GalCiv III tactical battling

Well, I'm on the record as being opposed to any form of tactical combat in GalCiv III for (mostly) the same reasons that Stardock didn't put it in GalCiv II.

But it is in Elemental - although that doesn't necessarily prove anything - and if it is in GalCiv III, this would be pretty much what I would want.

I agree with you, GalCiv isn't about tactics.

The problem with having both a tactical combat and an auto-resolve option is that balancing both options equally is almost impossible.  If you try a formula based option (sword of the stars) is there there always end up being some combos/capabilities that work much better in one than in the other.  IF auto-combat is tactical combat with the AI fighting both sides then a good human player will always have an advantage by being able to out-fight the AI.

Exactly my thought.

Double post, ignore.

My problem here is that doing this will take resources away from some other aspect of the game or it's development.  Resources better spent improving AI, diplomacy, any number of things. 

I wouldn't count the AI out of being able to fight well in tactical combat.  Look at Gears of War 2 for example, you have AIs who are nasty enough to be able to frag tag an unwary human player.

The problem with tactical combat is that it isn't necessarily going to be as efficient as letting ships decide for themselves what to fire at, concentrating all their attacks on one target, and then moving on to the next when that's been obliterated.  That is, unless you add mechanics like evasive manoeuvres which causes attackers to lose their firing solution on a damaged target temporarily and switch to one that isn't evading so much.  Then it's more efficient for ships to fire at enemy ships which they have a good firing solution for.

I agree, but it will be a popular enough feature that I can't imagine SD not putting it in.

the GSB model is something that would be hard for humans to exploit.  (not a mention a good game in its own right)

It's not full-on AoW style tactical combat.

Not to mention it was $10 well spent on Impulse.

easy solution.

Just make it like Total War games

Simulate or Play, or maybe surrender or some other creative options.

The key part here is "unwary human player". Now, a good enough tactical AI can certainly beat the human... but this would detract from work on other, more important parts of the game.

Yes, it's a popular feature... but as some of these posts suggest, not as popular a feature for GalCiv. Also,  look at the whole "carriers" thing... there's certainly a fair amount of support for them, but Stardock has said pretty much definitively there will be no carriers in GalCiv II, GalCiv III, or a hypothetical GalCiv IV. Just because it's popular doesn't mean Stardock will put it in.

That said, although I've never played GSB, if GalCiv III must have tactical combat, your description sounds like the preferred option. (BTW, what is AoW?)

This post said it best on the topic:

of cources they would have to add mechanics for both players and the AI to use only if blizzard gave game engie mechanic for the AI to know Coke Points and Hight as well as other importent ojects, then blizzard would have enough room to get the AI smart enough. AI is already effective but being smart is only how well the person that develops it to understand the most of the game.

Gal Civ 2 i largly ignore ships trying to out tech / out expand other races sinces ships just have only a few factors affecting how well they perform in war, but with the option of tac combat will it be real time or turn based, i don't care if its one of the two as long as its in depth enough to give a varity of ships.

Stardock would be rather stupid not to have Tactical battles in Gal Civ 3 since it would give you more ship kinds as well as other weapons and defeneces such as mines but they would best work in Real time, carriers & their fights as well as other suppurt ships. Tactical Battles for taking a planet would be just as good as well in either turn based or real time and with the option of accurate persiton bombardment from your orbiting ships would make it much more hard for the defender but if they have powerful shields protecting key citys and areas that might make the ground invasion the only option for taking out places such as these, i think real time would be best because it would allow the greater use of space mines.

for the turn based one to work best would need to do the battle as a whole solar system every planet would then have something orbiting around of key importance so gas giants wouldn't be useless value in the game code but as the first line of defenece if they come in from that side, real time would work on any scale but the solar system battle would also be fun as well as astorid fields having spaces mines hidden as well as satalites orbiting planets or the whole system would really allow give it the depth it would need.

sword of the stars i got on impulse don't understand it 100% yet since the way the map is set up can be very confusing has put me off it, played a few tac battles it so far works very well for real time.

Tactical combat would add more depth to how you build ships for roles and what tech you go for, i would say this thread would be poinltess since they haven't started to work on Gal Civ 3 since they are working on Elemental unless they are working on more then one game at once?

There is a difference right now between simply seeing the outcome on the galaxy map (they go boom or you go boom) and examining the outcome more closely on the battle screen, even if it's just to skip straight to the report.

You can see which ships were destroyed, and how long it took for their defences (if they had any) to fail.  You can assess whether the design gives you value and/or durability for bc, or simply crams lots of firepower into the first round, meaning you need to keep building more ships.  You can see which enemy ship designs are giving your ships problems, and then research technologies to solve those problems.

The AI can research technologies to help give its ships a better chance, and it does, but some of the ship designs it comes up with have glaring flaws.  Such as, they take too long to build (so there are fewer rolling off the production lines over a given time) or they don't provide value for bc when they are built.  And the AI doesn't value its ships enough to stop throwing them at enemy fleets piecemeal, which ironically makes the job of destroying those fleets harder due to the steady increase in max hitpoints of fleet ships surviving the battle.

The AI should not be cowed because some upstart galactic civ has been churning out cheap fighters and has a solid military 'rating' - it should plot to mop up those fighters with better weapons and better ships.  A human player that refuses to use force when necessary (actually risk a confrontation with just those cheap fighters to throw into battle) should suffer some kind of a diplomatic hit until they build a real military and fight some real wars.

