If you're playing under these conditions then you won't see the AI for at least the first 100 turns and are basically in sandbox mode until then. I prefer to have more interaction with other races. Spawning near (or at least somewhat near) an aggressive neighbor should be within the realm of possibility and there should be more than one viable strategy for dealing with them.

People SAY they don't want games balanced to within an inch of their life.  But then you give players lots of options and they'll say the "AI is terrible".

GalCiv IV WILL give you the tools to abuse the game if you want.  While really low hanging fruit (some mentioned here) will get reasonably balanced to not be quite so exploitive, we also want to give players the option to play the game as they like.

It's sort of like when people choose to play as xenophobic but not include any races nearby.  Makes the game much easier.  Should we take xenophobic as a race trait out?  I don't think so.  

We also don't prevent players from modifying the XML to change the game rules either.  I want people to be able to play the game however they want to play so that they have as much fun as possible.

Thank you for this feedback.

There is certainly lot's of balance adjustment that will take place. It is the sort of game where changing a 3 to a 5 can make or break the game (and in a game with tends of thousands of values set, that's a lot of balance).

We are constantly in the process of balancing. It happens in every update, it will happen in release, it will happen in every update after release.

And we are always trying to find a happy medium between what is fun and what can be exploited.

The biggest current "exploit" in the game is to play in a large starting sector with no other Ai's near you (so they are all pushed off to other sectors) then overload the map with AI players. They will all be stuffed in sectors with each other, scrapping to get 3-4 good planets each. Meanwhile, the human player has time to expand and colonize 24-30 planets all by himself and can invest in long-term endeavors like colony ships and infrastructure research instead of military.

Even if you set the AI difficulty up high it's still like playing on baby mode.

But, I don't want to take away the ability for players to setup the game however they want to.

To the points expressed here, I want every option to have value in the right situation and if something is so good that it makes other options obsolete, then it's hurting the game. Commanders are great, but are they better than having a governor on a world?

Specific to OP's initial post. He is playing the Hive. The hive gets x3 HP on their ships but their ships don't repair. They are beasts. This means that he's much more open to policies that reduce HP (since he has so much), and they do very well in their initial battles because of the high HP (and less well in future battles as they are more vulnerable to attrition than any other civilization). Their commanders also have the ability to heal if they use Promethion (which is costly for them since their growth rate is based on the amount of stored promethion they have).

I do think there is some better balance that is needed here. Specifically:

1. We will raise the amount of Promethion required to heal them.

2. We will lower their free 20 Promethion (that was added before they got the ability to generate some Promethion per turn on their homeworld).

3. I'm going to play with lowering their HP bonus.

4. I'm going to lower the Missile and Kinetic attack on command ships (the beams looked good). Missiles in particular were really high.

Nope, you still need a doomstack because when you approach victory the AI will just declare war on you. Alliances are very difficult to get (+9 diplomacy!) and even established friendships are nearly impossible to sustain when you get towards the endgame. For more info, see my previous post. In that game I was a declared friend to the Terrans and they were one of the first to backstab me. I have not gotten as far in a 0.81 game so it is possible that these problems have been addressed but I have not heard of anyone successfully winning one of these victory types without a galactic war.

at the beginning with the commander spam fast attack tactic, yes (which is the only good choice for onyx btw, due to very low starting growth rate that takes a long time to get up anywhere near the other races). turning a colony into a core world requires lots of time, resources, and takes away a lot of resources going to your homeworld and other core worlds. many people dont have to make a choice between the two either, since you can get enough money to get enough leaders for both as early as you need to if you pick things right.

nice, these all sound like good changes, thanks. unless these changes are paired with a higher growth rate somehow though, i think that the onyx will always need to be aggressive early on to be best, and to counter the other races taking all those extra resources and planets. it's a LOT easier for the onyx to take several worlds with a stack of giant ships than to wait 20-30 turns or so for the next one citizen to be available.

ouch, yeah that sounds like diplomacy needs to be tweaked to be a little better, which i bet they'll already be doing before release. doesn't really make sense if all the other races attack you just because you're "doing well" though.

i do think that it would be a lot more fun for people if alliances were easier to get and to maintain, then people could try to work more on those good relations than just taking over the galaxy by colonization speed and/or force. If you're at war with a more powerful civilization, weaker ones should be more willing to team up against the huge threat that they all face and maybe even make a couple lasting friendships from it if they all survive the onslaught. happens in star trek all the time so yeah, i think winning by bringing peace to the galaxy should def be an attainable option. not sure how it's currently set up, but maybe make it where you win once your alliance controls a certain % of influence in the galaxy rather than needing to actually kill or force surrender from everyone who doesn't join them.

I like the feedback. It's better to say that I accept the balance challenge and headache to get the differentiated civilizations. I think this thread exposed some good issues about the Hive, we need to do that for all, without killing what makes them unique.

Gorignak and The Stalagmighty Empire (my custom silicon-based race) are def going to be mighty in gal civ IV

Just take out their shipyards and they are dead in the water.

Thats fair, and I'm adjusting values for beta 3 based on the good feedback in this thread.