Galactic Civilisations 2

[Zenicetus]

Frequent tech trading among the different AI factions has been one of the bigger player complaints over in the GalCiv2 forum. It can make it seem like your own research efforts have to compete against the pooled research of all the other factions at once, which is basically what's happening. Some players also felt that the AI's gave each other better deals than they were giving the player, but it's probably just the efficiency of the trading algorithms that make it seem that way.

The frequent trading also tends to normalize the tech in the galaxy, so after a while the different alien fations don't appear all that different from one another. I don't see that in every game, but I have seen games go that way when there aren't many wars limiting tech trading.

I never felt it was a huge problem, personally, but I may try a game or two with it switched off, just to see if it makes the aliens more distinct from each other. What's probably needed is some kind of halfway measure between full trades and no trading, like maybe making it harder to trade with a faction that's very far from your algnment or something. For now, as a quick fix, it was easier for the devs to just include an on/off switch in the setup screen.

[GoreBag]

I'd prefer that the algorithms be changed, or allow a new setting to gauge tech trading between races the same way most games gauge aggressiveness.

[frogbeastegg]

The more I play this game, the more I like it. The more I read about the updates and see their frequency, the more I like. The more I see of the developers, the more I like. The more I play without the usual copy protection, the more I like. The more I play with an AI which does not rely on cheats, the more I like. Really, this whole package is something quite special in today's gaming world. I find myself with a lot of respect for Stardock. A lot. A damned good game and a damned good company and frequent updates which contain so much they truly are updates and not patches.

Anyone reading this thread who does not own a copy should go and buy one right now.

I am really looking forward to 1.1 as there is some great stuff in there, and I want to see what the as yet unmentioned items are. And yet, the amazing thing is that at the same time I do not care how long it takes to arrive - I'm playing a stable, mostly bug-free, deep and challenging game right now. It has so many options and so many ways to play that I can see it being a long time before I feel the need to shake things up with changes. I've only scratched the surface! I haven't played against AIs above normal, or won a game, or lost a game, or even completed a game, or tried any galaxy sizes aside from tiny and normal, or been a military superpower conquering the galaxy, or tried a race other than the Terrans, or built a custom race, or designed half the ships I want to try, or used espionage much, or been played a diplomacy heavy game, or ...

[Puzz3D]

Anyone reading this thread who does not own a copy should go and buy one right now.

Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.

[Crandaeolon]

Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.

GC2 will probably be updated and fixed continuously, and will never be "finished" like big-budget titles. This is often the case with indie games. There will always be the next update that fixes bugs and adds new features.

[Martok]

Froggy, you sound like you're in love!

In all seriousness, though, I really dig GalCiv 2 as well. Not since Medieval Total War have I had this much fun and spent so many hours playing a game--and that's with it crashing every 10 turns or so! (My computer is desparately underpowered when it comes to memory and processing ability, so it isn't the game's fault for not running well.) It has quickly become my favorite PC game of all time, surpassing even Medieval itself--something I didn't think was possible.

[frogbeastegg]

Why shouldn't I wait until the fixes and improvements are in place? You can only play a game for the first time once.

Do you want the idealistic answer, or the more practical ones?

The idealistic answer runs thusly:

Stardock are going against the flow of the industry with this game. They are doing something incredibly brave, very different, and they are doing it with a high quality product. No copy protection; a game which launched in far better shape than many big budget and name titles; and constant updates which address everything, from bugs to suggestions and additions. They deserve to be supported for that, and the better this game does the higher the chance of others taking notice and following their lead. I for one would love to see more companies doing this, rather than the usual 'messy 1.0 release, 2 incomplete patches which take months to appear, then game dropped and sequel announced' approach. Oh, and I love a game not demanding I keep the CD in the drive all the time! Love it.

The more practical ones:
This is not a release a la Paradox, the other company famous for patching and updating games long after release. The game you buy on the shelves is not missing features and so buggy it is nearly unplayable. You will not be waiting half a year or more before it gets to be sound. It is a damned fine release as it stands now. I've passed over games I wanted for being buggy, dropped others for the same reason, and waited so long between patches that I have lost interest. GalCiv2 doesn't need that.

I don't see the fuss over playing a game for the first time. If it's a complicated game it takes hours to find your feet and begin to understand it, so those first few hours are rather poor. If it's a simpler game then usually the best things start to appear some distance in. The first time playing any game is usually one of the less enjoyable play sessions for me.

