Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Published on March 30, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

The only major feature we're going to be adding to 1.1 after this is the modder's UI stuff.  Everything else will get put into 1.2.  I think people will like some of this week's changes.

This version will be on Stardock Central in the next day or so.

Build 2A:

+ Tweaked funneling of unused social production.

+ Fixed visual glitch where it would not show unused social production

+ AI less sensitive about starbase building

+ Neutral civilizations won't discount relations with good players anymore (why be good? because good and neutral civs will tend to like you more).

+ Tweaked hardpoints on ships.

+ Torian population growth ability changed to 20 from 30

+ Torian Morale ability increased to 25

+ Torian luck increased to 10

+ Diplomacy ability slightly more potent in determining diplomatic relations

+ Being a good civilization gives you more bonuses with neutral and good civilizations in terms of relations

+ AI will generally not trade weapons technologies back and forth to other players unless they're very good friends.

+ AI more aggressive about upgrading ships

+ AI escort ships less likely to be converted into attack ships

+ Rewrote CalcMilitaryMight() to be more intelligent. If someone has a higher military might than you now, you better take it seriously.

+ Population Growth tweaked so that abilities are taken into account BEFORE morale bonuses. Net effect is that population growth ability not quite as powerful.

+ Fixed cosmetic glitch where military might factors always displayed "--" in the report screen instead of "-".

+ AI is less rigid about trading weapons and techs with human player, it will trade low level techs even if the player is very powerful but not high level ones unless they are allied.

+ AI much smarter about taking bribes. If you're weak or they really hate you, it takes a much MUCH bigger bribe to move relations back up.  Moreover, how often you can bribe and get an effect has been increased (previously you could bribe them every few turns and maintain high relations in perpetuity). Now if you're bribing more than a couple times a year it will ignore subsequent bribes.  In short, you can still use gifts and such to increase your relations with other players but you can no longer rely on gifts as the sole means of staying out of war unless you're willing to spend a LOT of money/tech on it.

+ If AI is at war and is losing that war, it will value gifts and help farmore than normal and be much more appreciative.

+ Double-Clicking entries on the Stacked Ship Window will bring up the Ship Details or Fleet Management window for that ship/fleet
 
+ PaulB's Random Icons showing up on the Galaxy Setup Screen

+ Fixed bug in Options screen where some options that required restart would pop up the message that the game needed restarting, but not list which options required it.

+ Fixed bug where ships built in an off-screen port that had a rally point assign would be invisible next to the planet until they were selected or moved.

+ Implemented graphical <<<< on planet screen to indicate when social production is being added to military production

+ rally point context window enhanced

+ can now move rally points using the MOVE btn on the context area

+ Formatted Text boxes will now allow you to use the mouse wheel to scroll when hovering over the text ( used to have to hover over the scroll bar )

+ End Game Summary Graphs screen now shows up to 10 civs (instead of 8)

+ When a new game is started, the Global Resource Manager now unloads all textures and surfaces that are no longer being used

+ Implemented new MOVE button in Ship Designer:
  + Select a component
  + Click move button (or press M)
  + Click where you want to move the component
  + NOTE: You cannot move a component if something is attached to it

+ Implemented Hot Keys in Ship Designer:
  New hotkeys:
    Delete - deletes selected component
    M - Moves the selected component
    1,2,3,4 - Default, Front, Side, Top views
    Pre-existing hotkeys:
    H to toggle hardpoints on/off
    + and - to zoom in and out
  
+ Fixed bug where "Cannot Remove Component" popup would get stuck behind the ship design window

+ More balancing of Arcean and Altarian AIs in terms of researching technologies.

+ More emphasis on creating escorts

+ More work on the simulated intuition engine to make better guesses as to whether an area is unprotected. (avoided temptation to simply put in code to have it look to see if there's attack ships in the FOW and escort transports - it's easy to create a perfectly effective AI, it's harder to make an AI that plays like people)

+ Terran Alliance AI more focus on defensive technologies

+ Torian AI better at building up planets.

+ AI better at building up planets at the very start (bias towards factories early on)

+ AI more concerned about the health of its troops in evading trouble with transports.

+ New API: AITakeEvasiveAction(X,Y).  Give coordinates of threats and it will attempt to stay away from them.  Using this only a bit right now to see effect.  Combined with faster ships, it should be harder to take out enemy ships at higher levels.  This API only works at Bright or higher.

+ Defensive technologies cost less.

+ Fixed crash when trade ship arrives at a planet and the trade routeaborts because it is too long

+ Added "Remove Functional Components When Upgrading a Ship Design" option to the option screen.  This is ON by default.  Turning it off will leave the functional parts on a ship when you upgrade it.  You will have to remove parts manually.

