Stuff that wouldn't require any extra AI programming at all:

1. A built-in map editor.

2. More Starbase hp.

3. NO special repair modules for starbases. I don't like this idea of special repair modules for starbases - I think that players' ships should simply get repair bonuses for being within range of a starbase at all. And don't they already? I remember something about that.

Instead, just give enhanced repair bonuses that come automatically from Military Bases through Starbase Mobilization techs. NO MODULES, since it would be too hard to get the AI to figure out how to prioritize something as abstract as that. This way doesn't even require the AI re-prioritize things; if they want a strategy that emphasizes starbases, then they'll need this benefit. If not, they won't.

This might require some modification of the way AI prioritizes things:

1. Reappearing anomalies. I put that in this category because that would make Surveying ships good, so the AI would have to figure out how many to build and when. But the code for surveying anomalies DOES exist, so it doesn't seem like a change in anything but adding another possible priority to the list. Maybe I'm wrong though, since I can't look at the code myself.

2. More powerful starbase defenses. In particular, Battle Stations need a boost. A Lvl 1 Battle Station should come with 2/2/2 Attack and 1/1/1 Defense, while a Lvl 2 should come with 4/4/4 Attack and 2/2/2 Defense. I'm definite on that - battle stations, at the least, need that extra oomph if I'm going to build an entire constructor for them and then pay for it too.

All the existing weapons and defenses need at least +1 to their current values also; that Beam you get for them at the beginning should do 8 rather than its current 7, Lvl 1 Weapons and Defenses should add at least 6, and so on.

The point is that it should be quite an ordeal to take starbases down, since it's so much time and cost just to get the constructors to continue upgrading them. The unique thing about GalCiv, I thought, was the way the game handles Starbases, and yet I see a lot of players apathetic to them. Mostly because they go down easily.

Stuff that would require extensively modifying existing AI programming by adding whole new ways of thinking:

1. Using constructors to repair damaged starbases. With the modifications for starbases I mentioned above, this may not be such a great idea; I only mention it because I think it would be neat, and it would definitely make starbases as they are worthwhile.

2. Moving military starbases - I liked the idea where military starbases can be turned into a module that is then moved by a constructor from one place to another.

Now this next one's ambiguous because I don't know how GalCiv AI handles this sort of thing; maybe lots of new progamming, maybe only a little. I do know that they used to build a lot of farms and research the farm techs like crazy for one reason or another.

The Shev Method of Fixing Farms:

Here's a relatively simple way to fix farms by doing nothing more than changing the morale formula: a basic farm increases max. population by 4 billion, and increases "morale tolerance" by 1 billion. But this bonus only applies ONCE.

Say, for example, that the current morale formula reaches a certain point of planetary morale at 6 billion. With one farm, it will reach that point at 7 billion, and continue stacking population on until it reaches the 10 billion max, so a basic (lvl 0, default tech) farm does still decrease approval as a penalty for the extra population. Then if another farm is built, it does nothing for tolerance. That's where the other farm tech comes in.

A Xeno Farm, or Lvl 1 Farm Tech, would give a 2 billion tolerance, so that 8 billion population is the same as 6 billion, but still only give 4 billion populace. This goes on until the Lvl 3 Farm Tech, which gives 4 billion morale tolerance and 4 billion extra pop. max.

A food bonus tile should increase tolerance as well as pop. max., so that a Lvl 3 food tile is actually a good thing to have: with a Lvl3 Farm Tech, a 300% Food Tile would increase population by 12 billion and tolerance by 12 billion as well, meaning that you get an 18 billion planet, with approval calculated as if it were only a 6 billion planet. It sounds like a nice reward for getting that high in a once-useless tech.

Of course, I don't have the slightest idea of what the planetary morale formula for GalCiv2 looks like. It could be enough to just change any instance of some planet_population variable in calculations to

planet_population * (6 / 6 + planet_morale_tolerance_in_billions)]

meaning that a population of 7 billion would be calculated as a population of 6 billion, a population of 10 billion would be calculated as a population of 60/7, or 8 4/7 billion, and so on.

But that may not work. Somehow I get the feeling that the morale formula is more complicated than this. But the bottom line is that farms should change the way morale scales, and more advanced farms should do that in a more beneficial way rather than growing more food.