As has already been said, this game is going to be updated for a very long time to come. It's the method of copy protection: updates, of high quality and containing content people want. You must have a legitimate CD key to get them, so pirate copies are stuck with 1.0. If you wait for it to be done then you will be waiting for potentially years. The content is approaching the more usual add-on territory, and much is by player request or suggestion. Stardock are listening to their players.

I also don't really think this game needs those updates. With the sole exception of the problems I had with the CD key during installation and the first update, this has been a very smooth experience for me. Which is more than I can say for most games I have played recently. No crashes, no slowdown, and I'm only spotting a few minor bugs. As an aside, the 1.1 beta is now available, and those bugs are fixed. By beta they do not mean the usual partly tested, potentially unstable programming. They mean a patch which contains all the fixes and features they have tested, but does not yet contain everything they wish to put in for the version number. You can see the 1.1 beta changelog here.

I feel that I am not going to play one GalCiv2. I'm going to play many editions of it. The future changes I've seen talked about will alter this game immensely. It's unlikely I am going to tire of this game in the same way I tired of Civ 4 and others. Why play just one game when I can play many flavours of it?

Heh, and another: The AI. It's got tougher with 1.1 beta, and it will continue to get harder. Which means it is improving alongside players. It's already a damned fine AI, and doesn't rely on cheating. Assuming the AI updates stop in a year and you pick up the game then, well then you get one AI only and when you have learned how to beat it that is that. Whereas those of us with the game have had a year of changing AIs to play. A year of potentially extended playtime; I don't know about others, but when I can win too easily I lose interest. I also don't like playing against cheat-heavy AIs, such as those on Civ4's higher levels.

Perhaps you want the price to drop? GalCiv2 is already cheaper than the standard new release, even with the edition you find in shops. The downloaded version is even cheaper. I doubt the price is going to drop for a long time, especially when you look at the sales figures; this game is topping the charts and doing better than was ever expected.

Actually, maybe I'll just ask this: why wait? Why pass over a fine game when the usual reasons for waiting (bugs, more bugs, missing features, potentially not very good, cost) do not apply?



Didn’t you see the little smitten geisha smiley, Martok?

Seriously, this game took me completely by surprise. I hadn’t taken any notice of it until I had to read this thread. The setting is one I don’t care for (prefer classical and medieval). It’s by some company I have never heard of, and a sequel to a game I didn’t play. It’s being touted as a spiritual successor to another game I didn’t play (MOO2), and the game yet another I didn’t play (MOO3) should have been.

I don’t have time to play it. There are other things I want to be doing more than playing games. Yet I find myself cramming the game in to whatever time I can spare from those things, and occasionally pinching a half hour or so from them. I find myself plotting strategies and thinking about aspects of the game during quiet spells at work …

[Crandaeolon]

Anti-gushing code is kicking in, so please allow me to play Devil's Advocate again.

I don't quite agree with the "finished" status of the retail version of GC2 that many are proclaiming. Even 1.0X has some crash bugs (on my up-to-date, non-overclocked system GC2 crashes once in about 5-10 hours, which is far more than other games i've played recently), and update notes seem to indicate that retail had more. There's also at least one potentially gamebreaking bug (population / influence explosion when invading a planet with Information Warfare) which is rare, but devastating if it happens on smaller galaxies.

What I found far more annoying than crash bugs, however, is the haphazard manner in which information is presented to the player. I like to know how games work, and don't particularly enjoy second-guessing game fundamentals such as Influence mechanics or economics. Ships use a different amount of logistics points in the build screen and the galactic map. Governments list a bonus to production, but provide a bonus to taxation. It's more profitable to keep populations smallish and concentrate on trade centers, even though all documentation indicates otherwise. Race abilities list just about everything as a percentage (stuff like logistics, speed obviously are not) and don't work as advertised (most work at half the listed efficiency.) The list goes on.

Some (hopefully most) of that stuff is fixed and cleaned up in 1.1, but retail... well. Just one glance at the changelogs, let alone playing the game itself, should be enough to convince anyone that retail was far from a finished product.

