The "Review in Progress" Thread...

[yin26]

This is not a review of GalCiv just yet but on-going impressions. Please join me if you feel so inclined.

First off: Yes, I played MOO3, and while I see the genius behind some of the ideas, only a few *major* patches will make it a game worth keeping IMO. So MOO3 is still on my HD awaiting small miracles. There, having put that to rest...

"Wow. Old school on steroids!"

GalCiv, as you might have gathered from the screen shots, has a wonderfully 'old school' feel about it. Oh, sure, the cut-scenes, alien head shots, etc., are all quite nice --and the rendering of the planets is outstanding-- but you definitely don't buy this game for visuals. Hey, to me that's a plus! So not only will the game run on tired systems, you hope that the greatest focus has gone to gameplay. So far after a bit of play, that seems to be the case.

First thing you notice is that the alien civs expand QUICKLY! It's the TBS equivalent of the RTS rush. My first few test runs left me thinking: "Hey, no way in heck these civs aren't cheating!" But then I realized that you start off the game with about 2,000 in the bank.

"Ahh! I can be like the U.S. government and ignore a balanced budget!"

Sure enough. I move the global econ sliders (very nice that you think globally not locally) for maximum military spending --which is what all ship-building falls under, even for colony ships. I now saw that instead of taking 16-20 turns for a colony ship, I could crank one out on a good planet at like 3-5. O.K. Things make a bit more sense now. Even still, them darn aliens are on the best planets faster than you could imagine.

"Ahh! I can also rush build a colony ship!" That's a nice option to remember when it's absolutely crucial to claim some planets.

Now that I could keep pace somewhat with the colony rush, I felt much better about the aliens and could see that, indeed, they were not cheating. There were, rather, executing highly optimized AI scripts. I wondered, though, if that would mean inflexible, predictable AI behavior later on?

Well, before I could get that far, I had to ponder how techs work in the game. These, too, are wonderfully strategic choices! After trying an approach of "Wow, lots of neat techs! Let's learn them all!" approach. Buzz! Wrong answer.

It became harshly clear as I watched my relative power fall through the floor compared to my neighbors that I was doing something wrong. You simply don't become a Jack of All Trades in this game...at least not early on. Rather, as I am discovering, you focus on a strategy and become a specialist in that area, craftily trading for, buying, and stealing other techs as needed. In other words, STRATEGY!

My strategy so far has been to go for the influence/trade angle. I figured this would be the easiest in gameplay terms, and I also wanted to test to see if this non-war method would actually play well, since most every game that claims such a victory is possible has failed to deliver.

My test in my last game (which made me late to work this morning!) was to go 100% on tech/trading advancements and leave no ships to defend myself. I wanted to see if the bad guys (I was playing 'good' by making 'good' decisions on the various moral dilemmas the game throws at you) would be opportunistic. They should, right?

I was stunned, in fact, to see that way that the Yor (think: Borg) eventually found their way to me. They were seeded on the entire other side of the galaxy from me, thank God, which gave me some time to breathe. Cleverly, they didn't simply declare war on everybody at once. Rather, they formed an alliance and took on the goody-goody civs, the other human civ.

For a while, I was content to let the goody-goody dudes take a beating. Then it hit me: Wait, if those guys fall, I'm next!!! So I call goody-goody on the phone and say: "Hey, dudes. Here is some money and tech. I've also whipped up some fighters for ya. Go to work. Best of luck. And if anybody asks, I'm not at war with the Yor, O.K.?"

While I couldn't see the immediate effects of this since I didn't have look out in the relevant sectors --mental note: work on that-- it must not have been enough because sure enough the Yor started threatening me. For a while at least I had hoped to keep them liking me by establishing a trade route. In fact, it does seem that alien civs, no matter how evil they are, still love money. It's not that they still don't want to rip your head off, mind you, it's just that if you are a good source of their income, they'll rip it off last!

Sadly, as I hadn't gotten the hang of bonus modifying star bases down yet, my trade route with them was worth a pittance. Now, I knew, I'd be in trouble. Sure enough, the Yor call me and say some such things like "Time to die."

Keep in mind I had no ships on me at this point, so I used my big stores of cash and immediately produced about 12 of the best ships I could find. Suddenly my military might graph shoots up to close to that of the Yor! A few turns later they call me back and say: "On second thought, let's not fight...it's so tiring."

