I told you I forgot the proper use of accent marks! You owe me some slack!

And ah, in English that word would never be pronounced like that without accent marks. I had it right, although in German its wrong, but you didn't provide the necessary accent marks in your user name so its your fault! Burn with the Drengin!!

I ran a couple 1-on-1 AI vs. AI test-games today. The settings were: small map, common all, no (Mega) events, 8 minors, Tough difficulty. I used the Terrans as base, and set them up against the other races.

So far, the Yor are the strongest. They've won each encounter. Though their research in the last one was a bit weak. Not sure, if that was just a coincidence, or due to one of my changes.

The Altarians and Korx did also pretty well. They've won most of their encounters, while the rest ended up in stalemates.

The Drengin and Arceans didn't win a single encounter. However, most of those ended in stalemates. Some of those games were actually pretty promising. If I hadn't cut them short at 6 years run-time, the Drengin and Arceans might have been able to turn the tide against the Terrans.

The Torians... need work. Badly. They've lost every single encounter. They were constantly behind in both research and manufacturing.

I still need to go through the other races, but it's looking very promising so far. Well, except for the Torians.

I've also got a couple more balancing questions:

1. Starbases. I'm a bit worried, that the early starbase defences are too strong. I want to make them strong enough, so the starbases are no longer easy pickings. However, I don't want to make them so strong, that the starbases are indestructible in the early game. I'd really like to get some feedback on this.

2. More starbases. The AI loves to build starbases. A lot. However, each new starbase costs an ever-increasing amount of money. The AI can easily reach a point were it has to pay several thousand bc for a new starbase. Which is pretty bad, because it takes away money from other important areas, and can make the AI go broke.
A high Logistics-score reduces the amount you need to pay for new starbases. If you manage to get a Logistics-value of 100+, constructing new starbases becomes free. I therefore would like to increase the Logistics-values in the game, so you can eventually reach a amount of 100+ once you've researched Ultimate Logistics. The Logistics-costs of the ships would also be increased accordingly, so you don't end up with more ships in a fleet.
What do you think? Implement this, or leave it to mods?

3. Orbital Terraformer. The Terraformer instantly terraforms all your planets. By the time you unlock it, you're most likely already done with most of it. So a few turns more or less won't matter. If you go Neutral, this GA is entirely meaningless to you, because your Alignment does all the work for you. So, I would like to increase the power of the Terraformer, to make it more useful for everybody. I was thinking of a civ-wide PQ-bonus, but would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

It's too bad that we can't get some AI fixes in so that they realise when they're overstuffing the galaxy with starbases and disband the ones they don't need.  I guess fixing logistics so they don't go broke is the next best thing, then.

Hmm, I guess that a PQ bonus for the Orbital Terraformer would somewhat offset the lack of use it gets.  As a player, you can of course intentionally delay terraforming by unchecking auto-terraforming - social production needs to be funded, after all, so on a large galaxy with an abundance of planets, it's probably a useful gambit.  Don't know.  Never built it.

As for starbase defences, well, I guess you could start at three points instead of five.  Thing is, ship weapons (lasers, for example) have a stronger start than in the vanilla game, so five points of defence doesn't last long over the course of a combat round.  Now by the time you get that second defence module installed, it's all the way up to twenty points, which can take quite a bit more punishment.  That's not to say that the starbase is invulnerable, just that it can wipe the floor with a lot of early-game fighters.

So yes, like the man above said, consider increasing the tech cost of Starbase Militarization, probably to at least 800 or so (almost three times the cost of Military Starbase Construction).  That's still a bargain compared to the cost of the weapon techs, mind.

The senate recognizes Qrtxian.

The problem with AI is the need to ask the right questions.  "Do I have too many starbases?" for example, is something that a human player can estimate quite easily.  An AI, however, must crunch quite a bit of map data to try to get to the same conclusion.

If there's something deficient about starbase AI, it's possibly because asking the right question would take so much time that turn processing would slow to a crawl, and the best rule of thumb breaks down under circumstances like a huge galaxy with lots of sectors to spam starbases in.

It's great if the workaround works.  One would hope, for example, that the AI doesn't go completely nuts and max out starbases in every sector.  The down side of letting the AI build as many starbases as it likes?  It may very well end up wasting a lot of time building constructors.  I guess we'll find out.

I've tested the remaining races today:

The Thalan are okay. No big issues here.

