I've been playing stardock games since 2004, Gal civ 4 is so broken as its super easy to cripple the AI early on with race bonus and commander ships. Mv is still so OP and the AI doesn't priorities it in any way, sure ill take a HP loss for extra movement.
Lots of work to be done Stardock as i've found it just too easy to use the OP stats you give each race and commander ships to get a huge lead within 25 turns. The enemy AI is just so weak worst than any other gal civ game.
When you add so many new abilities into the game unless the AI knows for eg to put a commander in with good resolve into a command ship for eg the games over already. They research useless techs all the time even the War types. don't focus the best anomalies or them much at all there bonus's are so OP 300 credits vs the ai earning 5 per turn ignoring anomalies etc
Ive played about 10 games even on high difficulty no challenge at all as its just Focus on MV, commander ships and there resolved bonuses, cripple a AI race early on till you get transports then its just a slow slog to take over everything.
The main issue with Gal CIv 4 is Bonus's and special abilities as the AI wont use them properly and it doesn't matter if they have 20 standard ships as you just use your OP one to take em out and there OP one is so useless its easy to setup a attack to take it out using your own OP ship because you have the HP and MV.
I suggest removing commander ships fighting ability as no AI algorithms can ever beat a human player, keep combat more even with small bonuses via the tech tree. Not war commander ships that are INSANELY OP, 64 hp 18 attack defences vs any ship any player can produce until medium hulls just wrecks the game at first turn!!
yeah the commander ships are a little op from turn one. maybe if you had to research each one's weapons, hull size, and maybe defenses to unlock it first, it would make it less op. maybe turn the survey ship into a small hull instead of med too, so it can't have over 100hp after a few quick levels. med hulls shouldnt be unlocked for a while anyway. you're right though, currently leader spam fast attack tactics seem to have no counter, esp when being used by races like the onyx, yor, and mimmot
While Stardock works on balancing (a given during a beta period), I suggest trying an underpowered race like Terran Resistance and see if you can win in any way other than an early rush.
Simple fix.
If the Commander ships are too powerful DO NOT buy them.
@Frogboy, @Derek and others please do not nerf the Command ships, if others consider them too powerful, they can refrain from "purchasing" them.
I need the e.g. "The Gaze" and "Hivemind" just as they are to exploit the defended Anomalies.
Knowing your ability with AI, my wish would be to code "God Like Difficulty" so that for those this game is "too easy" would get their Fourth Point of Contact handed to them.
Thus, we that want a casual Empire Building Game like GC1-3 were could enjoy your product without having too mini-max every damn turn of every damn game because some players find the game too easy.
/agree gypsy2299
As I said elsewhere:
However, if I don't have a great feel for what the game is at this point. Right now it feels pretty binary. Either you get the fourth commander ship before your most aggressive neighbor or you lose. Gifted difficulty + very fast pace seems like the sweet spot for me. With that combination, I have not yet discovered any strategies for overcoming a mediocre race and/or starting position to either hit that mark or defend myself if I don't. Once the AI acquires a death squad, there doesn't seem to be much I can do.
The OP and I seem to be on opposite sides of the same coin. (I'm just trying to be more measured about it.) My favored play style is defensive but opportunistic and I have not had any luck with it yet. In my current game, I only had two settle-able core worlds to go with a handful of mediocre colonies. The Torians were my neighbors and they were pretty chill but it was a matter of time before the Drengin or Krynn came over from an adjacent sector and declared war on me. The Drengin went after the Torians and the Krynn went after me. I'll see tomorrow if I can circle the wagons and mount any kind of defense but the Krynn fleet is far more powerful than anything I can muster at this stage of the game.
I hope they figure out how to balance the game more. The problem I have is that the way the game plays now, if I have the strength to attack space nests and precursor artifacts, then I might as well simply attack my neighbor and if all I'm going to do is attack my neighbor, then all of these other mechanics are irrelevant and I might as well just play MOO2.
