I have the GalCiv2_110_beta_032406.exe beta. Don't know if that's the latest or not.
The Dread Lords AI needs a serious tune up (on the Dread Lords on Parade scenario).
On beginner level, they never leave Amalda, except to scout. Years and years went by until finally everyone had so much tech that they couldn't possibly have beaten anybody.
That was boring, so I restarted with it set to "Normal". Major, big time difference. Suddenly there's hundreds of DL warships all over the entire galaxy. For crying out loud, have something in between.
Anyway, here's the bug. The Dread Lords become obsessed with starbases, to the exclusion of everything else. I mean literally, their only goal galaxywide is to destroy a starbase.
I managed to get a little corner of the galaxy all to myself, with three other planets + Mars/Earth. And T W O precursor mines. So I lucked out there.
About twenty or thirty turns into it, DreadLord warships appear out of nowhere and smash two of my mining bases, conquer the Iconians AND the Thalans. I mean seriously in the same turn. The Altarians were wiped out three turns later, then Arceans two turns after that.
So clearly, they're active. The other races are dropping like flies. I designed a crappy little fighter and threw it into production on all five planets. Stingers and lasers and with no protection at all. Meat for the grinder I thought.
Everything goes quiet for a while. I have time to put together 7 fleets of fighters before they came after me. Five per fleet. When they came, they came IN FORCE. Massive, colossal wave after wave after wave. I figured I was going to go out in a blaze of glory and start a new map a few turns later.
They ignored my fighers. They ignored my planets. They even ignored my freighters. Every single one of them was making a direct, unswerving beeline toward an economy starbase I'd built. They had endless opportunities to attack first and wipe the floor with my little fighters, but they just zoomed on past.
So I attacked. and I attacked. and I attacked. And I absolutely slaughtered them. I had *just enough* firepower to take out a frigate in one pass (most of the time) and they weren't attacking my fighers at all, so my losses were nearly zero. The fighters ended up with insane experience and bonus hit points. It got to where just one of my fighers could have taken on a whole fleet of pirates by itself.
They were so frantically obsessed with that starbase that they kept impaling themselves on my defense line. A neverending tsunami of warships. Huge stacks of a dozen or more ships, but none of them in a fleet. I just absolutely slaughtered them. And they kept ignoring me and making a direct beeline for that starbase.
Then it suddenly ended. No more enemy ships. Everything went quiet. Five turns later, they were conquered by the Drengin. The idiots were so obsessed with that one starbase that they sent every single warship they had after it. The end game summary showed that I had over 600 friggin kills for a loss of 13.
So.. ummm...... I think you need to tweak that AI just a little bit.
