ToA has been out a long time overall. I was psyched to get this as it advertised diverse races and techs etc. But I'm finding that most of the game is a broken fiasco. It has disappointed me terribly as, until recently, I had thought highly of Stardock and thought of them as one of the few companies that actually cared about the consumer and wouldn't release what they knew was broken crap. I'm going to go back to playing Dread Lords - which feels a bit boring after seeing the potential of different buildings/tech trees/races - but I'd rather have an actual working game than a pretty sci-fi space opera on the surface that is crud underneath. Shame on Stardock and Brad and everyone else for releasing something they knew wasn't playable and then not supporting it.
I find it funny how you don't list whats broken. I find the game working in good order and not broken. Sure a few things need tweaking and yah you get the occasional crash like any game could since a game isn't so easy to have perfect since evry video card and driver is changing every 6 months.
Now we all could agree on a few tweaks and a couple other things but those don't make the game actually broken. Stuff like the AI could be better or how sometimes the game seems to hinge on random events that make or break it and depending on when they happen.... mega events that is. Plenty works and works as intended and most of us are happy with the game as it is while sure we'd like to see new improvements its definately playable and enjoyable in the state now for ToA.
1) Races often do improper research - many going far into the research tree without researching weapons (this often combines with the "surrender" option where an entire empire surrenders to another before almost any of their planets are taken or they make an attempt to defend)
2) Races do not expand properly - many staying gimped throughout the game - either by not expanding, or by expanding and then doing nothing with the planets or building enough ships to defend/attack
3) Races do not build on planets properly (if at all); some leave planets completely barren throughout the entire game, others build wrong buildings on wrong bonuses
4) Races often don't make ships with weapons or with defenses, complete lack of balance for most races (I just played one game where the Thalans had researched large ships and then outfitted them with 4 pts of lasers ..... )
5) Tech costs inexplicably double - wreaking havoc for AI and player
There's a few to get started... give me a bit and I'll list more.
That list alone, taken all together, makes games predictable and deeply (deeply!) flawed. The Terrans, the Krynn, sometimes the Altarians and Drath will usually put up a fight or dominate; the Thalans will expand like crazy and then just get obliterated b/c they are too stupid to do anything; the Arcaeans (sp?), the Drengin and often the Korath will not expand sufficiently, not just in ONE game but in EVERY game - the races act idiotically or overpowered like clockwork.
Compare this to Dark Avatar where the majority of races faired well depending mostly on luck, planet quality etc - as it should be. They all played relatively smart and managed their planets/resources at higher levels without cheating, but by making the most of what they were given and adjusting it. This seems utterly missing from Twilight. It has the appearance of depth in my opinion, without an AI to take advantage of it.
It has been over a year and a half and many of these huge errors are still in the game! The research bug alone that doubles weapons research is crippling and game-breaking.
These are far more than "tweaks", Syanis. And none of these issues depends on graphic cards etc. I am not considering hardware issues in this post - just programming.
J
Agreed. It is very disappointing that TA was never fixed. Superior AI is near the top of my list for any game. The evil races not expanding is a gamebreaker. Stardock may be spread too thin these days or maybe they aren't hungry anymore due to past success. Before I cant imagine they would still have a broken product so long after release. I quit playing TA ages ago, and decided to wait for the patch. Which has never come.
Unbelievable that the glowing reviews of TA missed these major bugs you describe or that there wasnt more uproar in the forums. GalCivs claim to fame has always been its supposedly superior AI, but TA is flat out broken on larger maps. I've supported Stardock over the years as the underdog, the "small developer that could." But from now on I will be more wary about buying their games, until I'm convinced they are patched and have a good AI. Fewer features and great AI is vastly more important than a ton of features and crappy AI. The dreadlord AI was much better than TA.
Worrying feedback. Do others agree? I haven't bought TA, but have DA and DL. Should I buy TA?
On the whole, I'd say buy it still. The AI is reasonable if you set the difficulty on high and most of the bugs are fixed. Avoid the high definition mod for now (as it is buggy with v2.03). You're missing a lot without Twilight.
You really need to play "Twilight" for the 'real' game. In "II" and in "Dark Avatar", things were really broken as far as being able to swindle the NPCs out of all of their items (tech, planets, etc).
Twilight really made it harder to do this, adding a bit of 'realism' to this affair.
I'd say go for it, you won't be sorry for the challenges.
I've found a "work around" for the AI that seems to make the games more challenging and less predictable. In every game TA I played only the Terran and the Torians proved to be a threat; both would colony rush well, take resources, build up their military consistantly and make reasonable diplomatic decisons. The Thalans would expand like crazy, but never built their military or even research weapons tech; they always surrended pretty quickly once someone declared war on them..the evil races just sat there and drooled; the Altarains and Drath and Iconians faired only slightly better.