Having a less than polished release version and then updating it constantly over the course of the game's lifetime is quite normal for small developers. I've always been a supporter of indie devs, and this appears to be a pretty normal product cycle in that field. Incorporating player suggestions is another thing that indies are good at, for both good and ill; sometimes indies don't manage to weed out the good suggestions out of the bad ones.

The stance against copy-protection isn't really particularly brave or unusual; it's just common sense, and it's been done before. Raven software, for example. Still, it's a very good thing to know that Stardock does have the common sense to ignore (often biased) marketing data.

OK, that's it for now. (I'm so going down in flames... sometimes it's just not smart to speak one's mind.)

[BDC]

I'm having issues getting the Stardock program for updates etc to work, says I have adware/a firewall blocking it. Even when everything is switched off. Very odd.

[frogbeastegg]

Crandaeolon, if I burned you to ash I'd only have to clean the floors again.

Finished compared to the ideal, no. Finished compared to the PC games I've been playing and looking at for the last year or more, yes. Huh, but then the cynical frog in me would like to point out that most of those games has bigger budgets and were a worse mess in my experience, and took months to be patched. I'm also a survivor of three Paradox games, including the CK release. GalCiv2 has been perfectly stable for me, and I've not seen anything like that influence bug. Just the odd minor irritation. If I thought GalCiv2 sounded anything like the kind of release I've experienced with Paradox I wouldn't take any notice of it at all for a year or so. Believe me, I've had enough of waiting for my game to become playable. I've also had a stomach full of the 'delights' of issues like RTW's save/load, Stronghold 2's slowdown, Vampire: Bloodline's unfinished state, etc.

I wouldn't have classed this as an Indie game myself. Those, I was always under the belief, are tiny companies with rather simple games which are either released for free or for a couple of quid per download. For example Taleworlds and Mount and Blade. Stardock, Paradox, and the like are small companies. This is what makes the difference with the copy protection, along with the fact the game has a normal retail release in many countries. I can think of ... 2 other games I own which were released without a CD check, and one which had it added in a patch. This is out of a hundred or so from the last 5ish years. Of those 3, only 1 appeared in my local shop, and then it did so in very grudging and limited numbers. It was also a fairly ... erm, let's say cheap feeling release, and priced normally. Whereas here I've got a fancy metal box, glossy manual and tech tree, for £5 less than usual, and it was in a prominent place in the shop. None of those 3 games advertised the lack of a CD check; in fact it is a discouraged subject on their official forums.

I don't play FPS, and Raven make them, so ergo I don't take any notice of their products.

I also like to know the minute detail, the hows and the whys of my strategy games. The strange thing is, I feel I have a better idea of where things are coming from and what is happening in GalCiv 2 than I did in Civ 4. Civ 4 drove me crazy! Too much, and yet also not enough. :cough: But this is the fallout of being a dyslexic frog who has dodged much of the literacy related problems only to be blasted full in the face by the numeracy ones. I don't - can't - play by numbers, so I play by ... playing.

[GoreBag]

Just to butt in for a moment, most of the bugs which cause the game to crash are actually overheating graphics cards, I've read. I'm pretty sure this has been the case with me with just about every crash since the first patch.

[professorspatula]

I bought this last week. It's one of the most difficult games to get into. I think playing RTW for the past year and a half has made me soft, because in many respects GC2 is hardcore strategy and it feels like a baptism of fire everytime I start a campaign. It's virtually impossible to know what you're doing in the first few 'goes' as there's so many things and stats to consider and only a series of trials and errors will get you through. Your economy is non-exist for seemingly ages, and research initially is mostly random. And if you haven't expanded like a lunatic in the opening few turns, the AI will just nick all the habitable planets whilst you're still playing with your economy sliders. And then there's starbases to consider, another factor you'll be forgiven to completely misuse in the opening goes.

I eventually had to start the Dreadlords campaign which appears to be the only way to gradually get you adjusted to the game and its mechanics, despite some guide or review for the game suggesting you leave these missions until you know what you're doing. After 4 missions I decided to start a new game with loads of different races present, thinking I'd got the hang of things, only to once again get frustrated at the speed of which things move initially. I find it tedious to be forced to have to rush-buy everything because you can't make any money for about 454 turns into the campaign. And if you research and build newer manufacturing plants, you lose even more money. Would make sense if production costs decreased per level of building instead of leading you further into debt.