+ Fixed FogBugz 8471: Upgrading a ship design sets all ports building nothing to build the upgraded design

+ Updated map scrolling in message popup window.  If coordinates are passed to message box, the map will now scroll to those coordinates when the message pops up

+ "Do you want to upgrade starbase" popup will now display the name of the starbase and scroll to the location of the starbase

+ Fixed FogBugz 8014: Bottom-most sector displays at top of game screen as 2863311-2863311

+ Updated the tool tips in the camera controls for the ship designer to say "Rotate" instead of pan, since that is what they do now

+ Implemented Details/Manage button in stacked ships list. Players can now easily access the new Fleet Manager interface. Joy!

+ Ship Details window can now display data on a ship type as well as a specific instance of the ship

+ Ship Details will no longer allow you to decommission a ship that is currently involved in a battle

+ Implemented info buttons in the Civ Manager Governor screen.  You can now use the info button to get information on ship types or change/disband rally points

+ Fixed bug where "Component will not fit dialog" would get stuck behind the Ship Designer window

+ Fixed bug in Ship Designer dial controls where if set to rotate "freely" the mouse wheel would only allow scrolling in one direction.

+ Fixed problem in games prior to v1.1 that are loaded into v1.1 where the starport would get stuck at 0 turns if they had obsoleted a purchased ship before saving the game.

+ techs now appear in the foreign report window as espionage is done on alien races (fixing problem of not knowing enemy techs when tech trading is turned off)

+ Fixed graphical bug where some components attached to a ship would scale to a HUGE size when trying to resize them

+ Fixed graphical bug where some components attached to a ship would rotate 180 degrees whenever you rotated or scaled them

+ Random opponents and num of races will now randomize on Ctrl+N. (let us know if this is what you want)

+ Humans will now be randomly picked when playing another race.

+ Civ Manager Governor now only lists rally points that are being used for "Ships Going To" list

+ Prevent Cheese: Cannot disband a fleet in fleet manager while the fleet is involved in a battle

+ Race Legend Window will now only show civs the player has met if Blind Exploration is enabled

+ Fixed rare glitch where hardpoints reappear on the ship if you have them turned off, and select a component on the ship or from the list

+ Destroying a fleet will destroy the ships in the fleet.  Disband works as it used to.  These are now two different things.


------------------


Below is a repeat from 1.1 BETA 1.

+ New Option: No tech Trading. Players can prevent any tech trading by anyone.
+ New Option: Blind Exploration. Players can now start out not knowing where the other civilizations are located.

+ New Option: Disable Minor races. No minor races.

+ New Option: Randomize player intelligence. This will scramble opponent intelligence by around +/- 10 points to have more variance.

+ New Option: Randomly pick opponents. Players can simply choose to play against N opponents and it will pick them out.

+ Ship Design Screen re-designed to allow far more visible space for designing.

+ Ship Design Screen supports panning with left-mouse button held down.

+ Ship Design Screen displays installed components in a grid list. Right click to remove a component.

+ Ship Design Screen supports rotation of components.  See options screen to control how much you can rotate them.

+ Ship Design Screen supports copy/pasting behavior with ship size/rotation. If you select an existing component and then select a new component, the new component will automatically take on the size and rotation of the installed component you had just selected.

+ Ship Design Screen supports symmetry in rotation. Select an existing component, then select a new component to add on and then RIGHT-CLICK on the appropriate rotation dial and it will mirror the rotation automatically.

+ Ship level doesn't add as much to max HP.
+ Option now to display an animated dotted line showing where your selected ship is going.

+ How many turns it will take to reach a destination can be displayed at the destination target for selected ship. Note that you can hold down the Shift key and drag select multiple units.

+ If low-level espionage achieved, you can see the destination of selected enemy ships.

+ AI values range technologies more

+ Sensor techs increase sensor ability

+ Lots of little AI tweaks not worth mentioning but together will make a substantial difference to making the AI more enjoyable at low levels and more challenging at higher levels.

+ AI's more aggressive about expanding range with starbases. (some of  them anyway)

+ Uncommon habitable planets tweaked to make them slightly more likely to have habitable planets.

+ Fixed AI bug where it would sometimes put its rally points on planets when it didn't mean to.

+ AI takes distance more into account than it used to for determining relations.

+ AI more sensitive to cultural and military build up using new APIs that do fewer false positives.

+ AI gives more effort towards researching propulsion technologies.

+ AI puts more effort into logistics techs.

+ AI puts more effort into miniaturization techs. In all 3 cases it does  an evaluation of the galaxy state to determine whether it should be doing this.

+ Some AI personalities focus on significantly different techs.

+ AI will design faster or longer range ships depending on its needs

+ AI tech trading rewritten so that it doesn't do sweetheart deals. Tech trading somewhat rarer now as a practical matter. May need to be balanced so that human player doesn't get too much of an advantage.

+ AI can upgrade ships if it has enough money and thinks it's worth it.

+ AI manages colony improvements more effectively.

