Over the past few days we've been cleaning up things in preparation for the 1.3 release.

+ AI will play harder in campaign at lower levels (AI was designed to be somewhat nerfed on the early missions of the campaign to give players a gentle introduction.

+ Various improvements to the Terran Alliance and Arcean AIs.

+ Made some tweaks to show ships are designed such that even if they prefer to build ships with a particular weapon system, they will also bear in mind what types of weapons they have already researched (i.e. they may WANT to put beam weapons but if they only have Laser I but have Black Hole Generators for mass drivers it'll still build Black Hole Generators on their ships rather than just tossing a bunch of lasers on a ship simply because they prefer beam weapons at that point. It did this before but now it has a better algorithm)

+ CPU for AI algorithm option enables AI ships to be re-designed twice as often.

+ Terran Alliance based AI players will put early priority on factories as the first thing to build rather than star port.

+ AI players will not go to war for military reasons unless they have enough military forces to deal some immediate pain.

+ Lots of little AI tweaks

+ Changes in values to planetary improvements and starbase modules

+ Starting population now 8 billion on the home planet

+ Morale on home planet gets a 20% bonus

+ AI will tend to try to "finish off" its enemies

+ Changed difficulty to be based on the AVERAGE AI intelligence rather than the highest AI intelligence

+ Torian AI significantly altered in what it builds on planets.

+ Torian AI will raise taxes as long as morale is high

+ Terran Alliance AI will lease less often (stunted early growth)

+ Drengin will build more scouts to expand faster

+ All AI will tend to mobilize for war now BEFORE going to war (i.e.  start to send ships near the border rather than declare war and have months of phoney war. We have ideas on making it even better in the future.).

+ Starbase modules give more boost earlier and less later as you add modules

+ Fixed weird issue where AI would turn off social production between projects and then the AI would see that it has no social production and would then pick the cheapest (rather than the most appropriate) improvement to build which (wait for it) would tend to be economic improvements.

+ Morale ability has more diminishing returns at the high end. It still is powerful but a 200% morale ability is not twice as good as a 100% morale ability.

+ Integrated concepts from other AI personalities into Terran Alliance personality

+ Fixed several crash bugs we added during the betas.

+ Fixed some typos

+ Fixed beta bug where new city lights took away clouds

+ Some additional text polishing

A lot of this boils down to fixing bugs we've added during the betas, polishing areas, and in my case balancing things to go with some of the changes we've made.  I also spent some time on the AI that I hope people will notice.

I still have some major complaints with the AI.  the funny thing about writing "smart AI" is that you often run into three different issues: a) Knowing the strategy Convert the strategy into code and c) Making sure that the strategy actually works.

It's item C that is the most frustrating at times. You'll see the AI do something incredibly stupid that you have code in there explicitly to keep it from doing that.  Case in point, I had a mega fleet that I created (cheat codes) and the AI just bounced endless weaker fleets off of it. I have code that is SUPPOSED to make a reasonable guess whether it can win or at least soften up a given target. If it's hopeless, it should back off.  Yet I saw the Arceans waste half their military banging into this invincible fleet.  Another one that kills me is that the AI is SUPPOSED to mobilize for war.  When their relations with someone start to go down, they're supposed to start moving ships and fleets near the border so that when they go to war, they're organized.  Instead, I'll see the AI declare war and nothing happen for many game turns. Naturally, any time I go to debug it, THEN it works.  Which is how many of these problems go - they sometimes do work as designed but often won't work at all.

One complaint that I addressed last night was the nerfing of the AI in campaigns.  The AI is really dumb in the first several missions of the campaign.  But it ended up being TOO dumb.  At higher difficulty levels, it shoudl start to get smarter.  Subtlety is often hard to code in.

The amount of time it takes to debug tactical based military moves is what really causes the most pain. But it's something that is the most rewarding but takes the longest to test.  The AI in GalCiv 1 was horrible at actually fighting wars. You ended up with a death train.  This time around, the AI is much better, focusing its military. But I still see it do things like leave an undefended planet (one it just wiped out the defenses for) before the transport arrives.  Another I saw but couldn't figure out how it happened was Arcean over-construction of freighters even though the code explicitly says IF # of TradeRoutes is >= NumberAllowed then don't build any freighters.

