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.

A new version of ObjectDock is nearly ready to go.  ObjectDock and its big brother, ObjectDock Plus, is a utility that lets you have a really cool and useful dock that can sit on an edge or pretty much anywhere else you might want to have it.

New features include:

• PLUS-Enabled activation in Plus build
• BOTH-Added ability to offset dock from edge of the screen
• PLUS-"Automatic distance from edge" (place above taskbar) feature
  now fully compatible with multi-monitors. This handy feature ("auto
  distance from edge") is only available in the Plus version, and is
  enabled by default in the plus version.
• PLUS-Added mouse-activation (different from hotspots) ability for
  tabbed docks whose tabs are not always on top. When mouse activation
  is checked, docked tabbed docks whose tabs are not AOT will come to
  the front when you hit the edge of the screen directly over where
  they are for the specified time period.
• BOTH-Not always-on-top tabbed docks that are docked to the edge of
  the screen (autohidden) will now un-autohide if you choose from from
  the alt-tab list.
• PLUS-Added ability for tabbed docks to reserve the entire edge of the
  screen that they are on. Adjustable to be autohidden or not
  autohidden.
• PLUS-When dragging docks that are reserving the edge of the screen,
  they will detach and turn off their reserve-edge option upon pulling
  far away from the edge. If moved back to the edge or to another edge
  while in the same move/drag operation, the dock will automatically
  re-reserve the edge space upon docking to an edge. Under other/normal
  circumstances (just usual docking to the edge), the dock will not
  automatically reserve the edge of the screen.
• PLUS-When in "My Docks" dialog, all autohidden or not-on-top
  zooming and tabbed docks should come to the front and become
  interactive. Upon leaving the application completly, docks go back to
  their original positions.
• BOTH-When in the properties dialog for a
  individual dock (zoomer or tabbed), that dock will temporarilly
  ignore its autohidden and AOT state if present to make itself on-top
  and visible to the user.
• PLUS-When using the configuration dialog for a dock, a bouncing
  arrow will show up to identify which dock is currently being edited.
  Similarly, when in the "My Docks" dialog, upon selecting a dock from
  the dock listing, that dock will have a bouncing identifying arrow
  pointing to it to identify which dock is currently selected. This
  feature can be disabled from the advanced options, and when shown due
  to a configuration dialog being active (not "My Docks"), the arrow
  will fade out after 5 bounces to prevent it from becoming annoying.
  The arrows only show up when there is more than one dock present (and
  so are not necessary in the free version).
• BOTH-"Send To" now displays and works in system context menus for
  files/folders within ObjectDock.
• PLUS-(less significant change)-In tabbed docks, more effectivly
  separated the options for "Always on Top" and "Tabs Always On Top".
  Tabbed docks maintain two AOT settings...usual AOT has effect only
  when not docked to edge, and "tabs AOT" has effect only when docked.
  Checkboxes in the dialog and context menus will change themselves
  accordingly based on the current mode (docked or not).
• PLUS-Similarly, the option for if the tabbed dock appears in the
  systray or taskbar when not AOT is kept seperatly for when docked and
  undocked. This is the case as when just floating and not AOT, by
  default the user will want to have it accessible via taskbar as there
  is no other means. But if docked to the edge, it is more likly that
  they don't want it in their taskbar, but rather they want to access
  it by mouse activation (bumping the edge of the screen). Thus, this
  allows automatic defaults to accomidate each scenario.
• BOTH-(minor change)-Added ability to set "Autohide" from context
  menu of zooming dock
• PLUS-Fixed bug where in changing themes or shutting down, if more
  than 1 tabbed dock is present not all tabbed docks have their
  resources freed properly
• BOTH-Found and fixed 'handles' leak upon each use of context menus
  for File/Folder dock items, amoung a few other small places (such as
  during the poof animation)
• PLUS-Changed default tab appearance (e.g. on creation of a new
  tabbed dock) to the "Simple Tabs" look.
• BOTH-New logo images in config dialogs for both plus and free
  version
• BOTH-Fixed bug, when zoomed dock uses autohide, when you run an app
  from the dock you can still click it even when it has disappeared
  until the "running" animation ends.
• BOTH-auto-save 5 last 5 crashes into ObjectDock folder
• PLUS ONLY-Added ability to automatically place dock on edge of
  screen, above the taskbar
• Updated Free-version's dialogs (the main dialog only. the nicer
  for-each-item dialog are still plus-only)
• BOTH-Trash icon did not update automatically when a folder is
  dropped onto it. Fixed.
• BOTH-Added 100ms delay in updating the trashcan's image, so that it
  will refresh to the proper image when just the standard windows icon
  is being used. (eg when no *custom* images are being used for the
  trash)
• BOTH-Tweaked drag & drop on zooming docks, fixed issues involving
  glitchy drop targets when the taskbar (and systray) is disabled
  

Stardock expects to release ObjectDock 1.3 officially in the next week or two.