+ AI adapts economic strategy based on whether the new "disable tech trading" option is on.

+ AI generally better at picking techs based on new algorithm for evaluating galactic state.

+ Some AIs smarter about building constructors/freighters/defense.

+ Terran Alliance AI will not allow it to fall behind militarily beyond all hope.

+ Most AIs now will try to upgrade existing starbases more so than building new ones.

+ Most AIs will tend not to upgrade starbases that exist just to extend range.

+ Terran Alliance AI builds helper starbases closer to home.

+ Terran Alliance experimental strategy: Very focuses research - will  ignore other weapons techs other than its main strategy. If you're not playing against the humans, you're missing out.

+ Terran Alliance has a whole new ship design sub-module for having its very own types of ships.

+ Terran Alliance will build defenders with no weapons (not needed to keep invaders out).

+ Drengin AI planetary management substantially different from others.

+ AIs take into account wasted social production (which is no longer wasted) into account when deciding what to build.

+ Drengin more likely to escort transports.

+ Drengin will focus more on trying to have the strongest military at all times.

+ Terran Alliance focuses on diplomacy techs, gifting, etc. to keep relations up so that it can pursue technology.

+ Drengin and Terran AIs now very much focused on controlling all nearby galactic resources.

+ Drengin focus more on extending their range of their ships and getting more morale building techs than previously.

+ Drengin tend to focus more on their primary weapon and defense techs. We'll see how it works.

+ Drengin AI a LOT smarter about what they research.

+ Yor AI now derivative of new Drengin AI.

+ AI, in general, values research more than it did previously.

+ First attempt, but probably not last, for AI to try to take out resource starbases of enemies where it can find them (as a reminder to players, the AI doesn't necessarily know the existence of a resource starbase, it has to "see" them. So if you have some resource in the corner of the galaxy, don't wonder why it's not getting attacked any more than why you don't see their resource starbases tucked into some corner).

+ Trade revenue increased on larger galaxies, decreased on smaller galaxies.

+ Starbase factories improve the production of factories and labs on planets by X%. Half of that increased bonus is "free" and the other half is charged for.

+ The -2000 ceiling on debt has been eliminated for players playing at higher difficulty levels.

+ Last vestiges of aborted feature "Propaganda" eliminated. Expansion pack will have "agents" that players and AI can assign to do mischief and counter-mischief instead.

+ ECONONOMIC ENGINE CLEANED UP! Production and research now works as follows: Labs and Factories produce N production of their kind. How much of their capacity is used is based on the domestic policy sliders (spend rate X what % on each of the 3 sliders is used).

That amount is then multiplied by 3 types of bonuses:

(1) Your Civ Ability (which you set at start and can enhance by mining special resources).

(2) Economic starbases with factories on them.

(3) Planetary bonuses that comes from random events, UP issues, etc.

50% of this bonus you get for free -- not charged for it. The other half you pay for out of your treasury.

Example: If I have factories producing 100 units and my spend rate is 50% from domestic policy and my military spending is set to 100% then that factory's base production is 50 (50% of 100).

If my Civilization ability on military production is 10% and I have an economic starbase doing 5% bonus and I had an event that increase planet production by 5% then I would have 50 + 20% bonus = 60 production. I would only be charged 55 however -- 10 bonus production, 5 free, 5 paid for.

+ Tax rate angers citizens less (a bit).

+ Your Morale ability is taken to the .90 power and then added to morale (was .80 power).

+ Population growth fixed dramatically. This is going to have a significant game play result that we're still having to fix in the AI. Before, on a class 10 planet with a morale of 70 your population would increase at 20% per turn. Now is would change at 3%.

The "population growth ability bug" wasn't a bug but rather a problem with having populations in billions rather than millions. The population growth was previously capped at 200 million per turn. 20% of say 1 billion (or
higher) reached that cap. So all those bonuses meant nothing.

Now, at 3%, if you have a population of 1 billion then you're looking at an increase of 30 million per turn X your population bonus. If your morale is 100%, that gets doubled again.

Here's the thing: If you drain a population down to only a few billion, it'll take you a very long time to recover. Say goodbye to mass colony rush. You'll need to be very careful or else you could end up with a vast empire of tiny populations producing no money while smaller empires grow beyond you and conquer your weak but large empire.

Population Growth = CurrentMorale X Government Level X PlanetQuality Factory X GrowthFactor.

+ If your morale is > 75% you now get a 25% extra bonus to population growth. If it's at 100% you get a 100% extra bonus.

+ Population growth ability taken into account at the very end of this process for maximium effect.

+ Research Ability used wholesale (previously it was chopped in half).

+ Base taxes collected now is the square root of the population of a planet. This may be tweaked based on play testing.

+ New clean APIs: CalcTotalMilitaryProduction() and social and research equivs that just give you how much a planet is producing (for AI use later).