Great! The AI noticed (or so it seemed, anyway) my beefed up military and decided to leave me alone a moment while it worked further on some other civs. But here's the problem: Now I had huge upkeep costs for all those ships. I was going into debt fast! Not only that, but some of my trade routes were getting killed off because of on-going war in those far-off sectors. It seems that, indeed, by not helping keep the peace or protecting my frigates, I had been sitting back sowing the seeds of my own economic headaches...

What a wonderfully fun challenge to balance this all!

So, a few hours ago I stopped the game and came to work. As I read somewhere else by a beta tester, I, too, find myself thinking about how best to dig myself out of the hole I'm in. For the moment I have a scary fleet of ships, but I can't afford to upkeep them. My cultural influence plan is in good sted, but I realized there are but a few planets in my sector that might defect to me anyway. So that won't help -- in my next game, I'm going to go for a Cultural Bomb strategy by placing more cultural power in an enemy sector to see what will happen...

My gut tells me I've lost my window of opportunity this round. I didn't support my buffer civs early on when it might have mattered. Now not even my trade routes are safe. I'm relegated to being the fat pig in the galactic corner waiting to be slaughtered--and I love it! I did some things right, but not enough, and the AI seems absolutely adept at setting me up to die for it. I'm on normal difficulty by the way. All AI's are at normal. I fear what happens as I notch that up!

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't mentioned the game UI, etc. In fact, that's not because it's perfect. Actually, I see much, much room in the way the interface could be improved...I won't bore you with them now, but there are significant annoyances that you have to train yourself to work around (screens that should logically pop up in places don't, selecting things that should be easy is counter-intuitive in places, cumbersome counter-negotiating interface, etc.).

But you know what? So far at least, the core gameplay seems so well done that I hardly noticed the UI problems. To me, that's the sign of a hugely promising game. Yes, it needs tuning. But the 450 horse power engine is already in place, and the body work can be done over the next few months. Brad, like Johan at Paradox, is set to upgrade this already stable, challenging game for the next year!

However, I refuse to get too giddy here. There are still some issues I need to test. For example, will the Yor always follow so closely to its script that I can 'counter-script' it into easy submission? One hopes the AI updates Brad will take from actual human play over the coming months will help with this. But who knows?

The one thing I *do* know so far is that it will take me several more tries before I begin to feel in control on normal level. And I know that to be in control I'll need to use some real thinking and real strategy to be successful. And once I've done that, I raise the AI level to see if it's really all that much harder. And if it is, I then randomize the AI behavior so that I truly will have to react on-the-fly as the galaxy opens (or closes) before me.

Well, this is not a review yet, but very few games in the past couple of years have shown such sound under-the-hood strategy as GalCiv seems to hold. Yeah, to address an oft-thrown complaint, I miss some tactical combat and ship configuration type stuff... but then again: Think of Battle Chess a moment:

Do you really care if you can watch an animated queen squash a pawn? Sure, that's fun for a few moments (though being able to attach some cool rock-scissor-paper type weapons on that pawn might be fun!). In the same way with Gal Civ, what you don't get in tactical play, you more than make up for in grand strategizing. And it has been a long while since I've had that against human players let alone again an AI!

In other words, GalCiv follows in its design the same way of thinking you've got to employ in the game itself: Pick your strengths and utilize them to maximum benefit!

More later...

[MarkG]

many thanks for your view yin, keep it coming!
btw, can you please not use the quote tag in your signature? thanks

[Lemmy]

Good to see you liking it...you are after all the negative cosmic force around here.

I guess these stories is all i have for now...it will be a while before it comes to retail over here.

[ChaotikVisions]

Good review in progress, keep it coming. Still unsure about the game right now after the Orion Sector review, think i'll probably wait for the demo and try it.


Oh and btw on the AI expanding thing, they do get a "cheat". They start with all of the map explored or at least a good portion around them explored. This cheat is written off as part of the story, but its probably one of the main things boosting AI quick expansion to good systems.

[yin26]

Ah, I didn't know about that 'cheat' -- which does explain some of what I saw. Brad has, however, given a nice hotkey: ctrl+N

This will regenerate the galaxy without having to restart a game. So if you get totally hosed at the start, you can re-seed. I actually don't mind the AI seeing more at the start since, as you say, it's part of the story, and as a person gets better, the extra challenge this presents is a good one.

I think you *can* match them early on for the most part, but you've got to be creative on how to do it...like using your lab ship as a scout the first few turns if needed instead of checking on visible anamolies, etc.

