Is a new patch being worked on? » Forum Post by sn0rri

Good question. Some time a go Frogboy was working on it. Perhaps he has been busy with Elemental. I hope he finds the time do it as there is still some low hanging fruit (see the topics on this). I believe Galciv2 is still selling well and that Stardock would find new buyers as a result of keeping some resources devoted to this best seller.

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Solam

Join Date 03/2007

+16

I do not know if they are working on it but I would not worry to much.

Stardock is a veryb good company they will get to it eventually.

They are working on Elemental A LOT so they are bound to put somethings on the side for a bit.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Gah. Forum burps & quote mess at the same time...

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Back in February, Brad posted: "Galactic Civilizations II still sells amazingly well. Both at retail and digitally.

As a token of thanks, I was thinking of working on an update in my spare time after I turn in the book manuscript next month. Are there any small updates you guys would like to see in there? Mind you, it would be just be me. On a couple of cold weekends doing this."

The thread's got over 100 replies so far.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Won't happen in the near term.

We check in little fixes and tweaks to the game on occasion. But it'll be awhile before we get QA time to put it all together and start testing it out.

My particular interest will be on the computer AI.

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As it has always been. Don't mislead those eager for change. Long-term is long-term. Not a criticism.

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Sup brad,

How much longer til MP patch is done? You promised me this in PM once.

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hell i just bought the game i'd never heard of it until last month. I bet if more people knew about it, it'd sell well :0 i mean metacritic gave it like a 90

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Thanks good to know. Very much appreciated!

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

It's all very well saying this should be fixed or that should be fixed, but you aren't the ones who have to get it to work without unfixing other things along the way. There's five pages of forum posts with a range of proposed changes which go way beyond the scope of small updates. I'm not saying that those changes wouldn't do any good, but one of the chief complaints has been that the AI doesn't behave as it should. If you have the right guy interested in making the AI play better, wouldn't it be a good idea to bias your suggestions toward AI changes?

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Maiden666

Join Date 12/2008

+62

Quoting MarvinKosh,

reply 10

It's all very well saying this should be fixed or that should be fixed, but you aren't the ones who have to get it to work without unfixing other things along the way. There's five pages of forum posts with a range of proposed changes which go way beyond the scope of small updates. I'm not saying that those changes wouldn't do any good, but one of the chief complaints has been that the AI doesn't behave as it should. If you have the right guy interested in making the AI play better, wouldn't it be a good idea to bias your suggestions toward AI changes?

True, so true. Though I assume AI behaviour to change isn't something that is done in an evening, but there were quite a number of issues mentioned that could.

Basic problem with AI behaviour seems to be that it always the same way, and once you get used to it, you know pretty much right off the start of a game what you need to do to counter that. That is, the AI is lost inevitably from turn 1 on. Solution would be if the AI gets the ability to *learn* during the course of a game, esp. by observing the strategies a player takes, and tries to counter them also. And that experience should not get lost, but be incorporated from game to game, so that the AI's would ever evolve - so that each new game the player will never *exactly* know what and how the AI is going to do. b

All in all, it might be wishful thinking on my behalf...

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

I wouldn't say it was wishful thinking, there have been hints about getting the AI to use the full capabilities of a multi-core to do analysis. That said, any analysis the AI does as part of making the next move is always going to be an imitation of what human strategists do instinctively.

How does an AI tell when a player has made a mistake that creates an opportunity, rather than a ploy which will result in certain defeat? Or in other words, can you make it think 'this is too good to be true'?

How does an AI realise that knocking out production or economic centres is better than trying to win an unwinnable superiority battle?

How does an AI decide when it has warred enough with one player? How do you get it to avoid getting dogpiled on without avoiding the potential spoils of continued conflict?

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Bottom line is Brad needs new game sales to justify the expense of devoting programming and development time to the fixes and enhancements patch requested in this thread and others. How can we players help increase sales?

Well, I can think of a couple of things that would help. Perhaps you can think of other ways.

1. Post positive player reviews on sites like Metacritic and Amazon; and other sites you think potential buyers might visit.

2. YouTube Videos. If you have the tools to do so, please make some commented videos and upload them to YouTube. These need not be full play throughs; those are really big projects! Videos that emphasize particular features, videos focusing on the fun to be had.

I know that before I consider buying any new game I read forums, check some pro reviews and user reviews, and then head over to YouTube to see what the game play really looks like. Also, as a rule of thumb, see how many videos there are and how recent they are.

Sins of a Solar Empire has good YouTube presence. Heck, even Master of Orion 1 & 2 have good YouTube presence. But the Galciv series in general has only fair to poor YouTube presence.

Why don't I fix that? My computer will not handle the video recording software is the main problem.

In conclusion I think it is very likely that an organized player campaign to increase the visibility of the Galciv 2 series to prospective purchasers and thus help Stardock with sales is going to increase the chance that Stardock can devote the resources that the patch will need.

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I JUST found out about this game 3 months ago, and it was because it was in a bargin bin in a crappy computer store i go to see if i can get any good items for cheap, oooohhhh yea that kind of store, 100% legit, so they say, they don't say much, at least in english anyways. before then i never even heard of it, not once. But its damn great, lacks a bit of depth and the ai is pretty stupid, but overall its freekin fantastic. I wish someone would just merge Homeworld, this game, and space empires into one, now that would be something else.

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econundrum1

Join Date 04/2007

+36

I've no complaint, this game has been out years and had lots of love from Stardock as well as two great paid expansions that really took it to another level.

I think it's amazing Stardock are still producing patches for it (in a good way) I know of no other software company which wouldn't have long since abandoned it.

Mindon you I'm looking forward to Elemental, the beta is certainly promising, but not as much as GC3 can't wait for that....but sadly I have to

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