I don't know how many people here read the Journals section but that's where we put up most of our day to day development stuff.  Though by "We" I mean the entire GalCiv II team though it seems like I'm the only one with enough free time to blog about it (under my Draginol account from JoeUser.com).

Next week we put out 1.1. We've been releasing beta builds like crazy since the end of last month.  Future updates won't be quite so extravagant. We just wanted to make sure people knew how serious we were about adding user-requested features even after release.

More reviews have been coming in. We've been very pleased with most of them.  The G4 XPlay review was a real shocker. 5 out of 5. I've never seen a game get a 5 out of 5 on there so we were pretty jazzed about that.  Our friends at NeoTechGaming had a nice review up of the game as well.  Computer Games Magazine gave us a 4.5 out of 5.  The CGW review should be out soon too, they aren't currently doing ratings though so we'll just use this made up quote of editor in chief Jeff Green "6 out of 5, greatest achievement in human history."

Meanwhile, our developers have been coding away on these updates. But what about the art team? Most of them are on Society. But what about our other artists? One idea we've been toying around with is a "Ship Pack".  Basically a bunch of hulls and components for ships that would allow people to create a bunch of new ships that we would sell for $9 or something.  We'd be curious on people's thoughts on that.  Art is expensive and we'd rather do it as a one time thing as opposed to a bunch of smaller groups at $2 or something each.

After next week, the team will start working on 1.2.  We have a list already of tweaks and additions.  We probably won't have a long public beta test of it like we did with 1.1. New users come to our forums, see a ton of "crash" reports and think "Oh man, this game must be buggy" not realizing they're reading beta reports.

Speaking of forums, we realize that our forums are like the devil. We are looking at a redesign soon. But we are listening to people's ideas.  Our forum system works across all our sites and allows for a lot of customization - which we'll be using to make it easier and faster to use in the coming weeks).

That's all for now.

Is multiplayer a required feature in a strategy game? Galactic Civilizations II does not have multiplayer.  And while it has averaged 4.5 stars out of 5 (or better) on the major game sites/magazines, most of the reviews have lamented the lack of multiplayer.

I talked to Bruce Geryk at length on this issue. Bruce reviewed the game for both 1up and Computer Gaming World.  He and I have talked about multiplayer for a long time and in fact he and I played head to head The Political Machine. He was, by far, the toughest opponent I played -- better than anyone internal at Stardock even.

Bruce and I have come full circle on the issue.  When he was younger, he was primarily interested in single player games. But as he's gotten older and busier, he wants his game experiences to be social.  By contrast, when I was younger, I would play multiplayer games like crazy. I would buy games and not even bother to play them single player.

From Warcraft to Total Annihilation to Rise of Nations to HOMM3, I was a junkie for multiplayer. In Total Annihilation I'd spend my days hanging out on TEN looking for people to play. I was even in PGL.  But as I've gotten older, I've become less patient with having hours wasted because my anonymous opponent would disconnect or do something incredibly lame to wreck the game.

My multiplayer experiences over the years could be summarized as follows:

• 40% of games end in the first 20 minutes due to the player doing some formula early game tactic (like rush). If their tactic failed, they'd disconnect. If they succeeded, the game was over. Either way, very unsatisfying.
• 30% of the games would end randomly due to a disconnect, crash, or the player having to leave.
• 20% of the games would end with the player leaving way early simply because they recognized that they would eventually lose. In most strategy games, if you're pretty good, you know you're going to win or lose long before it happens. So those players would simply drop out if the win wasn't almost a certainty. No attempt to even try to make a comeback. Not very satisfying.
• 10% of the games would actually play to their conclusion and be very fun.

And for that 10%, I would stick it out.  But now I'm older, I don't have time to waste a Sunday afternoon playing people on-line all day in order to find ONE game that wasn't a disaster.