[Eric S]

Lemmy, if you don't mind paying with a credit card, buying it from StarDock directly isn't a bad option. The game itself is 78MB, with another 7MB for the bonus pack. Download those, then play while you download the multimedia pack, which contains the music, the cut scenes, etc. Game works fine without them, just isn't as pretty.

[Lemmy]

I'd have to get a credit card first.

[Alex]

Nice review in progress, Yin. Old civers never die...

Keep it coming, as the others said.

[Tuberski]

I see that one of the things that people complained about in Civ 3, "Settler Diarhea" makes another appearance. It doesn't bother me, just seems kind of funny.

BTW, do you have to buy the game online?

ACK!

[vee4473]

I had the same reaction about the reported aggressive ai colonization. The FIRST thing that popped into my head was civ3.

But, it seems so far that it is handled differently in galciv...

You can buy it at stores. I haven't looked for it yet...I will tomorrow I think, so I am not sure of availability.

Perhaps there should be a "galciv sightings" thread along the lines of the one for moo3.

[CiverDan]

At least there is some strategy to it. You have to make a choice of cranking up your military production or Rushing. In my first game I rushed, but there was few good systems and I knew it wouldnt kill me economically.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by yin26


First thing you notice is that the alien civs expand QUICKLY! It's the TBS equivalent of the RTS rush. My first few test runs left me thinking: "Hey, no way in heck these civs aren't cheating!" But then I realized that you start off the game with about 2,000 in the bank.

Yin, good post, but do you think that the ai expansion in galciv is akin to civ3? Where the ai popped up cities wherever there was land available, or does it seem more controlled? or a result of the "credit" system?

[yin26]

First, a shout out to my Poly homies. I haven't posted much in a long while, so it's good to see you guys...

Yin, good post, but do you think that the ai expansion in galciv is akin to civ3? Where the ai popped up cities wherever there was land available, or does it seem more controlled? or a result of the "credit" system?

Ah, yes, "Settler Diarrhea." I remember using that phrase about Civ3 in disgust because the AI in Civ3 would actually expand to its own detriment (settling in completely untenable places that were sure to be culturally flipped in any event); the Civ3 expansion also completely ignored (I don't know if this was ever patched or not) your borders: enemy settlers would just walk through your borders to that tiny tile of tundra on your primary homeland. Sure, it presented no real threat, but it was hugely annoying (to me, anyway) that the AI would totally disregard your borders AND mess up its own economy with investments in doomed settling.

GalCiv is entirely different: First, the AI's expansion is very savvy. It seeks the best planets first (in several systems at once) and it's vicious at establishing its presence. And while there are no borders in space (though each sector does fight influence battles behind the scenes), the AI cannot colonize a system you're already in. So if you've got that first great planet of 4 in a system, the AI can't simply come in a take the other 3. You own the whole system as long as you don't have it taken away in war. This leads to some very tense early turns in which claiming choice real estate is often a matter of arriving a turn earlier/later than the AI. It's very satisfying to get to an awesome system just a turn before the AI does ... and similarly frustrating to be beat out! So the start of GalCiv in this regard is actually its own very interesting mini-game. Add the survey ship race to find bonuses floating in space (think Goody Huts), and it's just a wonderful mad dash all around. I'll write more on this below.

Where the term "Settler Diarrhea" is more appropriate in GalCiv is in regards to the star bases, which truly are the settler units in the game since they can be placed anywhere a space is open on the map. And here again the AI is simply ruthless in using these things. To explain a bit: You develop constructor ships (settlers) that, you hope, will have nearby space resources to land on. If you land on such a resource and start a star base, you automatically get a bonus of some type (+%5 research, for example). But it goes beyond that. If you continue to dock more constructor ships on this site, you get to dedicate them to tasks (mining, trade, culture, for example) that will give further bonuses. These, therefore, form the primary *peaceful* means of gaining dominance in various areas. So once the dash for settlement is over (or even still hot) you've got to make concerted and strategic decisions about star base placement and specialization: Are you going to ramp up military or culture bonuses, for example? And will you dedicate yourself entirely to constructor production and risk not getting an early defense ship or two in place? It's risk to ignore one or the other. More on this as well in my game example below.

So what happens when you or the AI 'push' these star bases on each other? As you'll see below, it's a serious matter for both sides...

Last night I went home after a day 'at work' -- sure, I was at my desk, but most of my mental energy went into planning what I'd do differently in my next game of GalCiv.

