Didnt they make a classic version which everyone can play. Maybe they should make it an optional game on the menu.

Currently the AI is broken, it cannot play the game. 

In the current version (2.6), population is everything. Whoever has the highest population wins the game. Cities and morale buildings are all you need to win. The fact that this is out of balance is a problem on its own, but it's not the worst problem. If the AI understood the way the economy works, one could still have a good game. 

Currently, however, the AI ignores population growth. I am now playing the game on 'Incredible' difficulty, and I have 11 games on that difficulty under my belt. For the first 100 turns or so the AI presents a challenge because it can keep up with me in output and technology and can send threatening fleets. 

Once I survive until turn 100, though (which I basically always do because of military base turtling), I win the game in a big snoozefest. In every single game if you look at the timeline you will see my population explode around turn 60-90 and keep growing exponentially, while the AI's population stays flat. (With ONE exception - the Yor. They are the only AI that grow their population.) 

Anyone other than synthetic does not grow its population, and so the game because boringly easy because I pull away in production and technology and leave everyone else behind in the dust. When I capture AI planets, I never find any farms or cities.  

The minor problem is that farms/cities are not balanced with factories/labs/markets, but the much more major problem is that the AI ignores the former and is thus not at all a threat. 

I am also seeing AI planets with lots of land that would be good for farms, but 200+ turns in there are no farms. Also a nice +3 population tiles that they start building a lab on, then switch to a factory, then back to a lab, and take quite a while before they settle on one.

I think the is true for both script-based and procedural AI.

I remember the AI in GC2 would grow its population. But then, now growing one's population is a 2 step process for most civs, one needs farms AND cities. I bet this is much more difficult for the AI to handle. 

I myself made the mistake of building too many factories and labs because I would unlock those buildings long before cities and wanted to avoid having empty tiles. I have since taught myself how to play well in the current version. I beeline the tech that unlocks farms and cities, perhaps right from the beginning of the game, or perhaps I grab Artificial Gravity first. Only after I've unlocked farms and cities do I research anything else. I will start building farms almost immediately, so as to ramp up food production ASAP, and cities come soon after. I'm actively growing my population very early on. 

On planets, I will build one of the early production buildings, such as the core mine, starport, space elevator, but after that I will start building cities. 

I suspect what is happening with the AI is that when it claims a planet it begins to decide what to build on the tiles. In the early game, cities aren't even available, and then when they are available, there is probably no food to build them and so the AI just fills all the tiles with other buildings. If the AI ever did build farms, by the time it built them, all its tiles would be full anyway and thus it would have no room for cities. 

I have done a little AI programming myself back in the day. Speaking from that perspective, I think it would be a lot easier on the AI in this game if 1) farms and cities were unlocked by default, as in, right from the first turn, and 2) if everyone started with some base food, say 5-10. That way the AI could much more easily be programmed to get farms and cities going right away. 

As for balance, farms/cities need heavy nerfing. One thing that I think should absolutely be done is to get rid of population adjacency bonuses. I think cities should retain their adjacency bonus to other buildings, like production and science, and that way cities can act as hubs, but cities should not boost other cities. I've had planets with 8 or so cities on them with 120 population. Each city is only supposed to provide a pop cap of 3, so 8x3+3 = 27. Where does 120 come from? All the adjacency bonuses. This is just nuts. Even without adjacency bonuses, cities would still be better than factories/labs/markets most of the time. Giving them adjacency bonuses just puts the balance into double facepalm territory. 

From what I can tell from the moddable files and having worked with them some months ago, the AI does something like this:

The AI kind of has a shopping list (GovernorDefs.xml). There items are addressed like 'Manufacturing', 'ManufacturingHub', 'ManufacturingUnique'. These types are linked to the PlacementTypes in the 'ImprovementDefs'. The AI will pick the highest available item on its shopping list, select an improvement of the right PlacementType and build it in the spot witht he highest adjacency bonus for the improvement. '-Hub' and '-Unique' Types can actually replace normal types, so no the AI isn't helpless when the planet is full.

Farms and cities have the PlacementTypes 'Food' and 'Population'. 'Food' is not an item on the recent 'GovernorDefs.xml'.

It does not even consider building farms, and what few cities it considers, it is out of food for those.

On a sidenote: don't remove city adjacency bonusses. I like the minigame. Just make them something reasonable like +.5 population instead of +10% again.

Apart from that I can only really repeat my previous suggestion on balance:

zuPloed

reply 156

We haven't even seen to potential of the current system because the numbers are off. In the spirit of keeping with the current system and with frogboys preference of not having commutative addition (I'm not sure this is the right way), I would propose the folowing changes:

- Factories stay as they are
- cities provide 1.5+.25/level pop
- research labs provide 10%+5%/level
- workers, engineers, scientists and entrepeneurs provide 5+.25/level flat bonus instead of 30%+1%/level

This way population is roughly on par with their improvements if you only consider that one output and neglect approval. If you start to consider tech, citizens, asteroids and approval it shifts more in favor of improvement based planets rather than pop based ones.

This is the least intrusive change I can think off.

Also: you want population to cause a different strategical challenge than just being limited by another ressource? Let us kill population by bombing planets from orbit (I allways wanted to be able to do that ). Casualties: .2% of total weapon rating of the attacking fleet. Bombing costs multiple moves per turn, because the fleet has to get into position deeper within the gravity well and has to get out afterwards (and because otherwise it turns into a mindless clicking for the player or is very op).

Well the game is just not playable right now if the AI will never build a farm. I know it sounds harsh, and I know they put a lot of work into this game and I appreciate that, but this is not just a small oversight, it's massive. I guess there are a lot of people who don't mind playing "sim city in space", they don't mind playing a game they are guaranteed to win, where there is no challenge at all, but I'm not one of those people. As it stands right now the AI is just unable to play and presents zero challenge, and so I see no reason to fire up a game. This is very frustrating. I think I'm going to leave GC alone until this issue is fixed and I definitely won't spend any more money on it until this issue is fixed. I really hope it is fixed soon. 

Is there any way to fix this via modding? 

Agree.

I haven't fired up a game since May.  Still waiting.

Yes.  But is it worth the bother?  The shear mass of data that needs combed through is just too much, especially with the specter of the next update, whenever it comes, invalidating the modded changes with who knows what sweeping changes to core game mechanics.

(Sigh)

double post

Feeling pretty ripped off right now tbh. I paid a lot of money for this broken game. Gave it a thumbs up, too. Of course, that review can be changed... 

Also, if the devs answer is just "hey, we fixed the problem in our new expansion, pay $49.99 for it and you'll see". That's not good enough. I need to see the game I paid 80 bucks for fixed before I'm spending any more money. GC2 was a fantastic game, which is why I had a lot of trust in this developer. That trust isn't endless, though. 

Back to topic: what I would also like to see is that if you hire mercenaries then the ships should appear at the bazaar you contacted and not at the home planet. Especially on the largest maps it's very annoying that a mercenary needs 30 or 50 turns to reach it's destination because it always appears at the home planet.

That would make the "Bazaar" button at the top obsolete since you would have to fly one of your ships manually to the bazaar of your choice.

I am not usually one to make complaints, but I do want to chime in on the AI not building farms.  This is the biggest disappointment I have found yet.  I'm very patient with all changes to the game, and don't mind relearning mechanics, but the farm/city thing is just annoying.  For the first time since I got the game (not a founder but got it upon release) I actually do not wish to start a new game.

I think you misunderstand me. My proposal includes that the player is able to contact any bazaar on the map, not just his or her own one. Sorry if that wasn't clear.