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[umiman]

Stardrive 2 has so many bugs I'd be impressed if you managed to finish a single game. When I played it my experience was the AI would cheatspawn gigantic doomstacks larger than the game would even let you create when it started losing. It also crashed every few minutes and sometimes you get stuck on a permanent crash loop as it tries to fire off an event but can't.  Maybe it's been fixed since then but reviews say otherwise.

Star Ruler 2 is good. The diplomacy is great but the combat is hmm... impressive at first but boring later on. Mostly because it's really just throwing two blobs at each other and hoping for the best. So to that result it's kinda the same thing as GalCiv except more pretty and larger numbers. It's really cool to see 900 giant laser ships shoot though.

Between all the 4x games this year I like Star Ruler 2 the most. Too bad the dev is going bankrupt.

[Aklyon]

I'd say support the SR2 dev but theres probably not much doable on your own that can prevent it besides a sales spike.

[Stuebi]

Wait, the Star Ruler 2 Dev is going bankrup? Shucks, I really like the game.

Also, I'm gonna second the suggestion for Distant Stars Universe as an alternative, either until GCIII get's Mods or heavenly intervention. I took the liberty of playing it some more on a friends account.

The AI is BEYOND bipolar. I had a Civilization make demands at me for waht felt like 50 turns, until they declared war. They promptly proceeded to get wrecked by superior Tech, hauled their asses back and since I was busy with a other Civ, I accepted peace. A couple turns later they ahd rebuilt their ramshackle excuses for ships, and again only taking numbers into account, promptly declared war again. Depending on how big you make your Galaxy, this happens ALL THE TIME.

Every neighbour you have will start "bullying" you, declare war, proceed to get killed and then back off again. I have no idea what late game for these schmucks looks like, because If they dont commit assisted suicide via me, they have backyard slapfights with each other. There is NO challenge at all. None. You can either sit back and wait until Techvictory and get some fun out of the shipeditor, or just go to war after the first couple reasearch topics. Depending on Map size, I'm confident you can win in 100 turns or less.

People might yell at me for this, but I actually dont mind the AI cheating on the highest difficulty level. I remember a lot of games where that was literally the only way to make it a challenge.

Also, I'm kinda dissapointed in Stardock. It's one of the few Devs that I still have some admiration for, and I bought a lot of their games blind on trust alone. But considering this is basically GalCivII with less stuff, and still has a AAA priceag? Come on guys. I dont want to hate you too.

[Sergarr]

For a 4X game, having an AI which doesn't account for technology at all in year 2015 is absolutely unacceptable. The ones who are responsible for this travesty to be allowed to sneak in to 1.0 should be fired for being unskilled at their jobs.

[Niveras]

I have a difficult time believing that the AI not accounting (properly or otherwise) for tech level is intended design. Surely it is a bug.

Of course, whether or not a bug of that magnitude constitutes a heinous crime is another matter. But it seems like that component could be easily tuned in a patch.

[Aklyon]

What difficulty is this on, btw? Wouldn't be surprised if the AI is this stupid on the lowest level, but beyond that...

[Sergarr]

I have a difficult time believing that the AI not accounting (properly or otherwise) for tech level is intended design. Surely it is a bug.

Of course, whether or not a bug of that magnitude constitutes a heinous crime is another matter. But it seems like that component could be easily tuned in a patch.

A game at 1.0 should be fucking playable. It's not supposed to be a start of open beta-testing. Any amount of play-testing would have revealed that AI is in fact retarded. And some people among the game developers have accepted this as a release version of an AAA (judging by price) game.

This is literally a travesty. AI is the absolute key part of 4x strategies that makes or breaks them. Failing to make good decent AI is bad enough; failing to make that in a third game of a series renowned for good AI is unconceivable.

[Chiefwaffles]

Okay, sorry for the mini-dissection, but you're being rather illogical.

A game at 1.0 should be fucking playable. It's not supposed to be a start of open beta-testing.

It is playable. You're overreacting. It may not be in the perfect shape that you had imagined, but that doesn't mean that you can't play it at all.

Any amount of play-testing would have revealed that AI is in fact retarded.

Oh, you mean the ~2 years of public alpha/beta testing they did?

This is literally a travesty.

No. You're literally overreacting. AIs not accounting for technology in this specific situation is an annoying quirk/bug that should be brought up to the developers. It is not "THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD AAAHA AAAAH AAAAAH FIRE EVERYONE RESPONSIBLE."

[Culise]

Hee.  If you want travesty, you want something like Sword of the Stars 2 or Elemental:War of Magic (the latter, coincidentally, being another Stardock offering).  On a scale of 1 to Big Rigs, I'd say GalCiv3 right now ranks a bit around Space Empires 5. 

