Around half a year ago I got GC2: Ultimate which contained the two addons Dark Avatar and Twillight of the Arnor.
Back then it wasn't even the question what to play, as ToA is newer and thus better, right?
Well, after a couple of games I noticed there's a lot of oddities. The praised AI wasn't doing as well as it should.
I went to the forums and read a really long-thread in the modding section just before getting into modding myself.
What I found was this: The introduction of race-specific tech-trees and buildings in most of the cases was the explanation of poor behaviour. Why? Because it wasn't done properly. There are so many logical errors within the tech-trees that one could talk about a huge mess. My estimate was that someone would have to sit down for 2 months or more in order to fix and test everything.
I sure didn't want to be this person.
So after not playing GC2 for ... well, since then. I just today came over it, when looking at the games I have.
I remembered the problems I had and was thinking: How about the addon before the introduction of the race-specific-tech trees?
So my question is: Does someone actually remember the days of this addon? Did he notice anything besides the tech-trees that are in ToA but not in DA?
Or is there even someone who, despite having ToA, plays DA for the exact reasons I have called out in this post?
I never bought TA because of the reasons you cited and, additionally, because some of the AI personalities do not develop their planets and others appear to be so afraid of Influence effects that they do not expand well.
I still play DA.
You don't have to be - there's at least four different mods out there fixing the tech trees. All of them put their own spin on things, so it's probably worth checking them all out to see which one you prefer.
I've tried 2 of them back then. And while they fixed a lot of stuff, there still were things that seemed like not working as intended.
For example some races were really easy to rush because they delayed far too long.
Trading your techs to others could screw them in the following way: They see: "Oh this is better than mine"... build it and never upgrade it because they never get the tech for the upgrade.
I'll just spend some time with DA and then see if I miss something crucial that ToA has but DA doesn't.
To answer the original question:
The AI in DA does what it is supposed to, making the game very playable (no honestly, it's very good).
ToA is a bit hit and miss, though the mods make it a lot better (I play Tolmekians... I think). I switch between DA and ToA as both are fun. ToA offers more depth but you'll have to be willing to ignore its weaknesses in return.
I'm a little late to the discussion, however, I'm with you on this. I came here and a couple other forums and got the answer, "Well it's newer, it's definitely better, so buy it" ... even got a response, "I dont get these people that dont buy the newest expansions". Some time later, I bought ToA, and while I enjoyed the graphical updates, I found the research tree, the custom buildings for each race and the new AI to combine for a lesser game.
That's just my opinion of course, and there are many people that think otherwise, or are happy with the game the way it is, but not me. I played 4 or 5 games in ToA and couldnt even finish most of them. They were boring or so mis-balanced I didnt have nearly the cut-throat fun I had playing DA, so I went back.
Modded TA is much more fun. Of course, it depends on what you find to be fun.
I like the tension of the tech race, and the wrestling for military dominance. That's partly the reason I designed the tech trees as I did with my mod, so that if I didn't invest enough in research I would always feel the pressure if another race got to developing weapons before I did. And they do, usually.
However to be honest on an Immense map with masses of ships and victory all but assured, the fun factor does tend to die out. Lots of space battles to be had, and maybe there will be surprises, but GalCiv 2 itself does tend to create a no-lose scenario where if your ships gain enough levels they become unstoppable, and then it doesn't matter how big of a fleet opposes you, you're almost guaranteed to win.
Which mod is your mod? ... one year later, lol.
Who are you referring to?
On second thought, here are all of the mods:
MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod
Tolmekian's TechTree Fix
Autumn Twilight (my mod)
Altarn's Polished Twilight
Thank you
I'm in the same boat as you, mafutnyoas - I picked up Ultimate shortly after it was released and very quickly put it down, frustrated and disappointed in ToA. For whatever reason, I came back last month to try it with the APT1 mod and have been quite happy with that. It's not perfect - the AI's research is still sort of random at times, and big civs don't always press their advantage like they could - but it's serviceable enough to finally enjoy all the cool ideas in ToA. And it maintains unique trees and tech trading without greatly changing the game. I've been playing at Crippling (Large map, no Super Abilities) and feel it's an enjoyable and legitimately challenging game.
I am starting to see how APT1 (which is very conservative) is limited in what it can do, though - even at Crippling (not that high a level), the AI is threatening in large part because of all its inherent bonuses and not because it's playing especially well. The game starts to feel warped when your well-developed empire is getting out-teched by an AI a third of your size. Then you look around at the AI planets for a good Spy target and can't even find one - the AI has nothing but randomly scattered Research Labs getting boosted by an enormous ability bonus. You end up just needing to grow enormously large to compete. I'd expect this would only be more ridiculous at higher levels and demand ever more mass and ever more exploitation in order to win. Still, that's not all that different from Civ or similar games played at high levels. But I imagine that the more aggressive mods do more to help the AI's play well without just needing to stack up huge bonuses to do it.
But again, even just APT1 is worlds better than vanilla ToA, which I found to be almost completely pointless to play.
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