You might be surprised how often changing a number makes something like starbase building go from not building any starbases to building hundreds evne though the changes would imply only a slight change.  Such is the nature of AI development.

S1Genocide feels that Dark Avatar is more like a mod than an expansion:

We all have our opinions of what an expansion is but I think Dark Avatar is pretty far from a mod.  A mod is something a third party could create. 

Let me give my own biased two cents on how this:

Most expansion packs simply add more content.  Civ IV's expansion added new maps, scenarios, units, and races.

Our expansion does the same thing -- new races, maps, scenarios, and units (ship pieces).

But we are also changing the game play in a pretty radical way that I think will make the game a LOT more fun.  For example -- Planet environments.  This changes the game in pretty significant ways.  First off, the entire colonization phase never truly ends because you can't colonize half the worlds right away. You have to research expensive techs that are unrelated to get to them.

Secondly, the asteroid fields create terrain and opportunities for exploitation that simply aren't in the game presently.

Thirdly, the custom opponents is something that I think users will really like. Now you can put together your own races to play against, decide what they're like and play them. From a longevity point of view, this is a big deal.

Fourth, the Espionage units are a BIIIG deal. These units add an entirely new option for players to try to win the game. The ability to spend money to cripple your opponents gives players a new tool.  Right now, you basically can conquer them with ships or buy their love or try to influence them. In Dark Avatar, your agents can nulify infrastructure, cripple economies, destroy morale. You can bring someone down from within.

The new diplomatic treaties give players more options to build relations with particular players and try to create more alliances within the game.

The AARs (after action reports) people seem to love and now anyone can partiicipate to a degree with the Epic generator creating unique stories of their games.

So I can't see how anyone could argue this is like a "mod".  I'd argue that Dark Avatar is an expansion + half-sequel rolled into one.

Our last poll asked people how they liked the update system we use with Galactic Civilizations II.  Our position on CD copy protection is pretty well known as this point -- we don't use it.

We just don't want people to have to keep a CD in the drive to use the game. Once it's installed on their home computers, players should not have to worry where any physical medium is.

On the other hand, to get the free updates, players do have to type in their serial #. This allows us to have much more expansive product updates because we can change all the files in the game if we want without significant fear that someone is going to combine it with a demo or even be able to play the game purely on the updates (if one looks at 1.0 to 1.3, nearly every major game file has been changed).

The serial # then talks to our server which knows which serial #s have been issued and creates an account for the user. The user can then not only download updates but re-download the entire game. So even if you lose your serial # AND the CD years from now, you can still come on and re-download the entire game with the account it created (when you use Stardock Central, your Stardock.net account knows all the products you've purchased so you don't have to type in serial #s again).

In the poll, 83% of users like the system. 17% of users did not.  Some users don't like having to type in a serial #. Others don't like having to use the Internet to register the product to get updates. That's understandable, there's trade-offs with any system. 

The next poll is a follow-up to the previous multiplayer poll.  Stardock does, however, plan to create an expansion pack sometime mid next year to GalCiv II that includes multiplayer depending on how well Dark Avatar sells (pricing would be about the same as Dark Avatar and it would have lots of other features as well to make sure it appeals to a wide spectrum).

For testing the release candidates of GalCiv II 1.3 I've been playing all kinds of different sizes and scenarios.  In the process, I've been making tweaks and enhancements to the computer AI, uncovering mild logic bugs in my code and adding new abilities to try to keep the AI evolving as players evolve.  If you play at the lower intelligence levels, you won't see much difference but at the higher levels, players will likely see a significant change in the computer players with the final 1.3.

1.3 has a lot more re-balancing in it than previous versions.  Over the last several months, based on player feedback, we've made adjustments to how the game plays to improve the player experience.  But this has made some fundamental alterations of how the mechanics work that are sometimes subtle.  For instance, with 1.1, we made it so that you could only have 4 starbases in a sector. This change hasn't been really reflected in how we balance the starbase modules.  In 1.3, rather than starbase modules becoming increasingly more powerful (to encourage fewer but more powerful starbases) we now have a system where we know players won't build more than X starbases per sector so we could re-evaluate the numbers for the starbase modules in a way that we think will make the game more fun (it's certainly made it more enjoyable for me).  For example, building a starbase factory assist module no longer pumps out a piddly 2% improvement. Instead it does 5%.  But at the same time, the higher end factories aren't nearly as powerful.  But the important thing is that early game you can start to get an early boost.

