I just like how he combines "ethnical" and "eliminate". That's so evil!

Seriously: I agree that good civs are hampered by the game - unless you do a lot of evil and buy yourself a white vest (which is just like Bill G., btw).
I don't think tat complicated details and new game mechanics are the answer though.
There is no real reason why evil civs like each other - punish them diplomatically/influence-wise and you've got it simple and realistic at the same time (and don't give me the Axis of Evil rhetorics - that's just propaganda)

This is a really stupid question, but tactical battles means you actually decide what the ships on the Battle Screen does, rather allowing for the computer as now?

I'd love a more developed Diplomatic choices.

I am aware very few are interested in multiplayer, I would though be in the small minority who wants, if only to be able to play with my best friend.

So yes, I'd pay for several more expansion packs, including a MP expansion.

Sincerly,
TIP

A somewhat off topic request: a Twilight of the Arnor AAR from Frogboy.

i think that's what's most players mean when they use the phrase. though i don't think it necessarily needs to mean the player controls every single action. personally i'd much rather have tactical battles work like football. you start in a specific formation and with certain actions and goals in mind, but once the action gets going each player (ship) has to use discretion, on-the-spot judgement and make use of every opportunity (a good player anyway).

IMO this is also more realistic for a tactical battle. the pace of battle wouldn't allow the admiral of a fleet to micromanage every ship's action. a few orders could be sent out to modify the plan - unless of course the enemey were jamming transmissions - but i don't think the kind of management in MoO2 is realistic, and it'd also help keep the pace of battles from becomming tedious.

I would really love a regular series of expansions. Even if I did not love every one, I would probably buy them all (love tactical combat, hate multiplayer but would buy them both.) I would even love to see minimum effort expansions like MOD packs and scenario packs filled with player generated MODs and scenarios. packs like this would keep the game fresh, and on the radar of the gaming sites until the next release is ready. The only downside that I can see from this is someone will eventually accuse you of nickle and diming people to death. I think that that can be dealt with.

Scincerely,
Scintor

The game mechanics not being as you would like them, however, doesn't mean that this is some sort of "Bug" that needs to be "fixed."

Your earlier post makes it sound like there are objective problems with the game in which we owe players an explanation for not "fixing". 

Every design choice we make will always have some percentage of players who disagree with it.  But that doesnt' make the design choice some sort of bug to be fixed.

I'd be up for one more expansion.

I'd like to see an expanded UP and more diplomatic options, as well as have some new random events/colonization events, and have it where the player can choose between if he'd rather build the most advanced building of a certain type or one of the less advanced buildings of that same type.

It would appear that my arguement against a dozen or so expansions backfired. Apparently I need to work on my choice of words, and how I phrase things.



No, you don't owe us an explaination. I never said that you did, though I did ask for one. You don't need to provide one if you don't want to.

In any case, would it be to much to ask to get a "disable random events" button much like how we have the "disable minor races" button?

________________
I appolagize if I came across as rude or was somehow offensive. I don't always percieve these things. I can be overly critical at times, but its never my intent to be mean.

Evil races should not get a diplo bonus with each other.

NLC's do need to be nerfed some I think as well.

hi Brad, did you notice my input on the subject, reply #57? i'd be interested to hear your feedback on my thoughts, especially since you handle the AI.

I'm fairly new to the game, so I might be a slightly different voice than others.. I dunno. I would definitely buy expansion packs up to a point (probably 5 is the most that is reasonable), and would especially like to see the following things improved:

Economy: ?!? I really dislike the current sliders approach. Maybe make each slider individually say how well it will be funded (all 3 being 100% as an option), but feeling like I am hurting myself by not doing an all factory or all labs strategy kinda hurts.

Campaigns: I like storylines, but I wish there was more story and less repetitive building up/doing the same thing over and over. Would love to see more streamlining in the campaigns to make them more "fun". Admittedly, I haven't made it to the DA ones so perhaps this is already happening. But I do get frustrated having to essentially play the sandbox in a constrained environment over and over. I feel campaigns should be more like a starcraft mission, where things happen and a story is told rather than an intro box of text, a contrained sandbox game, and a concluding box of text.