+ Social Production that is not being used anymore is transferred to military. So you're no longer being charged for social production. However, only the BASE social production is transferred and that amount is not subject to bonuses and so forth (lest there be a lot of cheese tactics and gaming of the social production bonus). So you still need to manage your economy decently but you're no longer being charged for production you're not using.

+ AI at lower levels gets less money to account for improvements in overall AI.

+ AI now "adds noise" to its decisions based on difficulty level.

Essentially, on things that are prioritized, AI that is playing as a "dumb"
level will have injected into its calculations a noise factor that will result in it coming to wrong conclusions about what it should do and hence do stupid things. It's random

+ Planets on the verge of defecting are more likely to defect.

+ AI updated to use its points differently based on new ability costs.

+ AI Ship design looks at the galaxy size and then decides based on that whether it needs to focus on range or speed more. Before it was one size fits all.

+ Cost to upgrade ships now cheaper.

+ Lockup fix: AI could get confused on where to put a starbase and get into an endless loop.

+ Player and AI on same starbase rules: 4 friendly starbases per sector.

+ AI more likely to target starbases.

+ New function: FindClosestEnemyStarbase()

+ AI will send its ships to guard nearby planets rather than cluster them in hordes.

+ AI will target military support starbases more so.

+ Bonus production now displayed in various displays).

+ Updates to the various screens to display the correct economic data based on the new economic engine (involved 9 different .cpp files).

+ Planet Abilities decreased in player start-up. Before someone yells (or if someone can answer them on various forums): Before the abilities would then get nerfed in game. For instance, a research ability of 20 was treated as a 10 when calculated. Now, the research ability is half as much in the player setup window but multiplied directly. There's no net change, it's just a display change.

+ Message changed to tell players they can only build 4 friendly starbases in a given sector.

+ Most defense modules are now slightly smaller

+ Logistics change: Large ships now use 6 logistics (was 5). Huge ships use 8 (was 6).

+ HP change: Large ships get 30HP base (was 28).

+ HP change: Huge ships get 50HP base (was 48).

+ Nano Rippper damage changed from 8 to 6.

+ Capitals no longer provide a morale bonus.

+ Maintenance on labs and factories increased slightly (1 to 2) to compensate for higher tax income and easier morale.

+ Factories and labs produce slightly less base production (because the new bonus system provides more bonus production).

+ Cost of some high level buildings substantially decreased.

+ Slight tweaks to racial abilities.

+ Eliminated Galactic Mall and Concert Hall starbase modules. Since influence victory strategies have been strengthened, we require players to have to go for the cultural domination tech path.

+ Put cost to upgrade an influence starbase at the beginning, subsequent modules are free.

+ Mining modules have been significantly nerfed since abilities are now directly multiplied rather than modified.

+ If you have the cultural domination techs, you can build directly to  those upper cultural influence modules bypassing the wimpier lower level ones.

+ Influence modules are less powerful (since you can now go directly to them) but still very powerful.

+ Fixed some tech tree bugs where the category was wrong. The AI relies on category to determine what type of tech it is since the AI isn't scripted.

+ Lots of tweaks to technology costs based on play testing and user feedback.

+ AI values tweaked. Miniaturization was valued very low. So the AI tended to have lots of cheap and ineffective ships compared to expert players.

+ AI less aggressive at lower levels.

+ Fixed typo in UP issue.

+ Prevent Cheese: Do not allow player to open fleet manager for a ship that is fighting. They could disband or change the ships in the fleet.
 
+ If a component on the ship is selected, size and rotation will remain the same as the selected component when a new component is chosen
+ You can click a slot at the top of the window to select a component on the ship. Clicking the slot again, de-selects the component.

+ Clicking a component on the ship, high-lights its slot in the component list

+ Fixed bug where if you choose a filter, and then add a component that should be filtered out, it would still show in the list

+ Size and rotation settings are no longer reset when selecting a new component type

+ Fixed bug where Clear button did not restore modules ( like colony, trade, etc) in the list of available components if they had been added to the ship before clearing it.

+ Fixed an exploit where players could add several modules of different types on the same ship by using auto-place.

+ Fixed not being able to select slots Slots now tint to the correct color

+ Took out the old component "slots" code and replaced it with new code using a grid list control.

+ Implemented the filter controls for choosing function or structural parts, or all parts. Known bug: if you choose a filter then add a component of diff type it will show in the list.

+ Added support for mouse wheel to the rotation dials. They will use whatever increment you have set in the options screen for rotations.