What you're going to see is not going to be a complete game because it's being played on a Gigantic galaxy.  Instead, the goal is to watch how well the computer players play and see if they're doing things more intelligently now.

So what does "Allow AI to use CPU-Intensive algorithms" do?  Basically it allows the AI to design new ships more often and allows it to do some predictive branch analysis on what will happen in future turns. Does it make a huge difference in difficulty? Hard to say. It will mean more in Dark Avatar when I start to put in a lot more AI work. But I think it probably does make a mild difference. It doesn't affect Metaverse scores either way (so if you're really into maxing your score, you don't need to use it).

Here's an area that I did make a change today. It wasn't a bug fix per se but it might as well be one given how unintuitive the behavior was. The difficulty level was based on the intelligence level of smartest player.  So you could play a "suicidal" game where 1 player was really smart and the rest were set to completely brain dead. Then, once in, just set the galaxy so that the really smart one was in an isolated pocket while you fed on the easy players, then mop up.  One wonders how many "suicidal" games were done that way.  No more.  Now it's based on the average of the intelligences.

In this test game, I'm going to see how the Drengin, the Terran Alliance, the Altarians and the Torains do.  These are the 4 main AI personalities. The other players have derivative AIs (i.e. subclasses) of these 4. It's also why it drives me nuts when someone says "The AI did X" since it usually tells me nothing since there's literally 4 independent  (and even the others have their own code)  AIs in the game.  They ain't going to do the same thing. When I wrote them, I intentionally wrote them with very different algorithms. They may do similar things but not because the code's the same. 

It's a large galaxy after all...

Tight clusters, very large galaxy. I'm going to be cheating the whole game using the debugger so I can see everything they're doing at all times.

Opening Moves

The Drengin cranked out a factory and started a second one along with a scout and then started on a constructor since there's nothing good nearby (the constructor could be used to extend the range for the Drengin).

The Torians built a lab. Not what I would do but..

The Altarians have power built. On turn 3, they've got 2 factories and a research lab.  I'm looking into why they have 0 social spending right now.

The humans fast-buit a factory and then started on a second factory. They fast-built a scout and are now building a constructor.

As for me...

I fast-build a factory and a lab and start on a factory while building a constructor and a colony ship.

Watching the AI blindly send out scouts to see if it can find planets to colonize.

Turn 25

By turn 25, the AI has done a pretty good job on its home planets. Playing at "tough".

The Terran Alliance

The Torians

The Altarians

The Drengin

and for comparison -- me:

Their choices, other than the Drengin who built an Embassy, are similar to mine. I'm making a tad bit more money than they are but the Altarians are doing the best overall.

Me vs. Top players.  The Torians building that manufacturing planet really helped things as you can see.

End of first year

At the end of the first year each side is on its own unique strategy. Let's start with the Torians.

A pretty boring home planet but pretty effective. They could be making more money if they moved their taxes further up.

The Altarians have the right idea. This is probably the best home world right now overall. The Altarians don't get a second starting planet but they're doing well with the class 12 they get.

The Drengin are doing pretty well too. The embassy was an odd thing but still pretty impressive. They could stand to raise taxes further.

I have mixed feelings about the Terran Alliance.  They have their taxes up and are making some good money but they're clearly out of money. They could also stand to focus more on colonizing or else they'll lose some real opportunities.

And for comparison. I think it's safe to say that in terms of home planets, I'm doing the best. I have the highest income of any of them right now. Of course, I also made some different set up choices to have better morale.  The challenge is always translating "duh" strategies into a fast algorithm that doesn't do "stupid" things in other circumstances.

I'm doing pretty well overall.

End of Year 2

By the end of the second year, I'm doing pretty well. (gray line).

The Terran Alliance AI is clearly the weakest at this piont. It had the best starting position and is still blowing it.  So I'm looking into that.

Now I'm going to sit back awhile and see how the players handle themselves. Warfare should be particularly interesting because a good portion of my weekend went into making the AI more effective at waging war at higher levels. So in theory, they should be better at effectively wiping each other out.

