I have a little question while were sorta on the topic. Why don't races have there own political partys? Why do all the races have Federalists "Economics +20" as there default political party pick? Why not have the Dregn for example have War Party? And the Torians be Technologists Ect.

They don't have different parties? I never noticed that.

I love Draginol's idea.

Great idea! I've allways wanted to see what would happen if the Drengin were wusses and the Torians were evil


Also I agree that the A.I should pick parties.

yes, please.

just as a side note, the ability to let minor's colonize again, and more control over how often the UP votes/random events happen would also be nice.

i will say this in this feed as i have said in other feeds

an evil empire will not consider itself to be evil

I like Brad's idea. Not only does it allow you to better customize the gameplay you will experience, but it also removes the artificial barriers that allow for more challenging gameplay.

For instance: in v1.2, the jump in difficulty from crippling to masochistic is difficult for many players to overcome because of the huge resource bonuses that the AI players get at masochistic. Being able to increase the AI resources to 125% or 150% of normal instead of 200% or more as proscribed by the predefined difficulty levels would help players ease into higher difficulties and learn appropriate strategies for higher levels in a more step-wise fashion. Plus, it would reduce the frustration when you can't find a play level suitable to your abilities.

For Brad: how challenging would a change like this be to implement? In other words, are we talking a potential enhancement for v1.3, or something in an expansion pack (or in GC 3)?

I have a little question while were sorta on the topic. Why don't races have there own political partys? Why do all the races have Federalists "Economics +20" as there default political party pick? Why not have the Dregn for example have War Party? And the Torians be Technologists Ect.

They do. The data on the 'Pick Your Civilization'-screen is only used when (surprise, surprise) you pick your civilization.
However, all AI:s certainly seem to favour the same parties. Federalists, Industrialists, War Party are those that I see the most. I have never seen an AI choose Technologists. I would like to see different races favour (if they are already doing this, it's isn't apparent) different parties and a little more variety, please.

"Moral alignment" should really be something to pick from on that "Advanced" menu. Good Drengin, evil Drath, carbon-loving Yor, neutral Arceans......wait.

I think above posters ideas go bit hand in hand with the current poll. People want more options in diplomacy and UP (politics as I understanded?). With that I would like to see race specific goverment types and why not political parties also. Would generate more atmosphere for the game. Somehow Demoratic Drengi does not fit the bill Quite a change, hopefully something SD is willing to consider in Expansion Pack.

@OP

I certainly like the idea of these new options as long as you can set em random also. Random opponents and inteligence is a good start, but with these extra options we could create really random games.

But there a little flaw in this system. How do you recognize example Aggression level 3 AI from Aggression level 7 AI? I don´t think that GC2 has deep enough diplomatic system to Really separate different AI:s from each other. I would certainly like example more aggressive civs to black mail others more than less aggressive civs. To explain my point bit further at current version I don´t feel any difference coming from different AI:s. Sure they expand differently and maybe declare war in different scenarios but thats it basicly.

I think the current diplomacy and politic system is hindering down GC2 potential a bit at the moment. Hopefully Expansion really improves these areas of the game and makes different civs really Feel different.

Imagine an "advanced" button next to each player that let the player pick: * Resource Bonus (-50% to 200%) * Aggression Level (1 through 10) * Strategy Type (A, B, C, D) * Intelligence (1 through 10 which the higher the #, the more CPU it would use).

That would be gamers' heaven!

One additional suggestion: It would be a great addition to make all difficulty settings adjustable, either on the game setup screens or as an editable text file which contains them.
This way the players could compete e.g. against AIs with +100% economy and +50% weapons while having -10% research on their own (just a random example).

graet idead gets my vote

You know why this is a good suggestion? Because it helps players create their own game and not have software designers create it for them. You can please customers a lot more by letting them customize the game what they want to play. Look how much you've improved the game compared to other 4X games by being so open to user feedback.

I hated Civilization 3 as it came out of the box. You couldn't rule the world because every city after the 20th was 100% corrupt and couldn't produce more than one shield a turn even if you bought a courthouse. Don't know what they were thinking. But they had a corruption slider, and that meant I was able to happily play and enjoy the game instead of throwing it out.

I loved GalCiv I's aggressiveness, but it ended up that I could only play Masochistic on Huge universes because I couldn't get past the early game in smaller ones. I would've enjoyed playing with different levels even though it was darn near perfect the way it was programmed.

This isn't the final solution to AI development, though. You're still producing all the AI yourself. You need to give users the freedom to create new AI and not just turn the knobs on your program. Look at the results of the time and effort people have put into ship designing and hull mods. How much better that turned out than if Stardock produced all its best designs and let us choose between them.

AI is the same way. Imagine user-designed AIs building off your base, with the time investment and collaboration only a fan community can produce. Imagine tournaments held between user-designed AIs to crown the best one. The evolution that would take place would be powered by natural selection, and that beats top-down design every time.

So you definitely have the right line of thinking. Just keep taking the game toward something that will allow your customers to satisfy themselves and you'll have happier and happier customers.

I would just like to see the new ideas read by the game developers, and have these ideas polled by them in their departments.....

Also, the game is getting on a bit... Although I sill love to play old games.... (Gameboy Games, NES, Amiga etc).

I personally, would like to see better effects in the game - for example - the option to turn off the engine effects on my installation makes no difference, basuse even with it on, I don't get any, on the map or in battle... I had seen them once. Once and once only!!!!

I know it's not my PC - it's slightly better than the Dell XPS system... Mesh did it cheaper - although the case isn't as good. I also know it isn't my graphics card or its dirvers, because the card is still a PCI-E 6800GT, and the driver under a year old.

Also, I noticed that the Tech tree isn't as customisable as they actually say... I wanted to put some techs between some of the core techs, and when I ran the game, it crashed, so I had to move the techs to after the core tech tree.

Hi!

- Resource Bonus (-50% to 200%) - Aggression Level (1 through 10) - Strategy Type (A, B, C, D) where most players would wnat to choose random but it would have various general strategies that TBS's and RTSs have. - Intelligence (1 through 10 which the higher the #, the more CPU it would use).

YES!


BR, Iztok

A little more -- I forgot to mention the extreme attractiveness of a "1 through 10" aggression slider to me. I have mostly stopped playing the sandbox because I'm waiting for this feature to come out. I've been playing the campaign and waiting for the news that Huge or Gigantic galaxies will have actual warfare again.

like what e-stab is saying about adjustability. For example I'd like to play Masochistic with about -50 to diplomacy so I wouldn't be tempted to all the micromanagement of trading every new tech to every race. I want it more like GalCiv I where most every trade was unfair but some, like Impulse Drive, you just had to hold your nose and pay for.