Metaverse: would love to see the metaverse system improved. There should be lots of more ways to compete, similar to altmeta but taken even further. I especially dislike the penalty for playing lots of smaller games rather than a few really huge ones. Imo, smaller games are more fun.. so why should I feel pressured to play a less fun game to score higher?

Tactical combat: Actually, like multiplayer I don't think this is a good idea. It would be too hard to make the AI do well, so those who choose to micro this will do better than those who don't. Lets leave it out. However, it would be fun to have ship vs ship battles and ESPECIALLY planetary invasions redone to be prettier.

Anyways, guess that got sort of long. But I really love what you have done with GCII, and hadn't found a good game of this type since MOO2. I will play and buy expansions, but I do hope to see GCIII someday as there is a limit to how long expansions can substitute for rebuilding from scratch.

Vilgan

Apart from what we can already anticipate from Twilight of the Arnor (and if these features won't be present as part of the "plus more!" in its description,) the only things I can think of that would make the game even more of a joy to play would be:

1) A greater number of normal and mega events, or a greater frequency for those which are already present. After enough games, these often end up being the moments that vary the challenge or add spice to the galactic pageant.

2) A greater consequence or consequences for selecting ethical alignment. The unique projects and bonuses, as well as AI disposition changes are not insubstantial; however a healthy dose of immersion might be added by scripted progressive "mini-narratives" such as rising tensions or specific galactic events with moral implications into which ethical alignments played.

3) If not the Epic Generator, something less complex to catalogue our accomplishments and defeats, even if it were limited to an end-game timeline indicating when invasions, defeats, surrenders, important mega events, etc. all occurred.

4) An option to continue playing following victory. This might seem pointless, but it's a fun pursuit of mine in games like the Civ series. It would be fun to converse with AI races and have them use scripted comments acknowledging your victory i.e. "Greetings, peace bringer. The galaxy sure is a much safer place since you united all of us!" in the case of a diplomatic victory, or, "What? Is someone there? It's grown suddenly warm in here, and I seem to hear someone speaking in my mind...hey! Get out of my head! Argh!" for the tech victory.

Might I suggest a storyline:

'The proponent race' (player choice), at the beginning of the turmoil of the Hyperdrive expansion (or perhaps near the end of the Dark Lords campaign), siezes the opportunity to send a special long range colonial flotilla through a massive transient wormhole, for the preservation of the race if things go completely sour in the home cluster.

They are thrown to another galactic neighborhood, possibly to another galaxy altogether (the mystery about that can be part of the storyline). They have to find a home, deal with local races, and possibly, ultimately, find a connection back to the home cluster. Who will be in charge there. Did the reach of the Precursors extend to this new area? Are there other precursors, or their artifacts?

Perhaps instead of an ordinary colonist, the safe haven flotilla has the 1st ever mobile starbase, or a hollowed asteroid, and they can opt for a space based culture.

etc, etc.

drrider

An alternate path might be that the safe haven team were tossed in TIME, and they wind up competing to BECOME the Precursors, or they wind up competing with familiar but decendant cultures long after the Dread Lords war.

Any of the above might happen when you go through the wormhole on Turn 1; be prepared to cope.

drrider

Eh, as far as I'm concerned, you could take it a step further (or in this case less) than expansion packs, and offer mini-expansions or micropayments. For example, I'd be willing to dish out 5 bucks for more ship jewlry, or for a decent starbase manager, or for a new race or campaign, or for hot-seat ability. I'd really love the option of being able to pick and choose what I want, and not being forced to buy 2 or 3 expansions for stuff I didn't want. 40 bucks per expansion isn't alot, I know, but it's kinda a principal of the matter thing. In fact, I'd probably wind up spending more than 40 bucks worth of 'extras'. Maybe some combination of expansions and micropayments are in order...

The key point for me is that an "expansion pack" has to live up to its name and actually expand the gameplay. Dark Avatar certainly did this and Twilight of the Arnor looks promising.

If there are ways to keep successfully expanding the gameplay then I'm all for expansion packs. However, if the focus of an expansion pack is just going to be rebalancing and/or new content that doesn't add to the gameplay, then it is probably time to start on the sequel.

