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!!
If you're playing under these conditions then you won't see the AI for at least the first 100 turns and are basically in sandbox mode until then. I prefer to have more interaction with other races. Spawning near (or at least somewhat near) an aggressive neighbor should be within the realm of possibility and there should be more than one viable strategy for dealing with them.
I see AI about turn 35 to 100 it varies a lot.
People SAY they don't want games balanced to within an inch of their life. But then you give players lots of options and they'll say the "AI is terrible".
GalCiv IV WILL give you the tools to abuse the game if you want. While really low hanging fruit (some mentioned here) will get reasonably balanced to not be quite so exploitive, we also want to give players the option to play the game as they like.
It's sort of like when people choose to play as xenophobic but not include any races nearby. Makes the game much easier. Should we take xenophobic as a race trait out? I don't think so.
We also don't prevent players from modifying the XML to change the game rules either. I want people to be able to play the game however they want to play so that they have as much fun as possible.
I'm still waiting for someone to prove to me that there is more to this game than getting a doomstack and declaring victory. Even if you completely isolate yourself, you still need a doomstack to get rid of precursor sentinels. I have not found a single game scenario that didn't hinge on whether I had a doomstack or not. Various other decisions will speed things up or slow things down incrementally but they don't really matter.
Thank you for this feedback.
There is certainly lot's of balance adjustment that will take place. It is the sort of game where changing a 3 to a 5 can make or break the game (and in a game with tends of thousands of values set, that's a lot of balance).
We are constantly in the process of balancing. It happens in every update, it will happen in release, it will happen in every update after release.
And we are always trying to find a happy medium between what is fun and what can be exploited.
The biggest current "exploit" in the game is to play in a large starting sector with no other Ai's near you (so they are all pushed off to other sectors) then overload the map with AI players. They will all be stuffed in sectors with each other, scrapping to get 3-4 good planets each. Meanwhile, the human player has time to expand and colonize 24-30 planets all by himself and can invest in long-term endeavors like colony ships and infrastructure research instead of military.
Even if you set the AI difficulty up high it's still like playing on baby mode.
But, I don't want to take away the ability for players to setup the game however they want to.
To the points expressed here, I want every option to have value in the right situation and if something is so good that it makes other options obsolete, then it's hurting the game. Commanders are great, but are they better than having a governor on a world?
Specific to OP's initial post. He is playing the Hive. The hive gets x3 HP on their ships but their ships don't repair. They are beasts. This means that he's much more open to policies that reduce HP (since he has so much), and they do very well in their initial battles because of the high HP (and less well in future battles as they are more vulnerable to attrition than any other civilization). Their commanders also have the ability to heal if they use Promethion (which is costly for them since their growth rate is based on the amount of stored promethion they have).
I do think there is some better balance that is needed here. Specifically:
1. We will raise the amount of Promethion required to heal them.
2. We will lower their free 20 Promethion (that was added before they got the ability to generate some Promethion per turn on their homeworld).
3. I'm going to play with lowering their HP bonus.
4. I'm going to lower the Missile and Kinetic attack on command ships (the beams looked good). Missiles in particular were really high.
well i think that depends on what victory conditions you set. you might not need a doomstack if you're able to get a prestige, research, or ascension victory. if you're focusing on diplomacy maybe you can win by allying yourself with most other races and getting your friends and/or enemies to mostly take out the rest. havent gotten far enough to really try out diplomacy stuff much but in theory this is how it should work i think. more defensive combat strategies should work if you go for these types of victories.
Nope, you still need a doomstack because when you approach victory the AI will just declare war on you. Alliances are very difficult to get (+9 diplomacy!) and even established friendships are nearly impossible to sustain when you get towards the endgame. For more info, see my previous post. In that game I was a declared friend to the Terrans and they were one of the first to backstab me. I have not gotten as far in a 0.81 game so it is possible that these problems have been addressed but I have not heard of anyone successfully winning one of these victory types without a galactic war.
I also think the anomaly rewards will always be tweaked as well. 300 credits from an anomaly is a lot.
