It used to be this way at 3 tiles. The current system of 4 total per parsec was a major reduction of starbase spam.



Spy costs will always escalate, it's unavoidable. The alternative would be to set a flat price, which would start ruinously high, then be fair, then become absurdly low as the game progressed. Even setting escalation really low still wouldn't get you out from under a spy spam, as everyone would get spies at the same rate as everyone else, it would just make the spamming faster.. You can argue about the rate of escalation, or whether it should scale for map size, but you can't reasonably argue against all escalation.

Someone mentioned pathfinding bugs, and I absolutely second that -- I'm already tired of watching my fleets swerve out of their way to plow into entirely avoidable asteroid fields for no discernible reason.

But there's an even more aggravating bug, and it's one that has existed, in one form or another, for pretty much the entirety of GC2's history; and that's the fact that "Save Game" is a lossy operation.

As much as I love GC2, that's just completely bleeping absurd, and I don't think I can ever remember any other game having it. The idea that you can affect game outcomes by simply saving a game and immediately reloading it is insane, but there it is: Are you worried about having to skirt that fleet around Yor space? No problem, just save the game, and Yor space will have shrunk dramatically when you reload it because the influence state information is lost.

Well, at least they squashed the "lost turn of production" version of this bug a while back; that was even worse than losing influence state information.

Has anyone out there ever played another game where saving and reloading is not a reversible operation?

I would like to see the ship building ai also design new support ships (colony ships, constructors, mining ships, and transports and such,) as new engine, life support, and sensor techs become available. Also is it just me or did they take out the option to leave components on the ship when you want to upgrade? If so I would like that back in.

I definitely like what has been suggested so far for the most part (excluding that part about chuck norris(funny but so off topic)) personally I think star bases should have a more diverse role in game play. As a civ advances, it would make sense for them to take advantage of using space stations in many more places, especially around stars especially because of the enormous energy output they have.

I also like the Idea of them having fleets incorporated into their defense. It would also make sense that star bases even have some of the ability of planets, including research (take for example our own space program) and production. I think it would be good also that they could receive asteroid resources.

I would really like to see more imaginative star base modules that effect the game in some meaningful way besides attack, defense, and providing somewhat boring bonuses to nearby planets and ships.

it would even be possible to put star bases in orbit of a planet, and have it be more involved in the specific research, production, defense, etc. of that planet.

I want to see more miniaturization and a bigger hull size. what's the point of playing a galaxy that's insanely big if you have no hull size to match. also, even more miniaturization. the tech ends too early in my opinion. ad a few more levels of miniaturization so one could see ships w/ even more attack/special modules.

also, agents in espionage should be more incorporated into other types of in game actions. ex: planetary invasion; spy plants virus in enemy computers crippling the defenders just before an invasion. this would give spys some actual strategic value besides making your opponents spend money to remove them.

lastly, weapons platforms that could provide long range (more than one tile) attack on ships and provide some ability to defend an entire region.

recap:

1: better and more fundamentally game changing starbases
2: fleet defense of starbases
3: ability to build starbases in orbit of planets and stars
4: starbases can actually provide research and make ships (with appropriate modules)
5: modules that can do something with starbases than provide attack, defence, and bonuses to research, production and influence
6: starbases in orbit of planets and stars: ex: halo, stargate, BSG, star trek, and any number of plausible future scenarios, and of course earths own space ____stations (MIR, ISS, Sky Lab...)
7: bigger hulls with more possible miniaturization
8: let spys play a more integral part in the game. this is arguably the biggest arena for improvement. spys need to do more than tell players whats on other ____civs planets ships and starbases. take some notes on cold war espionage on this ____one.
9: consider the possibility of weapons that could engage the enemy over several light years (tiles) as opposed to several thousand kilometers (adjacent tile). a weapon that could engage ships across a solar system does seem plausible.

this is a rather long list and it criticizes an already amazing game. most of these improvements/ changes are too radically game changing to be realistic, but I do hope they are at least considered, or maybe modded in.

sorry for double posting

[ I've been away from GalCiv for a while, so foregive me if this is already in place (I doubt it). ]

Right now GalCiv has a uniform space travel model: ships travel at constant velocity (eventually faster and faster). The game would gain a very interesting dimension if this changed over time( as a result of research) like this:

1) Constant velocity (like today)

2) Constant acceleration. You define ships' destination and the computer calculates the time to accelerate and decelerate. This travel becomes faster but you cannot stop in the middle of a multi-turn trip. Battles are limited to a single salvo (or, in a finer model, a calculated series of salvos).

