1.9 Single Player Feedback

• Existing Game
• Game Loading about the same, didn't time it but, wasn't quicker by much if any.
• Memory went from 14.8 GB on my machine down to 13.6 GB (less Windows overhead of about 3.0 GB).
• CPU usage dropped to about 40% from 65%.
• New Game
• Game Loading about the same, same as above.
• Memory usage (early game was about 8.7 GB, which is about 2 GB less from the start of the above game.  (Again less Windows overhead of about 3.0 GB.)
• General Observations
• FOW bug is still present when ships are revealing new previous unexplored map off screen.  It doesn't reveal the FOW, only where the ship started and stopped not the path.
• Continued issues from the above MP game.
• General Suggestions
• Allow the player to select Bazaar Mercenaries prior to game launch, nothing like starting a game and getting several turns in only to want to start over because the Bazaar is useless in your game.
• Bring back Ctrl+N (load new map.)

We don't limit the transfer rates.  

Good stuff.

So regarding influence, you are definitely seeing a partially implemented solution.

The answer is that we have to heavily buff influence starbases and other culture features.  Previously, it was pretty effortless to cover the galaxy in your color.

About research speed:

I would say the current speed is appropriate for a 'fast' or even 'faster' setting. But since we are talking about these settings: In the current implementation they do next to nothing, because they only count like a planet improvement in that they are additive with them and not multiplicative. If someone finds the time, it would be great if they could be implemented in a more useful way. For example by affecting the tech inflation exponents.

Ship sizes:

I think the difference between large and medium hulls in usefulness is too large. Large hulls can be researched as early as your 13th tech (Iconians earlier I believe), which is very early in the game. There is basicly no reason to build medium ships now.

Starbases and Administration:

On an interesting tangent, I think this together with the intention of opening up more strategies may offset bad luck with the galaxy generation to some degree. I like this. It means I can look at my - only one colonizable planet outside my home system start - and say "hmm, means I will play a different strategy" then instead of "hmm, I am gonna have to fight an uphill battle".

Question: Administration could ultimatley be highly correlated to management effort a player has to invest in each turn for optimum play. Will there be a game settings to how much Administration there is in the round? Will it be tied to galaxy size?

- Asteroid groups get created.
-> Number of groups is independent of rarity setting, but number of asteroids per group depends on the setting
- Each asteroid group has a chance to contain one (and no more) strategic ressource (there can be more with events though)

this means for durantium any setting above 'none' should give the same (averaged over many games) yield of durantium.

Here's where I get more into the realm of guesswork:

- In difference to asteroids thulium and promethon spawn from planets, more specificly from dead planets in a near star orbit and gas giants respectively. The planet rarity (and star rarity?) effects how many planets there are and therefore how many chances on generating a strat ressource of this kind there will be. More planets -> more promethion and thulium.

-> I think that's the reason for thulium being very rare sometimes, because dead worlds in the near star orbit are so rare
-> Or it is intentional by SD. with data archives and jamming fleet boosters, it gives access to, are some of the strongest elements in the game.

Anti-matter and Elerium depend on black hole and nebula frequency respectively. I had no problem with Elerium in my last games, since I have nebula on abundant allways.

It seems like 1.83 had more habitual planets to me.

100% agree--and that is what I was driving at in my post. I think an influence victory shouldn't be a given but something to work toward.

@zuPloed - thanks for the info. I was aware of most of that, but the setup *felt* different this time around. Guessing that has to do with my setup and the following change:

• Nebula and black holes and anomalies made much less common on all settings.

I'll revisit how I have this configured.

I also wanted to say that while I stated in my previous post that the AI seemed to be functioning on a much lower level, I hadn't met everyone... and the issue may or may not be colonization related. I met the Drengin and Krynn somewhere around turn 230...

Within about 30 turns, their power ratings (particularly the Drengin's) skyrocketed.

I also met the Yor in the meantime, and their rating was likewise pretty high, relative to everyone else's.

