1.8.496731 Game balance

Using "medium" map and "far" distance, on the last two runthroughs I've spawned in my own sector and that's with 21 opponents on "incredible" difficulty. Even my big sectors are a lot smaller than that one, though.

That said, it looks like you have a challenge, which is good. With plenty of probing and judicious tech management, you should be able to take the Manti out eventually. Although I can't see much, it looks like you've got plenty of resources--perhaps use more citizens for colony ships rather than constructors.

Cheers,

CB

You’re on turn 308. The Manti are apparently more powerful. B\y 308, it’s not surprising other Civs are reaching you. Am I missing something?

Influence was greatly reduced in 1.8 over previous versions. But the AI is much better now.

Just seemed a little overpowered for "Normal".  Never saw my home sector labeled as being controlled by another CIV. Guess I'm just too used to the "old" AI.

Yea the new AI is a lot smarter.  You might want to drip the difficulty down a notch.

Yeah, I'm used to beating the AI without breaking a sweat.  I'll see if I'm up to the challenge   

BTW, I really like all the updates.  I think you're implementing some of the better suggestions and coming up with some interesting twists.  The change in how citizens impact their planets was perfect.  It really helped solved the problem of how to make a planet pop! 

Thanks!  I have to say, I've been really enjoying working on the AI.  A lot of time has been spent in the debugger and it's amazing how far that sort of thing has come over the years.

Back when I made the OS/2 version, I had to use beeps to tell what the AI was doing!

I really love the fact AI planetary management has been given a look at, such an overlooked thing normally the approach is give massive bonuses but then the AI doesn't use the massive resources they get well and the player finds a way to plunder them through diplomacy ironically/warfare making harder difficulties with larger bonuses sometimes quicker to beat that lower difficulties with less bonuses in many 4X games.

Sadly however in my Godlike game recently I've AI''s that haven't even colonized all the planets in their tiny systems at 50+ turns in, so upgrading the AI definitely has a way to go still.

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The amount of maximum sectors has been reduced to 10 in 1.8 was 12 in 1.7 and think 20 even 30+ in earlier patches, would be nice to know what is going on with this tbh I've posted about this in other threads/posts I've made recently so won't repeat myself other than saying more galaxy options, and less opaqueness with what they do and allowing us to mod sectors warp paths etc. would be amazing.

@scifi1950 if you've gone past 300 turns and not won by that point the AI arguably has a right to criticize you as well... at least on normal speed settings in most 4X games I've found.  Not sure how Gal Civ IV stands with maximum sectors gameplay yet, in terms of turns before victory for a good player 300+ could be not so bad, hoping to play enough with 1.8 to find out.

MacsenLP - I'm playing huge everything with very slow speed settings and conquer all as the only victory setting.  Take a good look at my starting sector.  It's so big I can't even get to the only portal yet     Granted getting a starting sector like this is fairly hard, usually takes me 10-15 rerolls, but I'm not interested in winning game, it's the chase of glitches I'm after.  Frogboy always says we shouldn't be having fun when games are still in development   

Very slow speed and conquer only, fair enough no ones gonna win in 300 turns on those settings - Wish I had the amount of time needed to win that - I think you can select starting sector for player as huge in the pref file, no restarts necessary then, might even be possible to get 2 huge sectors on a map that way which is normally impossible with 1.8 I think.  I'm sure I saw it happen when using cheat codes - fow

Not sure Frogboy meant post release, (and still in development) but hope you have fun anyway

I'm playing Insiders edition so most of the time that's a pre-release version, not ready for prime time.  And I've never won a game on those settings, but that's mainly due to the constant restarts testing out new versions.

And no, you can't select sector size, just the # of sectors.  Trust me, you have to work for pain like this   

1.8 public version, In the launcher, settings, edit settings there is literally an option called "PlayerStartingSectorSize"  I think the default is medium.

It's possible it's not working if you edit it, I thought it was but I'm beginning to doubt now.  I had changed it to random.

Could you please post a screen shot of this.

Are you playing with the cheat codes enabled, because I've never seen anything like that in the standard game.  There's an option in EPIC to Launch game with advanced modifications, is that what you're referring to?

I'd really need to see the saved game for that.  Even on Easy they would do that.

If you really want to go hard core and insane here on map sizes do this:

Play a single sector, largest size after having edited StarClusterSizeDefs.xml

Change:

To be instead say 800.  

Instead of 90,000 tiles on the current ridiculous sized map it becomes a mind boggling 640,000 tiles. You'll never finish that game but it's pretty breathtaking.

The other thing is to run the game with this parameter: rebuilddatacheck  which will cause the game to rebuild the changes you make to XML.

If you want to change the # of sectors the file you are looking for is StarClusterQuantifyDefs.xml 

So on the biggest size you'd change it like this:

On the biggest size change many to say 20 to 30.  Keep in mind, it'll start to flake out around 30.

Here is a 50 sector galaxy.

Reminder: You can also turn ON mods in the galciv options area.

and then in documents\my games\galciv4\mods drop your change into the ExampleMod\Data\Gameplay (in this example)

Quoting Frogboy, reply 16

 

Here is a 50 sector galaxy.

 

What size is that map and is it set to Far Opponents?

Looks good the one opponent is much farther than I currently get as only using 2 AI they both show up in either the next or second sector from my home on largest far.

I am sure most players will love these tips unfortunately they are beyond my skills.

Some time when I have several hours to spare I might try them but until the workshop is up and running like Steams and some nice Modder loads these in it I likely will fail to be able to use them.

Thanks anyway for the hard work you put in to the game.

As stated above beyond my skills.

Considering buying a puter with the Ryzen 7950X

NVidia GeForce RTX4090 24 GB GDDR6

128GB DDR5 memory

So I can play on bigger maps.

This would be a Dell Alienware as all the other companies I know have gone out of business.

Do not say Apple as I will never purchase from them. There "I know better than you what you need" mentality they had when they first started out turned me off to them.

Are mods now active with 1.80?

Mods are not active.

I had checked it earlier today, and I doubt it has changed since then.

Pic of steam Gal Civ 4 launcher - Edit settings file highlighted (opens pref file)

To add cheats option in steam - right click on the game in your list on left, click properties, click general, type in "cheat" in launch options - in game press `¬  to open command window once set up a galaxy - cheats I use to look at maps are fow and unlock also colonize all - (not connected with launcher to my knowledge).

Frogboy must have access to a version that has them enabled then, 1.9 perhaps? One can only hope

Drengin weren't the only Godlike AI in this game to be slow to colonize though they had colonized a bit - Please let me know where to send saved games happy to upload it.