So, one game, during the set up, I set all of the major races to use either the Torian or Terran personality - all still with the"traditional" ethical alignment. And it worked. A pretty even colony rush, with only superior location providing advantages, resources also evenly spread, everyone had a military, and kept improving it. Made for a MUCH more interesting game, where because everyone was on a reasonably even footing every treaty/war/ random event tipped the scales far far more than in the earlier games I played where there was only a couple of races who could be a threat.
Some might take the view that you shouldn't have to do this; the AI for each race should be robust enough, but hey, I still enjoyed the early games, its just, ahh, there is something not right with TA compared to DL and DA. Still a hell of a game though
Because all the ai should act like milatarist clones of each other and not attempt to pursue reasearch and expansionist goals in accordance with their "biography"...
Go play an RTS then if all you want is nothing but armys bashing each other.
I have found that the AI has trouble reacting to plague. It'll research a cure, but during and after this it can increasingly tax its citizens so much that growth comes to a standstill. In order to combat budget shortfalls it should look at cutting back spending, even demolishing factories or labs so that population growth doesn't get choked.
I agree that various races don't make weapons a priority at the right time. While advanced invasion techs help to increase Soldiering, it's vital to have a military force which can support troop transports; even bog-standard transports will be adequate for a while.
I think the reason why the Torian and Terran AI work so well is because they make population growth a priority at the right time. This leads to a good economy as the game progresses,
Does anyone know if 2.03 fixes these issues?
On point number 5, since TA's release there has been some tweaking of the formula affecting tech cost. There were issues with the AI researching too far along one line and then not being able to catch up in other areas because of the ballooning cost which was an intended feature. And so the feature was disabled in one of the patches, as far as I know. However some techs have become more costly to research to balance things out.
If there is a bug with tech costs suddenly doubling in TA 2.03, I haven't come across it yet, and I typically play long drawn-out games on a big map with lots of planets.
In my experience, there are always a few races that get marginalised but only because a couple of other races make a better grab for planets and will thusly always have an economic advantage. Then there's always the Fundamentalists random event to spoil an evil race's chances of galactic domination.
Where TA seems to shine most is the ability to create custom races if the default ones don't shine as much as they should. It's sort of a backhanded compliment, but so far it's seemed that when I change a race to something different than the base parameters, it does better than if I simply let the AI pick its starting abilities and government.
I do agree on some of these issues - the strange tech-inflation seems to be able to wreck havoc to AI's at times.At least thats what I blame for some AI's not researching weapons sometimes.
I also have the impression that some races (esp. Drengin) expand almost never. However, based only on my experiences that could be only bad luck - they almost allways end up with crappy starting positions.
However, I cannot agree with the attitude of some people. They get great games for years in a row from some company and the instant that one of them doesn't come up to their very own personal expectations, all they can think of is starting a flame war.
Ok, they had time to patch it up, but it's a pretty complex game who knows whats ultimately behind those issues?
And finaly - it's a game, get over it!
I bought DA/DL, play DA, and enjoy it.
I have not bought TA. Games that look pretty but are not fun and challenging to play do not interest me. In 4X games, the AI is paramount.
If TA were fixed, I would buy it. If it is not fixed, I will not buy it - - it is as simple as that.
Thats your decision of course.
However, I find TA very enjoyable, even if it has some flaws.
But then, DA had some, too.
I guess it comes down to playstyle and taste how much you will notice them.
I will say buy TA - it is not any easier than DL, at least. I haven't played DA, so can't comment on its difficulty.
Also, the new tech trees are a fundamental change - believe me when I say that you need to actually play differently when playing as different races. Not to mention that the game feels very different when playing as the Terrans and the Drengins. Yor and Thalan are even more weird, I have heard.
Also, diplomacy is a lot tougher as the AI won't let you buy it out of the game IMHO.
You know, if you only scratch the surface, I can see how it could be perceived as broken. I mean, tax is a function of the square root of population, population has nothing to do with productivity, entertainment centers' 10% morale never really gives 10% morale, why even have 300% farm tiles at all, there's the silly 20k bc limit, bonus production is half paid and half free (?!?), miniaturization doesn't miniaturize anything (it makes ships bigger), ships can actually come out of combat with more HP's than they went in with, and the ship defense...enough said.... It's obviously the result of a lot of tweaks and tuning. At some point you just had to call it done, and that left a lot of loose ends untied. I didn't have a problem with it. But I can see how someone else would. I mean after all, you'd think 10% morale means, 10% morale.
This game does have a lot of quirks, perhaps reflecting the preferences of
I want to see how the game performs at the MAX CPU settings once I upgrade my PC. I am definitely hoping that it will improve significantly. A good AI has been a very good reason to play GC2.