Much later

By 2231, the Drengin are long gone.

The Terran Alliance have a small niche and the Altarains have their own corner of the galaxy. They all have friendly relations with each other at this point though the Torians could easily crush the humans.

Doing some analysis on what the AI has done..

While the Torians are dominating, I'm disappointed in a couple of the things they did.  First, while they are making a lot of money, they could be making a lot more. Their tax rate is lower than it could be. And they have a planet that they're not doing anything on. Why is that? (turns out they were just between turns).

Moreover, no starbases. I shouldn't say no starbases but very few. Resources are maxed out but there are very few economic starbases around. That's silly. With such a powerful military, the Torians should be shoring up their production.

I am generally satisfied with the AI's handling of their planets, however. While they may make a few different decisions, the overall results are pretty good.

We're in the process of re-designing WinCustomize.com for the new 2007 edition.

Here are a few features that will be in it:

1. For subscribers: It'll be skinnable.
2. Much faster overall (see forums for a taste)
3. Much lighter (lot less graphical content in the design)
4. Skinners with Master access or higher will be able to optionally sell skins and themes (giving an incentive for classic skinners to keep making new stuff and an incentive for up and coming skinners to release lots of good free stuff to move up -- subscribers will get at least 25% off the price)
5. A simpler UI to get to things more easily.
6. More galleries
7. Featured Skinner section
8. Skinner forum

But what are some things you would like to see? What things of the current site do you like and would like preserved? What things about the current site that you don't like would you like changed or removed? What things from other sites would you like to see added?

Let us know! Thanks!

In today's mission, I am playing the supreme ruler of the Galactic Federation. It is trying to rule a  quadrant with 16 sectors in it.  My opponents include the Terran Alliance, the Drengin Empire, and the Torian Confederation.

My purpose in this is to test out the many balancing changes that have been occurring in Galactic Civilizations II, new user interface enhancements, and updated computer players.  How have things improved over the past few months?

A brave new galaxy

The first thing I wanted to check out was to see how the new player placement code was working. We wanted to put a little more distance between players when possible.

Using the hot key Ctrl-N, I have the galaxy regenerate with the same settings to see how well it does.

The above 3 were typical. Whereas before, you would end up with someone very close more often, now there is more distance.  We actually intended the old code to spit out people right next to you with the idea that players would have more variety this way and could use Ctrl-N to get the galaxy they wanted.  The problem is that such a system falls apart with the feature in 1.2 of hiding where players start as an option. So we decided in 1.3 (build Z right now) to always have a bit more distance between players.

The Galactic Federation resides on planet Thandar. The new city lights code makes the planet look a lot nicer.  I have anti-aliasing turned off so the screenshots will probably be a bit blockier than normal in these screenshots.

And since this is a fresh copy of the game, I don't have my previously created ships saved so I do what I normally do on a fresh load -- build a custom colony ship. It's faster than the default but shorter range.

A couple other changes in build Z of 1.3 beta:

• Starting funds raised to 7,500 (from 5,000).
• Initial population 8 billion (instead of 5 billion)
• Capitals have a 25% morale bonus.

The result...

Happier people with more money to start with.

Ah the Drengin.. No galaxy is complete without them.

A civilization on the grow...

The Torians. They're great. I wonder what they taste like.

My civilization was off to a good start. I had even managed to find a class 26 planet. Each planet class (from 0 to 26) represents the number of useable tiles to build things on. Class 26's are extremely rare.

I decided to call the planet Paridias.

Rise of the Argonots

My strategy was going to be pretty straight forward -- conquer those I can conquer and befriend those I could not.  The Terran Alliance was going to be the ones I would try to befriend. The Drengin and Torians I would try to destroy. To this end I have designed a pretty lethal fighter called the Argonot-X1.

I control the bottom right part of the galaxy. The Drengin the bottom left, the humans the top left and the Torians the top right.

The best laid plans torn assunder

The Terran Alliance is now at war after the assassination of their leader!

The Argonots are able to take our their Vengeance class fighter. But the pesky humans are rampaging across my trade lines.

My first target would be Martzia.  The Humans are not powerful enough to conquer me -- they can only harass. I am going to conquer them.

