How is the Game working now?

It isn't entirely clear to me how a set of text and image files could possibly screw up your system... Or why you would need to replace the computer even if the OS mystically got hosed... its a simple emergency repair install and you are good.

GalCiv is not as complex as SE, so it is not as hard to write AI for it. There are a lot of aspects of the game mechanics that were simplified explicitly to work around the limitations of AI. But even so, it is still a complex rules set, and there is no way modern AI techniques can come up with a better player than a human for it (save at the number crunching game). Super chess AIs only work out because the rule set is astronomically simpler than a 4x game, and people like to build machines specifically for a chess AI. Processing power of a consumer PC and the limited sophistication of AI techniques greatly limit what can be done with more complex rule sets. Some might argue that its not really worth putting huge amounts of time into it, as the player base will inevitably discover how it works and exploit its flaws. Also, I really don't think that the devs of GalCiv would take much exception, since they know full well the limits of AI programming.

That being said, the AI in SE5 does quite clearly suck, and needs a lot more work. Several mods have put a fair amount of work into doing just that, and are definitely worth checking out.

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Two questions:

1. Do you really think that GalCiv2 is comparable to SEV as far as game depth and level of detail goes? Or, to put it another way, how long does it take to figure out and enter orders for a turn of GC2 as compared with figuring out and entering orders for a turn of SEV? This is not any kind of slam against GC2, but from all I've heard, the complexity of the two games is way different, and it translates into AI programming being much, much more of a challenge.

2. Is it really possible to compare the AI with a human player on GC2, a game that doesn't have a multiplayer capability? How can you be confident that the AI in that game approaches the competency of a human player?

Man, people sure get distracted easily and fail to mention the important point. I do not know how good you are at SE V so whether you'll find a mod's AI to be sucky or not is unknown. We do have quite a few stories now of people getting raped by the IRM AI, but good players can beat it if they know what to min/max.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

HI
I am playing a game in King of the Hill, 1 on 1.

Although I am enjoying the game i also get frustrated by the funny things which happen.

A lot of them are mentioned in other places.

Units / ships not shooting or just running away.

small increase from a tech level gain. i.e. went up a level in mineral mining and only got +200 minerals a turn, a small return on a lot of time. or up a level in ship yards to gain +200 again.

Planetary defenses not working together, some rushing off to engage [those with movement like fighters] and the rest not firing working together because of placement. manuly placing units does not help as some our to small to see and the planets are so big they can not shoot unless they are attacked directly.

Fleet and Task force options not seeming to work well.

Mines not being placeable at all as i can not see them in the sector view, so i have no idea were they are.

As I said I am enjoying the game I am playing but am not sure what I will learn about the game except that numbers count more than quality, or at least thats what it seems to me.

I would also like to play single player but know that it is not worth it at all.

Keep trying to work with it as the game is good if rather flourd at the moment.

Hey CaptainBrann

Mines work but wont show up in sector view. Any enemy ship (or neutral) that moves into the sector will automatically hit every mine in that sector until all the mines are gone or the ship is dead. If all mines are used up, only then will a battle occur. The only time mines might show up in sector view is when launched during combat from a mine layer ship (never experienced this personally so I dont know how it works during actual combat)

-unnamed

I have had combat with a minelayer ship. I looked, but was never able to see any of the mines visually. I think it's as you said: they're there, but their effect is abstracted.

The combat I mentioned was odd, really: the minelaying ship released all of its mines early in the combat (verified by looking at its cargo scan at various points in the combat replay). However the mine strikes suffered by my ships as they chased it across the sector did not occur until a LONG time after they'd all been released, and well beyond the point in space where the minelayer had completed releasing them...the mines should have been way back behind all of the ships involved...there's no physical reason for them to have been in the vicinity of the ships (at least not in SEV physics, where no drive = dead stop). My hypothesis is that mines have some sort of chance of making a "hit" during each appropriate turn; I don't think it's automatic.