+ Made the constructor highlight slightly less transparent to make it more visible

+ Random ?'s turn on and off on the Opponent screen Polished

+ Functionality on the Opponent Screen added funciton to

+ "OverrideTextDisplay" of Spinners

+ added code to make civ save extra research points when it has more needs for the current tech

+ changed code to save ship designs as .xml files blind exploration now works

+ Changed "Enable Minor Races" option to "Disable Minor Races"

+ Changing any of the Game Options in Galaxy setup will now trigger the galaxy thread to be recreated if it is already running

+ Random Number of Races option working

+ Random Selection of Races option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Random Intel option working (PaulB will be cheking in a screen to fix the clipping)

+ Added Stat in "Foreign Stats">"Misc" that gives the intelligence of the race.

+ NEW FEATURE: Auto-Pilot Lines checked in NEW FEATURE: "Show Auto Pilot

+ Lines" option added to Options screen NEW FEATURE: Resource icons on

+ tactical map are now color-coded NEW FEATURE: Number of weeks to move

+ to destination appears on the destination cursor

+ Tweak: Made dial needles thinner in ship designer

+ Fix: Bug where adding a ship with moves to a fleet with 0 moves restores the fleet's moves

+ Fix: Potential crash in overlay code

+ Fix: Made constructor highlights slightly more visible

+ Fix: Fleet Manager updates context area if fleet is disbanded

+ Fix: Removed code in CalcAStarRoute (used by trade routes and auto-pilot lines) that prevented the route from reaching across a gigantic galaxy

+ added code to FindPath to allow AI ships to get a new destination when they don't have one

+ added code to CanRaceBuildShip to check for an existing model file if  it's a user defined ship

+ added code to classShipTypes to save out an XML file for its def. If a ship is user defined and this function can't find a .shipcfg file for it, it will now return FALSE. This fixes the bug that Brad found where he was playing as a custom race and he changed what style of ship he was using.

+Fixed length of the Zombie Army event to make it fit nicer in the box

+Added ability to pan and rotate main map with the Keyboard:
   -CTRL and Arrow keys to rotate (with snapback working if activated)
   -SHIFT and Arrowkeys to pan main map

+ Old "hardpoint modifiers" that rotated and flipped hardpoints have been marked as "hidden." This removes them from the components the players can choose, and also allows them to keep using the designs they have previously made that use them.

+ Improvement Summary window now shows tile improvements and their effects on the improvement and planet

+ Fixed bug where obsoleting a ship that had been purchased prevents the star port that purchased it from ever building anything else again

+ Improvement Summary Window: Fixed spacing of units

+ removed some references to humanity in the Tech Tree (but only where it made sense to remove, most places it worked well)

+ Fleet Manager: Now displays number representing ship's logistic value in ship thumbnail

+ Fleet Manager: Implemented the command buttons

+ Ship Designer: Implemented "Reset Component" button

+ Ship Designer: Added tool-tips to the new design UI controls

+ Ship Designer: Fix: Scaling selected part now scales ONLY that part

+ Fleet Manager window is implemented

+ Dbl-click a fleet or click on Details in the fleet context window to open it.  Use it to add ships to your fleet. Use it to move ships from one fleet to another. It still needs a few graphical tweaks: Some things don't tint Will be adding a number next to the ship icons to show their logistics (like the stacked ships window does)
 

+ You can no longer multi-select dead ships or ships hidden by FOW (This fixes bug where multi-select highlights empty spaces)

+ You can not cycle through fleets in the ship details window anymore (This is to make way for the new Fleet Manager screen)

+ Action buttons in ship details screen are now disabled if the ship cannot perform that action

+ Fixed bug where text in trade screen would display green when using the money slider even if the AI would refuse to trade a military tech because the civ was too powerful.

+ Fixed bug that Brad e-mailed about (Planet logos missing when zoomed out)

+ Fixed bug in Tutorials window where pressing ESC key would hang the game

+ Fixed UP Starbase Tax law-related problems.

+ Fixed bug where a player could not attack Dread Lord planet with an orbital fleet manager on it

+ Fixed non-working scroll bar in rally point window Added GetTurnsAway  function to classStarShip that returns a float indicating number of turns it will take to get to specified tile CTRL+I now displays the number of turns it will take a ship to get to its destination.

+ MiraclePlanets Event: Now updates the overlay icons for the planets. (They used to have "uninhabitable" icons even though they were upgraded by the event)

+ Fixed exploit where you could get around UP starbase module limit using a fleet of constructors

+ Fixed sizing to 0 error message in debug.err in ShipCombatShipsEntryWnd.

+ AIUpgradeShip will not allow you to use it on a fleet (it will abort gracefully) “Fleets” themselves cannot be upgraded, but the ships in them can
+ Fixed UP Law bug where starfaring tax was applied even if the civ in question was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where war tax was applied even if the civ you were at war with was dead

+ Fixed UP Law bug where Starbase tax was applied even on starbases that were destroyed

+ Changed starship::GetFleet function to return a pointer to itself if the ship is a fleet.

+ Found and fixed source of “Influence Flooding” bug.  If the invader used the “Use unhappy citizens” tactic, these citizens could be counted as casualties and the casualties would exceed the number of troops on the transports, thus giving a negative population.