This time around I really maxed out the colony rush! Ah, it brought tears to my eyes. I took a calculated risk by rush-buying colony ships on credit...yes, credit. When you choose to rush-buy something, you have 4 choices, represented by 4 'companies'. The first company will accept a large lump sum payment to build the ship by the next turn. The last company will take a much smaller up front payment but will then have you on lease for several turns past that, costing you more in the long-run, of course!

I figured what the heck and put all my eggs in the credit basket and got multiple colony ships on target in blinding time. This, I now see, is how the AI can pepper space so quickly with these important ships. The upshot here is I had the absolute choicest planets claimed in no time. Not only that, but I had claimed some choice systems *right next* to my nearest enemy ... I had beaten his colony ships by a single turn. In my mind, this meant he was going to meet certain death down the line. I had choked him off some of the best stuff in his own sector. Turns out, though, he'd find a way out of it...

With such a great start, I began my 'Culture Bomb' strategy by building star bases in the enemy sector on an important resource. I also added trade to this with this enemy so he'd be less inclined to go to war with me on his own. That was the thinking, anyway. Slowly but surely I began to dominate the culture war, and I was well on my way to having some of his planets 'flip' in my favor. The result?

Before that, though, it's important to address how I managed to get out of my financial hole I purposely put myself in early on: Since part of my strategy involved becoming the master diplomat, the other civs were always very happy to trade with me on good terms. So I did the 'shop tech A you just got from Civ A to Civ B...repeat down the line.' This allowed me to be the front-runner in tech-dealing, and through this I managed to get large sums of cash coming into me spanned over several turns of payments. The greatest cash cow came with a minor civ, to whom I sold about 14 techs at 500 b.c. a turn for 30 or more turns! To give you and idea what an enormous sum that is, even a lump sum payment of 100 b.c. is considered a significant boost to your economy in the early game.

So, I had tons of money, booming cultural influence, expanding trade, star bases growing like mad. Surely I couldn't lose, right? Wrong.

I had counted on my nearest enemy to simply be swallowed up by my great early expansion. I also knew that he was a neutral race and would have no innate reason to hate me...yes, if you can believe it, the AI actually "thinks" in these terms! It's awesome. Yet, he attacked me and knocked me on my backside. Why? How?

Why:

Two primary reasons, the first being my star base push was posing a serious threat to him and I hadn't built any military up to this point. So when he attacked, he specifically said something like "Your puny military might forces us to force you into extinction." You read the right: the AI specifically saw my weakness and went for it...hard.

You see, that cornered AI had been springing a trap on me, the sleeping giant. While I was happy to put all my resources into star bases, etc., he was focusing on military tech and assault ships. His first attack came on my biggest, meatiest star base! Keep in mind, hundreds upon hundreds of 'dollars' had gone into expanding it...but I hadn't invested in its defensive capabilities, nor had I put defensive ships to protect it. *boom* in a single turn, it was gone. Dead. 2 more star bases followed that same fate as I called up my military governor and had all planets switch military production to making corvettes, which I thought would do well enough, thank you very much.

I also took a lesson from my previous mistakes and bribed other civs to join in on my side. Yes, this was expensive, but keep in mind my huge cash reserves! Problem here, too, was that this attacking civ was in a corner next to *me*. Ooops, what I had seen as an advantage early on was now a huge problem: I had let a poisonous snake grow large and mean right in my own backyard, and it would take several turns for the other civs to arrive here to help.

After losing all my corvettes in 2 turns (you see, though they are good ships and all, my military tech was too far behind to fight in any meaningful way), my best system was overrun by ground troops. Within perhaps 6 turns, my might economic empire was reduced to a 3rd-rate civ. Seeing this, one of my own (highly bribed) allies called for peace with this attacking civ. Bastards! They obviously saw that I was going to be of no help in the war, so they pulled out while they could. Genius.

Still sitting on a large cash reserve, I called up my attackers and begged for peace. Oh, the humiliation! Here I had taken his best planets and was choking him to death with my culture bomb strategy...only to realize now that my entirely unbalanced gamble cost me everything. With a huge payment to him, hostilities ceased. But I was just a fraction of what I had been. I do think I could have stayed in the game from that point (it's a testament that you can bounce back if you're smart about it), but the night was late and I shook hands with the AI: "Thanks, AI, for kicking my rear."