Some on-line advocates, such as Bruce, have friends that they play these games with. I envy him for that.  My friends who play games are either playing totally different games from me or if they are playing a game I might like are at a totally different skill level.  As much as I might like playing a 3 on 1 Rise of Nations game or Warcraft 3 game, I'd rather have a 2 on 2 game or a 1 on 1 game where both sides are reasonably equal. (Battle.net does a decent job of matching people but the percents I mention above are still about the same).

On Bruce's blog he writes:

Brad makes the comment in his post-mortem that he wants GalCiv2 to be the kind of game the you could buy and play two years from now. But I can tell you one thing: without m/p, there is no way I'll be playing GalCiv2 in two years. Frankly, I won't be playing it in two weeks. Without m/p, my interest in playing it past the review period is nearly zero.

I asked him why challenging computer players wouldn't solve this.  His response, to paraphrase, was that when he's on the computer he wants to be interacting with other people, not playing a computer game alone.  I can respect that.  But it's totally the opposite from me.  I spend all day interacting with people on the computer, I absolutely love playing Civilization 4 and other strategy games single player.  I don't want to play a total stranger at a turn based strategy game and I don't know enough people who are good at turn based strategy games who have enough time to dedicate to playing one to the finish.

Troy Goodfellow, who wrote the 4.5 star Computer Games Magazine review writes:

Galactic Civilization II doesn't have MP, Civilization IV does. Both are great games, but guess which one will have a longer life on my hard drive? (And not just mine.) I've been a single player gamer for almost my entire life, but I have finally come to the point where a lot of gamers were a couple of years ago, seeking out multiplayer in every game. Good MP experiences have also made me hungry for real world human contact in gaming. Board gaming, DnD...anything to keep the rush of shared competition going between computer game cycles.

By contrast, Bad MP experiences have made me hungrier for good single player experiences.  I think if we sat down and did an inventory of strategy games that have come out in the past 5 years that the multiplayer fanbase has gotten served quite well.  By contrast, people like me who want to sit down and play against computer players have gotten, in my opinion, the shaft.  When I see my friends in person, I generally play board games with them if we're going to play a game. Ticket to Ride, Twilight Imperium, etc. 

If I had a ready set of friends willing to spend 8 hours straight on the computer playing a turn based strategy game, I could see the temptation.  But that's not the norm.  If I want to play Civilization IV multiplayer, I'm stuck hanging out on GameSpy's multiplayer system looking for total strangers and then we're back to the %'s.  And even if I could solve the problem for myself, I know I'm not alone in this problem. And that's the point - multiplayer people have got tons of games to choose from.  How many strategy games in the past 5 years have made a serious effort to have a strong single player experience? 

The irony is, I am not against multiplayer.  Every other game I've developed for Windows has had multiplayer. GalCiv's the only one that doesn't.  But every time we do it, we come away disappointed.  Disappointed at how few people are using is and disappointed at how many features and changes has to be made to implement it.  I suspect in some future expansion (though not in an expansion for 2006) we'll add in multiplayer.  But if we do, it's not going to be done in the traditional way.  I'd like to do something that creates persistent games -- your games exist on a server that you can come and go back to as you please with your friends over minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. But that's for another discussion.

What got this discussion going was that the game had gotten punished by some (not Bruce though he laments no multiplayer) reviewers.  I had commented on Quarter To Three that no one was taking points off of Oblivion for not having multiplayer -- an RPG after all. Bruce's response to that was that RPG players who want multiplayer have lots of choices.  Turn based strategy gamers don't have as many good options for multiplayer.  But it's not our responsibility to be all things to all people. And besides, Civ 4 has the best multiplayer of any strategy game I've ever seen.

Does that mean that some future GalCiv III won't have multiplayer?  Odds are, it'll have multiplayer. But we won't make sacrifices for it.  The single player experience will always take precedence.  The reason we didn't have multiplayer in GalCiv II is because as a first-time publisher we had to have a price point of $39.95 to get decent shelf space and that meant not having something as expensive as multiplayer (make no mistake, you're paying for multiplayer in that $50 game regardless of whether you use it or not).  A GalCiv III will probably be a >$40 program.  But that's for a looong time into the future. 