I'm not sure what specifically caused the disparity, but having AI of the same difficulty ranging in power rankings from 152 (Iridium) to 20,675 (Drengin) by turn 280 seems a bit... extreme. I can also attest that the Drengin did not appear to have used either of the ship-granting ideology perks. (I used the Pragmatic "Cautious" perk and pushed my power rating from about 1,000 to about 9,000 in the span of a turn, so my first thought was that must've been what the Drengin did--but that appears not to be so.)

Again, this may simply be a function of the number and placement of the available habitable planets... but there was definitely a lot less disparity in AI power ratings before this patch, so I assume it is related to the AI changes.

I am impressed that Stardock is continuing to patch this game a year-and-a-half after release.  Thanks for demonstrating  a commitment to quality and customer service that is sorely lacking in most video game companies today. 

I played two games on 1.90, both as the Terrans.  My first game was on a medium map at normal difficulty and I achieved a technological victory.  My second game was on a large map at gifted difficulty and I stopped playing once my victory was inevitable and the AI no longer posed any threat. 

Here is my feedback based on those two games….

As others have mentioned, cultural growth has been nerfed too badly.  In previous versions, it was too easy to win a cultural victory, even without specifically trying to do so -- all it took was building a cultural starbase to cover each planet, and then victory was almost assured.  However, the fix in this patch has taken things too far.  In my two games, I was unable to flip a single AI planet.  In one case, an AI race colonized Mars, right next to my capital Earth.  I covered Mars and Earth with two (2) cultural starbases, each kitted out with the latest cultural modules that I had researched, but Mars never flipped. 

The AI declared war on me a couple times but completely failed to prepare its military before doing so.  They sent several single ships into my territory, but no fleets.   The AI should not declare an unprovoked war unless it has some fleets and transports ready to invade enemy territory.  They also left many of their planets completely undefended, not garrisoned by even a single ship.  I configured some troop transport ships with a bunch of engines for speed and captured a big chunk of the enemy’s empire in a single turn.

Research time is too fast, and the human player quickly outpaces the AI as soon as the human builds out some research-focused planets.  I was discovering two, and sometimes even three, techs in a single turn by going into the tech tree and selecting a tech several iterations beyond my current state.  To try to compensate for this, prior to beginning my second game, I manually doubled all Terran tech costs in the Age of War and quadrupled them in Age of Ascencion, but that made little difference.  Once my research focused planets were up-and-running I could still discover most techs in 1-2 turns.  Too summarize, in the late game the AI falls hopelessly behind in research.  Maybe research buildings are overpowered and should be toned down because the human probably makes better use of them than the AI does.  Or maybe the Player should only be allowed to discover a maximum of one tech per turn.  Excess research over the cost of the current tech being researched would still carry over towards the next tech in the tech tree, but the carryover would be capped at 99% of the cost of the next tech.  

It is prohibitively expensive to upgrade ships, so much so that I scrapped all old ships and built new ones rather than paying for upgrades.  In past games, my modus operandi was to build a bunch of obsolete ships and keep them stacked at the central point of my empire.  As soon as I went to war, I would immediately upgrade all of the obsolete hulls to the latest technology.  Thus, after a one-turn delay to await the upgrades, I could send a large, fully modernized fleet straight into battle.  I suppose that was an exploit to be corrected, but the fix and gone too far and upgrades are now too costly.

On my medium map game, I do not recall seeing any Elerium anywhere the entire galaxy.  I did not have any Elerium mines myself, and my scout ships could not locate any Elerium whatsoever.  Resources should be scarce to make them strategically relevant and worth fighting over, and since this is a strategy game, the Player should have to make tough choices about how to best utilize his resources.  That being said, resources are too scarce now.

The new functionality notifying the Player that a starbase can be upgraded is a good concept but you need to add a ‘skip’ or ‘ignore’ button.  I often leave constructors sitting in my starbases awaiting a technology that I will research at some point in the future.  This is particularly true for Xeno and Mining starbases.  If, in the meantime, I research say a shield technology, I do not want to have to eject the ship from the starbase and hit the space bar to end that ship’s turn, then move that ship back into the starbase the next turn.   As currently designed, namely without a ‘skip’ option, this new functionality has made the starbase micromanagement problem worse rather than better. 