Lessons learned here:

* While I knew this from my RTS experience (Age of Empires), you don't want to sit on cash. Spend it! Ideally, you're spending money as quickly as you make it. Money in the bank is money that could have been spent rush-buying defense or bribing civs much earlier in the game to go to war with that cornered civ before he actually gets strong enough to break out. Money sitting there is simply money sitting there. Make it work for you before it merely becomes a way to beg for peace...

* Specializing is great and all, but you've got to have your bases covered (literally!). If this means bribing a strong man to do your dirty work, great. If this means buying the latest ships off of that militarily superior civ, great. But don't sit there like a fat duck or you'll be dinner!

I am so far completely astounded at this AI's ability to poke at your weaknesses and exploit them. So, tonight I will have to go back and try to put to use some of my lessons learned. Having to balance my strategy in those ways will make the game far more rewarding, I'm sure.

There will be very few (if any) turns that will go by in which I won't be actively working on parts of my plan. And for that to happen in a TBS ... to be fully involved at each stage of the game ... is a testament to what I see shaping up to be a simply superb strategic gameplay experience.

[KingSponge]

yin, that was one heck of game review. Thanks! While Brad's (the designer/developer) own gameplay examples are what inspired me to preorder the game (gogamer.com still doesn't have them in...argh!), your review as a customer instills confidence in the purchase.

Ya know what...I'm gonna cancel my preorder and run to EB on my lunch break. Screw it, I can't wait anymore.

[yin26]

KingSponge:

LOL! Excellent! You should be back from lunch any time now...please come back here to contribute your 'review in progress' as I'd like to know what your first impressions are.

I should go on record, of course, in saying that my thoughts here are being written as they come after just a few plays of the game. However, it really does seem like the underlying AI is so promising that, along with the already edvident support from Brad, that it will indeed get better.

Another thing I should say is that GalCiv is a simple game. Of course, simple does *not* mean easy, as you see from my reports above. Rather, I think Brad understands perfectly that in order to make a strong AI, you've got to limit the number of factors in play. So there is no customizing ships, for example. Sure, that kind of sucks, but the AI can therefore employ much better strategy. The same for economics: These are global decisions that don't allow for player exploits (or, I should say, leave the exploits just as open to the AI). The whiz-bang stuff is also dropped, leaving more CPU cycles for the AI.

I've heard GalCiv called the chess-man's 4X strategy game. This seems a fair assesment so far, and as an old-schooler myself who could really care less about zippy graphics in my strategy games, GalCiv is focused just where I would want it to be: On an AI that, without cheating, is making me play a smart game plan.

[Draginol]

Yin,

if you can put your AAR into a single file, I'll put it up on GalCiv.com.

[Eric S]

Originally posted by ChaotikVisions
Oh and btw on the AI expanding thing, they do get a "cheat". They start with all of the map explored or at least a good portion around them explored. This cheat is written off as part of the story, but its probably one of the main things boosting AI quick expansion to good systems.

Actually, they don't start with the map explored, they only know the type of each star. They still have to go to each star and look to see if it has any planets, it's just able to prioritize checking out the stars better than we can.

I find it odd that something that Humanity can do NOW we can't do at the start of the game, 175 years in the future.

[yin26]

Hey, the man himself!

Do you mean a file as in a .txt file or just all this stuff posted here put, say, in an e-mail? I do hope to keep adding to it over the next few days as well, but I'll send ya whatever you want (or post it an a given thread at GalCiv) if it helps people who are looking for the gamer's perspective on what seems to a top-notch game.

P.S.

Can I mention that the way you dealt with a particular poster demanding a refund because of downloading issues was masterful? You side-stepped his (understandable but overdone) anger by admitting he has a right to a refund given his feelings. You even contacted support to take care of the refund yourself. Next reply from him?

"Sorry. I was a jerk. Please don't give me a refund. I really want to play this game."

LOL! Superb...

[yin26]

I find it odd that something that Humanity can do NOW we can't do at the start of the game, 175 years in the future.

True, but where's the sense of adventure in that!? At least you can see the planet positions on the mini-map, which is a bone thrown in this direction.

By the way, Brad: Is there any option to turn off seeing the planet positions in the mini-map? I'd like to start my games completely blind (well, blinder than I typically am, that is).

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Tuberski
I see that one of the things that people complained about in Civ 3, "Settler Diarhea" makes another appearance. It doesn't bother me, just seems kind of funny.

As others have pointed out here, "Settler Diarhea" was a derogatory term in which the AI wasn't being more effective, but rather less effective and more annoying.