The latest beta patch seems to be addressing certain issues, but players are apparently already complaining that rush colonisation is more important than ever. It's good to see the developers are really listening to their community though and working to fix things. Wouldn't it be nice if CA could take a leaf out of their book.

All in all, GC2 is a game with incredible scope, but one that I can't help but find needlessly tedious at times, or a bit unpolished. Once I get into it proper, I know I can kiss goodbye to a good chunk of my life for sure. Though to be honest, I think I'd prefer Master of Orion 2 with GC2's diplomacy. That would make for a great game.

[Zenicetus]

Don't be afraid to set taxes way up there (49% usually) for the duration of the colony rush, and it can sometimes help to send scouts out to find other races so you can sell them techs if you run out of money, although admittedly i've never had to do that.

I don't know if this is the best approach, but it works pretty well for me. I alternate between buying (and later building) colony ships and cheap/fast sensor ships in the colony rush phase. The sensor ships are cargo hulls with two engines and the other hardpoints loaded with sensors.

With sensor ships fanning out ahead of the colony ships, I can avoid a situation where the nearest star system has a class 8-10 planet that looks tempting, but there's a class 26 in the next system that I could have settled instead, if the colony ship just kept on going. I can leapfrog to the best planets, then fill in the closer ones at a slower rate... the ones that other races are less likely to reach before I get to them.

Fast sensor ships are also important for finding civs I can trade with. None of the early tech is strategically important, so I sell all my tech to whatever aliens I can find in that early phase of the game. After the initial colony rush, I park the sensor ships as a picket line to keep an eye on the local neighborhood.

We can bitch about the colony rush, but it's basically how the game is designed. If you don't do the "Gold Rush" thing, you lose. At least, I tend to lose at my current skill level. I've heard of people doing okay with just a few planets, while all the AI's had dozens, but I sure can't handle that yet.

[Martok]

Actually, 1.1 looks like it should nerf the "colony rush" somewhat, so that it's not so insane. Brad has significantly decreased the population growth rate, so you won't be able to just churn out colony ships and dump 500 million citizens in them every few turns. Now our homeworld will take a fair bit longer to recover its population after it's sent out a colony ship. In other words, if we keep sending out colony ships all the time, our homeworld will very quickly run out of people!

Personally, I'm glad of this change, as it should stop everyone (both humans and the AI) from making a mad rush for planets, and will help level the field a bit for those players that prefer to turtle more. It also just feels much more "realistic" as well, at least to me. It always seemed a little bizarre to watch my homeworld "regrow" 500 million people in the space of a month or so....

[professorspatula]

That is true, but then reading through comments on the patch, people discovered the new tax rate calculations mean you get far more tax per person on smaller populated worlds than on heavily populated ones. And looking at the beta patch thread, it seems they've stuffed up quite a few things. It's going to be one of those games were the quality and experience of the game changes with every patch it seems. They seem like the kind of company who stick through with things and not just give up after a couple of patches though.

[frogbeastegg]

I played my first few games on a tiny universe with abundant inhabitable planets, against 2 AIs on beginner level. This kept it manageable, as each faction only ended up with about 5 planets total, and the AI was not busily killing me from turn 3. Then I just played about. I found my feet much faster than I expected to, to be honest. Though I make no claims of mastery, or even of being good.

I set taxes up to about 49%, slam spending to 100% and split it 50/50 military/research. I begin by getting a few of the faster engine techs; I can usually get them within a couple of turns. Meanwhile I buy 1 factory for my homeworld, send my first colony ship to the nearby rubbishy planet and settle it. My mothership I send scouting. I buy a colony ship. End turn. That colony ship is sent to the nearest star, to scout out any habitable planets. When one is found, I settle. I keep on buying colony ships, but it does not take more than a few turns before I can build one in ~3, and so I build them instead.

When I find a world of class 10 or better, I buy a factory on it and build a starport )I put some funding into social at this point, usually 50/30/20 mil/soc/res) and focus the planet on social so it is constructed in a decent amount of time. Then I reset to the 50/50 spending and even focus. This world then starts building colony ships, or occasionally I will buy one if I want one in a hurry. When it's viable, I build a custom colony ship which is basically a colony module strapped to the biggest hull I can find and any spare space is plastered with engines until no space remains. That allows them to travel further faster, and generally the cost is not too much more, so build time is either the same or 1 turn more (depends on the engines available to me, mostly).

