Disclaimers:
Thanks to a lack of cash, I don't own DA or TOA. The following was played on the original GalCiv 2.
I play on "Tough", so this may not work for you Masochistic/Suicidal types (in fact, it probably won't).
I'm four years into my current game (Huge galaxy, common everything, loose clusters) as the Iconians with my preferred picks, and I'm completely dominating the AIs (Drengin, Korx, Yor, Arceans, Thalans). I could crush any of them but the Arceans at will, and the only reason that I can't instantly wipe out the Arceans is that it would take a while to absorb their 42 planets (nearly as many as me). I'm making well over 600 bc a turn, and my treasury, even after a fleet-wide upgrade that cost almost 50000 bc, is larger then all the AIs combined. Any individual one of my ships has more attack/defense then the strongest AI fleet. My manufacturing and research both outclass the Arceans, who have more advanced factories and labs, and I have researched every diplomatic technology in the game. Basically, I see no way I can possibly lose this game.
I don't consider myself anything near an expert player. I also don't think I'm ready to move on to the next difficulty, judging from my last game, in which I am almost certainly going to be obliterated by the gigantic Torian empire. Yet in this and in my previous game (with very different settings) as the "weak" Iconians, I have won with far more ease then with any other civilization. I'd welcome some speculation on the reasons for this.
My picks for the Iconians
4 points Economics (+30)
2 points Diplomacy (+10)
1 point each Social and Military production (+10)
Political party: Technologists (+20 research, +1 sensors)
My goal is to turn the Iconians into a research and economic powerhouse, taking advantage of their default +20 to research and impressive number of starting techs. The diplomacy points are so I can swindle the AIs at tech trading by trading them techs they (over)value in exchange for everything they own. Social and military points help round them out. I've noticed that the combination of +30 economics and Xeno Economics as a starting tech means that I can almost completely avoid the early post-colony rush economic collapse.
Thoughts?
Hi!
The reason why Iconians are considered weak is IMX their sub-par default starting abilities (not much bonuses, with some research the Super-adapter loses all its advantage over other races, "good" alignment), and somewhat toned-down AI (their AI is a bit too "polite", if you're not Yor).
IMO since you can't see the effect of their super ability, and compare it to other ones, you can't give a relevant comment about Iconians. Besides, in 4x games ANY race wth good initial planet "draw" and proper play can grow big - unstoppable. What you're describing is simply an effect of that.
BR, Iztok
Also, if you are playing as Iconian it is no longer considered an 'AI weak' race.
You, as a real human (with real (assumed) intelligence), will always have an advantage over a programmed AI.
Thanks for the input, Iztok and Moosetek. My responses:
IMO since you can't see the effect of their super ability, and compare it to other ones, you can't give a relevant comment about Iconians.
I know I can't judge their performance in DA or TOA. However, I had heard that even in DL, the Iconians were considered by far the weakest major race.
Actually, I didn't get a good initial planet 'draw'. I finished a distant fourth behind the Arceans, Thalans, and Drengin. I got all those planets by taking most of the Yor worlds in a blitzkrieg after he stupidly built no defenders by the third year and from a lot of low PQ AI colonies in my space that have defected. Given that the other races surpassed me at the start, I still find it strange that I've basically been in first the whole time.
A little off-topic, but I haven't noticed any special antipathy between the Iconian and Yor AIs. The only backstory conflict consistently reflected in AI behavior seems to be Drengin/Torians, who go to war in almost every game they develop decent militaries (more then any other combination of AIs).
Also, not to start yet another ethical debate, but I really haven't noticed good being that much weaker then evil and neutral. It is weaker, but doesn't seem so much so that simply a 'good' starting alignment is a drawback (although the Iconians' 99 ethos is a real pain when you're trying to take them to a different alignment). Part of this is no doubt my playstyle - I'm a pretty peaceful guy and tend to win diplomatic victories, which is IMO best done with good (diplomatic bonus between good races offsets neutral's extra trade routes).
Also, if you are playing as Iconian it is no longer considered an 'AI weak' race.You, as a real human (with real (assumed) intelligence), will always have an advantage over a programmed AI.
This is true, but some of the races are still weaker then others in regards to starting abilities. I had heard (and thought myself) that the Iconians were one of them, but experience seems to be proving the opposite.
Thanks for the feedback!
What "picks" do the Iconians take when the programmed opponent plays them? Have you compared them to which ones you take?
On fortuitous starting positions affecting which AIs pull away from others, I have seen that in my own games. In several early games, I went back to the original homeworlds of AIs and looked around at the inner circle of what had been their empires. (Each time at that point I owned most of the map.) I would look at the quality of the starter homeworlds and the ones close by that would have been colonized very early by that race.
Many times the races which had provided challenges to me in that game had started with really good bonus tiles on their homeworld and/or early strong colony planets of high PQ with some bonus tiles.
In DL I see no reason to distinguish the Iconians from a simply "custom race" setup, they have ten points to spend, and do it on racial stuff that could be re-created by any race in exactly the same fashion. But this could be said from most races. However, there are some exceptions, esp. the Yor's 25% Miniaturizationbonus, or generally the Drath's bonuses, which historically are considered the strongest DL race, and whose amount of bonuses will exceed the points each race has to spend by far.