+ Fixed crash when memory allocation fails on ship type creation in ship designer. Adds message to debug.err when this happens and takes appropriate action to avoid crash

+ Fixed crash in Polyline.  It now checks number of points in the line to avoid out of bounds crash.

+ Fixed CTD on Governor Screen.   pColony was not set in governor mini map. Pointer is checked now.

+ Fixed bug where removing components does not remove their tech requirement.

+ Fixed crash when entering victory status screen.  Planet was not set in colony::CalcMorale.

+ Fixed incorrect stat shown in ship statistics text (Trade screen)

+ Fixed bug where data on main screen (treasury, tech, etc) would not update immediately after loading a saved game

+ Fixed crash in OverlayGraphic::QueryInterface function.  Pointer was not being checked.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a ship, you will now get the “ship intelligence report” on that specific ship, instead of a generalized ship type information popup.

+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a starbase, it will now show the correct data based on what modules your starbase has.

+ Fixed a typo in conversations

+ Fixed a “false positive” message in debug.err.  It would display “Could not find texture” when PictureFrame images were being set to NULL (to clear the image).  This is ok.

+ If population after an invasion is less than 1, it will be set to 1

+ Fixed incorrect data being displayed in Ship Upgrade window

+ Fixed colors in a few end game summary screens to use race color instead of interface color

 

 


Comments (Page 3)
5 Pages1 2 3 4 5 
on Mar 30, 2006
Yes, the moving rally points has been number 1 on my wish list.

Borismeow, My understanding is the Galactic privateer does not stop your routes from being attacked, it stops them from being discontinued because of an attack.
on Mar 30, 2006
LOL...this is a good one.

All my ships have little pictures of my custom race leader floating above them. When I zoom way out on my map, huge pics of her overlay the map. Thank goodness I picked a cute blond for my leader. BTW, this was on a game I started in Beta 1 and loaded in beta 2. Persists through re-laod as well.
on Mar 30, 2006
There's at least two load save game bugs that i'm aware of which would be nice if were fixed.

1. Free turn of ships moves and date not changing bug when press turn, but no production. This has always been case pre beta.

2. Planet quality changing to pre soil enhancement, terraform etc levels. eg built soil enhancement on lev 10 world becomes 11 quit then load save planet quality is 10 again but you have planet 11 quality number of tiles. Did not notice this pre beta.

Also noticed the AI's love going after banking centers/stock exchanges early on. Probably not a good idea as they are so expensive in production, there's much better things to be going after early on in my opinion.

Lenius.
on Mar 31, 2006
Please fix so that the AI players research and use different weapons and defences in the same game, again

I did a quick test without fog of war, just pressing the turn button and seing what kinds of military ships that was built.
Result: All of the computer players built missile ships.
I'm quite sure that they all focused on the same defence too. In games I have played in the previous betaversion, all the races have switched weapons and defence at the same time, making it rather pointless. For example, if I would have pressed the turn button some more, all of them might have changed to beams or massdrivers at the exact same time.
on Mar 31, 2006
Mother of all patches, great work SD!

PS. Could we get updated Keyboard shortcuts sheet also with official 1.1?
on Mar 31, 2006
What about fixing the "music volume resetting to maximum after restarting the game" bug?
on Mar 31, 2006
Random opponents and num of races will now randomize on Ctrl+N. (let us know if this is what you want)

PUT THIS AS A OPTION.. i want new maps but not new races and such..
on Mar 31, 2006
What about fixing the "music volume resetting to maximum after restarting the game" bug?


Hey SevenSwords, I thought this was due to my crappy integrated sound card. Minor but annoying thing, should be easy to fix also?

on Mar 31, 2006
Random opponents and num of races will now randomize on Ctrl+N. (let us know if this is what you want)

PUT THIS AS A OPTION.. i want new maps but not new races and such..

Unless I am mistaken, but I have understood the sentence to be : if you set in your galaxy settings random oppents and random num of races, when you hit CTRL+N, it will redraw the opponents and the number of race instead of just regenerating only the stars, the planets and the home position.
on Mar 31, 2006
First of all, I'm yet again amazed about the amount of work you guys have gotten done in a week. Me? I've been playing too much of this addictive game to do much, maybe you've heard of it... GalCiv2, oh wait... right. Anyways, keep up the good work, and I look forward to more stuff (god I'm greedy now, look at what you've done!).

Now, as to some concerns that are being raised:


+ AI is less rigid about trading weapons and techs with human player, it will trade low level techs even if the player is very powerful but not high level ones unless they are allied.

Does this mean that the AI now distinguished between the player and other AI? If so, then that is a bit dissapointing because I really liked how the AI didn't treat the player as anything special.