The Iconians are mostly okay. Their biggest issue is, surprisingly, the Dream Conclaves. They're too good. The Iconians build a few of these where possible, and start ramping up the tax rate. New colonies, and any other planet without Dream Conclaves, will soon end up with very low two-digit (or even single-digit) approval ratings. Reducing the morale bonus of the DC might help, but I don't want to drop it too far. The DC is based on Precursor tech, so it should be at least as good as the VRC.

The Korath... are mixed. If they get a good starting position, then they are wiping out everything in their path. If they get a bad one, then they are dead meat. Besides this, their research is also not that good. They focus too much on farming and terraforming, and not enough on production and research. They also often don't research Spore Weapons. I've made some adjustments to the AIValues and some tech categories, especially for Spore Weapons, and the Korath are now doing slightly better. It's not much, but I'm not sure how much more I can improve them.

The Krynn are doing okay. Their only issue was, that they didn't research the Jihad of Krynn path of techs. That's fixed now.

I've also had another look at the Drengin, Arceans, and Torians:

The Drengin managed to beat the Terrans to a pulp this time. I think they should be fine now.

The Arceans still didn't managed to win a match. However, they also didn't lose. The match ended in a stalemate again. By the looks of it, the Arceans were trying to win an Alliance victory. Quite out-of-character, I must say.

The Torians... still suck. They keep losing the colony-rush, and make stupid research-decisions. In one match, they didn't research any weapons until the Terrans declared war. This prompted them to research up to Beam Weapon Theory, only to spend the next 30 turns to research Industrial Sectors afterwards. They are dying by the billions, but at least they got better factories now.

All in all, we only have two real problem races: the Korath and the Torians. Though the Korath are probably the better of the two. I'm almost considering to move the Torians to AIP 8, but we already have so many races which use that one.

I've uploaded a new version, using the same link as before. This is primarily to get feedback on the new balancing-changes, but anything regarding the behaviour of the AI is welcome too.

What the... !? Dammit!  You're supposed to be on AIP 11, Torians! It's happened to me now a few times, that I made an entry in the the changelog of what I'm going to do, and then forgot to actually make the change. This, however, has got to be the worst case of them all.

I corrected it now. Let's see, if that improves things a little.

Edit: Okay, I've just run a test, and it didn't look good at first.

The Torians only managed to get five planets, while the Terrans got 14. On the plus-side, the Torians were the first to research weapons, and to build a military. On the downside, the Terrans were the first to research Planetary Invasion, and began conquering the neighbours. The Torians just colonised the aquatic worlds when the first war began. It didn't look good for them, because they still didn't have Planetary Invasion, and the Terrans were already sending troop transports. Somehow the Torians were able to fend of the invaders, get Planetary Invasion, and strike back. They actually conquered two of the Terran worlds, before a peace treaty got signed.
The Torians now began a two-point campaign. Their military went after the remaining minor races, while their social department colonised the remaining extreme worlds. This pretty much spelled doom for the Terrans, because almost the whole map was soon covered in green. The Terrans already began losing some of their worlds to culture-flipping, when the second war started. The situation was pretty hopeless, but the Terrans kept on fighting. They actually managed to hold out much longer than I expected. Still, the Terrans eventually realised how the war was going, and surrendered to the Torians.

Well, that was quite a comeback for the Torians, but I still need to test them further. 

Good question.  Have you by chance noticed that Planetary Improvements is a hump that some of the races have trouble getting over?  Or are they fine with it?

I've been playing as the Torians tonight in preparation for tomorrow's video playthrough.  The Yor are making war, or at least trying to.  Meanwhile I have teched up and I'm rolling out the big guns.  I don't know if it will hold them off, but it sure is a fun game.  Just one more turn?  Yes please!

I would say that one of the mistakes I made was being too peaceful, a little backward and ignorant of the other races.  The Yor declared war on me before I even researched Universal Translator.  Still, I have a massive lead in terms of population, even over the Yor, without even having researched Xeno Farm Construction.  When I start invading (and I kind of have to now) the ability to continually refill transports is going to be hilariously OP.  But you know, that's kind of the Torians' thing, just like the Yor can crank fighters so fast that they turn the skies dark.

2 suggestions on things to change...

1) Take away the ability to trade IP. The A.I. doesnt get how useless the stuff is, and will trade good tech or cred for it.

2) Add bonuses to choosing the good or nuetral options in a decision. Just like GalCiv 3!

So, I did a lot of playing and recording tonight.  About five and a half hours.

I probably won't use it all in the video, which will now for sure be pushed back to tomorrow, but I'll try not to chop it too much.  I may re-voice some of the talky bits, as my throat was getting a bit dry towards the end, and I have a little bit more playing to do as well.

I think that it shows off the AI fairly well, but on the other hand they do still make a bazillion runs at heavily-fortified starbases so, still not too bright.