It's also worth noting that in my last MP game I won not because of my command ships (I was playing drengin and tried to lean into them as much as possible), but because of my manufacturing base. It was an all out brawl, arena mode war from turn 1. but he tore apart my Commanders with normal fleets, but I overwhelmed because the sweet sweet volcanic furnaces of Drengi produced wave after wave of steadily growing ships.
at the beginning with the commander spam fast attack tactic, yes (which is the only good choice for onyx btw, due to very low starting growth rate that takes a long time to get up anywhere near the other races). turning a colony into a core world requires lots of time, resources, and takes away a lot of resources going to your homeworld and other core worlds. many people dont have to make a choice between the two either, since you can get enough money to get enough leaders for both as early as you need to if you pick things right.
nice, these all sound like good changes, thanks. unless these changes are paired with a higher growth rate somehow though, i think that the onyx will always need to be aggressive early on to be best, and to counter the other races taking all those extra resources and planets. it's a LOT easier for the onyx to take several worlds with a stack of giant ships than to wait 20-30 turns or so for the next one citizen to be available.
Let's talk about civilization differentiation for a moment.
The best way to balance a game is to make every civilization as similar as possible. Trying to balance for one civilization in a game like this is incredibly difficult, trying to do it for 18.... is crazy.
Sometimes you get a crazy idea for a civilization, "what would it be like if you could....". From a balance and AI perspective these ideas are trouble. But they are so much fun. And I want players to have a different experience playing with different civs. when Basilisk83 says the Hive will likely need to be aggressive early to be competitive because of their slow growth rate I love that. I want players to adjust their strategy based on who they are playing.
The Hive, Baratack and Mimot are probably the most potentially powerful if their abilities are used well. The Iconian are the most powerful if you setup the map right. The Navigators and Xeloxi on the other side are particularly difficult to play, instead of leaning into their strengths you are really trying to mitigate their weaknesses as best you can.
I'm sure some players will hate playing as some civilizations and declare that another is their absolute favorite. That's what I want.
Even though it opens up a matrix of balance issues like we have here.
ouch, yeah that sounds like diplomacy needs to be tweaked to be a little better, which i bet they'll already be doing before release. doesn't really make sense if all the other races attack you just because you're "doing well" though.
i do think that it would be a lot more fun for people if alliances were easier to get and to maintain, then people could try to work more on those good relations than just taking over the galaxy by colonization speed and/or force. If you're at war with a more powerful civilization, weaker ones should be more willing to team up against the huge threat that they all face and maybe even make a couple lasting friendships from it if they all survive the onslaught. happens in star trek all the time so yeah, i think winning by bringing peace to the galaxy should def be an attainable option. not sure how it's currently set up, but maybe make it where you win once your alliance controls a certain % of influence in the galaxy rather than needing to actually kill or force surrender from everyone who doesn't join them.
just so u know i get what you're saying and totally agree. i always liked playing against the korath it's def too hard to try to really balance all those races, and i also love that a lot of them have really good strengths and weaknesses. i just wanted to make sure you're aware of how much of an imbalance that race seemed to have in case you wanted them to be more diverse. now that i know you want them to work like that instead of being more diverse i'll stop making comments about ways to try to balance them
I like the feedback. It's better to say that I accept the balance challenge and headache to get the differentiated civilizations. I think this thread exposed some good issues about the Hive, we need to do that for all, without killing what makes them unique.
Er, how does that doomstack handle the fact that while you're running around with your doomstack the rest of your empire is being taken out by several smaller, faster fleets?
Gorignak and The Stalagmighty Empire (my custom silicon-based race) are def going to be mighty in gal civ IV
i can't speak for slarjy, but i think that the way this usually works is that you have defensive fleets first if you need them, or build those up after you start to move your big stuff into their territory. right now the ai is pretty bad about resending big fleets, and if they attack more it will often be with smaller stuff that you can more easily defeat with smaller fleets and then heal up before the next one comes. once you start building ships faster than the ai this can actually be fairly easy to achieve and then just buff your defenses up while your doomstack conquers all.
AI is still kinda bad at making ships too, so combine better ships with defensive bonuses and you dont need nearly as much to defend
Just take out their shipyards and they are dead in the water.
I'm not asking for a perfectly balanced game, particularly at release. I can do the math. I know it is impossible. I just want the races to be different enough that they more or less favor different strategies and victory types. They all play differently but those differences don't change the underlying strategy.
Thats fair, and I'm adjusting values for beta 3 based on the good feedback in this thread.
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