I've seen ships pass into and out of mined sectors without all of the mines blowing up on them, though, which convinces me further about some sort of set chance for mine strikes during each turn. Another observation I've made is that ships in a sector with a minefield seem to be safe as long as they don't try to move. I can't say whether it's the moving into a sector, out of a sector, or both that gives the mines their "shot".

Hi CB. I know you're not necessarily complaining, but perhaps I can offer a few thoughts that may be helpful, or maybe they're unwelcome.

Units running away: fighters have a nasty habit of running out of supplies quickly, especially if they have traversed a system. It's also very possible to cram too many of them into a carrier, considering the resources a carrier has. I designed many a carrier solely for the purpose of maximizing fighter cargo, and ended up launching a bunch of fighters that had little to no supplies or ordnance (those items have to come totally out of the carrier's on-board resources). I'm assuming your combat strategies are appropriately defined; the standard ones sometimes slip in a "Do Not Engage" order in the target types list. Actually, if you are confident that the units and/or ships have supplies and ordnance, I'd be interested in a couple of screen shots showing the entire strategy definition you're using that leads to these results, or perhaps a text listing. This doesn't happen to me, really, and I've done a fair amount of strat customizing, so perhaps there's just something you don't know about. Unfortunately, there's almost no MM-provided explanations of what everything means, and everything I have managed to learn took more time than I'd have liked.

Tech level gains: Yes, the first time you see it can be a shocker. Unfortunately this is part of the growing pains. Perhaps sometime Kwok can publish the details somewhere (assuming he has not already done so) regarding benefit/level.

Planetary defenses not working together: I don't know how platforms are controlled: by their assigned strategy, or by the "Planer Settings" entry in the Empire Options screen. However, if you were unaware of this potential, well...now you know.

Not sure why I said a lot of this, looking back I don't have near as much useful into as I thought I might, but it would be a shame not to submit it now after all that typing.

Supply/Ordnance? Strategy? Fleet Placement? Treaties? So far I've never had the problem of a ship running from combat without a reason.

IIRC that's +10% per level, which is not a negligeable amount!

That's exactly what you said: If you don't know how to control your forces, you will always lose, even with overwhelming numbers. For instance you could order fighters to stay near planet in strategies, or make fighters with 1 move. I prefer using weapon platforms, and keep my fighters on warp points, so really I don't know... but there must be a way to use them in planet defense.

Otherwise I hope we will soon be able so set the fleet leader and order without having to construct a new fleet each time...

Or, install a mod that improves the AI and have fun?

We tried to tell Aaron that this stupid "infinite tech levels" setup was bad for gameplay during the beta, but alas, we lost out. Thus, Balance Mod makes max tech levels far more reasonable, leading to actual value in each level, rather than tiny increments over 100 levels. The moral of the story is, play Balance Mod.

The details are available; look in the data file. For example from the SY:

Ability 3 Amount 2 Formula := 2000 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 200)

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I Haven't tried the game in a couple of months, but I do not think the main problem of the solo game was fixed: AI cannot manage fighters and ground invasions, which, in wha is essentially a pacific war game at astronomical scale, is a fundamental flaw.

When it's about fleet engagements, all comes down to building a big enough carrier group and sweep everything, period. The AI will never put together a force capable of standing a couple of hundreds of fighters well armed (assuming it will have a single carrier loaded with fighters at all or that he will lunch them for planetary defence if it has it on a planet) and even if, it cannot grasp the concept of pre-eptive strike (lunching the fighters from the square next to the enemy fleet and moving them in combat).

When it's empire building, the AI cannot make a landfall on a planet (I assume, I never saw it) so they, at best, raze it and start from a colony ship, while a human can conquer a full built colony and turn it again the enemy.

It's like if in the pacific war the Japaneses couldn't have planes or land on enemy occupied islands... ah well

Sorry, end of the rant, but I had so much expectations on SEV...

I've been invaded by AI troops at least three times. The first was a complete surprise and I lost.

They don't follow up, nor do they prepare well for counter-attacks so it's not all that dangerous; but they do invade once in a while. I've noticed that it's usually fairly early in the game, before fleets get too large for them to manage.

I play stock and BM, and it's happened in both.