Quoting Syntax_VI,

reply 451

fair warning that godlike is pretty ridiculous The level below that (i think its incredible) generally feels about even for where I'm at. OFC all of this depends on start locations etc. I usually set multiple difficulties in game, so several incredible, many gifted, some genius, and maybe one or two godlike if I'm feeling adventurous.

Agree ... all AI at Genius was great fun early to mid-game but a touch easy late game, I'm playing Incredible now and not sure if I can win.  That said, Genius could be ideal once 1.4 hits i.e. a good challenge without feeling like the AI benefits are immersion breaking (particularly the free credits, free technology, free ideology referenced in GalCiv3AIDefs.xml and no FOW).

Also agree, not sure what the root cause is, but this is definitely the main reason I've pulled away so quickly from the AI late game, Naselus I would encourage a closer look here.

in current game playing noted that AI was t'forming at start but stopped as game progressed.  same with colonizing .. big push up front and then stops or only does 1-2 new o my 10-20.  overall does fall behind in mid to late game but initially does it which might be a problem as  instead of blding production research does terraforming if able.  Oh well back to playing

I dunno, costs scale a lot now. They're more use than they were. And while engines are only 10 space each, if you've got 5 or 6 then that's an extra gun.

Yes, the AI doesn't appear to trade techs very much. I'm hoping 1.4 might have some changes there.

It's not quite so easy as that; I have 6 weights which can be tweaked. This makes it very hard to tell it 'research this at this point'.

The techs reduce colonial maintenance now rather than improvement-specific maintenance, so they're not as useless as they appear. I've just not updated the tooltips. I do need to do a massive update of all the text in the mod; been kind of putting it off because, well, text updating is boring and mechanics updating is fun. I'll press-gang my gf into it at some stage.

Quick question in regards to starbase carrier modules. I got one, then upgraded it once to asault (on the starbase). I then gifted it to the AI and attacked it as I wanted to see how powerful it was and there were no fighters in the battle.

Bug, or did I screw it up by gifting the base to the AI? Do I have to manually build the fighters and send them to the starbase?

Hmm, weird. I'll see if I can get the AI to attack a starbase with a carrier module and see what happens, perhaps its because I gifted it to them.

RE the defenses being homogenized in size, i get that they kind of are already (at least in weight to ratio), but pretty please don't make them all the same mass I just realized, I've been playing all these custom factions and making blueprints for the AI to use when they use the faction, and I'm guessing that change would basically nullify all the blueprints. Further, if I'm not mistaken, the AI would probably continue to build the now drastically less effective blueprints, wouldn't they?

I notice that if I play a faction, then start a new game, with the previously played faction as an AI that they often use the ships I built in the previous game.

Yeah - End game propulsion techs allow for Huge carriers to move 40 spaces, Large carriers to move 31 and Huge battleships to move 34 spaces, default terran blueprints.

I found the relevant quote from naselus RE ship speeds.

I hear what you are saying jju57, but I do disagree. It just becomes a giant game of galactic whackamole with 30-40 move ships, where you or the AI can just drop huge fleets on one another without the other even knowing they are there. Not to mention that moves = attacks in this game, as you can take out a good chunk of an empire with that many moves, and depending on your level of upgrades vs an opponent.

Carriers are the big culprit, as they auto upgrade to current tech. You could be at a stalemate with an opponent, catch a few weapons upgrades and kite through 10-20 fleets (depending on spacing of course) in a single turn with a 40 move super carrier.

With proper positioning you could be well outside an AI's empire, then drop in before the AI could possibly react and take a good chunk of their empire in a single turn. I doubt the AI would pull of said maneuver, as I believe it is beyond them, but it allows the player to just run circles around the poor AI.

Is there a mod somewhere that just fixes/increases the terrible habitable planet spawn rate on abundant settings, specifically on medium to larger maps without all the extra changes?

Was looking for a mod where it only changed the planet spawn rate and nothing else, dont mind where its from

Although that post seems like it might be what im looking for. Ill try it out later, thanks!

Ill probably just fiddle with the files, albeit most likely unsuccessfully lol. The 1.4 (maybe 1.5) update where they are going to make the map spawn planets based on number of races and map size, etc. Or something to that effect I remember hearing, will hopefully just fix it anyway. I was just getting impatient as each update seems to not fix the underling issue or making it worse by making planets more and more rare.

With the help of others on these boards I was able to change the planet spawn rates to fit my play style.  I'm not at home to post the changes but I play on the next to largest map, have nice isolated pockets of stars, have a very manageable number of planets and reduced resource spam.  Not sure if this is the type of map you are looking for or not.

I hope im not jacking this thread.. and let me know if what im typing dosnt make sense its 1am atm and im typing on my phone lol!

I tend to stick with about the huge or gigantic maps with abundant minors, which probably dosnt help with them eating up the planets. Then I add 9 opponents, which once again is probably too many for the map size but I don't want to spend forever playing a map with half my time just traveling around or microing hundreds of deep space battles and stations. But I still like the variety of races.

The problem I find is, even on a gigantic map which I feel is an adequate size for that many players. You will get some races who are unlucky and start near 2-3 low PQ planets and nothing else. Then other races who have 5 to 7 planets in there own little star cluster. Then of course on huge your averaging 2-5 planets per race if your lucky, with most having one extreme or the other. This effectively means that the most powerful race is most often the race that just so happened to start near all the planets. As research and production is restricted by this it just compounds the power gap.

Now maybe this is just an issue with the map generator not at least attempting to even out the placements to give them a chance, but in the earlier beta even 1.0 I believe, all you had to do is set things to abundant and you would get tones of planets to go around, in some cases too many. But at least it was spawning them. It was more successfully then not at getting a nicer set of clustered planets across the map. Also atm im finding my starbases cant cover more then one planet as there are so few.
 
So I guess im looking for:
-Higher chance of planets spawning near each other or in the same system.
-More even spread of planets across the map, in both quantity and quality.
-A more even focus on evening out planets around each race (no idea if thats even possible)
-And one thing I just thought of, I wish there was more extreme worlds. Even on abundant with a huge map, you may at most get one extreme world per type. Effectively making the extended colony phases when the techs become available useless. As well as specializing also near useless, as there is only one planet to get anyway. Which still in turn eats at the possible habitable planet list.


To clarify, im not looking for anything crazy like 100 planets per race or anything. Even having about 8-10 per race with a few nice planet clusters hear and there would be nice. And as you suggested above more consistent resources, maybe not reduced just more clustered together to prevent starbase spam every 5 tiles polluting the map. Perhaps im just spoiled from the GalCiv2/Galciv3 Beta days. Either that or im remembering through rose colored glasses lol.