After a while it feels right to me to stop expanding. Then I put spending 40/30/30, and start building labs, factories, and the economic building which I forget the name of of my various worlds. I choose a function for a world: ship building, research, money mine, or other, and then build to suit. By this point I have better engines and sensors, as well as other techs, so I custom build a scout ship and send a few out to finish exploring. I put my mothership on auto-survey. I think it took about 40 turns to get to this phase in normal-sized universe game, and those 40 turns were very rapid.

And then .. well, it depends what I want to do and what the overall situation is.

That is for 1.0X. I thought I would finish my current game before trying the 1.1 beta. Which may have been a good plan. I was under the impression the patch was mostly tested, just incomplete because some of the desired ideas had not yet been coded or tested. Emphasis on "was". Humph!

[Ironside]

Must say that influence resources seems to be essential for an influence victory.

5 players on a small map, challenging. Didn't exactly have the best faction for influence (Torians) but did try for influence victory anyway.

Tried to influence one outlying colony for the Korx to get it into rebellion, so I was teaching like mad into the influence branch. Even 2 fully upgraded influence stations didn't help, instead it really pissed off the Korx.

As the Korx was at war with the Altarians at the same time, my troops could easily do what my influence had not. The ungrateful Korx did finally surrender to the Altarians and that gave my one colony by influence as the planet next to Korx (who had been taken by me) did eventually rebel.
Meanwhile, the Arceans decleared war on me for some reason (the Altarians was practically blocking hiim out from my empire, we had no shared borders). The Arceans did actually give some decent opposition, but my newer ships and a war with the Altarians (who seems to have been very aggressive on this map) made short work of him. About half of his original empire surrendered to the Altarians.

By this time I had 72% taxrate, 91% approval, 100% efficency, earning about 500 a turn and was doing about 90% of the total research.
This while owning two research and one economical resource, all stolen during the war with the Korx.

And had about 50%-60% of the influence, with 4 fully upgraded influence bases. Then I came up with the idea of buying the 2 influence mines that the Talans owned. 10000 bc and about 7 high-techs later, I had my plans for an influence victory ready.

The next turn I owned 83% of the map... and within the time it takes for an influence victory to be declared, I was owning 100% of the map. Really makes a difference.

Edit: I must say that the incarnation of evil summoned by the dreadlords really got a fiendish look

[Martok]

Gelatinous Cube, I see the perfect solution to your problem: Give those planets to the Yor as gifts. You'll get rid of the drain on your economy, plus it should calm down the Yor enough that they might actually start to like you a little bit. I did this with the Terrans, with some pretty favorable results.

[doc_bean]

I downloaded the demo and finally got a chance to play this game this weekend. I must say I'm underimpressed after hearing all the hype here.

First of all, a little explanation of the demo: it allows you to play in a random small universe with up to three opponents (Dreghin, and two civs that start with an A). You have to play as the Terrans. You can play for 140turns (three years).


So I stated my first fame at the easiest difficulty setting, the AI basically did nothing, not even colonize other worlds, but it did give me an idea of how the game worked. Second game on a little higher difficulty, fast research, not too different from the fist game, I quit. Third attempt at an interesting game: normal difficulty, fast research. After a while I became untouchable (again), all rating near or over 200. Fourth attempt, one on one with the Dhregin on challenging, I took 70% of the galaxy in the colony rush, quit. Fifth and final attempt (thus far) I played the three races on challenging, I got a really bad starting position, my best planet (I think I had 5 in the end) was earth, which was right next to Dreghin. I managed to keep up with the rest for most of the game (thanks to some lucrative tech trading), I did lose an influence war (?) which caused earth to fall under Dreghin influence, I built some star bases to counter this but could barely get earth back in my zone. I lost an election and couldn't go to war on the dreghin (stupid senate), the 'yellow guys' eventually attacked me (after I had gotten bored and just pressed skip turn a bunch of times) and destroyed most of my fleets, I surrendered.

Where the hell is this awesome AI everybody keeps raving about ? On equal footing I could beat the AI if I had been given a few decent planets. CivIV has given me more of a challenge, even on lower difficulty settings.

Other things that kinda bugged me:

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

-The AI seems to tech rush at first (or cheats...), all other Civs have much more techs than me, but after a while it seems like they just stop researching, especially the Dreghin don't seem to advance much beyond LaserII.

