Balancing Defenses

A tale of how defenses work.

Published on November 19, 2005 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

In Galactic Civilizations II, you have beam weapons, missile weapons, and mass-driver weapons.

Against these weapons are corresponding defenses -- shields, anti-missile defenses, and armor. Defenses in a different area do provide some benefit -- they are the square root of their value.

So if a fighter with Blasters (beam) of 3 attacks a ship with 0 shields, 4 armor, and 0 point defense then the battle goes something like this:

Fighter rolls beteween a 0 and a 3 and the defender rolls between a 0 and a 2 (square root of 4).

The significance of this is that if you pick the wrong defense, you take quite a pounding on your ship. This means that defenses should cost quite a bit less and be somewhat easier to obtain (otherwise you might as well just crank out the strongest offensive ships possible).

Balancing this out is tough. We want different defenses to have different advantages over time. Here's what we came up with:

		Size(Tiny)	Size(Large)	Cost	Power	FighterValue	CapitalShipValue	FighterPower	CapitalPower	Winner
b	Deflectors2	9	13	15	1	9.70	21.33	1.32	4.00
md	Titanium2	6	13	20	1	15.61	14.79	1.94	3.85	Armor
m	Chaffe2	11	15	8	1	11.96	27.78	1.07	3.33
b	Shields	9	13	20	2	14.18	29.59	2.61	7.69
md	Duranthium	8	12	30	2	11.90	23.15	2.93	8.33	Missile Defense
m	ECM2	9	13	10	2	28.36	59.17	2.61	7.69
b	Barriers	7	9	20	3	41.32	103.81	5.45	17.65
md	TriStrontium2	7	11	20	4	46.30	82.64	6.67	18.18	Shields
md	Superior Duranthium	6	8	50	4	30.61	71.11	8.57	26.67
b	Subspace Rebounder	7	9	60	5	22.96	57.67	9.09	29.41
m	Point Defense	9	11	30	4	21.63	60.47	5.58	19.05
md	Kanvium2	6	8	25	5	76.53	177.78	10.71	33.33
b	Barriers 3	5	7	25	3	68.05	142.01	7.83	23.08	Armor
m	PD Combo2	6	8	40	5	47.83	111.11	10.71	33.33
md	Duralthene	8	11	20	7	68.33	158.73	10.71	33.33
m	Droid Sentries	5	7	38	7	76.94	218.00	15.67	53.85	Missile Defense
b	Adv Force Fields	6	8	25	6	91.84	213.33	12.86	40.00
md	Adamantium	6	8	25	7	107.14	248.89	15.00	46.67
b	Invulnerabilty Field	5	7	30	7	132.33	276.13	18.26	53.85	Shields
m	Droid Sentries3	4	6	45	7	98.20	257.12	19.27	63.64
b	Ultimate Invulnerability	3	5	40	8	228.62	400.00	29.63	80.00
m	Aereon Missile Defense	4	5	60	11	122.37	366.67	31.13	110.00	Tie
md	Zero-Point Armor	3	5	45	10	220.20	444.44	34.48	100.00

Comments (Page 2)

Supreme Shogun

on Mar 02, 2006

I think the AI does a relatively good job at adapting on the higher difficulties.

I'm not so sure I agree with you on the second point. Defensive components do take up progressively less space the more you research. Also utilizing starbases helps heaps too.

Alstein

on Mar 02, 2006

The AI definitely does adapt. I saw the AI switch from shields to point defense, and from lasers to mass drivers in the last game I played. By that point I had enough worlds to just outslug the AI though- my big problem at the end of the game was scraping together enough money for my mega transports.

Popup Target

on Mar 02, 2006

I also would like to point out that a lot of the all-offense debate could be ameliorated by making defensive elements take up LESS space than offensive elements. THat way you can make an excellent counter to the all-offense navy, which in turn would have to counter by switching weapons styles, or just overcoming in huge numbers and being the attacker in engagements.

Defense does take less room than offense, once you get out of the beginning techs. it's nothing unusual for me to drop 4 points of attack and replace it with 6 or more points of defense.

Personally, I've always had more luck with ships with defense, but that's because I'm usually the tech leader before I get into combat. With a tech lead, a balanced ship will out perform an all-offense ship, as long as you're adapting to the enemy ship designs.

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