Actually, the Iconians do NOT have ten points to spend. They have eight. I think this was intended to be balanced by the fact that they started with more technologies then any other race, but it seems to have made them weaker (or so I thought). The Iconians are actually one of the only DL civilizations that can't be re-created by a custom race, with the Drath and Yor (as you said) and possibly one more being the others. There's also a few other quirks such as starting with an usually high PQ homeworld (15 without any terraforming) but an extra-bad "Mars" (PQ 3).
Upon further reflection, the Iconian AI probably is a little too "nice". I started another game playing as the Drengin, and the Iconians are overwhelmingly the strongest civilization in existence. They have me beat in everything but morale and economy and control about 30-40 planets to the 20 of me and the largest AIs. In most other civilizations, this would lead to the Iconians picking on the weak, but so far they aren't even attacking minor races (and this is 5 years in). While it's nice to see a good race actually acting like it (unlike those warmongering Altarians), it's definitely a weakness in this situation.
AI strength/weakness definitely is determined by starting position, although some of them (Torians and Thalans) expand much faster then others (Yor). The Iconians in this game got virtually an entire star cluster to themselves whereas (for example) I wound up close by the Yor, Torians, and Korx.
This is really puzzleing me now, because I can't seem to re-create that, although I have 2 different versions of DL installed on 2 different PC's. Are yours up to date (v1.53)?
My Iconians do have +10 Econ (2 pts) and +20 Research (4 pts) which leaves them 4 points to spend; I can actually un-check this pre-chosen bonuses and the customization points are re-filled to ten (same as when using the "reset"-button). It works vice-versa, and using the "clear" button (which usually should restore a race to the default) brings same result. The strange thing is that in the raceconfig in the installations-folder the Iconians get 7 customization-points attributed to them, while have those above-mentioned bonuses, but my game doesn't default to this.
As it turns out, you're correct. For some reason I thought that the +10 economics was an inherent bonus akin to those of the Drath. I just checked and there are two points into it.
You still can't recreate the Iconians with a custom race, though. I checked and there is no way any custom race could begin with as many technologies as they do. I guess that's actually supposed to be balanced by the fact that they start with no bonuses at all. Still, on paper, they don't actually seem that bad. Were all those DL-era posts saying the Iconians were weak just talking about the Iconian AI (which I agree needed work)?
True, their starting techs give them a small edge in the beginning. On the other DL races that have real racial bonuses be overtly careful when selecting them; they can vanish. E.g. you pick up the Drath who have +50% Defenses, and then you go on and add another +30% (3pts) to it, then you won't have 80% but only 30%, and those "points" from are not refilled at all... you need to clear out the character and start again to keep them.
That's strange. right?
Yup. And I think that should have been taken care of long ago. I mean, right now, just like it is, the situation can very well arise that a lot of racial bonuses are lost.
I think it was just two months ago that I discovered that by sheer accident. Now I pay heed to that, but I'm pretty sure that in 2009 most my DL setups were sub-optimal.
The danger, esp. for new people who can't know this, is that you start a game and during the setup you select probably all races, just to look what they got, and click through the racial bonuses and by doing so one destroys nearly all racial bonuses that can't be recreated with the normal 10 pts. And if one doesn't use the "clear" button it will even stay like this forever.
Interesting... Is this for all the races? If so, it could explain why my Terrans always seem to have weaker-then-normal diplomacy. That said, I press "clear" each new game I start, so I don't have to worry about this being permanent.
In regards to strong AI races vs. strong human races, what AIs (in DL, I know you can tweak it in DA) seem to be the most aggressive? I rather like winning diplomatic victories, but lately, it seems as if the entire galaxy is overrun by pacifists. Does it relate solely to their strength in that game (i.e. strong races will be aggressive, weak ones will not) or are some races naturally warmongers? I'd assume the Drengin would be, but they've been pretty laid-back most of the time. For some reason, the Korx (of all people) seem to be the nastiest evil AI race.
Yes - though it won't matter on those races that have pre-selected points which can be re-created.
Difficult question. Ususally war is declared by the AI when the rating is "hostile" for a time. The diplomacy rating has many facets itself, to discuss this fully would explode the topic. Military Rating weighs big into it, but there are many other factors as well.
Personally I would say, the Yor. Their Miniaturization-bonus gives them a warship bonus everytime, which is esp. strong in the beginning. But it's really the map itself that decides that.
Hmm. The Yor used to be horribly weak, but lately they've become much stronger. They were, fittingly enough, my main antagonist in one of those Iconian games. Actually, both the Drengin and Yor seem to become much stronger as I move up difficulty levels, compared to other races.
What I was wondering, though, wasn't about AIs declaring war on me so much as being general 'warmongers'. If I'm at peace for any real length of time (at least in the early game), some disgruntled worker will inevitably shoot an alien leader and plunge me into war. What I had in mind was more along the lines of a 'Nazi Germany' type race that will continually gobble up weak powers unless stopped (like the Drengin in some of Frogboy's early examples, for instance).
Totally off topic: Do Arceans have the best AI for wars? They seem much better at use of fleets, starbases, and general tactics then virtually everyone else?
I just want to throw in (mainly because I feel that there has to be SOMETHING that makes the Iconians useful) that the advance in logistics is very useful in the early game. Having an exactly +10 logistics enables you to group two transports together, further increasing your advantage/loss of troops in a battle. Hate to switch to the expansions, but I still feel the need to defend these poor guys- The AI greatly over-values the extreme colonization and beyond techs...A useful way to make the best use of the Iconians super-ability is to secure what you want in the colony rush, then sell those bad boys for LOTS of early techs before all the inhabitable plantes are gone.
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