Like many people who play strategy games, we have a lot of ideas for cool features to have in a strategy game.  They come up all the time.

Space mines, orbital bombardment, tactical combat, heroes, special agents, asteroid fields, special powers for races, and dozens I won't mention right now.

It's not that these aren't good ideas -- they are.  I want many of those features too (except orbital bombardment <g>).  For me, PC strategy games revolve around having good opponents.

A good opponent means either another human being who is decent at the game or a computer controlled opponent.  For most of us, another human being who is at our skill level who is readily available to play a game that is going to last many hours is not a realistic option. That's the drawback on turn based strategy games (which isn't to say that we should shun having a multiplayer feature someday, only that it's not at the same priority as computer players).

The features I describe above could be added to the game in a month or two. Features are easy. Computer players who use them effectively are not.  On paper, having a computer player who "uses" a feature effectively seems easy. But in practice, there's a lot involved.  One mans genius strategy is another man's doom when played on a different map or in different circumstances. 

So like I said, adding features is easy. You can create a bullet list of great features but in my opinion, if the computer players don't use them effectively, then it's largely a waste unless you have a really solid multiplayer component and then it's fine -- for the people who play multiplayer. 

When we do the expansion pack, the features we choose to put it in will have to budget not just the time to implement those features but the time to write a computer AI that does the same thing and does it well.  And that can be tricky. 

And so next time someone wonders why "Feature X" isn't in the game, the answer may be as simple as "Because the time to have the AI use it well was longer than we could budget."  If the response is "Game Y had that feature" then ask yourself - how well did game Y make use of that feature for its computer opponents?

Paul Thurott takes a look at the latest Windows Vista (and has some screenshots) beta and has some criticisms.

We've been playing around with it as well and our initial excitement over Windows Vista is starting to turn into concern as we remember where Windows XP was at this stage of development -- it was in better shape.

The issue isn't just the bugs (which there are more than one would expect) but significant compatibility issues combined with Microsoft not making it clear whether they're going to live up to their performance expectations.  For instance, the new Aero glass UI isn't fully hardware accelerated from what we can tell.  Resizing windows or doing anything particularly intensive on the screen eats up a lot of CPU.  CPU? It's supposed to be using the video card (WindowBlinds 5's performance gains don't eat up all your CPU on XP because it's using the GPU instead of the CPU for instance).

The state of some of the new goodies is problematic.  The Sidebar, which we're excited about as a concept, needs better content if it's going to be on by default.  Microsoft has broken the LogonUI elements which many programs, including many of ours, finger print readers, etc. made use of in order to do their magic and has provided no work around, no new API, nothing to resolve it despite developers asking for a resolution.

Bugs get filed and then marked closed seemingly arbitrarily. And many existing programs, which should work fine on Vista, just don't work. Right now, even DesktopX is not working on Vista.  Why? We don't know.  We'll find a way to resolve it long before release but it's these seemingly arbitrary compatibility issues that give us pause (let me put it like this -- WindowBlinds works on Windows Vista which you'd think would be a much tougher thing than DesktopX to get working).

It's too early to say that Vista is having serious problems. But time is running out for Microsoft to provide a build that looks like it's remotely ready for prime time.  We'll be traveling to Redmond next month to talk to Microsoft on these issues and more.

On the good news side...

G4's Xplay gave GalCiv II a 5 out of 5. That almost never happens.

On the bad side, PC Zone UK gave the game a 60%.  It's a paper magazine so I have no idea what the review says.  But anything under a 4 star review I think at this point means that they must have run into some problem.  Anyway have access to a PC Zone UK and can give the gist of why they disliked it?

G4's popular game TV show, XPlay, has given Galactic Civilizations II a 5 out of 5!

Galactic Civilizations II: 1.1 BETA 4A

This is what is new over beta 4 of 1.1.  This, in theory, will be the last public beta of 1.1.

+ Optimized fleet manager screen for faster response times Implemented 

+ New Option: "Hide Nebulae and Stars in Ship Preview Windows". This option fixed some compatibility/crash issues some users ran into (video card related).

