[Freeciv-Dev] Re: What we can learn from MOO3

[Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Disclaimer: I have only played a few games of GalCiv, and I am in no way
an expert.

* Raimar Falke (rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 06:02:46PM -0400, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> > Another game that might be worth to look at (in the same domain) is
> > Galactic Civilizations. They made quite a few mistakes as concerns the
> > interface (not enough help during the game, mostly), but playing this
> > game is just great, and replayability is amazing.
> 
> I spend 12h yesterday to play one (1) game on a small map. It would be
> less if I recognized earlier that I can move my death^W^W^W^W^W
> terror-stars.
> 
> My summary: nice. It is more like Civilization (well the name says so)
> than like MoO. You have a grid-map. You have places which yield random
> results if you visit them (huts) (they have an auto mode for
> this). You have problems with happiness/moral. You have to research
> governments and change to them. You later also have a senate which
> votes if you are allowed to declare war. You have a predefined set
> (about 20) of ships. And the fight is also like in Civilization mostly
> unit against unit without a special fight screen. They also took the
> culture from civ3. The ships and techs descriptions are funny. There
> are references to 42, 286 and Britney Spears in them ;)
> 
> What I didn't like is that you can't control the agenda on the council
> meetings. In moo3 you are allowed to bring in minor actions. The
> elections aren't important anymore at midgame since the penalties
> don't have such an impact.
> 

I agree that this would be great. (It might even be possible to do it
right now, as some of the features are not very well documented ... I'll
ask on the GalCiv forums (where the main developer actively
participate)).

> Although also not all elements got tooltips you aren't lost like in
> MoO3. I didn't found an in-game help system. The RMB is used to mark
> the destination of a goto/enemy to attack. 
> 

The game is definitely lacking as concerns help. The manual itself is
disappointing but it is being rewritten.

> A good thing about the interface is the graphs interface which is
> almost all the time visible
> (http://www.galciv.com/images/screenshots/8162002122540AM.jpg at the
> middle of the right side). Also nice was the split into the left side
> (80%) and the right side (20%). What is displayed can be changed
> independently.
> 

One small complaint about this sidebar is that one needs to refresh it
actively. For instance, if the main screen is the domestic fund
allocation screen, and the sidebar is the planet list, when changing the
allocation of funds to military / social / research, one needs to click
on the "show planet sidebar" button to have the "turns left" refreshed.
But it does make for efficient management of planets.

> Also nice was that you good visual feedback at the diplomacy screen:
> yellow for they-won't-accept-this and green for they-will-agree. This
> however allow some kind of light cheating: if you have a deal
> tech-vs-tech for example which is green you add money of the other
> side till it turn yellow. If this behavior of the players was so
> expected they it would be nice if the game had a add-money-till-yellow
> button.
> 

The same thing happens in Civ III with the advisor. In fact, I just
received a mass Apolyton email this morning that was talking about "what
makes a good civ-like game", and the advisor was mentioned (comparing
tech trading with SMAC):

<quote>
CivIII, you have to click on the tech that interests you, and to click
on the tech you're ready to disclose : the advisor tells you whether it
will work or not. In  short, the concept is the same, and is equally
complex (a tad more   complex in CivIII actually), but the interface is
much more simple.
</quote>

> Alan can you answer me some questions about the game? Starting from
> the middle I had money problems. At 3/4 of the game it was something
> like this: I collected 700 with taxes, 100 with traderoutes (they have
> limited the number at the start. I had no idea how to increase it even
> when I hold 60% of the global might). However I could have spend
> 4000. So I can only spend 20%. This rate occasionaly also got down to
> 15%. What did I wrong? In my home sector I had 4 planets (lucky) and I
> build 2 full star bases. Not enough or too many star bases. So what I
> made it selling my techs to the AI. I got deals like 750 for 30 turns
> which was quite nice for 2-3 high techs. The last enemy had only one
> planet left. He wanted peace. I requested all his money and he
> accepted. So I got 15k. This was only enough to drive my economy at
> 100% for 3 turns.
> 

As I said at the beginning, I'm still pretty much a newbie with this
game. But there are a couple things that I learned:
- do not maintain a huge army, they are very expensive. Being flexible
  helps a lot (playing the spending sliders). As it is very difficult to
  invade a planet (especially if the population is big), one has a few
  turns between war declaration and big problems. (I discovered the
  first casualties in war in my latest game were starbases, so now I
  heavily upgrade their defenses).
- do not build all improvements, some of them are just too expensive.
- Upgrade your planet quality (soil enhancement and habitat), which
  makes for a bigger population -> more taxes.
- Build economic updates on your starbases. Most of my planets are
  constantly building constructors at midgame point.
- Trade more. You can only start with 2 trade routes, but some techs let
  you have more. 100 in trade seems a bit low (but you did not say what
  map size you played on).
- I am almost never able to be at 100 % spending. I'm usually around 60
  %. It also depends whether you are in a recession or not (recession is
  a game event, it is really bad: I had to cut my spending to less than
  10 %).

> Also when I used the worklists they rebuild trade goods and wonders
> which are already built. I think this is a bug. Related: it doesn't
> look like you get the production money back if you build "nothing" on
> your planet.

I never use worklists, so I don't know. And I think the "not getting
prod back when building nothing" is on purpose.

To me, GalCiv is not a revolutionary game, but it's my favorite
turn-based strategy game right now, for a few reasons.
- The AI is just great. I've only played at 'Normal' (there are a few
  levels above that), and it plays well with alliances, it detects
  military build-up or cultural attacks, it sometimes even give you free
  ships if you're at war with a civ they don't like but are too afraid
  to make war to. And one other great thing: as a legacy from the
  original game (which was programmed for OS/2 and multithreaded), the
  ai decisions are computed during the player's turn, so there is almost
  no delay when hitting the "turn" button (except for watching ships
  moving around). It's a nice change from civ III which was hard on my
  poor slow cpu.
- The back story is interesting. I've just discovered a few parts of it,
  but there are some new events almost at each game. Also, the player
  has to make "moral" decisions when colonizing planets (and from time
  to time). Being good prevents you from using resources as efficiently,
  but good races tend to stick together and have alliances (and you get
  free ships from minor races from time to time as well). Evil lets you
  abuse resources and gives you access to some special techs.
- Replayability is really good (which is not surprising for this kind of
  games). It's possible to play on a tiny map (the game lasts a few
  hours) to a gigantic one (I have not tried yet, but I imagine it takes
  a long long time).
- Great support: the forums are active, the main developer listens to
  comments. Games uploaded for scoring (they have a "ladder" thing where
  you can upload games) are also used to study how the AI reacts and
  improve it. They release updates early and often (bug fixes as well as
  new stuff) and have budgeted one year of support (whatever that means
  ...). The game seems easy to mod, but I have not looked at that part
  yet.

Sorry for the long mail. And as I said before: this is from someone who
has just started playing a couple weeks ago.

Alan

-- 
The hacker: someone who figured things out and made something cool happen.