-Military rating seem a little bugged

-The AI seems to be unable to design its own ships

-Does anyone actually buy stuff with delayed payments ?

-The battles are a little too drawn out for my taste

Despite my complaints here, I did play 5 games. It's a decent game, I might pick it up if/when i tire of CivIV, but I'll wait to see how Sword of the Stars turns out before I decide.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I just played the demo too, and I was wondering if taking 3 hours or so to get a military aircraft is normal. On the one game I played, I got 2 class 10s, one 7 or so, and one 18 (stole the highest out of Altarian territory...heehee).

But the begining seemed to take forever. Is it like this in the real game? I wouldn't want to spend an hour or so before being even able to fight.

Crazed Rabbit

[Oaty]

^^^ @ crazed rabbit

I never played the demo and the options may be limited.

In the retail version you have options for fast research to slow research. By default I'm assuming the demo is set at normal. If you look at the journals on thier website it will tell you what is in the demo compared to the full game.

Also you can start a game with the lower end techs researched right away so you can militarize right away all the way to all techs researched. Also I'm sure you can mod how the techs are, all the way to making a custom map where the warmongers have a decent tech tree already researched for militarization to other races who start with less in the military tree.

[Zenicetus]

I just played the demo too, and I was wondering if taking 3 hours or so to get a military aircraft is normal. On the one game I played, I got 2 class 10s, one 7 or so, and one 18 (stole the highest out of Altarian territory...heehee).

But the begining seemed to take forever. Is it like this in the real game? I wouldn't want to spend an hour or so before being even able to fight.

Well, that's pretty much the normal flow of the game. Unlike the TW series, it's not designed to allow an early military rush. You don't start with any military power. Planetary Invasion is also pretty far down the tech tree, which discourages early military action. There isn't much incentive to attack your neighbors until you have that. In most of my games, the shooting doesn't start until somewhere in the midgame.

You can speed it up a little by using the smaller maps (so fewer early resources are used in colonization buildup), and using one of the faster research settings in the initial startup. That will bring Planetary Invasion online faster. Another way to get into a quick fight is to play the startup mode (I forget the name... Battle of the Gods, or something?) where everyone starts the game fully teched-up. That can be fun, but it's a bit one-dimensional (IMO).

I actually enjoy the slow buildup and jockying for position and strength with larger maps and slow tech, but that's just me. When I want a game where I can run an early Blitz, I go back to RTW:BI. They're just different types of games.

[Xiahou]

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

Weird, with just a few planets I can get planetary invasion in less than 30 turns if I really want it- I usually dont though, since I like going after diplomacy techs. Not sure what your were doing.

As for the AI try "tough" if the others are too easy for you- its' the highest level that doesnt give the AI economic bonuses, although Im not sure how you were dominating the game without such techs.

I just played the demo too, and I was wondering if taking 3 hours or so to get a military aircraft is normal. On the one game I played, I got 2 class 10s, one 7 or so, and one 18 (stole the highest out of Altarian territory...heehee).

Well, how many turns do you think that'd be? Sounds like a pretty long time to me.

Are you guys using your spending sliders, ect?

[doc_bean]

Weird, with just a few planets I can get planetary invasion in less than 30 turns if I really want it- I usually dont though, since I like going after diplomacy techs. Not sure what your were doing.

Sure, I didn't mean you can't rush towards it, but following a pretty 'normal' (imho) build path it can take quite a while before you get those techs. In my last game (challenging) it took about two years before a civ got planetary invasion iirc (the drengin of course).

EDIT: in my normal game (which I finished) none of the other civs got to planetary invasion or medium hulls afaik

As for the AI try "tough" if the others are too easy for you- its' the highest level that doesnt give the AI economic bonuses, although Im not sure how you were dominating the game without such techs.

Well, it's hard to tell if you're really winning if you don't play until the end i guess. In the games i quit I far outdid any other civ in all of the different areas, for instance I had a 200+ economic rating and every tech they had plus about a dozen more. My military was bigger than theirs and much better equipped, and I had about twice as much planets as any of them (in some cases thrice as much).

I guess I just got teh rush down quickly.

[frogbeastegg]

I find games on the larger maps are far more lively; I wouldn't go back to the two smallest sizes now I have played on normal. If the demo limits you to those then I expect that might be a problem.