Regarding AI ship deployment and design….

The AI should deploy its ships in fleets rather than sending individual ships into battle alone to get annihilated piecemeal. 

Later in the game, the AI should put two (or maybe even three) engines on its ships so they can move faster.  When a fleet on a large+ size map is moving at say 5 hexes per turn, that fleet becomes strategically irrelevant. 

Once average planet population has achieved a certain threshold, the AI should begin configuring its troop transport ships with two invasion pods instead of the standard one.  In other words, each troops transport would carry 6 soldiers instead of only 3.  Often, a single pod of 3 soldiers is not enough to conquer a planet, whereas in most cases six seems to be enough.  

The AI should escort its troop transports.  Several times the AI sent slow (one engine) unescorted troop transports towards my planets and I wiped them out easily.

Like I already mentioned above, the AI should garrison its planets with ships to deter invasions.

Other general comments….

Regarding the Player Achievement buildings of which only one per Player is allowed, the AI seems to be able to build multiple instances of them. For example, an AI planet might have three (3) Citadels of Revenue and another planet might have two (2) Manufacturing Capitals.  

The Benevolent Ideological Trait ‘’Enticing’’ (Prominence III) does not flip starbases. When I selected that trait, none of the AI starbases within my cultural sphere of influence converted to my ownership.

I read in several places on the forums that the Shield Punch technology does not work.  I have not verified this myself but if it is an issue then maybe it could be fixed in the next patch.

The functionality for a Player to partially automate starbase modules construction was released in a prior patch IIRC.  The procedure is that the Player would click on the starbase and select the desired module, whereby an order would be placed at a shipyard for a constructor, then the constructor would be built and would travel to the starbase and build the requested module.  This is great and was meant to reduce tedious starbase micromanagement.  However, when I try to upgrade my starbases, it seems like the constructors are being sent with only a single construction module, and since they were moving very slowly I assume they had only one, obsolete engine.  The Star Trek mod by Horemvore handles constructors very well because they move fast and carry multiple construction modules.

I feel that the cost of 'upgrading' ships is too high. I also think this is something that hurts the ai. 

Using Civ VI as an example, the ai there did not upgrade due to costs or lack of resources (iron for swordsman). The cost was adjusted down and the resource requirement was lowered to needing just one. This allowed the ai in Civ VI to upgrade its units (most of the time). 

I am not sure if it would help here but it surely cannot hurt to lower the upgrade cost across the board. 

We also need a system like we did in GCII where we can upgrade all our fleets at a various cost strung out over many many turns so we do not have to go bankrupt doing so. 

Started a new game to see what changes the update to the opt-in added. Research speed seems better now, but I have few planets due to playing with rare planet setting. I will see how it goes.

Observation III on 1.9 SP game...

• General Gameplay
• Starting to see some planetary defense by turn 100 with some AI, however two declared war prior to having this capability.
• Manufacturing seems a bit low most quality ships are taking 20+ turns to build, however, before was way too high.
• Is the administration thing in the game yet for star bases?  Don't seem to have any issue building star bases to this point.  Several are starting to pop around my planets (by me).
• AI still not building star bases and has no interest in Relics, I'm getting them all, bonus for me
• All 3 AI's have declared war with me when they were #1 in military power on my list of players.
• All 3 AI's are right next to each other on my border.  (Easy to defend and attack as I don't need to split my resources.)
• Still Double power ranking of any other AI I've met, however, only have met about 10% of the factions so far.  (Again Normal difficulty so that could be part of it.)

To be cont...

Must have missed that reply from PShaw...  Thanks though.

Now only if Abundant actually meant "abundant"

One thought on the Planet specialization wheel, currently I very rarely use the Bureau of Labor but maybe as a bonus, since your adding more coercion, the building could reduce it somewhat.