I'd definitely go for some more expansion packs. I enjoy galciv II a lot, but with some attention in certain areas it could make the leap from enjoyable to ridiculously fun.

The area that comes to mind for me is the combat system. In a sequel I'd love to see interactive combat, but for an expansion I think it'd really help to just have a slightly more involved system. Not a lot, not too complicated, but small changes, like a variable for miss-chance so that the giant space guns aren't hosing tiny hulls that are smaller than the bullets being fired. Things like support ships for extending fleet range, etc.

I really like the small tweaks to the combat system made in the latest expansion, as well as asteroid mining, hostile world colonization and the like. Things like that go a long way to enhancing the overall experience.

If they expand the gameplay as much as DA, absolutely .



As long as they don't go crazy with the idea, I might be open to it. One thing I don't want is to have to buy hundreds of things to get the game to where I like it. Quite frankly, though, I'm one of those people who really doesn't want one or two things - I want to get everything I can. Quite often, when things are split into lots of pieces, it gets very expensive to buy everything. I guess I'm opposed to such a system.

And I definitely do not want to have any "subscription" items where you have to keep paying for it to use it. I've played a MMORPG called "Silkroad" where you have to keep re-buying a very useful "pet" every month to keep using it. It's pretty annoying and a drain on the wallet. Eventually I just stopped paying to renew the pet - it wasn't worth the hassle and eternal money drain.


As far as good vs evil, I think it should generally go like this:

Good:
+Greater long term benefits
+Large benefit on the civilization as a whole
-Lesser short term benefits, maybe even short term drawbacks
-Lesser benefit on individual planets or ships

Evil:
+Greater short term benefits
+Greater benefits on individual planets or ships
-Lesser long term benefits, maybe even long term drawbacks
-Lesser benefits on the civilization as a whole

Neutral would, of course, be somewhere in the middle of all of the positives and negatives.

. . . and that's generally how good vs evil works, even in real life - evil things may produce short term benefits that usually affect the individual, but always hurt society (and even the individual) in the long run, especially if repeated.

For example, stealing stuff from a store may produce short term benefits for a single person, but take into account that a lot of people are stealing and that it is often repeated: It eats into the costs of running the business, inflates prices for honest consumers, and ultimately hurts society as a whole.

Obviously "good" wouldn't be good if there weren't any benefits. There are both benefits to society and to the individual. In my stealing example: If stealing is lessened, it will mean lower prices and produce long term financial benefits for both the business and consumer. Also, there's a clear but often overlooked benefit to the individual: There's no risk in getting "caught" if you never did anything wrong in the first place. People who are good are very unlikely to have the law breathing down their backs. Sound pretty trivial to me, but I'm surprised how many people forget that.


Anyways, yes, I'd be very interested in future expansions . So far, it's been a great game and I definitely look forward to future developments.

I want more expansions rather than waiting until 2010! Just do this:

"For example, I would be open to revamping the whole economic system in a future expansion pack to help streamline it. I'd also like to expand the United Planets to allow civilizations to submit "bills" to the UP to vote on. I'd also like to see more types of ship components, more diplomatic options, and so on."

And I will keep paying to "upgrade" my game.

GalCiv2 is the only game I ever bought an expansion for. In general, I don't really like expansions. Mostly, they are purely commercial crap that sucks life out of the original titles.

There are 2 reasons I did buy DA. One, StarDock does extremely good job at patching, so it didn't feel like buying a patch. Two, GalCiv2 is an objectively good game, which defies the horrible trends in modern gaming.

So, would it make sense to develop expansions past TotA? I'd say only if developers have really new ideas that could be implemented this way. And by "new" I mean new to the games in general, something that would be interesting design-wise.

---

My personal preferences.

I would not buy (or recommend to buy) a multilayer expansion or something that merely adds combat nuances to the game. On the other hand, I would definitely buy an expansion that works with diplomacy, spying, local elections and galactic council. Anything that would spice up the winning conditions (especially tech victory) would also be appreciated.