+ Only thumbnails for ships your civ can use are pre-loaded Fixed bug where UP would vote to change to Democracy, but would changeto Federation instead

+ AI now factors "Fear" into relations. If someone is going around conquering others, they'll begin to get nervous about them.

+ AI will tend to band together to try to stop someone who is going around conquering them (whether that be human or another AI player who is mopping everyone up).

+ AI players will evaluate threats and put together coalitions against aggressive players or at the very least take a more active role in thwarting aggression from the sidelines. (LOTS involved in implementing this).

+ Computer players weigh risk of being ganged up on if they start a war of aggression before starting said war of aggression.

+ AI Much more effective at evaluating threats and discarding false positives.

+ Some AI players will be more aggressive at secretly paying someone else off to go to war with another player.

+ Many new messages to human player to let them know if someone has gone to war with them because they've been paid off or some other reason.

+ Some new AI upgrading code to ships to prevent it from trying to upgrade Precursor light cruisers (aka Rangers).

+ Torian and related AIs now adjust what they are building/researching based on the status of the galaxy. If the galaxy is on fire with war, it begins to rearm.

+ Lots of tweaks on which ships are built.

+ AI much better at focusing on tech researched based on its own strategy. Previously it tended to over focus on how much a tech cost so it would tend to research techs that weren't central to its strategy simply because they were "Cheap".  Such distractions really add up.

+ A LOT of work on the tactical AI, picking out which ships to go after, how to focus power and project it in a focused way.

+ AI will move offensive ships into defensive positions in orbit of a planet if it feels threatened.

+ If the galactic atmosphere gets dangerous (i.e. lots of wars) AI will start fortifying its planets more to prevent sneak attacks.

+ Starting spend rate changed to 67. "New" users will hence see the game pace improved (i.e. the "I just keep having to hit the turn button over and over" issue where people who don't increase their spend rate end up waiting a long time should be helped a bit).

+ Game now keeps track of how many civilizations a given race has conquered. pCiv->ulCivsConquered.

+ New API: FindBestFriend.  Returns a player's best friend that they can reasonably trust. Takes into account if said friend is going around conquering everyone and is not allied.

+ Saved game and load game format changed to support new features.

+ Saved game makes use of new weapon and defense focus features.

+ Planets under alien influence defect faster.

+ Tweaked planet seeding so that there's a bit more difference between rare and uncommon.

+ Fixed rare crash where a ship has been destroyed but the bad pointer is left in the orbit list. Now it will NULL it out if the ship's been destroyed.

+ Cleaned up the way influence ability affects the map. Much better.

+ AI will tend to use space on a ship design more optimally.

+ AI: If you're playing on Impossible (or whatever the most difficult level) the AI gets a free miniaturization ability. At this difficulty level, our focus is to provide god-like players with a challenge. (besides, if you're beating it at genius or higher, you're probably doing something similarly cheesy <g>).

+ Report screen on foreign relations screen tweaked to show fear as a negative (or positive) effect on relations.

+ Influence on the map tends to spread further into empty areas.

+ AI somewhat more shrewed in negotiations.

+ AI takes into account how many wars the player has started before making peace.

+ Iconian home world nerfed to 14.

+ Lots of new alien dialog.

+ Various tweaks to costs and benefits to planetary improvements based on player feedback.

+ Iconians are now good (were neutral).

+ Torians made slightly nicer ("more gooder" <g>).

+ Influence modules made more powerful at the high end.

+ AIs consider hulls more important.

We're still doing QA on Galactic Civilizations II 1.1.  We've been working on a wide variety of things such as increasing performance on lower end systems, improving the computer AI, adding more alien dialog, fixing bugs, and the other usual stuff.

We will be putting up a new beta this week. Then next week we'll officially release 1.1. 

Do as I say...not as I do...