1)As said above, military starbases just aren't useful on the bigger maps; maybe they could have their range of influence scaled with the map or maybe they could be made mobile one way or another, but it would be nice if they were more of a factor.
2)I like the idea above of evil races being able to break alliances at will, you shouldn't be able to trust an evil race because they "promised" that they're your friends.
3)Good ethics needs buffing, and evil probably does too; the morale bonus and the free terraforming for neutral is just too big. Also, the good/neutral/evil decisions you get on your planets should have a larger impact on your society's "leanings"; I play Altarians, and even if I consistently take the evil choice throughout a long game, when I get Xeno Ethics I never even make it to neutral on the scale, nothing I do can overcome their natural goodness, which removes all meaning from the ethical choices.
4)This probably isn't feasible, but the one thing I really miss from Master of Orion is different species naturally liking different kinds of planets (one likes high-grav gas giants, one likes cold, barren rocks). It meant that starting to conquer another race's planets was a big deal because having a new species in your empire meant that you could colonize additional worlds effectively. MoO never really implemented it right, but it was a terribly cool idea. I guess keeping track of the racial compositions of all the planetary populations and making different worlds have different PQ or something for different races would be a little complicated. Ah, well.

Thanks! Keep up the good work, it's a great game!

I apologise if this has alreayd been mentioned and/or if this would be too big a feature but How about a U.P. Secretary General or Cheif chairman of some sort.

They could be voted in or go according to who has the most Influence points, making influence points much more valuble in the game.

The U.P. Secretary General or Cheif Chairman would get to choose from a random selection issues to be voted on by the U.P. you could even give them the ability to choose more than one depending on other factors such as influence points and type of government. i.e. a Star democracy is backed more by a people than a person and it would therefore be more permissable if that peoples leader is chairman for them to pick more then one issue to be voted on in the U.P.

I think this would add a new dynamic to the game and make it more interesting politically as well as more politically involved which if i recall is what Gal civ gamers were wanting in a poll awhile ago. It would also make the U.P. more than just that random bonus or negative you may get every year.

Another voice in the mix:

*Race customization enhanced (allow changing of logistics, tech, miniaturization, etc.)

*Add additional map features (nebulae, space clouds, super novas, etc.) for more strategy

*Decrease micromanagement, particularly for Constructors- make them work more like miners

*Create an end-user map/scenario editor

*Improve UI, as listed in this thread:

https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=357&aid=143715

*Enforce influence areas more, so they can be treated more like borders:
-if someone crosses one, have option to declare war (like Civilizations)
-negotiate for safe travel, even if not allies

Good luck sifting through all of these requests. Looks like you'll have enough work for patch 1.999999999!

I'd like whatever obscure bug that has caused none of my saved games to work, new or old, be eradicated so that I don't feel like I spent money on making GalCiv2 unplayable.

... now, that said, I do think you're doing a great job and I do have faith. The above just depresses me.

A way to customize station graphics & a way to access the ship builder outside of an actual running game.

Mmm... I wouldn't mind a polycounter display during ship building. I'm trying to be more efficient.

I'll think harder this weekend.

Remove the 10 ship limit.
Allow mass production of tiny hulls (2-3 a turn) so they're worth something.
The Jagged Knife should only take out planets with less than 70% aproval, and not your capital.
Give the AI more emphasice on reasearching at least Medium Hulls and Planetary Invasion if it hasn't and it's in a war.
Do not get "Twilight" in your report if there's only a 10 Point difference in military.
War Weariness.
Make entertainment wear-off less severe.
Ecumegalopolii (Were if 40+ tiles are covered in fully constructed sectors, their effectiveness is increased)
Tell the AI,"Get your **** out of my ****ing territory, ****"
And in that tone
Change visual proportion of Mediums and Smalls, smalls are too big or mediums are too large.
Make each new weapons module on a starbase a new weapon so it can multi-target. And a tech that gives stations an inherent "Battlestation"
Respawning anomalies.
Space distasters, i.e: Blackhole, ion storm, and bring back the space monsters!
The AI still doesn't use engines. Make it so.
If a ship or fleet has more movement points than a ship entering a 3x3 area around it, have that ship intercept it.
I think we should let starbases build ships, make it start at building tinies in a seperate tech line after you research medium hulls or the 3rd industrial sector tech.
Rework spending costs for building ships

My wish is that DA will have better performance than DL. My computer ain't the best(yet),but DL runs perfectly on it, while DA...well reeks in performance.