3) The wormhole age:

a) planet-to-planet wormholes that allow for instant transfer of population and goods between planets. It should give significant kick to the local economies, with the $ and manufacturing improvement being a product of a formula that takes into account the productivity of other planets in the wormhole network, i.e. first 2 planets connected both help each other, but when a third one gets a wormhole, things improve for all three again. Population happiness should be evened out as well (proportionally to the populations) due to free migration. Research could improve wormhole "throughput" and thus its influence on the economy and such

orbital wormholes (and eventually station wormholes) transfer ships instantly between themselves. Chaining multiple jumps of such nature would require extra research. Eventually wormhole-endpoint ships appear (wormhole gates propelled by regular drives, no self-jumping capability yet.

c) orbital (and starbase) wormholes/farcasters will transfer a ship instantly to any point in space withing a certain radius. From there on the ship has to use its own drives. With extra research farcaster ships appear: their only function is to "farcast" other ships.

d) wormhole engines: a ship with such moves in a series of instant jumps. Initially the jumps could be of fixed size, thus requiring to have both new and conventional drives on the same ship. Jumping over enemy fleets will be fun!

Global events could include "warp storms" making wormhole travel impossible, or (more fun!) unpredictable (and messing up the dependent economies for a while).

Fill up the list of Galactic Wonders with your own ideas

If these Eras of star travel are implemented, there will be a delightful variation in the gameplay.

I am sure the creative folks at Stardock can fill up the details, and if not, my fellow players will pitch in.

Have fun!

A>

I would like to see 2 things:

1) A more meaningful UP - with ways to influence the decision by diplomacy. eg the topic that will be decided upon will get "published" a month before. Afterwards you can - by diplomacy - try to influence the other AIs in order to vote for a certain outcome. Or some other way, but currently the UP is rubbish imo. Also give it new/more - and harsher - decisions.

2) Spy prices have been discussed earlier. I could imagine that another way works better than the current one, the price of a new spy is dependend on the amount of currently owned spies.
One example of how it could be imo:
(currently owned spies: price for an additional one)
0: 100
1: 200
2: 400
3: 700
4: 1100
5: 1600
6: 2200
7: 2900
8: ...
...

Price could also double for each new spy or it could be done in dozen other ways. But away from the current method (price gets higher the more you have ever produced towards a way where price gets higher the more you currently have.
This would - I think - give spies more meaning as there is always the chance for every player (AI or human) to create new ones for offense and defense as the first ones are very cheap always (when you lost all or some such) whereas it gets more and more expensive the more you have in action.

to WIllythemailboy


But still it's four Starbases per race. And I personally hate have my 4 starbases + 1/2 non upgraded at all Influence starbases of each race in my home sector. With 8 races that's 4+(8 to 12)= aprox 16 sb bases in the middle game... Crazy and a waste of resources for them Imho.

Spy costs have to increase due to the higher insurance premiums they have to pay.


Its actually funny that if there were spys like this in real life the insurance companies WOULD be the ones making them too expensive to train. For each one lost the rates would increase.

These four get my vote.

- how about constructors with more than one constructor module?
- pathfinding and waypoints, enough said in this thread
- actually I liked the old "espionage spending" sliders - and the current spy cost explosion is a little overdone (should be linear)
- "upgrade fleet" = very useful stuff


+1

I second fixing the load game feature. One's influence should not retract at the beginning of every game.

Another branch of this complaint would go towards diplomacy; races will forget they've just recently spoken to you after every loaded game, essentially making an aspect of the Super Diplomat ability pointless.

better 64bit support or a native 64bit binary

It was put in place I thought to better game loading times. If that is true, then I'd prefer (sorry devs) it to be an option to have it either way.

As for the load game etch-a-sketch, I think the first major AI on the list doesn't get freed up to talk on a load, the rest however do as well as minors.

I, too, would rather that spy costs are based on currently-owned spies rather than ever-owned spies. It's too easy for other races to gang up and nuke all of your spies, preventing you from defending yourself (unless you're lucky enough to have the Counter-Intelligence Center).

I'd like to have more choices for the mega events:

1.) Most important, a few difficulty levels! Instead of just game breaking, I'd like to have a few more levels like entertaining, challenging, unbalancing and game breaking.

2.) It would be nice to have the possibility to choose which mega events are used in the game. For example, activating dread lords and deactivating all others...

It's somewhere in the game settings.

I went through every one and did not find it, All I had on Ship builder interface was the selector to change the amount of rotation of parts.

Edit[pulled wrong quote.]

Creating new Star Systems

This would require some serious mojo, of course

I foresee two scenarios:

1) Regular: requires a serious investment, the process of creation should take several turns and could be interrupted by neighbors shooting down the "star builder". When the system emerges, all planets within radius X will loose their population & infrastructure, and all ships within same radius will be destroyed - this is an artificial mega-event after all! (This will create an interesting race to re-settle). Within radius 2X the ships will survive but the planets will loose half of their population/improvements.