I'm not sure I understand this, unless you're just saying that the AI's assessment of a civilization's strength needs work. Could you clarify what you meant?

In some cases, durability doesn't matter. I have some ships specifically designed as 'kamikazes' to be used against certain high-attack, no-defense enemies (like Dread Lords or some AIs).

What I meant was, just building a stopgap military force shouldn't give a + to relations for Military Strength, although it could remove a - if the AI doesn't have anything better.  You would need to build advanced fighters and capital ships to get a + to diplomatic relations.

Similarly if a player's ships never actually see any use, or the player's tactical prowess is poor, they should get a - to relations after a while.

Obviously though if an AI is to succeed in combat, tactical or otherwise, it needs to take note of these things and not just get grumpy or cheerful on the diplomacy screen.  The more skilled a player is in tactical combat, the more of an edge the AI needs to create for itself in order to compete with them.

Ack!  Double post.

I would be unhappy with this. Currently, building up a large enough military force in GalCiv allows you to completely avoid war except for some random events. As players go, I'm not much of a warmonger, and I like it that if I want, I can stay out of wars.

As a matter of what, what you're suggesting almost comes across as a - for peaceful behavior, which is just silly (except maybe for races like the Drengin and Korath).

This might be difficult to implement. How do you define "poor tactical prowess"?

This I do agree with. In my current game the Drath and Altarians have both actually paid tribute for my "superior military strength" of 4 ships with 8 total missile attack.

Well, I do think that the AI should consider the fact that by the time they're finished warring with one civ, they may be vulnerable to attack by another, that they may very well get stabbed in the back by their so-called allies.

Building a decent military should prevent an immediate war declaration, I have no argument with that - but competing for the number one spot in military terms should generate animosity.

Not wanting spam to get the last word, I decided to throw in a comment here.

[Ed - the moderators deleted a spam post directly above this - so this is not any sort of dis of MarvinKosh whose post NOW is the one above this]

I read a lot of books.  One common element is that certain scenes or events make or break books for me, and I doubt I am alone in this respect.  Such scenes might include a big battle, or chase, or even a romantic sequence.  If the author botches such scenes, the book fails, just as a horror flick would when the scary thing turns out to be too obviously a man in a rubber suit, a al 1950s.

Such scenes generally need build-up or stage-setting, and that takes a lot of pages/words.  Readers or movie goers accept that pages or minutes will be necessary to get to the key scenes.

Space battles are those key scenes in games like this.  Yes, 4 X means the emphasis is on exploration and empire building, but the reason is to conquer and that means winning wars, hence battles.  Yes, one can win other ways, but for a game to be profitable, it must be bought and paid for by more than a very small sliver of potential players.  I, for one, would enjoy GC2 much more if I actually got to do something with all those ships for which I spent so many hours researching techs, building the yards, settling the planets, getting my empire up, and all that stuff.  SEIV made a decent gesture in this direction, with targeting priorities and formations, but GC2 has not.  I am not declaring what the exact answer should be, but I feel strongly that nothing is not enough.

Yes, space battle sequences and treatments would be chrome, and hence a burden on devs who might otherwise focus on infrastructure areas in the game.  However, if GC3 is not to be multiplayer, which is where a lot of the market is, then failing to build in such chrome will even further narrow the market.

I would certainly like to see tactical combat in GC3; it could always be turned off as a game setup option for those who don't like it.  Yes, it poses some challenges for the AI designer in terms of ship design and tactics, but it makes combat so much richer.  I still miss MOO2, where shields, armor, and point defense were each unique in their own way (shields had facings, and could get knocked down, but regenerated; armor was cheap, but ablative; point defense only worked on missiles, and had limited shots per round, etc).  Not to mention the ability to board and capture ships, and all of the unique technology paths to get enhancements to the weapons.  In GC2, the ships feel very generic in comparison.

My hope is that because GC2 was written with a longer-term lifespan than most games, that much of its engine will be able to be re-used for GC3.  That way the programmers can focus on implementing new features, rather than re-inventing the basic infrastructure that a 4X game needs.  Tactical combat would be my first choice for a "big" feature add.  Named heroes/advisers with custom bonuses would be another.  Special espionage missions and research projects would be a third, and switching from a square grid to hexes would be a fourth.  Give me those features, and an AI that can play them intelligently, and I'll happily shell out $50.

While I have more to say on the subject of tactical combat, about your other features: 2 and 3 are good (actually, 2 is a must-have, particularly if you can mod the 'heroes' and 3 is more "would be nice"), but what's the big deal with hexagonal grids, anyway?

Diagonals.  Using a square grid, moving along the diagonal is almost 50% faster than it should be.  Using a hex grid eliminates that irregularity.

Another possibility would be to go to eliminate the grid entirely and go with a continuous (real number) position system.

Sins of a Solar Empire has tactical battle...I believe.

That is another game I was looking into getting... But first I will be getting GalCiv II.

I'd be ok with that, as long as they also include a fully featured combat viewer like in GC2...

My end line is this: if making tactical combat will detract in some way from the strategic part of the game, I want no part of it. If Stardock can manage to integrate tactical combat without overshadowing other aspects of the game, and with equal (well, close enough) balance between letting the AI handle battles and fighting them yourself, I will gladly pay extra for it. I am not into GalCiv for tactics, but if tactics can be made to work as part of the game (and not the main focus of the game, as in some other space 4X games), then I'm fine.

Incidentally, like the last poster, I would also want the option to view battles that you're not playing out.

I just noticed that there's an existing old thread on this exact topic, and suggest routing further replies there.