I lied, thats not my only wish. Other things that would make DA cool:

-orbital defence platforms, ie macguns from halo.

-When a spore ship attacks a planet, the planet should toxify insstead of having the same picture when it wasn't toxic.

-Enviroment worlds should have advantages/disadvantages

-AI backstabbing and schemes

-More ways of collecting money. Like turning asteroids into money by beaming the asteroids another race for money.

-Balancing super abilities. Superadapter doesn't do much when there aren't special worlds around

-Starbases should be managed easier. You could have a waypoint go there, have a list of the upgrades you want on it instead of it constantly pestering you on what you want built on it

-Better espionage interface. EX: Techs are color coded to whether you have them or not compared to another race's techs.

-More espionage options, have 007 spies and tuff. They wuld be super spies that are pains to remove and have powerful abilities like making a planet revolt to you. On a sie note, you should be able to see where enemy ships are in the fog if you have "Advanced" intel on an enemy.

-Better minors(?)

-Races that are better suited for radioactive worlds or taxic worlds. They Would be immune to spores and would have to research normal planets.

-Have a second in command who manages all the minor stuff when you are playing a gigantic galaxy. Micromanagement can really bite.

-Up is never formed initially. It must be formed when order is wanted/required.
EX: The goodies form the UP and start to systematically kill all the evil civs. The Evil civs band together to form the "Evil UP" which is dedicated to suffering and hate. The different UPs have different laws and bonuses. So you would have to stay out of this "Guild war" or join a UP faction. The neutrals could have their own, but whats the fun in being neutral? (other than the neutral bonuses)

-And last but not least, a map editor. ( not sure if this one has been said)

*Drools* That would be perfect for my super-race! Also, why does the entire ship disappear when you use a spore capsule. Shouldn't it return to port for a refill? And if you put multiple spore capsules on a ship, why does it only invade one planet and die?

What I'd really like is a combination of 2 feats meantionend above:
i)Borders! Not like real big territory-including borders but rather the first one two or three little squares around every planet one owns. That would make Influence base spamming a wee bit harder,disallow parking fleets (like i sometimes do when i suspect treachery from me wonderfull allies ) AND it would also make planets some sort of a obstacle. Ships might have to make a detour round my planets and in wartime it would make conquering outlying cr***y planets worthwile.

ii) I'd like the diplomatic options of: "do this OR ELSE" and "get out of my territory/borders"


These things really bugger me as a roleplaying aspect of the game... I mean if I had a planetary empire/Alliance/mumbojumbo i shure as hell would mind ships and or bases being deployed in or near Orbit of my planet.
theres just no SUBTLE way to react which kinda sucks. Some times ye just dont automatically want a war


anyway: go improve away!!

Maybe they could make ends meet with an option to pick wither the new or old espionage system(and if the espionage is expanded more options there too). I would also want to see a "What they are up to" area you can gain in espionage. That would be very useful to see what their next move is things like who they will attack, are they planning a influence battle, how will they manage the economy they have now, what new ships they are planning, what important projects they are building, or even where their spies are placed. For example you open the tab and see that the drengins are planning to attack the torians. This could mean you could take advantage of the situation somehow. Plus you could see whats up in their minds. Thats the reasoning for espionage right?

Another idea, when you research "Near omniscient" in the tech victory, you should be able to easily gain enemy info.

Personaly for me i would like to see a little more collor and painting control in the shipyard ship designer. now im still new to the game and havent spent as much time with the shipyard as anyone who entered there ship design, awsome designs by the way. ill have to continue to play with it but so far the game is definantly about a 4.5 besides some issues with my video card which im hopping the new drivers i just started downloading should fix.

As previously mentioned, upgrading numerous starbases can be a bit overwhelming as your empire grows. A "technology" that can automate this process at later stages, would surely help. The time sink should of course stay.

I fondly remember a very old game called "Deuteros", where similar tasks tended to be automated when they started to become truly tedious. I am of course against too much automation, as the game should not play itself. But when you got a certain number of starbases, you tend to be bogged down in the upgrade process.

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