I preach, regularly, that you shouldn't rewrite code. Instead, you should try to learn how it works and fix it or extend it. But sometimes, in rare cases, I find the need to rewrite something. Often it's something I did myself.  I've done a lot of rewriting this weekend. A lot.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday and today I pretty much did nothing but work on the AI.  No, it's not work. It's for fun. I mean let's be real, I'm working on a video game.  Any modders out there? You know what I mean.  If you had the source code to your favorite game, you'd probably make changes too.  And that's what I've done.

The list of changes is too long to list tonight.  The big ones I've done that players will likely notice:

• AI (all players) Tries to do better at researching.
• AI (all players) focuses much better on their chosen weapons tech.  Essentially, it was factoring in the cost of a technology too much in deciding what it would build. So later on it would think "Sure, I'm focusing on mass drivers but that quantum driver will take me 20 weeks to get while I can get Stinger missiles in only 3 weeks. Let's go for that.  Uh-uh. Not anymore. It's more intelligent now about deciding when to research what.
• AI (all players) is much better at doing something about threats.  Players know the AI can identify threats but it wasn't doing enough about them. Now, you move those ships into that sneak attack, you'll see the AI pull in ships from nearby into orbit or attack you (and then announce).
• AI (all players and not just the Drath) have the capability of paying others off to go to war with others and now it will tell you if they've been paid off (before they'd just go to war and you might not know why).
• AI (all players) is aware of conquerors and will take steps to try to thwart them by acting together.

A lot of the weekend has been testing this, tweaking things, getting the pacing down pat. You don't want any of this to happen too often or not often enough. You also have to do work on the diplomacy screen AI (which I am not as involved in but have started getting involved in more) to make sure that this all flows well.

I need living space...

In my last game I was testing out the issue that hard core strategists have observed -- you can roll up the AI players if you can fight them individually and in isolation. Play on a large galaxy, tight clusters, rare everything and then pick off each player in a single surprise attack. Regardless of difficulty level, this is the "easiest" way.  The computing advantages of an artificial player are at their weakest.

The problem in battling this strategy is that it requires that players go against their own short-term self interest.  If I'm attacking the Altarians, why should the Arceans really care? I mean, they might toss the Altarians some ships and they might take you out IF they are more powerful. But what if they're not? What if you have the military edge? Tough luck basically.

In the real world, this happens regularly unless you have defined alliances.  In GalCiv II, alliances are not something you get easily. You have to get close relations and have alliances and even then it's not 100%.  

So what we want is for players to act against their short-term interests in exchange for their long term interests. Any AI developers lurking know the difficulty in putting together such a long term strategy. 

After all, nation states rarely work towards their long term best interests.  In World War II, Germany took Austria and no one made noises.  Then Germany took part of Czechoslovakia and the world did nothing.  Then they took the rest of it and the world did nothing.  Only after Germany conquered Poland did Britain, its dominions, and France declare war and no much happened except at sea.  Then Germany conquered France and still nothing happened. If anything, other countries joined up with Germany (Italy declared war at that point).  Then Italy invaded Albania and Greece and then Germany got involved there too. Country after country invaded and even though the writing was on the wall, countries didn't band together.  Even the United States stayed out of it until it was directly attacked and even then waited until Germany declared war on the United States.  In the end, what did Germany in wasn't that countries collectively got together (other than Britain and the Dominions who were true heroes of World War II) and said "enough".  It was mostly that Germany underestimated the Soviet Union and combined with Britain, the US, and the dominions, were able to take them out.

As we approach a strategy game, the challenge is how to get computer players to be more like Britain and less like say Belgium (or less like the Soviet Union which aided Germany until it was their turn).  In GalCiv 1.0X, the AI at best acts like the United States -- "Oh, you're being wiped out by the Drengin? Here's some free ships." Clearly that's not enough when you're dealing with a well oiled military machine rampaging across the galaxy.  In 1.1, some (and I won't say which) of the players are now set up to be like Britain where they will organize forces to fight aggression. BTW, I don't want to offend my German friends with any of this.  I'm looking at this purely from a strategic perspective. Regardless of ones feelings about World War II, Germany, up until they attacked the Soviet Union, had an excellent military strategy.