You know, if you don't like what the stock races are doing. Do what I did. Create your own. I have a varied collection of races based off their original race but edited in the pre-game editor and edited their xlm files with Word. I created a playtest map and have tweeked them down to pretty solid races that do well in all the games I play.
If your interested in them just post and I'll see about uploading them here.
I am definitely interested, but did you design them for ToA? Do they work with the Metaverse?
Thanks!
They are for ToA on a tough or painful level. You will get a higher level of play from them as the level modifiers are built into the custom race files. You won't need to go higher on the difficulty level, but you can if your into pain!
I don't get into metaverse play so I'm not sure if they'll work. I imagine not as metaverse play would be an equalizer so that all players are playing on the same level for evaluation. But your welcome to check them and see.
Let me know and Ill upload them or email them to you.
No, that will almost certainly trip the cheat flag for metaverse games. As I plan to play mostly MV games, I don't think I will make real use of them.
Thanks for your time
I like TA a lot more than DL or DA because it has some really nice features. I agree with some of the comments made about the AI here. I've been using a mod I did that reworks all the tech trees to make them more "DA like". It does take a lot of the uniqueness out of the trees, but it makes the races behave more like they do in DA. I still haven't done a couple of the races. When I get them done, I'll post the mod.
Here's an issue for everyone. Diminishing returns.
Let's say a company starts up, and makes a game that's pretty good when compared against its contemporaries. As time goes by, they make improvements to that game through patches. Later on, they make a new game, which takes all they've learned, and does a few new things to keep it interesting and experiment with. The same happens over more time until they make yet another new game, and so on. Eventually, they reach a point where they've made a truly awesomely epic game, in terms of functionality. Its gameplay is smooth and intuitive, its AI challenging and reliable, and its features are interesting and balanced. Now what?Well, now...because of simpletons who demand "new, new, new" at all times and immediately, they have to scrap their "perfect" system and come up with something from scratch all over again. They can't even use their established system for inspiration because even the slightest hint of similarity will be met with chagrin and debasement from critics and consumers. "We already played that, we want something else now" It doesn't matter at all that the system can be applied effectively to other games of other genres, it only matters that its new...but it still has to be perfect or else everyone gets their panties in a wad anyway.People in general seem to fail to realize that there are points where there simply isn't a better way to do something, and to do that thing a different way can only possibly be a step (or sometimes a flying leap) backwards. The number of potential "ideas" in the universe is certainly staggeringly large, but hardly infinite. And the number of those that are actually viable to any degree, let alone the greatest, are so few in number that even we have already gone through too many of them. Most things imagined simply don't work...ever...and nothing at all will ever change that in any way.Now...all that said, look at this game. Really look at it. It wasn't designed to be some blockbusting international gaming event. It was just supposed to be a well-made game that was fun to play. The only crime I think the developers could really be accused of is worrying too much about critical acclaim in a game designed solely for players. Its like they tried to make an award-winning game while trying to keep it fun...and honestly, the two are most often mutually exclusive. Because games that win awards rarely strike me as fun...but that's just me.GC II: TotA isn't perfect, but it's not bad. It would've been nicer if it could've been refined more, but while its the fault of both company and consumer, I blame the consumers more than the company for that. It's consumer behavior that leads companies to their ultimately stupid business practices after all. They do what they do to sell products by any means possible...because of the way the public behaves with their money. It's less that organizations are lousy and more that the public is lousy. Garbage in, garbage out. The game is fine after its patches, and its easy to tweak a variety of values and behaviors in the game in some way or other to make things more palatable. Finally, like someone said before, it's just a game, get over it.Actually, one other thing. Some say, "the customer is always right," while I'm more a fan of, "let the buyer beware." Idylly, economics is a closed circuit just like an ecosystem, with finite quantities of resources being shared among all aspects of the system as needed. That it's become so adversarially oriented is part of the problem, not a potential solution. And before some wannabe environmental biology major spouts off the same nonsensical dribble that's caused more problems than its solved for decades now; I'm fully aware that the food chain IS adversarial, and that there are pocket ecosystems throughout the world...though those are only smaller components of the whole. Until we or some natural catastrophe interfere though, those systems remain balanced on their own with no one aspect gaining dominance over another. We screw each other just because we can...rather than considering the benefit of the species over the individual.
I am suprised you posted here, most have left me for the shiny new elemental forum as you hinted to above. I love this game. It is more easily customizeable and varied than anything on the market. I mod everytime I start a new game. That makes it a brand new game. Sure its not perfect but I find myself solving most of its problems and enjoying the learning process. Who knows maybe one day I'll be a dev and can read people's ridiculous complaints about the masterpiece I create.
New techs, new improvements, larger fleet battles eveytime I get more ram and processing power, I don't see this game getting old for a decade or two.
That said, elemental is going to be a better version of this game essentially and I can't wait to start it and a year or so!
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