I played for about 25 hours last year and did fine as a GalCiv 2 vet, was having some fun games but left to play other things. Since the new Expansion is out I fired up a game last night to see what had changed in vanilla through patching since mid last year. I didn't notice anything odd at first, I did my usual "expand peacefully and get a good economic and tech lead, crank out high tech ships when the AI starts bullying me" strategy. This backfired and I got killed by the Drengin in an early game rush (or more specifically, they attained space superiority and prevented me rebuilding star ports). That in itself isn't unheard of, but I noticed something odd in my second game.
Basically I went for military techs sooner and got a modest fleet optimised to fight the enemies out. But even as I started building ships, I noticed that my military score was being dwarfed by practically everyone. When I went to war with the Dregin, they were swarming me with fairly modern ships (they weren't well suited to my layouts, but they weren't majorly backwards technically except maybe in propulsion). I decisively defeated them, but the graph insisted that my military score was still tiny, and my overall faction score was correspondingly very small in comparison to other nations that were a similar size or even smaller than me, territorially, research wise, and population wise. It was quite silly to see the Altarians who controlled a half as much territory and had a much smaller economy than me allegedly be much more powerful.
At one point I built up my fleet to my economic limit to defeat the Yor who had got a bit out of control. Even then, the AI military score was WAY ahead of me, and it wasn't until I'd reduced them to a tiny husk of their former self that they seemed to be below me and sue for peace. Is this a known issue? Is the AI cheating in some way (possibly maintenance) to get ridiculous numbers of ships? Every planet I attacked had a half dozen modern ships and they also had multiple large roving fleets, while in order to be competitive I had to leave planets undefended and take advantage of my propulsion superiority to interdict incoming enemies and strike at their homeland. Economically and tech wise I was in the lead. The only other thing I can think of was that they had a lot of population on some planets, but as an empire they weren't ahead overall.
AI pay half the maintenance for stationed ships, but a moderator mentioned that this will be changed to effect all players in a future patch.
But yeah it's the reason that the ai is spamming so many military ships and for the military rating quantity goes over quality.
Yeah the power rating graph leads to the AI making some tragic errors. Like deciding you're weak, ripe for conquest, and suiciding their entire fleet onto your border guarding technologically superior fleets...
If you want to stave off war until you can build massively superior fleets focus a bit on diplo techs and drop the odd embassy on planets and starbases, build a couple of prototype ships, and buy one or two extra survey ships from the mercenaries pool (if available) and survey heavily so you get lots of free ships from the ship graveyards. The combination of not being ridiculously weak, with really strong diplomacy helps.
Also early on get all the Open Borders as soon as you meet people and the two most evil races (Drengin and Snathi) say you like them in the diplo. It's too early for anyone to say 'you liked my enemy' since nobody really has any enemies and it slows their hate a bit.
On beyond the point of maintenance discrepancies, during the patches there has been continued development work and progress on the overall AI performance. They have gotten incrementally smarter each time and they make less mistakes. Some exploits gloated about on the forums have been addressed. Since you have effectively skipped a few of those updates, the difference would be more striking for you than for those who have experienced it in steps over the past few months.
I have not tried in the opt-in, but one thing that I do to help with the sily power curve is ask for ships from minor races. The game doesn't know they are junky as far as the power screen goes. Especially once I get free trade agreements, those are typically good for one or two free ships plus some energy credits, per minor race every time the deal expires. Later I can upgrade them to something useful if I want, or just scrap them for a cash infusion if needed.
In terms of winning the game, quality counts more than quantity. In terms of the power score it is reversed. Getting a bunch of cheap, low maintenance ships without interrupting my starbase more important functions is a nice solution. I consider it like using the minor race's as contracted military suppliers. ^.^
^^The Opt in will fundamentally change your game. All ship parts (engines, weapons, defense and life support) are now a set value with percentage increase. Which means you can no longer endlessly stack engines and get ridiculous speeds on your ships. I was used to having a MINIMUM of 3 warp drives on Medium or larger ships on an Insane map. No more. Now the game takes longer to play and is actually even more fun since everyone is 'racing' to attack the other.
Maybe i broke my game some how but i do not see the ship part scaling. I turned mods off verified game files started new game designed new ship. every drive increased mass and moves by the same amount, same wilt sensors and life support. What am i missing? where is the now a set value with percentage increase?
I used to be able to put 3 engines on a medium hull. Now I can get 2 at best and then still barely any weapons or defenses They simply scale up higher.
Did you 'opt in' for 1.7?
yup, it is 1.7 just did a new med hull, put 4 warp drives on, mass cost for # 4 was the same as # 1... What the heck?
EDIT Ok i THINK i see the change a given component (e.g. warp drive) uses up more mass as the hull size increases but remains constant for a give hull. honestly it does not look like a very big increase though
The mass shouldn't increase with more of the same module. The speed added per module should go down.
You know, diminishing returns and all that good stuff.
That will have minimal effect on me. I usually only had 2engines on up to medium, and 3 or 4 on large hulls. The rare games where I researched huge before winning,I usually dont build any. I have built my utility ships (colony, constructor, trade, etc) with a goal of ~20 move. But I can live without that.
I also typically build weapons on my escorts and armor on my capital ships. Now, I do put more def on my escorts and more weapons on my capitals, but I don't neglect either.
The sensor stacking loss I will feel, because I do keep a picket line of them parked in key space stations and worlds. Like you I play on big maps so even a large ship with nothing but sensors sees at most 10% of the map, probably less. I typically ñeed 5 or 6 of these just to see all of my own territory.
I guess I'll have to start researching better space station sensors.
I wish, but some reigning in is better that none.
Announced in stream that sensors ARE going to be changed. That's the bigger part of the relief.
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