This may not work

Before I go forward with the test game, I want to stress that I have no way of knowing whether this is going to work.  I'm playing the game and recording what happens. So don't get too excited, this whole thing may amount to nothing.  It may take more work to make it band together. There's a lot of variables in places.

What I can guarantee you is that it will be tougher for me to win. It will spend its money better. Research better.  Use its forces better.  4 days of pure AI development is more than some strategy games get total. So we're not talking tweaking around the edges here.

In the beginning...

Each player gets one star, 2 planets. I will attack the Korx first who are the light gray. Then I will take out the Yor. Then the Drengin. And continue until they're all dead. That's my strategy. It worked flawlessly last time.

As one can expect, I always win this setup. But I can't beat the AI on suicidal unless I play in a galaxy where I'm isolated enough to make use of economic and production tricks (the new suicidal is much tougher).  Lower intelligence levels won't be affected much by what has changed except that you are much more likely to get help from other players.

Let's see if they've improved...

I'm the brown line at the top. Since the AI is based on adaption and not scripting, it has to "learn" what is best for it. But as an experienced player, my game play is somewhat scripted. I have a build order. I crank up my initial research to get a jump and you can see the results above in research.

I also know that Trade is very valuable to computer players since well, it's trade.

So I quickly fill in my techs that I don't have in other areas.

Very early I will have planetary invasion. If I'm lucky, I'll have invasion ships before the first victim, the Korx, even have defenders. Speaking of Korx, what are they up to? Are they building well?

vs.

This is the Korx home planet.  Not too bad a setup. Not as good as my home planet though. I got a better home world than they do and I'm out producing them in every way. But it's not really their fault. I just got a better planet and am spending more. The Korx have their abilities wrapped up in their production so if they do live long enough they could be a problem.

Planetary Invasion Tech? Check. Enhanced Transport designed? Check.  Building: 11 weeks.

And off we go..

The Korx home world is mine.  It's going to take me a bit of time to get out of debt though. I will be helpless for a few turns.

One down. 8 more to go. It's still 2225 and I've already got a huge advantage. I was able to take Korx using Informational Warfare so I didn't damage anything (though I did go into debt because of it).

The other players respond to my new power appropriately as I trade them techs for money to get out of debt.

Soon, I am able to get out of debt by selling tech.  So should I conquer the Yor or the Dnreing? The Drengin are slightly closer. But they've already conquered a minor race themselves so the Yor are a bit easier.

But before I do that, I'm going to set up trade routes with my other neighbors so that they like me. I need each one to think they're my buddy until it's their turn.

But first the Yor.  I design a fighter specifically with them in mind.  They, like the Drengin, are focusing on missiles. So this is a two-fer.

At 6 attack and 2 defense against Yor missiles, it should be quite lethal. And I have twice as many planets to produce it from. It's called the F2-Yor Doom. "Yor Doom" Get it? Oh, I'm so clever..

Anyway..

The Drengin aren't impressed with my military might.  This could be an issue. I'm going to ignore them for now. My military build up should make them look for weaker targets.

While we build up, let's take a look at what the different civilizations are researching as we begin 2227 (two game years in):

• Drengin: Master Trade.
• Altarians: Enhanced Logistics
• Arceans: Plasma Weapons
• Torians: Medium Scale Building
• Yor: Harpoon
• Drath: Warp Drive
• Thalan: Stinger IV
• Iconians: Impulse Drive Mark III

So quite a variety there.

The Torians are now ones to worry for though, they managed to unearth a Ranger. And are wreaking havoc on the Drengin. That will keep them busy while I eliminate the Yor and can then take on the Drengin right after now properly softened up.

My fleets approach while the Drengin take apart the Torians. The Yor will soon be history.

 The Yor respond to my build up by moving ships to be very close to mine and beefing up their defenses.

And then attacking! But their ships are no match.  Iconia (the Yor home world) is mine.

