In today's mission, I am playing the supreme ruler of the Galactic Federation. It is trying to rule a  quadrant with 16 sectors in it.  My opponents include the Terran Alliance, the Drengin Empire, and the Torian Confederation.

My purpose in this is to test out the many balancing changes that have been occurring in Galactic Civilizations II, new user interface enhancements, and updated computer players.  How have things improved over the past few months?

A brave new galaxy

The first thing I wanted to check out was to see how the new player placement code was working. We wanted to put a little more distance between players when possible.

Using the hot key Ctrl-N, I have the galaxy regenerate with the same settings to see how well it does.

The above 3 were typical. Whereas before, you would end up with someone very close more often, now there is more distance.  We actually intended the old code to spit out people right next to you with the idea that players would have more variety this way and could use Ctrl-N to get the galaxy they wanted.  The problem is that such a system falls apart with the feature in 1.2 of hiding where players start as an option. So we decided in 1.3 (build Z right now) to always have a bit more distance between players.

The Galactic Federation resides on planet Thandar. The new city lights code makes the planet look a lot nicer.  I have anti-aliasing turned off so the screenshots will probably be a bit blockier than normal in these screenshots.

And since this is a fresh copy of the game, I don't have my previously created ships saved so I do what I normally do on a fresh load -- build a custom colony ship. It's faster than the default but shorter range.

A couple other changes in build Z of 1.3 beta:

• Starting funds raised to 7,500 (from 5,000).
• Initial population 8 billion (instead of 5 billion)
• Capitals have a 25% morale bonus.

The result...

Happier people with more money to start with.

Ah the Drengin.. No galaxy is complete without them.

A civilization on the grow...

The Torians. They're great. I wonder what they taste like.

My civilization was off to a good start. I had even managed to find a class 26 planet. Each planet class (from 0 to 26) represents the number of useable tiles to build things on. Class 26's are extremely rare.

I decided to call the planet Paridias.

Rise of the Argonots

My strategy was going to be pretty straight forward -- conquer those I can conquer and befriend those I could not.  The Terran Alliance was going to be the ones I would try to befriend. The Drengin and Torians I would try to destroy. To this end I have designed a pretty lethal fighter called the Argonot-X1.

I control the bottom right part of the galaxy. The Drengin the bottom left, the humans the top left and the Torians the top right.

The best laid plans torn assunder

The Terran Alliance is now at war after the assassination of their leader!

The Argonots are able to take our their Vengeance class fighter. But the pesky humans are rampaging across my trade lines.

My first target would be Martzia.  The Humans are not powerful enough to conquer me -- they can only harass. I am going to conquer them.

The humans put up a fight but they never had a chance. Earth would soon be mine.

The humans recognize their folly. But the price for peace is higher than they will accept. I want Earth.

But the Drengin have other plans..

The year is 2228. The Terrans and Drengin are out to destroy me.  I have the humans on their knees but the Drengin are very powerful. I need to finish the Terrans up soon.

The Drengin ships weren't that tough but they did have a pretty nasty Frigate class.

In response I designed the Turon-Z1

With an attack rating of 14, it would be more than a match.

Meanwhile, Earth was now mine and the Terrans were happy to be at peace.

To deal with the Drengin menace, I would build the fleet of triumph. Using 19 of my logistical points, the fleet packed a much stronger punch than any near by Drengin task force.

But as I cleared Drengin out of my space, they struck back with a surgical strike -- attack on a planet to remove defenses and then an invasion same week.

A crippling move to my capital world. Things are starting to look grim.

Until...

Phew!  The Torians, my old friends, have not only decided to help but join the war with me to defeat the Drengin menace.

More bad news for the Drengin Empire...the galaxy has experienced a religious movement.

Unfortunately, one of the planets they took over was Thandard -- my capital world, er former capital world.

But things have gotten messy for me as well.  Someone (i.e. the Terran Alliance no doubt) has paid the Torians to go to war with me as well!

I can't fight off both and the Drengin and us are in a stale mate. So my only option is to make peace with the Drengin and deal with the Torians.

And so the Torians are now against me and the Drengin. How strange war with alien civilizations can be.

The Torians have put together quite a fleet. It destroys everything before it.  But it's deep in my territory and slowly I wear it down.

And I get Thandar back from the Fundamentalists.

Now it's time to make peace with the Torians.  The Drengin should keep them busy while I start to rebuild my civilization.

As 2228 ends, I control the bottom right and much of the top left.  The Torians and Drengin are at war and much more powerful than I am right now but they are busy with each other.

Now was the time to set up my new platforms for war..

The Argonot-X2 would be the new fighter.  All of my ships would use the phasor based weapons platform. Much deadlier.

Meanwhile, a peace has come to the galaxy. No one quite ahead. Billions dead.

It was time to try to wrap this up. The Thalon class battle ship when massed should allow me to conquer my opponents.

End Game

With everyone picking on the Terran Alliance, they eventually surrendered to the Drengin Empire.

And so there were 3 left.

My goal was to befriend the Torians, eliminate the Drengin. The trick was to get the Torians to trust me.

Springing the trap on the Drengin would be delicate. Some AI work has gone in on build Z to improve the AI's detection of human attack patterns and decrease false positives.  Or put another way, you can't just put a huge fleet in their territory.           

I only  need a little bit of time..

They notice. But my main fleet isn't there yet.

Now it's there. This is a good argument for having true political borders in some future sequel so you can't park ships so close like this. The Drengin see what I'm doing and mass ships around mine and prepare for war too. But it does give the attacker an immense advantage.

My massive battle ships vs. their huge fleets.

Their big fleet wins.  But I do take several of their worlds, casualties are higher than expected.

By targeting the Drengin home world, I've utterly crushed their central source of power.

I tell you though, the Drengin ships are quite nasty. Far more advanced than mine. In an ironic twist, I'm defeating them through sheer strength in numbers (that is, in total military strength) which is usually backwards for a game like this.

I find my powerful fleets being broken down by their few but lethal wolf packs.  But I have so many fleets.

And slowly those fleets grind down the Drengin Empire.

The Drengin are all but eliminated but the Torians decide that they want not just the Drengin but the Galactic Federation. It's now an all out war!

And the Torians have the advantage.

By the fall of 2230, the Drengin are nearly gone. The Torians are strong but disorganized.

All for me!

But I just can't quite get the Torians to love me.

Too many wars. I'm sure over time they'd come to like me..

But there are other ways to victory:

With the Drengin gone, I now control 79% of the galaxy. I can win an influence victory instead.

And the ship that conquered the galaxy...

and victory is mine!

My technology was a bit behind (we're the 4th symbol).

Lessons Learned..

From this game I made some changes to the computer AI to be better at detecting threats but have fewer false positives. I also tweaked the planet improvement algorithms and a few other similar tweaks.

A couple people on the forum complained that the AI was building a bunch of stock  markets. They worded their report as if this is something everyone is seeing.  I know I haven't seen it.

Here are some select planet surfaces:

Toria:

Lasitus: (there's nothing "bad" about putting an invention matrix on a food resource)

Kerchen: (located far from enemies, it favored research and money generation)

Westerfeld:

Wardell:

Now, people can debate this tile or that, but from what I see it's doing a pretty decent job.  I'd probably have more factories on some of these planets but overall it seems like a pretty decent use of the territory.

So why did the AI lose?

Basically it boils down to this age old question: Strong offense or strong defense?  The AI, in my opinion, is too defensive. That's what killed it.  Spread around its planets are groups of ships that are quite impressive but not strong enough to defend against a massive fleet. And so it never is able to get a critical mass of offensive ships.  I've made some tweaks there to see what happens.