Citizen Dave Deckard on 4/25/2003 at 12:08:19 AM said;

/QUOTE

Hammer

I'm mostly an outsider when it comes to techie-game-post-jargon too, but I'll take a shot...

:::engaging universal translator:::

As near as I can figure, "nerfing" draws its analogy from the relationship between real toys and nerf (tm, circle R) toys. A real football is hard. It flies a long way. It hurts when it hits you in the head. (c.f. Marcia Brady) A nerf football is soft and squooshy. It doesn't fly as far. It's relatively harmless when it hits you in the head. (Unless you just picked it up out of a mud puddle, but that's a different story.)

To "nerf" something, then, is to make it softer, to lessen its reach and impact. In this case (apparently) the +15% PQ bonus was a rough hunk of pigskin which clever, mighty-armed players used to bruise alien noses left and right, ruining their chances of making the big dance. The devs "nerfed" it, reducing the percentage, so that when our heroes chucked away, the Drengins and Torians stood a chance of preserving their faces and making the prom unscathed.

I freely admit I could be wrong about this. This is just what I've gathered from context.

/QOUTE OFF

My version might have been more succinct but yours was a more enjoyable read. It also showed me a derivation the had slipped right past me and I, having a 16 yr, old son have bought just about every product Nerf (tm, circle R)has made.

Elrikk




~SDC~

Starpilot, the key to keeping the AIs off your back is your military strength of your race. You don't have to actually fight (I'm a builder like yourself), but you have to be strong enough that they don't come looking for you. Once I encounter alien civs I always keep the military graph up on the right hand side of the main display. When you see a civ moving past you, build more defense.

There are two good defender ships near the base of the tech tree, the first is the Defender, the second is the Battle Axe. When I'm first colonizing I build no defense at all, then later when I run into aliens I watch their military, when it starts moving up I build one Defender for each planet. That will usually hold you (assuming you expanded to a decent number of planets) for a good while. Then later you'll notice another civ jumping up its military over yours, at that point you'll either want to build a second Defender for each planet or research Shields tech so you can build a Battle Axe (I prefer the Axe, triple the maintenance cost but a far stronger defender). That will keep you safe all the way until the dreadnaught stage of the game.

Also, are you using Scouts to uncover the map? They cost 0 maintenance to maintain and can be built in just a couple of turns and have a long range. I usually have the first planet I colonize with the 100 million colony ship you start with build 4 scouts in a row. Saves you a lot of time fumbling around in the dark with your colony ships, and helps find any nearby resources.

Dave, good way of saying it, I always thought of nerf'ing in that respect, and yes, the +15% PQ was the hardwood baseball bat with several big, nasty nails sticking out of it, and if you played with the number of inhabitable planets set low, even came with built-in chainsaw. The 5% PQ pick is still a bargain at 3 points, but at least that one factor by itself doesn't make the game easy.

I hadn't updated to 1.03 yet because I wanted to finish the game on just one update before submitting it. So I still have the now nerfed PQ ability, I wonder if that is why I can't submit my score? (I guess I'll try updating to 1.03 and see if that allows me to submit the score)

Star Pilot made an interesting coment about come from behind victories.

They don't seem possible in GalCiv. Once you're down, the AI will keep beating you until you are completely destroyed. They don't give you an opportunity to make peace and rebuild.

I think the AI should do a better job of respecting peace treaties. And extortion too. If they extort you once, they should lay off for a while.

As it stands now, giving in to the extortion is a losing strategy, they will just keep at it until you have no money and no techs and finally no planets.

If you go to war against a more powerful opponent, yes you can hold them off, because with two starbases in your sector with four modules each, you can have ships with a +12 attack bonus. It enables you to kick ass in your home sector. But the AI will destroy all of your trade routes, thus cutting off your income. You will still lose some ships. The enemey will keep attacking you and will never make peace.

After the AI loses a lot of ships and doesn't gain anything from you, they ought to be willing to give up and sign a peace treaty.

The only way IMO to come from behind is to either win the research race (and that can be a real nail biter as turn by turn goes by and your civ gets nibbled away at piece by piece) or find some way to go on the offensive. Remember what Nathanial Bedford Forrest of Civil War fame said: get there first with the most men. If you can make a strong raid on the AI, take a few planets, then you can often get a decent peace agreement by offering them back (or all but one). Of course, you'll want to destroy every structure they've built first. This kind of hit-and-run, blitzkreig-then-peace tactic can buy you a lot of time, whether you can do something with that time depends on your position.

I agree that there's no sense in giving in to extortion for a peace treaty, if you aren't in a position to make use of the time it buys. AIs play just like humans: they'll offer peace when in a dominant position just to get stuff from you, then redeclare war. This is GalCiv AI's revenge for the hundreds of times we players have done that to an AI.

If a hostile AI has a significant military strength lead over you it will not stay peaceful no matter what, in my experience. So don't deal with them unless gaining a few more turns of peace will make a real difference, because they are going to attack anyway.

Sometimes you just can't win. But you'd be surprised how a well-focused bit of aggression can turn the tides long enough for you to regain control of the situation.

Also, if you have one civ that is really busting you up, make darn sure you get every other civ possible to declare war on them. Bribe them however is needed. The more fronts your enemy is fighting on the fewer ships he can focus on you. If he wants to fight, let him fight everyone.

I personally like the +15% PQ ability. Nothing that taking over a bunch of overlooked class 12-14 planets and making them 15+ in a few turns. Hey, it was called "Shazam!", right? Of course, combine it with maintenance-free starbases and original-cost constructors, and you could have quite the economic and cultural powerhouse. Probably why both were adjusted at the same time.

What would be nice is to allow these various cheese-tactic abilities and whatnot to be playable, but not submittable. On the new game startup, there could be a "Use Cheats" box to click, and a popup of various removed or "nerfed" things would appear, allowing you to pick and choose your cheese. But if you do, the game will disable the "Submit to Metaverse" option at the game's ending.


~SDC~