- Passing bills to GC sounds great.
- It would be interesting to actively seek re-election by acting on the whims of your empire under democratic types of governments, and to have your popularity change depending on what you do.
- Spying is kind of meh right now. Would be good to make the player more involved in the process, and to add more options.
- The economy and various buildings (morale, for example) could be better balanced.
- Tech victory is downright boring right now. AI does not seem to pursue it, and it does not really involve anything complex, you just research stuff. Would be great if the process became more involved. One way to achieve this would be if the pre-requisite techs would not be just boring stub technologies, but would produce major changes in the galaxy. Someone also proposed here that the technology that allows you to win could be "built" after research.

You keep producing expansion packs, I'll keep buying them. I love GA2 and would love to see future additions.

I too would buy them no matter what.

How about a subscription $5 per month (WoW style), that way stardock can allocate resource that are paid for on an ongoing basis to bridge the gap between now and GC3 (would like to see this as infinately moddable). Why not put forward a series of polls where the players get to vote for what they want.

I personally would like to see :-

Nebula that span say 20-30 parsecs, cannot go through
Permanent wormholes
Blackholes/Quasars/Pulsars (just for show)
Passing traders from other galaxies where you can buy alien artifacts/technologies.
Stealth modules (opposite of scanning)
Shipyard starbase
100x100 maps or customisable to any size.(memory dependant)
or multi galaxy maps (use wormholes)
Configurable no of Stars 20-2000 or memory dependant.
Configurable min distance between Stars 5 to 20 parsecs.
Ship model editor
Death Stars (planet destroyers)
Spys given options of destroying/sabotage/stealing/assasination of planetary leader
Minor races to work as major races except be one or two intelligence levels lower. (with no goal other than to be as big and strong as possible, never declare war first)
Lots of exotic icons/tiles pics for modding (planetary improvements)
Ongoing AI development
Lay mine fields.
Stargates
MMOSG (Massively Multiplayer Online Strategy Game) Billions of stars ...{pinch} .... have I been talking in my sleep?

Anyway keep up the good work, best Galactic Strategy game thus far. IMHO

I'd definitely look forward to more expansions, especially if a GCIII wouldn't be until 2010 at the earliest. Enhancing the diplomatic and UP options, the economy, invasions... to put it another way, every expansion so far hasn't been just "ok, here's a new unit X to play with" but has changed gameplay in significant, thoughtful and - to me - 'happy' ways. So yes, I would buy another couple expansions while waiting for GCIII. I can't say I'm interesting in multiplayer for GC2. I like playing against the AI when and would be happier to have the AI's intelligence improved over the tremendous development work for MP.

I would also love some revamps to how combat (especially ship to ship) is handled, but I wouldn't want to see it getting into much (if any) micromanagement. As has been mentioned, after awhile you just want combat to work and be logical On the other hand, part of why I rarely watch the combat video any more is not for speed but because it is pretty anti-climactic and feels like the ships are just milling about. Fixing that up to have more logical, interesting-to-watch fleet battles would get me to buy an expansion all by itself

I don't want ToA to be the last new GC content for 2+ years

I would be interested in new exp packs. They don't need to be so huge as TA or DA though.
Their price could also be half of TA's.

What i wish they'd contain are radical changes to some aspects. Ground combat; add religions that have negative and positive effects; better, A LOT better UP, similar to SMAC's UN but even more advanced with much more advanced diplomacy with ability to ask what would the other one want IE trade techs or buy something; Goverment changes and AI controlled sub-civilizations within your Civ; the dead horse, carriers {idea: make a module named hangar, it would be big, so big that it would require a large hull at least. The hangar would then provide range around the ship (9 squares, around the ship) so that way you could build a "carrier" that would help small ships, which don't have space for the life support modules, after you cross the range border but it would only affect to tiny and small hulls, not medium or bigger}; ability to switch beetween low-to-high rez graphics (ATM all textures are same rez right?) and help text for each button (explanation when you hover mouse over something after few seconds I.E. what does "disable Bumb mapping" do);
the space combat could also be improved.

There are some suggestion, dunno if they're very radical.

But personally, i'd like rather radical changes, but only in some areas.

it should always be an expansion pack, otherwise, why bother?