Its home page is www.objectdock.com. Use Stardock Central to download it.

In our recent poll asking users of GalCiv2.com where they first heard of the game, we got around 1,400 respondents. 

Bear in mind, these results only tell us where people who happen to visit this website heard about the game. I was surprised how poorly the print game magazines came out.  All of them combined came out to only 6%.

The big surprise was Penny-Arcade. 11% of users who responded came from Penny-Arcade. This matches up with some of the referral statistics we've seen.  And I for one look forward to working in Tycho and Gabe's underground sugar mines.

Another interesting result was Gamespot which had 21%. Gamespot has some web design features that I think really do help. For instance, it has top 10 most popular games based on user interest on Gamespot overall and then on a per section basis right down to sub-sections. So a user can go to turn-based strategy games and sort by popularity. 

Interestingly, the demo version only brought in 1% of respondents.

The biggest chunk came from Stardock's existing communities -- 26%. We'd be interested in hearing those who answered "Stardock (Other)" to let us know how they found out about the game.  Even users who had Galactic Civilizations I would still have to find out from somewhere.

Word of mouth was an impressive 7%.  That's a big chunk considering that we're talking about an on-line poll. People recommending the game is definitely key to the game's success.

Our second poll is going to ask that question outright: Would you recommend Galactic Civilizations II to others? The ultimate "has the game met your expectations" poll so to speak.

One of the general areas I have been looking to keep improving on the computer AI is its overall strategic overview.  It's a tricky thing since even in multiplayer games, many tactics simply work well.

For example, "rushing" in on-line games is an age-old problem.  My job is to take my online experience and translate it to having computer players that "feel" a lot like human beings (except minus the disconnects and a couple of specific game-related features such as your  "diplomacy ability" affecting your relations positively).

Doing this has meant adding quite a bit of new text so that players understand what's going on. I've tried to make it more apparent when someone is being paid off to go to war with you than previously.  But while I was at it, I thought I'd add more colorful text to existing areas as well.

 For those of you who have sent in resumes and such already - thank you! We're compiling them together.  We have finally gotten around to putting up an official job postings page over on Stardock's main site.

Stardock is hiring pretty much across the board. Not just on its games (though we need more people for Society and an unannounced "fantasy strategy game") but in IT, management, development for Windows Vista based software, etc.

We're located in Plymouth Michigan, just outside Ann Arbor. It's a very nice area and we have a lot of fun making cool stuff.

Over good Friday I spent a few hours playing video games. Galactic Civilizations II actually.  With 1.1 nearly done, I wanted to make sure the rest of my AI tweaks started to get in.

Moreover, I wanted to try a game where the AI is at its most vulnerable: A game where planets are rare.  The fewer planets there are, the tougher it is for the computer players. That's one of the reasons why metaverse scoring rewards those who play with more planets available.

In this test game, each AI only gets 2 planets each just like me.  The question is how effective does each player use its planets and use starbases.

For reference, here is my planet:

Here is the Terran Alliance:

Very similar to my setup except they have more factories.

Here are the Drengin:

More emphasis on making money.

Here are the Drath:

Fairly balanced set up with more emphasis on money than us and lower approval from a higher tax rate.

Above are the Yor (a few turns later).  Reasonably good setup. They have pumped up their taxes some and have a pretty balanced planet.

So this is the galaxy. All players are set to "intelligent" ("difficulty = tough") which is the highest intelligence they go before they start getting bonuses and such.

The Stardock symbols are my worlds.  I'm going to take out the Yor (purple) first.

Let's take a look at the ships that the Yor are building:

The Yor are slightly ahead of me in miniaturization. I know that because their max capacity is 35 while mine is 32 (10% difference).  On their ship they've put Impulse Drive plus they've gotten to Mark IV lasers.  But as you can see, they're optimizing their space better (This is something I've worked on this weekend -- as any developer can tell you, it's tricky to have it "Smartly" optimize the use of a container without using an O^2 algorithm which I can't use since the AI has to design its ships almost instantly (or else the game would be unplayable at larger galaxy sizes).