The humans put up a fight but they never had a chance. Earth would soon be mine.

The humans recognize their folly. But the price for peace is higher than they will accept. I want Earth.

But the Drengin have other plans..

The year is 2228. The Terrans and Drengin are out to destroy me.  I have the humans on their knees but the Drengin are very powerful. I need to finish the Terrans up soon.

The Drengin ships weren't that tough but they did have a pretty nasty Frigate class.

In response I designed the Turon-Z1

With an attack rating of 14, it would be more than a match.

Meanwhile, Earth was now mine and the Terrans were happy to be at peace.

To deal with the Drengin menace, I would build the fleet of triumph. Using 19 of my logistical points, the fleet packed a much stronger punch than any near by Drengin task force.

But as I cleared Drengin out of my space, they struck back with a surgical strike -- attack on a planet to remove defenses and then an invasion same week.

A crippling move to my capital world. Things are starting to look grim.

Until...

Phew!  The Torians, my old friends, have not only decided to help but join the war with me to defeat the Drengin menace.

More bad news for the Drengin Empire...the galaxy has experienced a religious movement.

Unfortunately, one of the planets they took over was Thandard -- my capital world, er former capital world.

But things have gotten messy for me as well.  Someone (i.e. the Terran Alliance no doubt) has paid the Torians to go to war with me as well!

I can't fight off both and the Drengin and us are in a stale mate. So my only option is to make peace with the Drengin and deal with the Torians.

And so the Torians are now against me and the Drengin. How strange war with alien civilizations can be.

The Torians have put together quite a fleet. It destroys everything before it.  But it's deep in my territory and slowly I wear it down.

And I get Thandar back from the Fundamentalists.

Now it's time to make peace with the Torians.  The Drengin should keep them busy while I start to rebuild my civilization.

As 2228 ends, I control the bottom right and much of the top left.  The Torians and Drengin are at war and much more powerful than I am right now but they are busy with each other.

Now was the time to set up my new platforms for war..

The Argonot-X2 would be the new fighter.  All of my ships would use the phasor based weapons platform. Much deadlier.

Meanwhile, a peace has come to the galaxy. No one quite ahead. Billions dead.

It was time to try to wrap this up. The Thalon class battle ship when massed should allow me to conquer my opponents.

End Game

With everyone picking on the Terran Alliance, they eventually surrendered to the Drengin Empire.

And so there were 3 left.

My goal was to befriend the Torians, eliminate the Drengin. The trick was to get the Torians to trust me.

Springing the trap on the Drengin would be delicate. Some AI work has gone in on build Z to improve the AI's detection of human attack patterns and decrease false positives.  Or put another way, you can't just put a huge fleet in their territory.           

I only  need a little bit of time..

They notice. But my main fleet isn't there yet.

Now it's there. This is a good argument for having true political borders in some future sequel so you can't park ships so close like this. The Drengin see what I'm doing and mass ships around mine and prepare for war too. But it does give the attacker an immense advantage.

My massive battle ships vs. their huge fleets.

Their big fleet wins.  But I do take several of their worlds, casualties are higher than expected.

By targeting the Drengin home world, I've utterly crushed their central source of power.

I tell you though, the Drengin ships are quite nasty. Far more advanced than mine. In an ironic twist, I'm defeating them through sheer strength in numbers (that is, in total military strength) which is usually backwards for a game like this.

I find my powerful fleets being broken down by their few but lethal wolf packs.  But I have so many fleets.

And slowly those fleets grind down the Drengin Empire.

The Drengin are all but eliminated but the Torians decide that they want not just the Drengin but the Galactic Federation. It's now an all out war!

And the Torians have the advantage.

By the fall of 2230, the Drengin are nearly gone. The Torians are strong but disorganized.

All for me!

But I just can't quite get the Torians to love me.

Too many wars. I'm sure over time they'd come to like me..

But there are other ways to victory:

With the Drengin gone, I now control 79% of the galaxy. I can win an influence victory instead.

And the ship that conquered the galaxy...

and victory is mine!

My technology was a bit behind (we're the 4th symbol).

Lessons Learned..

From this game I made some changes to the computer AI to be better at detecting threats but have fewer false positives. I also tweaked the planet improvement algorithms and a few other similar tweaks.