The way I understand it, there is an artificial barrier that have always existed when a player tried to trade with an AI. You can go back to an older version and see this effect clearly. Basically, when a player asks for a military technology, the barrier would kick in and look to see how powerful the two side are and the result would determine whether the AI would accept (if it's fair) or not. This is something that is built into the trading system because it was just too easy to exploit and buy every technology from the AI. However, if you have technologies that the AI wants (like a diplomatic technology), you will see the AI offering everything including that shiny top-of-the line weapon for it. From my understanding of what that point said, it is the artificial barrier that is being changed (relaxed), not that the AI have suddenly realize who the player was.

Personally, I don't see this as the AI treating the player differently, it just means that the game is making that distinction to prevent you from abusing the AI too much, but you may disagree. IMO, this is just a patch-fix solution to the trading vulnerabilities of the AI. I'm sure in one of two patches, when Brad gets the AI to be smart about its choices, this won't exist at all (IE: The whole reason that it is being relaxed is that the AI has improved in that facet).


2. Planet quality changing to pre soil enhancement, terraform etc levels. eg built soil enhancement on lev 10 world becomes 11 quit then load save planet quality is 10 again but you have planet 11 quality number of tiles. Did not notice this pre beta.


This was in prebeta, along with the bugs with neutral ethics auto terraforming. IMO, they just need a better refresh algorymth for Planet Quality. Hell, just a basic tile count system could work. That way, when you chose that racial ability option to improve planet quality, it would increase tiles on all planets instead of increase tiles on your home planet and adding PQ on all the others without any tiles, right now it is practically worthless for its cost.


Also noticed the AI's love going after banking centers/stock exchanges early on. Probably not a good idea as they are so expensive in production, there's much better things to be going after early on in my opinion.


This is actually a very good and legitimate strategy that *I* use all the time on higher difficulties. The expense is nothing compared to what they produce. IMO, stock exchanges are the ONLY buildings that are really worth their production, because they produce the money back, where as nearly every other building takes even more money away from you. Building stock exchanges early allows you to afford to use your other buildings. Granted, they should build a couple of factories first, but I think the patch notes specifically said that they are doing that now.


Please fix so that the AI players research and use different weapons and defences in the same game, again

I did a quick test without fog of war, just pressing the turn button and seing what kinds of military ships that was built.
Result: All of the computer players built missile ships.
I'm quite sure that they all focused on the same defence too. In games I have played in the previous betaversion, all the races have switched weapons and defence at the same time, making it rather pointless. For example, if I would have pressed the turn button some more, all of them might have changed to beams or massdrivers at the exact same time.


This is not a problem with the beta alone, and has always been the case. It seems the AI will always pick the same technologies as one another until they start fighting heavily. For defenses, it makes sense, if everyone is using one weapon, then research that defense, but for weapons it is a little more than odd. They will only switch weapons when they come up against other AI's using cruisers (defensively focuses medium ships) that counters their weapons. I would like to see them choose one of the three more randomly myself, because this type of behavior plays heavily into the player's favor. That is, the player will always have the "first strike" advantage if he looks at what the AI is up to so that he can focus into the appropriate defense/weapons.


Random opponents and num of races will now randomize on Ctrl+N. (let us know if this is what you want)

PUT THIS AS A OPTION.. i want new maps but not new races and such..


I believe this is only when you choose to have random opponents in your game. This especially applied to the "blind exploration feature". That is, you want the game to remain a mystery until you've discovered them. If you could explore the universe, meet everyone, then Ctrl+N to get a new map and know all the players on the map, what would be the point of this feature? If you select your opponent normally, nothing would change...
on Mar 31, 2006
This is not a problem with the beta alone, and has always been the case. It seems the AI will always pick the same technologies as one another until they start fighting heavily. For defenses, it makes sense, if everyone is using one weapon, then research that defense, but for weapons it is a little more than odd. They will only switch weapons when they come up against other AI's using cruisers (defensively focuses medium ships) that counters their weapons. I would like to see them choose one of the three more randomly myself, because this type of behavior plays heavily into the player's favor. That is, the player will always have the "first strike" advantage if he looks at what the AI is up to so that he can focus into the appropriate defense/weapons.

Not true. I have seen different races use different weapons and defences at the same time pre-beta. I have seen one race start with for example missiles while another goes for beams in the beginning.

Now, they don't. Everyone use the same weapon and defence. Sometimes every race will change weapons at the same time but they change to the same type, there is no variety anymore.
When all nine races build beam-ships, it's a no-brainer what defence to research.

My guess is that somehow all AI in a game uses the same data to determine weapon and defence. If one switch, everybody switch.
on Mar 31, 2006
Perhaps you could mail my son some details on Galactic etc (sorry I am not a gamer--he is an avid gamer).

