Manual update: Super Abilties

Published on November 20, 2006 By Brad Wardell In GalCiv Journals

Each civilization is really unique at doing something. The super abilities are:

Super Diplomat. Civilization is able to secure much better deals through negotiation that other civilizations.
Super Dominator. When they go to war, they receive a group of Corvette class ships. The number they receive is based on their military power.
Super Organizer. When they are attacked, all races of the same ethical alignment will come to their aid.
Super Warrior. When in battles, they get the first strike ability. That is, their ships attack first and if their opponent survives only then do they return fire.
Super Breeder. If their approval is 100% their population increases at 4X the normal rate
Super Isolationist. Can colonize barren worlds and no foreign ship can travel more than 3 spaces per turn in their area of influence.
Super Trader. Gets all the trade techs at start of game and gets 2X from trade.
Super Manipulator. Is very good at getting other races to go to war with each other.
Super Hive. Unlimited range and all factories are built in 1 week.
Super Adapter. Starts out with aquatic and toxic world technologies.
Super Annihilator. Can build spore ship which when used on a defenseless colony will eliminate all population and turn it into a toxic world of the same class.
Super Spy. Gets an agent to start with and worlds are immune from agents.

(these aren't all impemented in bta 1 of Dark Avatar).

Comments (Page 2)

webnavigator

on Nov 21, 2006

I assume we will be able to turn super abilities on and off for a more balanced/more differentiated game.

Options are always nice.

Jeff Graw

on Nov 21, 2006

Which part of Super Hive do you feel is unbalanced? I was thinking that instead of unlimited range, that they simply start out with much greater range than other players.

I'm thinking that 1 turn factories is overpowered, but along with unlimited range it just seems mind-blowingly powerfull.

Imagine creating a custom race with a *huge* reproductive rate and a Super Hive bonus. You get a highly expansionistic race that can make industrial strongholds over night.

Actually, I just downloaded the DA beta, and I'm now playing a Super Hive race. I'm loving it, because I can set up worlds so quickly, but it's still pretty unbalanced IMHO.

I noticed that in the race creation stage, there is an option not to use a Super Ability, and I thought, what's the point in that? And then I realized something... what super abilities had a disadvantage, and more powerfull super abilities had bigger disadvantages. For example, the disadvantage could be a reduced reproductive rate or research rate, and the more powerfull the Ability is, the greater the decline.

IztokBitenc

on Nov 21, 2006

Hi!

I wonder about the feasability of the Super-Adapters. Getting only two technologies seems to be a rather weak

You serious? Being able to colonize from the start 2 times as much planets as others can you find weak?

To understand the power of those two techs, thinka about what will happen when others will get tech for toxic and aquatic worlds, and most of those planets will be already taken? Who will have bigger economy, more research, more everything?

BR, Iztok

Evil Muppet

on Nov 21, 2006

One thing I've noticed with the Super Spy ability: If another race surredners their worlds to the Super Spy player, those worlds can still have enemy agents on them.

ignuss

on Nov 21, 2006

Super-Adapters. I find this one a little weak atm.
I propose that you also give them the second tech for both aquatic and toxic so that they can have 100% production on those worlds from the start. And maybe the prequisite Extreme Colonisation too.

Super-Dominator could either be very powerful or wholly pointless. The trick is to make it useful att all tech-levels. What happened to their secondary ability to extort money from other races? I liked that one.

Super-Trader. Good to see that they get 2x trade now. I thought it was a little weak earlier. The problem with this (and super-adapter) is that currently having a super-trader AI in the game means that all AI:s will get all trade techs very early through trade. It needs to be very hard to trade for these techs from these races.

Super-Hive. I think the factory part is overpowered. The reason being that all the other players have to buy factories in the beginning and the Thalans don't, they will have a massive economical advantage. At the same time, I think it's a really fun ability and don't want to see it removed. I would instead suggest removing their range-bonus completly. They don't need it, they will rock anyway.

The other ones I think are fine as they are.

LoneWolf0912

on Nov 21, 2006

I think that the super annihilator's spore ship technology should not be capable of being stolen or captured. Then it will get out to everyone, and their only advantage is gone. Currently it is stealable.

MacsenLP

on Nov 21, 2006

Wow some of these abilties sound so overpowered a human with some of these advantages would crush the AI easily.

The following abilities are the most noticably hugely powerful abilities to me.

Super Warrior: Sounds massively overpowered I know combat has been changed a bit but this woud be like a return to pre 1.2 patch (i think) for that race. Huge advantage.

Super Breeder: This could easily be overpowered.

Super Isolationist: Speed issues are huge this could make you nearly unconquerable and give u advantage in colonisation the most important phase. Id be taking an influence bonus with this ability.

Super Hive. Factorys in one week. You could colonise and build military at frightening speeds. Super Rush strategys.

Super Adapter: Big advantage in most important phase of game.

Dont get me wrong I think Gal Civ2 has been crying out for distiction between races this is a good way to do it but can create huge imbalances if not done correctly.

Lenius.

Philocthetes

on Nov 21, 2006

I can't do both.

Hay boss, I wasn't *at all* expecting *you* to do any more work! I was just suggesting that a little kicking of the user base from one of your fine crew might help get more folks like me to get of these forums and do some doc work over there. Apologies if I appeared rudely demanding. I guess I should pick up that flag myself if I'm serious.

Re the Super Hive ability, I don't know how much better off I'd be if I'd noticed it before playing about a year and a half in. The quick-factory plus unlimited ship range does seem pretty posh.

I like both the idea of shifting Super Hive unlimited range to a range bonus and of putting some disadvantage together with the advantages. Super Hive might suffer diplo or trade penalties, for example--that swarm of bugthings is too scary to do business with!

Ugleb

on Nov 21, 2006

I agree with the heneral consensus some of the bnonuses sound insanely powerful and thus exploitable, some penalties to go with them could be the way to go.

What if the Super Hives fast factories was balanced with a research penalty? Sure you can build five ships to my one, but I have better tech.

While I may be a super dominator, my influence is lacking - why dont the other races like me mummy? Guess if they wont recognise my greatness by buying trinkets I'll just have to put the boot in with my free ships....

Frogboy

on Nov 21, 2006

I'm open to the idea of having penalties with super abilities. Let's hear some ideas.

Jeff Graw

on Nov 21, 2006

Here's an even better disadvantage for super hive.

you can build factories in only one turn, but those factories only have x% (70% maybe?) of the output of a standard factory. Or maybe Super Hive cannot use power plants, something like that.

This gets me thinking a bit. It would be fairly easy to be able to let the user give their races disadvantages as well as advantages at the race creation stage. For example, imagine a race with a 80% penalty to reproduction, which IMHO should give some huge number of points to the player, like 30, but is super powerful in other aspects; kind of like the Dread Lords. Being able to give races disadvantages would allow users to create even more unique races than they can currently.

Dano13

on Nov 21, 2006

When you customize an opponent you can select "No Super abilities". That is cool, since otherwise the super abilities would get kind of tired, but the race should get something for not having any super abilities. For example, more Racial abilities over and above the standard 10.

Dano

Dano13

on Nov 21, 2006

I agree with Jeff Graw ... giving racial penalties as well as abilities would really help in making unique racial flavours.

I talk about this as well as other issues in my post:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=357&aid=136564#1058588

Dano

Jasamcarl

on Nov 21, 2006

I'm doubtful the AI will ever be able to exploit some of these abilities correctly. Super Warrior?

Anhydride

on Nov 21, 2006

For super Hive penalty you could allow a inflitrated agent in the planet a greater production penalty than usual to somewhat neutralize the super power

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!