I guess that Ranger you found wasn't enough eh? The Torians are going down. I do some lend lease with them since I need the money and the Drengin are my next target anyway.

The Drengin, however, are monitoring the situation. Their scout ship sits silently giving the Drengin the FOW viewage they need of what's going on. What will they do? Their fleets are nearly done with the Torian Confederation.

The Yor, meanwhile surrender what's left but turn it over to the neutral Thalan. There's a lot involved in who an AI surrenders to. It's not particularly random. In this case, I attacked the Yor, I was the aggressor. So the Yor simply handed their forces over to a neutral. This is akin to US forces occupying Iceland in World War II to take over for the British.

Two down. The Drengin are next. But it coudl be tough. They have absorbed the Torians and a minor race. They're as powerful as I am.

This is the galaxy at this point.  I'm the bround. The Drengin are the red. The Yor, Torians, and Korx are already dead.

Oh don't worry, we'll take care of the Drengin. You don't worry yourself. Whoahahah! WHOHAAH! (cough cough). I also go around and make sure the war machine is fed with tech trades. It's gotten a lot tougher since the AI is greedier with its hard currency and won't generally trade weapons techs unless it's really desperate.

But every little bit helps.

And I've got a new Frigate class ship designed just for the Drengin.  To deal with the Drengin, I have a new transport type as well.

With 5,000 legions on it, it represents a major investment of manpower for the Dominion. I only need to take out the various homeworlds that the Drengin currently occupy. The rest I can take at my leisure.

Pretty straight forward.  Now, I can already tell you that it's been a lot harder than previously. The AI is building better ships because it's building a better economy. And it's focusing better so I have to build up a lot more. If I can take out the Drengin, that will help a lot.

I send in my forces. I also send a secondary force to what was once the Torian home world. The Drengin have forces up there too.

The Drengin recognize what I'm doing and declare war. I'm not ready yet.

The Drengin are well prepared for me too. Their ships are defended against my weapon type just as mine is against theirs. But they have more ships.  But I do manage to take their home world. The attack on Toria, however is thwarted. The Drengin won't be going down in a single volley.

Nooo. 5,000 legions!  I also discover that the Drengin were also at war with the Altarians and had conquered some of their territory. Now the full force of the Drengin is on me. But I take our their resource starbases.

I send my reserves to defend Haven, my home world.

Here they come..

Harpoon III ships with Warp Drive and Duranthium armor. There is, however, the question of why aren't they using Photonic Torpedoes which they have. So it's not perfect yet.

Ouch time. I don't even destroy a single ship. I send all my fleets after them and wear them down to only 3 ships.  But it's 3 more than I have.  Haven is undefended.

From across the Dominion, I scrape up 6 ships to make into a last ditch defense. If I can cripple the Drengin fleet here, then the war will be mine because I now have a definitive industrial advantage.

Valheru station is open to attack! It helps power all the Dominion core worlds. And it's soon gone.

But my last ditch fleet is there to meet them and it's quite a battle.

I lose two ships but in the end, the Drengin fleet is crippled. But so am I.

Right about then the Arceans, who are last on the list to be wiped out, send me some ships to help!

It'll take 10 weeks for them to arrive.

The Drengin have the upper hand still in the short term.  I need to take out more of their resource starbases and get my economy back in gear.

The Drengin have 43 points in planets.  I have 46 points. But the Drengin have geared up more towards economy for a long haul strategy. My economy is not as well developed.  The one money making planet I do have is the Drengin home world but with only 140 million people on it, it's not making much money-- yet.

The Drengin knows (I can say with confidence) that I have the long term advantage if I rescale up.  So they send in their reserves to make sure that doesn't happen.  The Drengin have better logistics and their ships are better.

The Drengin attack both my main fleet and my Arcean gift fleet.  Both are destroyed. It's time to ask for peace.

I have been given a reprieve.  Clearly, it's tougher this time.

I have to give away much of the store but I have peace in our time.  Now it's time to build a new line of ships.

If I can just crank these out before the Drengin regroup.