2) EVIL scenario: same as above, but the destruction goes up to 4X radius, the populations and infrastructure are reduced 90%, BUT if the total number of casualties is sufficiently high (say 100bn, counting the colony ships) the new star system is "Heaven-class" - has 4 planets of type 24, and a bunch of more regular ones (otherwise it's a regular system). Basically, it's a "huge evil act of destruction and murder to create a super-system).

I can see such artificial mega-events become hystoric focal points totally changing the balance (other races may (a) race to prevent them, and (b) race to colonize the result).

Fun, eh?

I think as many aspects as possible of the 'etch-a-sketch' load game should be removed, personally. It's very off-putting and detracts from the immersiveness of the game; besides, I don't think anyone is complaining about the load times as of now, are they? How much would they be increased?

I've been playing the Europa Barbarorum modification for Rome: Total War, which takes at least two minutes to load up the front end each time. But I come back to it for its consistency. I certainly do appreciate the thought towards convenience, but I consider expansion and diplomacy to be core features that shouldn't be compromised for load times.

Two more things...

5. Fixing auto mine construction. When a mining ship is on automate and you have the tech to create the second level mine have it pick the nearest upgrading needed not the nearest empty astroid.

6. Ability to not survey worm holes I would really love to see my survey ship on the second turn of auto survey not find a wormhole and find itself on the otherside of the galaxy where it will do me no good for 50 weeks. Then my luck normally has it where when it does finally find it's way back it manages to stumble accross another wormhole, only to start this all over again.

Yes, the whole wormhole thing is useless, unless the stable wormhole is created. Otherwise I see no reason why to use them.

I think the wormholes are put in for that precise reason - kind of like the crates in Red Alert that, instead of having a bonus or money in them, blew up and damaged/killed your unit. Surveying should have some sort of possible down-side.

OTOH, a wormhole can put you in contact with civs you wouldn't otherwise encounter for a game-year or more, allowing you to jump-start the diplomatic fleesing of said civs. Silver linings and all that.



Even better, have it look at combined travel/build time. Send the miner to where it can complete the project faster - if traveling to the open asteroid and building gets done before building the second level on the current asteroid, do that. If not, upgrade current asteroid.

The only argument I can see for current behavior is that once you've claimed the asteroid, you can upgrade at leasure. If you upgrade first, someone else may claim the asteroid. Even then, influence will take care of that in short order.

Fixing the auto design issue is a must imo. Not sure if it was mentioned in this thread before, but having the autodesign create uber ships really gotta be fixed
Please ^^

1) Planetary bombardment. I'm probably being annoying about this, but next to threatening the AIs (amen!), I'd also like to punish them without having to send in a pile of troops to do. If I can stand-off the planet & bombard it with engine-equipped asteroid prior to invading, why not stop after the dust has settled & just simply move on.

2) Blockade a planet. Blow their fleet out of the skies, then park your fleet in their skies. Again, no troop committment, but it'll stymie their production, cancel trade routes, etc. Plus, if they do decide to produce a ship, it has to fight through the blockade - sort of an auto-combat. If it succeeds, then yay! You'd probably need to have a special ability or ship component to keep a fleet organized when blockading an enemy planet (can't use the planetary orbital fleet organizer), otherwise the enemy ship would only have to defeat the first ship in the orbital cue & then it's in outer space & can make a run for it. Of course, the AI should be free to do this to the player as well (I hope that doesn't come back to haunt me...)

3) Patrol paths? A la waypoints but back-n-forth. Nice for pickets.

4) Be able to limit certain ships to your influence region. Prevent those miners from going too far astray.

5) Stealth tecnologies? Shudder. It could be bad, very bad for all involved, but it'd certainly dramtically spice up a game when suddenly a pile of battleships & cruisers decloak off your homeworld.

6) Stable wormholes. Make 'em or find 'em, but be able to use 'em (a la MOO2).

7) KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK! Love the game, every minute of it (wife's not quite so fond of it, but she's very good about letting me decompress by blowing up aliens.) Speaking of which, has anyone else suffered the wrath of the Dread Lords? The first game I had them pop up, they had an uber-planet (Class 38!) but a pitiful defense. This last game, they only upped a Class 4 to Class 13 (bozos), but started cranking out battleships & dreadnoughts with insane levels of mass-drivers & armor (like 250-350 for battleships & a whomping 2000+ for that dreadnought.) The only thing that saved my bacon was the big ole' 0 for point-defenses. Sheesh! Whatever happened there, that was an AWESOME touch! Nothing like putting the fear of the Dread Lords back into the game!

I might have more ideas later, but I would like to throw my vote in for the enhanced use of starbases. I usually have hordes of constructors flying about as it is, so I can't imagine what it would be like if there were even more uses for starbases!

@Phiog

#2, you can partially do this now. Get enough ships to surround the planet and stop any freighters inbound and sny ships outbound.

#3 I haven't used it...but I think there is a patrol option for ships.

#5 We've had this, but unfortunately it was a graphics bug lol.