My "F2-StarCat":

My rail gun Mark IV isn't as advanced as the laser Mark IV (uses more space).  But the net effect is that at this stage, the AI and myself have the same ships except theirs are faster.

One of the bigger changes I've done, which I'm not sure how "good" it is is that the AI players (all of them) are now more aware of the threat of sneak attacks. Top human players will tend to make a deadly lightning strike and essentially win the war in one turn. I.e. Blitzkrieg in space. This is a hard strategy to fight against because what players do is make their ships fast enough that they can be placed outside the AI's sensitivity zone.  So I've made it so that the AI now keeps more ships at home than it used to.

This is going to be a real problem with the Yor because...

It's now leaving 4 defenders in orbit (unlike the old days where it would just have 1).  So it's going to be some work.

I move into place. The Yor know what I'm going to do but it's too late.

Within a game year, the Yor are dead. Next up, the Iconians. Let's see what they're up to..

The good news from their point of view is that htey've built up some starbases.  They've actually got a pretty decent economy going.

Plus...

They built a military starbase that gives their ships +1 on attack that covers my entire civilization (except for one planet).  The Iconians have one key advantage, their home planet is a class 15 planet, their secondary planet is only a class 3 but that initial planet is very helpful.

The Iconians have been very busy too while I was taking care of the Yor.  Their class 15 world is doing very well.

Lots of money thanks to a higher population and higher tax rate and they've made full use of their special tiles. They are also upgrading one of their embassies into a farm.  When I see people on the forums say the "the AI" (each player has its own AI actually) doesn't use its planets well, I don't know what to say because I'm not seeing it.  Statistically, the AI will make mistakes for sure but it's certainly not the norm.  To me, this is a pretty spiffy planet setup.

But I'm going to see about taking them out anyway. But I'm going to have to be very surgical about it. So I build a special type of planetary invasion ship:

I almost feel bad, the Iconians like me.

But I can make new friends. The problem here is that I don't have a lot of forces and I have to take out that starbase that is giving them an edge. I can't beat the fleet on new Iconian otherwise.

My military build up is getting some kudos though.

That's right humans, suck up. You'll get your turn right after Poland, er I mean Iconia.  The Iconians are already at war with the Drengin. So I need to make sure I take out the Iconians first.

The war begins..

This is going to be a close battle.  The Iconians have a decent fleet protecting their world.

Ut oh. My spear head is wiped out. But I did take out their military starbase. I send in my reserves.

My second wave succeeds.

And that paves the way for my invasion. New Iconia is mine.

Being the evil bastard that I am, I offer them peace for a bunch of techs. Then I'll attack them again.

Incidentally, the game does allow you to double cross like that. But it decreases your likeability with other races since it's kind of scummy.

With new Iconia mine, their minor colony is ready to defect. It might be cheaper to just let them be assimilated by my culture and move towards my next..victim.  The Drengin are at war with everyone else. They make a perfect target.

I have the Drengin beat in every way. This will be easy.

At this point, one might ask "Why don't the other guys do something about what I'm doing?"  The answer is, it's all in pattern recognition.  Now, this game is a pretty unique setup. Many of the people I see howl that the AI should be "Smarter" are likely playing on maps like I am where we all get 1 or 2 planets total with little ability to make use of the computer's natural advantage which is optimizing numbers. As soon as I took out the Yor, the balance shifted to me.  To thwart a strategy like this, players (including computer players) should get flagged when they go on wars of conquest. Then other players are more likely to go to war with them. 

Since I wrote the AI, I also know its secrets. I know, for instance that I have to keep the Drath happy because they do recognize wars of conquest and will pay others to unite in wars against those that do it.  But I've been keeping on their good side.  What will need to be done in the future is to expand on this pattern recognition.  But like I said, we're talking about a very specific map setup.

Of course, I haven't won yet.

This is the Drengin Empire. Not too impressive. Surrounded by enemies, the only smart thing they've done this game is put their economy starbase behind their worlds out of reach.

Their planet is cranking out money. About the same as I am at this point. Note that they chose not to make use of the influence bonus tiles. That's not a bug. They simply decided that galactic achievements were more valuable. I would have to agree.

Their capital planet is defended by a fleet of 4 mark II defenders. They are essentially as good as my ships but no better.