The only time I've seen the GalCiv AIs drop a colony in a bad position was when there were no good positions, and the AI had so few colonies that even a bad one was better than nothing. The poor Alterian AI in my current game is in such a bad position that he doesn't even culturally own the sector his home system is in.

You don't see very many colony ships moving through your area to snatch that one nice planet on the opposite side of the empire, either, because ships , including the colony ship, is limited in how far it can go from an existing colony, similar to MoO 2. This is one reason to expand towards the other races first, then fill in behind you, assuming you have a "behind you."

[Lemmy]

I find it odd that something that Humanity can do NOW we can't do at the start of the game, 175 years in the future.

That's not completely true, we can only 'see' the big gas giants now, and who would llike to live on a gas planet
And even if we could detect earthlike planets, we'd still have to know about the living conditions on the planet, which is even harder then just seeing them.

[Malleus]

I assume he meant the Stellar Cartography advance. I have never researched it. It's a bit silly...by the time it is available, the whole map has been explored.

And he is right. We know the star color and content of thousands of stars, including all of the nearby ones.

M

[velkoris]

I have quite enjoyed my first two games, but I do have one bad comment though.

I think the whim of the random event is way way way way too harsh.

In the first game, I had the clear military leadership, and was happily slapping a neighboring civ down into the dust, when a random event gave them a precursor ranger, which then casually demolished my entire fleet, all my starbases and my tradeships in about 4 turns.

The second game, my early fleet was crushed by the random appearance of 4 prison battlecruisers on about turn 20, it not being a total wipeout only because my hero ship was on the other side of the galaxy exploring. When they eventually got bored and went to torment someone else, I managed to do quite well until yet another random event made one of my planets be taken over by a precursor dictator with a fleet of overlord ships which, again, ran around and smashed my civ back into the stoneage ( including my 400 turn to build starbase aaaaargh ).

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by yin26
Ah, I didn't know about that 'cheat' -- which does explain some of what I saw. Brad has, however, given a nice hotkey: ctrl+N

This will regenerate the galaxy without having to restart a game. So if you get totally hosed at the start, you can re-seed. I actually don't mind the AI seeing more at the start since, as you say, it's part of the story, and as a person gets better, the extra challenge this presents is a good one.

Did the reset ctrl+N come with the bonus pack as I do not see it in the manual?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by velkoris
I have quite enjoyed my first two games, but I do have one bad comment though.

I think the whim of the random event is way way way way too harsh.

I would like to be able to turn of random events, I hate them in games.

[Gelvan]

Concerning Random events: they were made to support the feeling that every time you play it, it's a new game.

Somewhere on the homepage I've read something, that such "uber" random events will be announced, so you should get a message like "on planet x there might be some old relics" way before the opponent becomes his ranger. Therefore you should focus on getting this planet BEFORE the actual event takes place.

BUT - I haven't got the game yet, therefore I don't know if it truely gives you hints about 'WHAT WILL BE HAPPEN', or if this was a feature not impemented in the end.

Still they said it would be in:

Q: How do “random events” help the game? Sometimes games have random events that completely mess up the game. How are you going to avoid that?

A: Like our AI, the events that occur in GalCiv have intelligence behind them. While the event itself is chosen randomly, how it is actually played out in the game is not. It calculates out the event such that the event won’t have an over powering effect on the game while at the same time not being trivial.

For instance, we DO NOT have events like “Your power plant has exploded taking out planet Y” in GalCiv. That’s the sort of stuff that’s just frustrating because there’s nothing you could do about that.

Instead, something like that would be handled as a growing terrorist threat that you could deal with and the longer it goes without being dealt with (by someone, not just you because these events don’t make a distinction between you and other players) the worse it gets. For example, one event might come up and talk about how some minor thing got destroyed by a group called the “Calorians”. Well if you look on the map hard enough, you’ll find that there’s a planet called Calor that is a minor race that wasn’t there before. If you or someone else takes it over, then the problems caused by these guys goes away. If they’re allowed to linger, things get tougher. But you always have the ability to avoid or prevent anything that could be really game changing.

The choices you make in GalCiv combined with the status of the galaxy help determine how these events get played out so that they fit into the unique story of each game.

[velkoris]

Somewhere on the homepage I've read something, that such "uber" random events will be announced, so you should get a message like "on planet x there might be some old relics" way before the opponent becomes his ranger. Therefore you should focus on getting this planet BEFORE the actual event takes place.