I'm surprised to see someone say research is slow! In my last game I was getting a new tech every 2-4 turns on the standard tech speed, with no research bonuses on my civ, no research resources, and a moderately sized empire. That was so fast my military was semi-obsolete as soon as I built it. Putting research labs on your planets is a Good Thing. I specialised quite a few of my mid-sized ones (class 4 -9) for resaearch, giving them just one factory and nothing else but labs, and then used the focus thingy to aim them at research.

Has anyone else seen the Pokemon-like event yet? Made me chuckle.

[Xiahou]

That was so fast my military was semi-obsolete as soon as I built it.

That sounds more like my problem- it seems every dozen turns or so I'd have to go back into the ship designer and update my capital ships to keep them current with my technology.

Ive had some good games in a small galaxy, but I dont think the demo allows you to control how common/habitable planets are, ect- it's just random, no? Also, I think you will get cakewalk from time to time by just getting lucky and starting out near oodles of good planets while your enemies get screwed. That's something I think would also be exacerbated in a smaller galaxy as opposed to a large one.

[doc_bean]

Ive had some good games in a small galaxy, but I dont think the demo allows you to control how common/habitable planets are, ect- it's just random, no?

You can change it, I didn't play with it much though. I turned anomalies down since the AI didn't seem to hunt them in one game. My last game I turned habitable planets down (to rare I think), which makes colony rushing somewhat more difficult.

Research may be pretty fast, but laser II isn't exactly an improvement over laser I, I wouldn't upgrade ships until I had laser IV or V and at least one decent shield (lvl III I guess, the small ones).

[frogbeastegg]

Research may be pretty fast, but laser II isn't exactly an improvement over laser I, I wouldn't upgrade ships until I had laser IV or V and at least one decent shield (lvl III I guess, the small ones).

Size! It matters, despite what kind people may say I tend to find that researching a few levels of a weapon tech allows me to cram something else onto the hull, be it another weapon or a dohicky I want. So laser III is enough of an advantage over laser I that I wish to upgrade; I also research weapons/defence/engine techs in spurts, getting several in a row before going back to something peaceful. At the research rates I'm seeing at present that usually takes about 10 turns total, to make the jump from base tech to needing to upgrade.

[screwtype]

Okay, I just downloaded the demo and played it for a few hours last night.

It looks like it might be a bit of fun but there are some glaring problems with it which really give me the irrits.

To begin with, if you turn the music off, the game is played in almost total silence! There don't seem to be any sound effects at all, except for primitive "bleeps" and "bloops" when you click on buttons.

After a while the eerie silence gets rather oppressive, and I find it very immersion busting. Are they so poor they can't even afford to add a few sound effects? At least they should have the capacity to include them so modders can do it for them.

Secondly, the scrolling around the main screen is really s-l-o-o-o-o-w and gets me hot under the collar. I just *hate* slow scrolling games, GRRRR.

Not only that, but the scrolling is busted! If you put the mouse up into the corner of the screen, the stupid program won't scroll at all! Apparently it can only scroll in one direction at once. That's incredibly lame programming.

Same thing if you have a little window open on the screen. For example if you have that little window open that comes up when you click on the leftmost bottom gadget, the game won't scroll at all in that direction.

Thirdly, the lack of a "next active" button or something similar. You have a bunch of ships and you set them to various destinations, and then you don't see them again until they reach their destination, which means that if they encountered anything along the way which might be interesting, like an anomaly or something, you don't get to see it UNLESS you take the trouble to go searching around on the main or mini-map for the location of each and every one of your ships. I find it a real pain in the butt having to do that. Perhaps there's a way to set unit tracking in the options, but I didn't see one.

These might sound like little gripes, but it's the little things like this that one encounters constantly that usually end up driving me away from a game.

I don't like the tech tree display either. Having to pull it around with the mouse to see where you're headed is again, slow and clumsy. Surely they could have come up with a better method.

There are some other minor gripes too. For example, when you're informed that a planet has finished some structure and you click on "go to" to set a new structure, when you leave that screen, the original screen is still there with the original information! - it doesn't update as you complete stuff.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to check how much money you've got, except at the point of buying something. It should be on the screen all the time, or at least on the economics screen, but it doesn't even appear there.

Nor can see any place where the date or the number of turns is shown, which makes it kind of hard to track your progress.