So what are they doing wrong?

The Drengin have Singularity Mark IV.  Their ships are pathetic compared to what they could be building. Their latest ships known as mark III's all have singularity drivers but upgrading their ships in orbit would have been a good idea. The question is, why didn't they? Answer, same reason many humans don't, money. But I stop the debugger, make some adjustments here.

Since I know they're ahead of me technologically, I need to move quickly.

The Drath seem to be upset about the Korx.

Meh. The Korx are nothing to worry about. I'll get to them soon enough. I'll give the Drath some goodies though to help.

I also design some new ships with my latest/greatest stuff.

Like the poor Iconians, the Drengin are on friendly terms with me.  They have no idea I'm about to wipe them out.

The difference between 1.1 and 1.0X is really very apparent here.  I'm attacking a Drengin world and rather than encountering one pitiful defender in my sneak attack it's actually got a pretty decent little force here. It's still going to lose but it's a huge improvement.  I lose my capital ship in the process which is a bit painful.

One new change in v1.1 is that ships are named after who created them. So you can now tell when someone is supplying your enemies with ships.

The "Korx Frigate" is owned by the Drengin. The Korx gave it to the Drengin to fight me. But it's too late for the Drengin. Soon they're gone too.

Let's see, who's next?  Ah the snobby Altarians.

The Drath aren't having a good time. In fact, they're gone.

But they have given me what's left of their empire.  The Korx were too tough for them. Well I'll get to the Korx soon.

So here's where we're at:

I've got the bottom left corner. The Korx have the obttom right corner. The Altarians have two worlds just above me.

But the Altarians have been busy.

Look closely at this sceenshot.  The Altarians have 4 starbases ringing Altaria. Two military, two economy. The military ones are pumping up their ships quite a bit and will need to be removed.  But realistically, the Altarians aren't much of a threat.

Like the Drengin, they have a decent home defense but they're just too weak.

Rats. They escaped.

Okay, now I think I will deal with the Korx.  They aren't too threatening yet and I don't want to give them time to become a threat.

The Korx are currently involved in a war with the Torians.  I'm going to use that time to build up and study them.

Their home world is decently used. It's not as profitable as my home world is but it it's doing pretty well. But the Korx are worn down by the battle with the Torians. They are both ripe.

One of the things I'm noticing is that the AI isn't re-designing its ships often enough. This was put in for performance reasons but I think we can do it a better way (which I'm now implementing, recompiling, etc.).  It won't help the AI players this game, but it will help them in the future if they can make use of their new technologies more quickly.

I also design up a new ship for the Korx with a heavy emphasis on defending against missiles.

The Korx are offended.  But the question is, why aren't they doing more about this? They're set to intelligent. Though I do have the intelligences randomized.

Aha! The randomized intelligences save me.

Internally, they have to have at least a rating of 80 to do something about it. So I'm off the hook. The randomize intelligence feature adds or subtracts a few points from the AI randomly to give it more variety.

The Torians are losing but they won't have to worry about the Korx in a minute.

The Korx are defending their planets better than usual. Part of the reason is that all of the AI players will station attack ships in orbit now if it detects even the slighest threat. It makes doing these sneak attacks harder.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

"Why shouldn't I always just pick the evil choice?" This is why (one reason). I just lost three key worlds to these guys because my people revolted because of my evil ways.

I'll deal with that soon enough...

The Korx war is a bit of a challenge...

And ultimately they are defeated.

The rest is just epilogue.  I ally with the humans and the Torians and have them wipe out the Thalan for me.

So what lessons can be learned here?

• The easiest way to defeat the AI is on rare habitable planets. The fewer planets that are available to exploit, the tougher the AI has it because it can't make use of its computing advantage.
• The AI players need to update its ship designs more often (done now).
• The AI players need to be more sensitive to military conquest strategies. I just marched right through and took them over. Of course, this was a very specific setup - rare planets, small galaxy so I could get away with this.  But still, any player marching through like this should get flagged and other civilizations should do the same.  In World War II, Germany nearly won.  Had they not back-stabbed the Soviet Union, things might have gone very differently.  In this game, there was no Britain equivalent.  Everyone just waited their turn to be attacked.  I'll have to put some thought on how to do that.

Not too many flaws though, it's just hard for anyone, even people in the real world, to deal with a focused aggressor. I think we can do something about that. Whether that'll make it into 1.1 or into 1.2 remains to be seen.