I was once a giant, and now I have the weakest military. I have a good economy and my industry is coming back. I need to upgrade my factories.

Over the next year I do. Until the Drengin declare war on me.

This time, I'm a bit better set up.

But I still lose. The Drengin wipe out my starbases. They take Haven. There is nothing I can offer.

Kona is retaken.

Haven 2 is taken.

I max my resources and logistics to build the Liberation fleet.

Once more..

I'm not dead yet.

The Drengin now know of this fleet and begin to move forces in. I need to make up for my losses so I grab a few mor harbringers and put them together. I need to get Haven back.

Meanwhile, the Drath have had a revolution...

Welcome to the party!

Haven is liberated. Now for Haven 2.  Haven 2 is retaken.  The Drengin have figured out the source of my ships -- Iconia.  They have sent ships to "deal" with it.

The Drengin, having been militarily dominant, have focused on lots of other interesting techs such as huge hulls.  My fleet is no match. 

So what does a Drengin Dreadnought have on it?

That comes out to being a movement speed of 12! 33 attack and 21 defense. It's a monster.

Against this ship and its escort is the Liberation fleet. My best ships.  I am victorious. Luckily there was only 1 of it.  The liberation fleet also takes out the Drengin expeditionary force that has been holding down my other sector. The path is now open to retake Kona.  However, the Drengin take out Iconia while I busy elsewhere.

The Drengin now have their own mega fleet. A fleet of those Dreadnoughts. They're looking for my liberation fleet. I do my best to keep them out of their sensor range so I can keep them alive.

Here it is, the liberation fleet vs. the Drengin monster fleet.  They found me and got first shot.

Each side has 34 logistical points into this.  It's a slugging match. This is the kind of battle that the combat viewer was designed for.  I'm watching it as I type this.

I'm going to lose.

I'm going to lose badly.

Not even a single ship.  The Drengin are just too well defended now against my mass drivers. My ships can't penetrate them. I mean they're freaking Dreadnoughts after all.

But I've given them enough of a bloody nose and been at war long enough that I can talk the Drengin into peace.

I have to give up my winnings to get peace.

I'm back roughly to where I started. I have Haven back and I still have the Yor and Korx home worlds.

With upgrades to planets, I have 46 points in planets. The Drengin now have 53.  My research is ahead of theirs right now. My industry is on par with theirs.

Anyway, as you can see, things have gotten tougher. I haven't even gotten to where the players will band together to try to prevent me from conquering everyone.

That's all for tonight..

At some point we want to do an expansion pack.  And by some point, I mean, we have a pretty good idea of what, when, and what would be in said expansion pack.  But there's a lof of "Stuff" involved in deciding what will be in an expansion pack and when it would be launched and how it would be packaged.

First a little primer:  Unless you're mega publisher, if you want to be in the stores for Christmas, you have to be released by September 30th. That's the magic date.  Secondly, unless you're a large publisher, having both a boxed version and an expansion pack on the shelves is really really hard.

So if we want to do an expansion pack soon, we would have to release it either by the end of September (any earlier would be too close to the original release) OR wait until next year (February 2007).

There are also two basic ways of going about an expansion pack:

The Traditional Way.  You release your expansion pack for $19.95 to $29.95 that requires users to have the original game.  This is what big publishers tend to do because they can have both the mega selling original and the expansion. Civilization IV and Civ IV: Warlords would be a great example of this.

The Alternative Way. You release an expansion pack that plays on its own for $39.95 to $49.95.  That is, you basically update your original game to include the expansion pack as an integral part of it.  Disciples II did this.

I don't have a strong preference.  If you take the traditional path, you risk losing shelf space entirely unless you are selling in significant quantity.   If you take the alternative path, you need to find some way to enable people who bought the original game to get the expansion pack without having to pay full price (rebate in box for existing players, or direct download or something). It also has the problem of requiring the existing game be taken off the shelves first to be replaced by the "new and improved" version which can be a real bummer.

Or you could just bypass retail entirely and offer it direct and not mess with any of the problem and release on your own schedule.