[MDFification]

Hee.  If you want travesty, you want something like Sword of the Stars 2 or Elemental:War of Magic (the latter, coincidentally, being another Stardock offering).  On a scale of 1 to Big Rigs, I'd say GalCiv3 right now ranks a bit around Space Empires 5.

Being Space Empires 5 tier means it's still unbalanced to the point that the player experience is wrecked.

I mean, my experience with SE5 was that the techs were extremely unbalanced (fighters with meson blasters > anything the AI would ever produce, ever) and the AI too dumb to live. For example, it was entirely beneficial to pump all your tech through your smallest available ship. Your super-upgraded frigate would easily take down cruisers of an AI with an equivalent research base even on the hardest difficulty, because they spread their tech in illogical ways rather than focus on a few techs and optimize. The game provided you with a huge range of options, none of which you'd ever actually use because the AI wasn't a credible enough opponent to force you to diversify your strategy. GC3 strikes me as having the same problem - I've never thought the GC series was strategically deep like the SE series was, but poor AI basically means that it's a worthless game on single-player mode. And it's extremely hard to find people to get a multiplayer game going, as it's a typically single player genre.

[Sergarr]

Okay, sorry for the mini-dissection, but you're being rather illogical.

Illogical? We're experiencing a total failure by AI programmers to do their job, this is not illogical.

A game at 1.0 should be fucking playable. It's not supposed to be a start of open beta-testing.

It is playable. You're overreacting. It may not be in the perfect shape that you had imagined, but that doesn't mean that you can't play it at all

It's not playable. If a game's opponents are literally unable to perceive the main mechanic of 4X game, then it's not playable. The whole point of playing a 4x game is to defeat worthy opponents, and this game fails to provide that.

Any amount of play-testing would have revealed that AI is in fact retarded.

Oh, you mean the ~2 years of public alpha/beta testing they did?

Then the play-testers have completely failed to do their job.

This is even more of a travesty than I thought.

This is literally a travesty.

No. You're literally overreacting. AIs not accounting for technology in this specific situation is an annoying quirk/bug that should be brought up to the developers. It is not "THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD AAAHA AAAAH AAAAAH FIRE EVERYONE RESPONSIBLE."

It's not a "specific situation", it's literally the main point of the game! The fact that it wasn't fixed after two years of public beta-testing, and that it even arised at all in a third game in a series known for good AI is so mind-bogglingly incomprehencible that I can't even find words.

You have to understand that AI is what ultimately makes or breaks strategy games. 4X games - even more so. There's literally no point in playing a game where your opponents cannot provide you with any challenge at all. It would be bad if the game was free. But it's not free, it costs money. A lot of money, in fact.

And this is the second time this company makes a stunt like this - publishing a broken game. It's clear that at this point they're no longer trustworthy. At all.

[Chiefwaffles]

Yep. The AI sometimes thinking it's stronger/weaker than you means the game is automatically broken and unplayable.
Campaign? Nope.
Multiplayer? Nope.
Singleplayer? Oh no, I have to wipe out this pitiful empire a bit sooner than planned! What a travestry! Fire the programmers!!!

[Sergarr]

sometimes

I don't think so:

The AI is BEYOND bipolar. I had a Civilization make demands at me for waht felt like 50 turns, until they declared war. They promptly proceeded to get wrecked by superior Tech, hauled their asses back and since I was busy with a other Civ, I accepted peace. A couple turns later they ahd rebuilt their ramshackle excuses for ships, and again only taking numbers into account, promptly declared war again. Depending on how big you make your Galaxy, this happens ALL THE TIME.

Every neighbour you have will start "bullying" you, declare war, proceed to get killed and then back off again. I have no idea what late game for these schmucks looks like, because If they dont commit assisted suicide via me, they have backyard slapfights with each other. There is NO challenge at all. None. You can either sit back and wait until Techvictory and get some fun out of the shipeditor, or just go to war after the first couple reasearch topics. Depending on Map size, I'm confident you can win in 100 turns or less.

People might yell at me for this, but I actually dont mind the AI cheating on the highest difficulty level. I remember a lot of games where that was literally the only way to make it a challenge.

Also, I'm kinda dissapointed in Stardock. It's one of the few Devs that I still have some admiration for, and I bought a lot of their games blind on trust alone. But considering this is basically GalCivII with less stuff, and still has a AAA priceag? Come on guys. I dont want to hate you too.

Checkmate, atheists.

[Cimbri]

So turns out one of the people who paid enough to name a star, or did they just take names for those I don't remember, put in the name Boatmurdered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It doesn't entirely fit.

[Aklyon]

Naming a star probably doesn't mean it will always generate the same way.