A couple people on the forum complained that the AI was building a bunch of stock  markets. They worded their report as if this is something everyone is seeing.  I know I haven't seen it.

Here are some select planet surfaces:

Toria:

Lasitus: (there's nothing "bad" about putting an invention matrix on a food resource)

Kerchen: (located far from enemies, it favored research and money generation)

Westerfeld:

Wardell:

Now, people can debate this tile or that, but from what I see it's doing a pretty decent job.  I'd probably have more factories on some of these planets but overall it seems like a pretty decent use of the territory.

So why did the AI lose?

Basically it boils down to this age old question: Strong offense or strong defense?  The AI, in my opinion, is too defensive. That's what killed it.  Spread around its planets are groups of ships that are quite impressive but not strong enough to defend against a massive fleet. And so it never is able to get a critical mass of offensive ships.  I've made some tweaks there to see what happens.

If you are having problems installing from the CD-ROMs, try copying the files from the CDs to your hard drive and then run the installation from your hard drive.  If you are having problems activating GalCiv2, please read this sticky post:

https://forums.galciv2.com/122873

If you have any other problems installing or activating GalCiv2 and you can't find an answer in a sticky post, please e-mail [email protected]

With all the hardware and configurations out there, it's inevitable that some people are going to run into a problem.  The most important thing to bear in mind that if something is happening for you, it may not be happening for anyone else. Our job is to do our best to make sure the game works perfectly for you.

When you have a problem, the best tools you have is the debug.err that is in the GalCiv2 directory. It will tell us virtually everything we need.  In addition, you can install Smart Exception from Stardock Central (see downloads section here) from the "free stuff" in Stardock Central. If you have that running and GalCiv II crashes or something, it will create a file that will tell us exactly where.

So that we're on the same page - the game should never crash on you. As far as we know, there are zero crash bugs in Galactic Civilizations II.

The first thing to always do is to make sure you have the latest version of the game.

#1 Game crashes immediately.

Happens to approximately 0.5% of users.

Most common cause: Running your desktop at below 1024x768 or running your desktop in 16-bit color.  This resolves 99% of users.  Check your debug.err and make sure you're not running at some really low resolution.

#2 Game crashes randomly while playing!

Happens to approximately 0.5% of users.

Most common cause: People with older video drivers. We weren't kidding, you MUST HAVE A RECENT (past year) set of video drivers. If you don't, the game will crash randomly. The readme says this. The stickies say this. We're not kidding around here. You must update your video drivers. Ignoring all that and running into the forum and saying "How could they ship this piece of #$@#!" is not going to update your video driver. You must update the video driver. 

Ex: If you're running the nvidia 81.95 drivers, update them to 81.98 or better.

You also absolutely must be running at 1024x768 or higher. That means both X and Y must be equal to or greater than those two numbers.

Next most common cause: People who have eliminated their page file or have a very small page file.  That's your virtual memory.  Check the debug.err and near the top it will say how much virtual memory you have allocated. If it's less than a gig (heck, nowadays you should have at least 2 gigs for virtual memory) then there's your problem. 

Next most common cause: Overheating. The game's 3D engine has no polygon count limit, no texture limit. It's designed so that even 2 years from now, you can with mods plug in advanced textures. Some modders have already put in ships from popular sci-fi movies that have over a million polygons and it works.  But it comes at a cost: Your video cards are fully utilized. And that can translate to heat.  This mostly affects people who have built their own machines and thrown in a powerful video card.  Version 1.0X (and later) support GPU throttling which should solve this.

Next most common cause: People with AMD64 Dual Core who haven't updated their chipset drivers. GO here, get your drivers, play game, have fun.

#3 You lose your mouse pointer

People with nVidia Geforce 6X series cards (for the most part) have reported this. We have yet to get it in our internal lab and it doesn't seem to be that wide spread but it's a real show stopper.  The solution is to use the hardware mouse cursor which is in the video options area of the game.

OTHER TIPS:

Read the stickies! Post your debug.err.  Or at the very least tell us what kind of computer you have (though debug.err will tell us all about your computer). 

For more troubleshooting tips, please read this sticky:

https://forums.galciv2.com/127231

List things you have observed in 1.3 beta 3X that you think need to be addressed!

Thanks!