tech, assension and Prestige thresholds in just a few rounds, even my 2 allys went at me, even nearly every diplo bonus, I could get, not to bad since I at that point had some big ass ships worth nearly 2k produktion that could clear out whole fleet on their own, but still nasty, for even allys turning on you

Reply #15 Top

Quoting Crimson8472, reply 14

yeah Victory Conditions are hard got into a similar mess, I just happend to reach tech, assension and Prestige thresholds in just a few rounds, even my 2 allys went at me, even nearly every diplo bonus, I could get, not to bad since I at that point had some big ass ships worth nearly 2k produktion that could clear out whole fleet on their own, but still nasty, for even allys turning on you

I'm just not inclined to play a galactic war when the combat mechanics are such a mystery. Maybe if someone published a primer on how combat actually works then I would be more inclined. It's just not fun when your flagship gets one-shotted in a battle that is marked as no casualties for you and total loss for them. I hope my alpha/beta feedback to this point has been constructive and useful but there's only so much I'm willing to do.

Reply #16 Top

Will invasion tactics be included in some future build? I would like to be able to glass a planet full of Festrons. 

Reply #17 Top

Hey Prey. Don’t even think about it. 

I got the penalty for pursuing a research victory and I have no idea why and I don’t even think there is a victory path for that right now. 

I assume it might have something to do with the number of capstone technologies you research but I am unsure I see what you mean now. Major diplomatic penalties can accidentally be triggered. Of course my faction power is X5 the next closest Race so nobody gonna do shit about it but if I didn’t have a hilarious amount of gunships I might be screwed. I’m at turn 380 and I don’t think I can finish the game before turn 600.

Reply #18 Top

Quoting impinc, reply 11



Quoting Jeff Yutzler,


15. Intermittent bug: There is a situation where the planet screen draws incorrectly and the left panel gets cut off. I had to save, exit the game, and come back in. Alas, I have no idea how this happened or how to reproduce it. It has only happened once to me. If it happens again then I will take a screen shot.


 

I think I had the same thing happen. I believe I got it to happen when clicking on one of the notifications on the galaxy map. I believe it was something like planet X is unhappy. That would then open the planet window, which would be blank except for the toolbar up top. Esc didn't work, and I was able to get out of it by clicking on the research bar in the toolbar. But then after that, the planet screen had the issue you speak of. The menu only stuck out a little bit, so you couldn't see everything.


Save, quit, reload.

Known bug, known work around.

Reply #19 Top

Quoting impinc, reply 11
I think I had the same thing happen. I believe I got it to happen when clicking on one of the notifications on the galaxy map. I believe it was something like planet X is unhappy. That would then open the planet window, which would be blank except for the toolbar up top. Esc didn't work, and I was able to get out of it by clicking on the research bar in the toolbar. But then after that, the planet screen had the issue you speak of. The menu only stuck out a little bit, so you couldn't see everything.

Interesting, I'll try to repro that.

Reply #20 Top

Planet screen intermittent bug: 

I got this bug regularly, then with .75 (I think) it seemed to be much less frequent.  Now with .77B, I am getting it again.  Annoying because certain choices for planet building can't be made.   A very temporary workaround seemed to work sometimes is to save, exit the game, and restart. But it will pop up again after a few correct iterations.

It does happen after you get the "planet  XXX is unhappy" and when you click on it the program tries to go to that planet's management screen.   But all you see is the top line of the display.  Clicking in the research window, which is part of the top line, will regain control but it won't let you do anything.   I suppose you could do this and the try looking at the planet screen directly, but today the bug seemed to happen anyway.

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Reply #21 Top

I think you nailed it. I was playing a peaceful turtle game and never encountered that problem until I gave up on trying to culture-flip and decided to simply invade my neighbors. The problem coincided with the time I turned a captured core world into my own core world (probably a mistake in retrospect...) and naturally had unhappy citizens.