In general, I find the game interface to be a bit cluttered and disorganized. It could all do with a major revamp IMO.

So I stated my first fame at the easiest difficulty setting, the AI basically did nothing, not even colonize other worlds...Where the hell is this awesome AI everybody keeps raving about ?

My experience was different, I began the game by setting the intelligence of all AI species to "normal" and in both games I played, even though I madly rushed to colonize, the AI ended up expanding faster and beating me to most of the good planets, even those in my own back yard. So in both games I found myself struggling even from the start.

-It takes forever to get to decent techs, near the end of the 140turns, with fast research, I barely had planetary invasion and/or medium hulls. How long is this game supposed to last ?

You can put the tech on "very fast" if it's too slow for you. But there really isn't much time to achieve anything in the demo. Three years is hardly enough time to get some warships and start attacking the other guys.

I don't think the numbers of turns you play is a big issue though since after a while it seemed to me there was little to do but press the turn button over and over while you waited for something to get completed or for your ships to reach their set destination and so on.

-Does anyone actually buy stuff with delayed payments ?

Yeah, I did, in my second game, because I had more habitable planets than I had money to pay for colony ships. Don't know how viable it would be as a longterm strategy though.

The battles are a little too drawn out for my taste

I didn't play any battles :) I could see that by the time I got ready to fight I'd be near the 3-year limit anyhow so I didn't bother going that far.

Despite my complaints here, I did play 5 games. It's a decent game, I might pick it up if/when i tire of CivIV, but I'll wait to see how Sword of the Stars turns out before I decide.

It looks like it might be a decent sort of strategy game, but for an independent "budget" title it looks a bit expensive. When I went to their website they were asking $45 for it, which is rather a lot for a game of this type IMO. I'd probably be willing to pay $30, I don't know if I could justify the extra for a game which is lacking an essential feature like sound, and which in general appears to be lacking a little something in sophistication and utility.

[frogbeastegg]

I can help on a lot of those.

Secondly, the scrolling around the main screen is really s-l-o-o-o-o-w and gets me hot under the collar. I just *hate* slow scrolling games, GRRRR.

Turn up scrolling speed in the options menu; fixed it for me. Alternatively, there's a better option - use the drag feature. I didn't like it at first, but it has grown on me. It allows you to move the map quickly and precisely, and, with a little help from the zoom feature, allows you to cross a large galaxy in a second. Hold the left mouse button down on the map to grab it, then drag your mouse in the direction you wish to move.

Thirdly, the lack of a "next active" button or something similar.

See the button marked 'find' near the end turn button? That's it.

I don't like the tech tree display either. Having to pull it around with the mouse to see where you're headed is again, slow and clumsy. Surely they could have come up with a better method.

Agreed; it's a pain. I find the best way to navigate it is to select a tech in the top left hand box as though I want to research it, making sure it is from the research path I want. This centres the display on that line. Then it's simply a case of scrolling right.

There are some other minor gripes too. For example, when you're informed that a planet has finished some structure and you click on "go to" to set a new structure, when you leave that screen, the original screen is still there with the original information! - it doesn't update as you complete stuff.

Instead, click the 'done' button on the same screen. Now use the little square drop down icons on the right hand side of the screen to go to each event (left click! Not right; right banished the box). Then, when you return from the planet the box will be gone, keeping the list up to date.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to check how much money you've got, except at the point of buying something. It should be on the screen all the time, or at least on the economics screen, but it doesn't even appear there.

Er ... the treasury display? On the main interface, bottom left hand corner, below the research and approval listings. It's always there.

Nor can see any place where the date or the number of turns is shown, which makes it kind of hard to track your progress.

The date is also on the main interface. Top right hand corner.

There are tooltips to tell you what most of these things do, and I believe the demo is based on a version which has improved tooltips over the 1.1 build I'm still playing.

If you wish to find a really annoying thing about this interface (which, on the whole, I don't mind) try the sleep function for your ships. Or the 'wake up and bother me endlessly every time another ship of any sort which is not mine comes within your sensor radius' feature. Gah! There is no proper sleep mode. I built sensor hulks, a cargo hull packed with as many sensors of the best type I have and one good engine; I stick them on the borders of my empire to get early warning of other faction's movements. I also get bothered each turn by every single one of them. Gah!