He is at :

jamesswan101@gmail.com
Thx.
on Mar 31, 2006
I ran some more tests with lots of races and the weapons&defence-bug doesn't happen all the time. So I guess that's why not more people has noticed it. But it happens quite alot so I hope you will find it, Brad, and squish it.
It's not fun having played through the start only to discover that you are fighting 9 races that all the time uses the exact same weapon and defence-types.
on Mar 31, 2006
I am totally in awe of you guys. The amount of effort you are putting on updating this product is staggering! Don't you have families?

Played a session with the Beta 2 yesterday evening. I love your fixes and changes. Here are my notes of "still-existing" bugs and issues I notice:

o The bug where morale+5 is on every colony but your first is still there. To see it, colonize a planet and click on the details window. It shows morale+5 on every one but your first one.

o You still cannot "turn off" rally points for colonies in the rally points window. If you click an existing rally point (great work, by the way, of eliminating those that no longer have a colony pointing there), in the left side, click on "None" on the right side, and choose "update", the screen does indicate that the old rally point is no longer there. If you look at the planets individually, however, you will see that they still point to their old rally point. If you wait a turn, go back into this window, it shows up again on the left side. This is important to me due to how I play. I build constructors rallied to starbases until I develop the tech to build my initial defenders, then I want to have every colony build one to defend itself, so I want to "turn off" the rally points. Now I have to manually do this colony by colony. By the way, I "love" the ability to move existing rally points. This is awesome.

o Random race selection will choose Humans now, as you note. However, if I set difficulty level to "Painful", and click on each of the races portraits, every one but Humans shows up as "Gifted", while Humans show up as "Normal"... I guess you like to see humans lose ;-O

o The size of ship parts continues to grow as the game goes on. I think this is related to miniaturization techs, but not sure. I built a 2/1 defender last night, then a little later on research the second miniaturization tech, tried to upgrade the design, but couldn't add anything --- the parts have increased in size! I think that what might be happening is that the miniaturization is increasing all parts (not just the hull size) by that percentage... since it rounds down, some part sizes don't actually increase for a 10% or 15% increase, so you do have "some" more space but not as much as you should. However, the 25% miniaturization racial ability that the Yor has does not lead to an increase in anything other than hull size. I will investigate this further.

o It "appears" that the battle resolver works differently for fleet-based combat vs. one-on-one combat, but I need further testing to be sure. When I battled using fleets, it looked like attack roles and defense rolls were both 1-based, but that they were 0-based when battling one vs. one. Again, I will need to look at this further. What seems clear is that defense works much better in fleets than in a one-on-one battle.


The rest are all AI related bugs-issues, playing at Painful difficulty:

o Computer opponents "love" to build influence starbases, even early on deep in my space where they have no effect. Why? My guess is that they are searching for mines, and if they don't find one, they say, "what can I do instead?" If so, then they should identify an existing economic or mining starbase and add-on, or if one is not available accumulate somewhere to be used to quickly coalesce into military starbases, see below...


o Military strategy still poor. The AI continues to build wimpy ships far behind yours. At least the military strength graph now "knows" that your military is superior! I wish the AI would be more intelligent about building ships that match their technologies. This is playing at "painful" level, where they have researched the technologies, but still insist on having 2/0 ships defending their planets and fleets of them impaling themselves on your massively defended starbases. Suggestions: Due to the new cheaper upgrade costs, AI should routinely build new ship designs and upgrade their old ones. I still continue to see ALL AIs developing the same weapon and shield technologies and using them on their ships! Whatever you build to counter one AI will counter them all... I used to think this was due to tech trading, but they still do it when tech trading is turned off!! Finally, speed is undervalued by the AI in its fighters... why should I care that a fleet that moves at 2 pc/turn is going to hit my planet in five turns? Also, the AI needs to build units early on with some defense, and use military starbases to add defense to these when attacked. I do this, keep a few constructors around so I can quickly build a military starbase at a moment's notice.

o Military tactics still brain-dead. The problem of them impaling themselves on your high attack-defense starbases is still there in Beta-2, as I just noted. Why can't they see that they have no hope? The problem I think is that the AI always chooses a target for its fleets and individual ships. Once a ship or fleet is given a status to attack, it is going to find a target. The AI seems to do a decent job of finding a "good" target if one is available. If there are no good targets available, then the ship or fleet commits hari-kari "somewhere". What is needed is for ships and fleets to realize that there are no good targets, so it needs to wait for more ships (or better yet, upgrade!!!!).

o Troop Transports still fly into enemy space unescorted... why? How hard is it to group them into a fleet that protects them? They also need to make them faster, then they can just sentry them protectively in planets or starbases on the way. In early mid-game, I can easily build transports that go 8 ps/turn, why can't the computer? Then it can stage them more protectively...



on Mar 31, 2006
The change log REALLY needs to be cleaned up.... Its not that hard! just do some "New features", "Terran AI", "Drengin AI", ..., "Fixes", etc sections and put everything new in each category.
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