Weeel, yes and no.

For the events :
Enemy finds Ranger - No warning on this one at all.

Prison Ship Attack - Not a specific warning, but for future I would be aware of the possibility as the senate voted me into having ownership of a galactic penal colony some time earlier. ( How the escaped prisoners managed to steal some battlecruisers to escape in is somewhat of a mystery given I hadn't even researched corvettes at that point and I was galactic research leader ;p )

Overlord takes over planet - This one gave a warning several turns before happening ( Evil presence sensed, oncoming doom blah blah suggest you abandon colony ) but still, a destroy one of your most prosperous planets or be wiped out is, imo, a ridiculous special event.

[Jamski]

Trade it for something good?

-Jam

[Urban Ranger]

Hey Yin, good to have you back. It was great the way you heckled them other guys during World Cup

So you are at Yale now? How goes?

[yin26]

UR: Good to see ya! LOL, yes, the World Cup thread. That was hilarious! Thanks for the reminder. Yale is awesome. I'm completely engrossed in my job ... except for the past few days with this GalCiv thing, of course. I hope you are well.

Well, I played some more last night and put my lessons to good use:

This time I decided to rush-buy anything that took more than a handful of turns to make. As you might imagine, this has put me in a lease hole that I might never pay off. As it stands, I've got like 100b.c. in lease payments each *month*! On the flip side, I'd got a huge advantage over most civs in most areas. Yes, this time I not only made a military, but it's the strongest in the galaxy...so I attacked my neighbor just for fun, taking one of his systems and am working on the next.

Some thoughts:

It seems to me that it is entirely too easy to use the lease thing to huge advantage because of the way diplomacy works in the game. Again, I'm only on normal difficulty, so perhaps this issue is not so pronounced at higher levels.

Basically I sent a scout out ASAP to find other civs so I could start tech trading from the get-go. Unlike previous games, I did *not* trade away the Universal Translator, so unless they researched it themselves (some seem not to!), they couldn't engage in trade with other civs (I'm assuming this is the case at least).

Long story short, between the major civs and the one minor civ, I not only covered all my leases but am again swimming in cash! Now, I completely understand that at some point the Love Fest will end and I'll be strapped with huge lease payments that could wreck me.

But in the meantime, I've such an advantage over my neighbor that I'm easily gobbling up his planets. I wonder why it's so easy to make money off tech trades...? Well, since I haven't played a game to completion (other than losing, of course), I'll need to sit on these worries a moment, but is awfully curious to me that the other civs don't seem to be aggressive in their own trading of tech. I hope, again, this might be tied to difficulty level.

And now that I'm actually launching an attack on somebody, I'm finding the pacing of space travel a bit taxing. Perhaps I just missed a key tech., but my troop transport will only move 1 square per turn at this stage...so to take over that system 15 squares away took 15 turns just to get there.

I understand, of course, that since troop transports represent the incoming occupying force you want to give the defender a decent chance at intercepting it, otherwise the game would be a sneak attack fest with much less strategy involved. Having said that, at least semi-early on, the pacing of warfare is a little too deliberate as a function of ships not being able to move much in a single turn. And this is against my neighbor!

Here again, though, I'm happy to be told that later techs will greatly address this issue. It certainly will have to because those pesky Yor are WAY over on the other side of the map ... and its a small map at that.

One quick note back on the transports: My neighbor tried to retake his first lost planet by sending over troops ... but he did not protect the transports at all, resulting in easy kill. Might this also be a factor of the difficulty level? Needless to say, I had a few moments of panic as I thought: "Darn, this otherwise great AI seems to be doing the trickle attack thing...I hope that's not the problem."

It's not that the AI didn't have some ships nearby. He had a stack of 4 starfighters, but they got confused at to whether to attack *my* transports, my ships, or what. Or so it seemed.

Well, some cautionary flags have been raised in my mind, but it's too early to tell in this game how things will go. Will the leases eventually crush me? Will other civs gang up on me and then attack in force if I don't pay careful attention to alliances ... ?

The good news here is that even if these truly are _problems_ with the trade and AI, they seem infinitely fixable. So with Brad on standby for the next year, I'm happily not feeling so uptight that things are set in stone here. And, hey, it could be that once I install the bonus pack and subsequent updates, coupled with a notch up in difficulty, that I'll find myself happily getting my rear handed to me again.

Here's to my defeat!