Edit: I did a bit more recording on Friday and ended up with a total of eight hours to go through.  So it may be a while before I get done with the video, unless you fancy sitting down for a Lord of the Rings triology length video.

chananyahoschander's post made me think about the alignments again. The way I understand the intended design is this: Good suffers in the short term, but gains long-term benefits, due to better relations with the other races. Evil gains short terms benefits, but suffers in the long term, due to constant conflicts with the other races. Neutral is somewhere in the middle.

This is definitely how it was in GalCiv 1. If you played Evil, you needed all the benefits you could get, because everyone wanted to see you dead. Playing Good, on the other hand, was pretty much "easy-mode", because everyone liked you. Except for the Drengin and Yor perhaps. Neutral was the least beneficial alignment, because you didn't get any of the fancy techs Good and Evil got. Well, at least nobody hated your guts for being an Evil jerk.

However, this isn't really the case in GalCiv 2. The downsides for playing Evil just aren't that big, or not really downsides at all. (The Altarians declared war on me? Great! I was already sending my invasion fleet in their direction anyhow.) While the bonuses for being Good don't offset the penalties suffered in the beginning.

We obviously can't fix the underlying issues, because they are hardcoded. However, we can change the bonuses the alignments receive in form of SPs and GAs. So, here is what I'd like to do with Evil:

1. Move the Mind Control Center to Xeno Brain Washing.

2. Move the Artificial Slave Center to Artificial Slavelings.

3. Move the No Mercy Invasion Center to Terror Drones I.

4. Move the Secret Police Center to Concepts of Malice.

The primary reason for this is so Evil only gets what it's supposed to according to its bonus-sheet. Which is good enough already, if you take all the bonuses from events into account. The other reason for this is so that the Drengin, Korath, and Yor, have something unique to them. Plus, it fits nicely into their playstyle and general theme. For example, the Drengin already use propaganda and brain washing, so the MCC fits right in. Artificial Slavelings is an absolute no-brainer as a requirement for the ASC. Invasion is the main-method of the Yor to acquire new planets, so the No Mercy makes them save a lot of money. Still, I feel the Yor got the worst deal in this. The No Mercy just isn't as powerful as the first two improvements. Especially the ASC. (50% more total Military Production on all planets in the empire? Yes, please!)

I'm still not sure, however, about what we should do with Good. The Emphatic Tactical Center feels kind of redundant, because Good already gets a Defense bonus from the unique defense techs. Maybe a Weapons or Soldiering bonus instead would help. The Hall of Empathy, on the other hand, ranges from "meh" to "useless", depending on if you activated the option for surrenders or not. It may be nice, if it guaranteed that races surrender to you, instead of just doubling the chance. As it is, I rarely bother with it. Too bad we can't change that.

So, any thoughts? Feedback?

I'm fine with Good getting the better defences, because they are compassionate about all life, while Evil gets the better weapons, because they don't care, if the enemy suffers a long and agonising death.

Still, maybe we could take a look at the Altarians and Thalan to make Good a bit more unique. At least for the official Good races. That would leave the Torians and Iconians, because the Altarians and Drath already get some nice stuff.

In case of the Altarians, Good gets: a Creativity bonus, a PQ bonus, unique attack and defence Atlas modules, a Soldiering bonus, and a planet-boosting GA (Shrine of Tandis).

In case of the Thalan, Good gets: a unique defence Atlas module, a Soldiering bonus from a SP (Church of Valor), a PQ bonus from a GA (Gaia Vortex), a Influence bonus and a unique culture module.

With the exception of Inherent Magic and the Shrine of Tandis, we could probably use all of the Altarian techs for the other Good races. The Thalan techs, however, are too specific to them, with the exception of maybe the Hyperion Defense module and the Church of Valor. Still, I'd rather keep those for the Thalan. It makes them feel a bit more unique and powerful.

As for the Empathic Tactical Center and the Hall of Empathy, I got some ideas:

The ETC could provide a Weapons bonus. The premise behind this is that the ETC trains your soldier to use their empathic abilities to predict enemy ship movement. If they use this knowledge to destroy the enemy ships faster, they can better protect the innocents in the galaxy from the machinations of the Evil races. The best defence is a good offence, and all that.

The Hall of Empathy could either provide a civ-wide Influence bonus or a civ-wide Pop. Growth bonus. The former representing the other civs increased willingness to join up with you due to your high empathy, while the latter represents the high influx of refugees from the war-zones. Either bonus would make the HoE more useful, especially if you have surrenders deactivated.