The OP and I seem to be on opposite sides of the same coin. (I'm just trying to be more measured about it.) My favored play style is defensive but opportunistic and I have not had any luck with it yet. In my current game, I only had two settle-able core worlds to go with a handful of mediocre colonies. The Torians were my neighbors and they were pretty chill but it was a matter of time before the Drengin or Krynn came over from an adjacent sector and declared war on me. The Drengin went after the Torians and the Krynn went after me. I'll see tomorrow if I can circle the wagons and mount any kind of defense but the Krynn fleet is far more powerful than anything I can muster at this stage of the game.I hope they figure out how to balance the game more. The problem I have is that the way the game plays now, if I have the strength to attack space nests and precursor artifacts, then I might as well simply attack my neighbor and if all I'm going to do is attack my neighbor, then all of these other mechanics are irrelevant and I might as well just play MOO2.
You could try the far setting with fewer AIs for your opponents or if you are one of the players that just must have trade less AI with medium distant opps so fewer are creeping up on your fourth point of contact ready to jump.
I play far with less than five AI and they being the more Benign available.
@ Stardock another wish is an option if I do not select an AI as an opps that race does not show up in the game at all, not as part of the Krynn(?) or as an event does not appear at all (the Krynn is the multi race one?).
My most ecstatic bestest dream of all would be the total extrication of the Festrons from the game. I am however aware that many people think highly of the Alien Franchise, me I loved the first liked the second and wished they had not wasted production time or Sigourney's talent and time on the rest.
As I am aware of others "liking" them and "Space monsters" I know they cannot be eliminated from the game I would however love for the option to eliminate them from mine.
As the game currently stands, I will never choose to have the Festrons in one, unfortunately I cannot play with Pirates or Precursors as I then have to except the Space Monsters which will never be in a game I play. They are just too immersion breaking for me to stomach them.
I guess, but if you don't interact with the AI very much and there is zero risk of war, it's not much of a game. It also makes all this time spent on the battle viewer and ship designer kind of ridiculous. This is supposed to be a 4X game and you're describing a 2X game.
My next game, I suppose I can try playing with a larger number of small sectors and see if that leads to a more interesting game.
The A.I. is actually much better than GC3 (I haven't played GC2 yet). The A.I. in GC3 was pretty terrible. It struggled to take any planet, and the game was completely broken when you were given 3 fighters per planet.
GC4 A.I. can take colonies, but it really needs help taking core worlds. It was doing good fleeting up, although this seems to have slipped again in the last couple updates. It is still leaps and bounds from where it started in the early beta.
There is still a lot of work they need to do, but it is getting there.
A really good discussion, guys, with some excellent observations all around. I've made sure to pass this thread along to the team. Thanks!
Although choosing not to build them is possible the AI still will so they have the OP ship. Its the big gun syndrome they have one you need a bigger one. I did play not using them and the AI eventually uses them and you have little defence.
As mentioned nerf or remove the combat focus ones.
Commander ships should be more powerful than what shipyards can produce but at most twice, not 15 times or more ie my eg above 18attack vs a 1 attack at round 1.
Even mid game commander ships are still 5 times at least more powerful than a shipyard build but it does level out a bit.
Commander ships already have more HP so really there durability/specials is the bonus they should have not combat ability.
This is the Only thing i have discovered playing Galciv4 that i feel is broken otherwise the game is amazingly balanced, with only the AI not using transports enough and too many anomalies to discover which gets reset with techs too much.
Nice to get that response Tatiora
Only wanting the OP combat ships to be nerfed the others are fine agree with you there
Interesting, I've actually found the opposite to be true, that commander ships were mostly worthless. They might have high stats at first, but they are still only one ship (and can attack once per turn), are slow, and hit points heal very slowly.
And if you research the tech for middle or higher tier commander ships, you passed up researching the ability to simply make better ships
To me it depends on your starting position. Precursor Sentinels are a bear and I'm still working on the strategy for dealing with them. In my current game, they spawned right in my kitchen. Navigators don't get offensive command ships, they're really better escorts. It appears that I will have to construct significant fleets to take them out and that they will simply be a fact of life for the first 100 turns.
