I know we all have our own play style and Galactic Civilizations is great on allowing the player that option to play the way they want. After playing the game mod free now for 9 months after it was released this is what I have noticed.
Playing on an Insane map with Abundant planets and very slow game pace and technology rate, the Age of War comes way too fast. Most of the time even with 60 AI on the map factions have entered the Age of War before the colony rush has ended. Now I could see this happening on Normal game paces or even if there were less factions on a map of this size with 12 AI. I know early on the speed of game and the technology rate was talked about scaling per map size. Mainly being faster on Tiny maps and extremely slow on Insane maps. Has that ever been put into action?
Now that Mercenaries has been released this becomes even more of a problem because players are able to hire the next level Mercenaries fairly quickly as well. Now I know one can mod this and, for those that enjoy modding I think it's a great option. However, even though I dabbled in modding back in the Command & Conquer days with ini adjustments, I have not done that much since then nor do I have the time. As a full time employee and grade school age kids when I get a chance to sit down at home, I want to unwind and play the game, not dig through mods others created (no offense as I'm sure there are some great ones out t here, Gauntlet and Buck as well as others) but, if I use them I'm very picky on what changes I want done to the game. So again while I appreciate that there is an option to mod this, I wish the very slow game options would be slower for insane maps and/or, depending on how it plays the Ages adjusted to take longer to get to as well...
Anyways, I don't know if any other players feel the same way I do but, feel free to chime in on your thoughts
It's based on the number of techs researched, and the move between first and second age is really short (like 10 techs IIRC). I think the idea is that you're likely to be researching very slowly at first anyway, so that 10 techs is like 150 turns. This is donkey's years after the colony rush has ended on even up to huge maps.
Obviously, on an insane map with abundant planets, there can still be empty planets well past turn 300, and the pacing options are a bit of a joke as long as they continue to stack with buildings. Ideally, the pacing options should act as price modifiers (i.e., +50% building or tech cost) rather than production modifiers (i.e., -50% research or -50% manufacturing) so that they act as a real brake rather than a very minor inconvenience; I think the actual impact of Very Slow research speed (-50% research modifier) is only an output reduction of about 10% of my final output from a mid-game research world.
That was my initial feeling on research as well. Even after modding very slow to a 90% reduction, techs just roll in lategame. But increasing the tech cost functions DOES have a huge impact at every stage of the game. If you want to change them, it's a very simple line change in 2 places in one file.
galciv3globaldefs.xml, lines 868 and 870. Increasing them raises the slope of the cost function, so the more tech you accumulate the more effective the slowdown becomes.
First 10 techs I normally have researched 60-70 turns, and because the speed of ship production, a player may only have 7-8 planets at this stage, I would be happy if Age of War didn't start until turn 150, that just isn't the case as most AI have easily entered Age of war by then with 10-15 planets each.
Not with 60 plus AI there isn't (except some extreme planets).
I love that Stardock has made it very easy to mod these files and do that, I just feel as a player one shouldn't have to mod to get the very slow game pace/tech rate to very slow...
I just finished a long insane map game and researched every tech way before the game ended. I set the pace to the slowest possible but I still think its too fast.
I agree on the largest map size the tech rate is too fast. I play the diplomatic victory option, so I don't need to mop up if I don't want to but also because a tech victory would be way too easy. Perhaps a negative modifier for research, the only problem is that makes the production + races stronger by comparison. I think the insane maps do better with more AI, I personally feel playing with 15 as I am is too few, so the number of AI is also a balancing factor.Next game I'll try 25 AI and see how I feel again about the speed.
They definitely come too fast. They used to come too slowly. Hopefully next adjustment will hit the Goldilocks zone.
Say about 8 more to get to age of war then an extra 6 to age of ascension? Final age could probably use a big jump something like 150 needed instead of 128.
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