Pirates and space monsters are more of a nuisance, but they will prey on anything unescorted. The real problem is that you need a significant force to take out the nests.
All this is before I have to deal with imperialistic races.
To me it depends on your starting position. Precursor Sentinels are a bear and I'm still working on the strategy for dealing with them. In my current game, they spawned right in my kitchen. Navigators don't get offensive command ships, they're really better escorts. It appears that I will have to construct significant fleets to take them out and that they will simply be a fact of life for the first 100 turns.Pirates and space monsters are more of a nuisance, but they will prey on anything unescorted. The real problem is that you need a significant force to take out the nests.All this is before I have to deal with imperialistic races.
yeah, the thing i really like about the navigator command ships is the couple that are survey vessels, gives them lots of good, tough survey vessels. but yeah, they're not as powerful in a fleet. some of the other civ's command ships give fleet bonuses and work very well together. others are just huge with big stats. the fact that you get them right at the start gives certain "early attack" civs a huge advantage. onyx and drath can get huge early ships, yor and mimot can produce ships very quickly right from the start. when you combine these tactics with the command ships, it makes it so that other species that aren't focusing totally on war at the start (and even ones that are, who just arn't as good early attackers) will basically have no chance once they see the giant fleet suddenly right next to their planets very early in the game.
yeah, the thing i really like about the navigator command ships is the couple that are survey vessels, gives them lots of good, tough survey vessels.
Yes but I've learned the hard way that you can't set them to auto survey because the bot is not clever enough to keep them away from the Precursor Sentinels.
Feature Request: be able to move ships with the keyboard or numeric keypad. If that ability exists today, it is not advertised. Auto-anything is too unsafe and clicking with the mouse is too clunky.
Yes but I've learned the hard way that you can't set them to auto survey because the bot is not clever enough to keep them away from the Precursor Sentinels. Feature Request: be able to move ships with the keyboard or numeric keypad. If that ability exists today, it is not advertised. Auto-anything is too unsafe and clicking with the mouse is too clunky.
I like that feature request. Will add it to this week's sitrep.
As for the overall thread I think I'm always on the prefering things op than under powered side.
the only thing that separates op from underpowered is which civ you are and thus which side of the battle you are on.
one man's op is another man's underpowered.
just trying to say that you could flip the perspective and say, for example, that this makes peaceful strategies underpowered.
History has proven that peaceful strategies are always underpowered. The most peaceful civilizations are only able to maintain peace if they are capable of at least coming close to matching to military strength of non-peaceful civilizations.
Just the way life in general works really. The bigger fish will eat the smaller fish.
Perhaps that is sad, but it is true.
History has proven that peaceful strategies are always underpowered.
Right but we're talking about a video game, not a reality simulator. You're always going to need some military to deal with space monsters and so forth. What I don't want is for the game to be one-dimensional. If there is really only a single dominant strategy then the game becomes more about finding and executing that strategy and the only reason to have multiple races is to test your ability to execute the strategy based on the degree to which the race excels or sucks at it.
History has proven that peaceful strategies are always underpowered. The most peaceful civilizations are only able to maintain peace if they are capable of at least coming close to matching to military strength of non-peaceful civilizations.Just the way life in general works really. The bigger fish will eat the smaller fish.Perhaps that is sad, but it is true.
hey, if u want to bring reality into this, then we shouldn't be able to instantly pop out a ship right as we discover space travel that has access to weapons we havent researched, hull sizes we havn't learned how to build, and defenses that dont exist yet.
I like playing a big map with a small amount of AI these command ships don’t factor when you have dozens of medium class warships that are all superior. The AI had a hell of a slug fest with me and seemed able to hold its own reasonably well for a time until I just out massed them.
In 3 carriers were just straight Overpowered so I never used them and I brought the carrier Mercs and parked em. Made my games way more enjoyable. I’m glad to see carriers way down in the tech tree in 4 I strongly approve of it.
I haven’t found command ships to be a problem yet. But if a Zerg Rush is bull there are plenty of settings to remove that possibility.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
