Galactic Conquest gameplay balance, land battles & other comments & suggestions

[Mastrody]

Hi TR team,

First of all congrats on your excellent mod. Its quite stable, polished, innovative, unique, graphic upgrades are excellent and it catches the theme and atmosphere that it wants to create. A few minor bugs or things missing here and there but nothing gamebreaking (so far), while I'm also sure you're working on them.

Now, on to my comments:

1) First, about Galactic Conquest gameplay balance. Me being an ole guy, leaning back, enjoying my coffee and playing solemnly SP games, the AI gameplay is my main issue.

I started playing a Galactic Conquest "Imperial Civil War" on admiral (hard) difficulty (even though I read that "your" "hard" is even above vanilla's hard), as Galactic Empire and after 60 or so weeks of game time I was dominating everything. I was already consolidated at inner ring and surrounding areas and I hit the mark that I was now healthy economically and established enough to start producing executor star dreadnoughts.

I focused on inner ring's core planets and didn't touch the further away ones (outer ring etc), thinking, well, no point investing money on them cuz they could be overwhelmed. After 60 weeks, of minimum defenses, those planets were never invaded. Besides the occasional space skirmish (that I could understand there were passing by ships triggering it), nothing else happened. From any other AI. I did notice that Empire of the Hand AI was kinda streamrolling New Republic on East side.

Me, reaching to the point of going to have multiple executors, robust economy, defended choke points and ready to streamroll everything, I knew where this was going and disappointed of the "challenge" I kinda gave up on that game.

Before I give up on the mod, I thought to try a galactic conquest map "From the Ground Up", where everybody starts with one planet, as it is my favorite kind of scenario. (Suggestion: Maybe do another From the Ground UP GC with more planets? like 90-100?).

Anyway, I start the map, Galactic Empire again (my fav heh's), admiral (hard) difficulty and this time, things are more "balanced". AI is more aggressive (I can see the logs of conquering planets, esp. from the New Republic AI) and this time, fights occur, things get tough, to my pleasant surprise.

Before I continue my game, I started to wonder why From the Ground Up is more "balanced" (from lack of better word), while Imperial Civil War (the flagship of all galactic conquests) behaves thusly. So, I started new games, let them roll, monitored logs for conquered planets, monitored economic and etc charts, checked out progression of AI regarding fleets, infrastructure (spying nearby planets) etc. And since I play strategy games for 25+ years and I've scripted a thing here and there about AI and gameplay and balance, I came to the following conclusions (which ofc may be wrong! lol).

AI (esp. the New Republic?) wants to build infrastructure. Barracks, light factories, turbolasers as well as space infrastructure and so on. While this is ofc healthy and desirable there is a side effect.

It's ok to do that in From the Ground Up scenario, because (as I saw) every time AI conquers a planet they get not the standard (as per your manual) planet capture bonus but 10x and even more times more depending on the difficulty level. This gives them enough credits to build infrastructure (esp. turbolasers and golans) that they so desire and manage to gather enough fleet and army to be aggressive or a "challenge".

In the other scenarios where everybody is pretty much with pre-conquered most of the planets, there's no planet capture bonus credits for the AI. The AI finds itself in a situation, with 8000 or so starting credits, numerous planets, need to build infrastructure in all of them and no income. So weeks and weeks will pass by till it reaches that point (of building infrastrucutre enough so it focuses on other things), esp the AI's with more starting planets. In the meantime, human will focus on money making infrustructure (that AI doesn't focus on *at all"), only defending choke points and start spamming capital or super capital fleets to streamroll everything. From there on, it's game over. There's no challenge.

My suggestion is 2-fold: Either start with less pre-conquered planets so that AI will have that planet capture bonus income or pre-built infrastructure in every planet that is pre-conquered at start up. (Not all infrastructure but at least some basic (barracks, light factory, turbolaser, a golan or 2, or heck how many are found necessary through beta testing - cuz finding the sweet spot of gameplay balance is tricky and we all know that). This will - hopefully -  lead the AIs to start building fleets and armies and threat / fight the human so that he won't just pass through 50-60 weeks like a walk in the park till he starts spamming capitals and SSDs and game over.

By the way, I noticed that From the Groud Up scenario (GC), New Republic starts from multiple locations(?) (how else can be explained them conquering various planets all over the galactic map at start of the game?) (so he has more than one planet at start up *as AI* opponent? so they ofc start to conquer multiple planets each time (instead of one the other AIs and the human "usually" does "at a time")?, with result their income revenue to grow up extrapotentialy (as they get the planet capture bonus) creating the feeling that some players may have that AI New Republic in From the Ground Up scenario is "OP" / out of balance, which in my opinion is correct. It creates imbalance. By the time the human has accumulated 10k-15k credits the other AIs about 50k-75k through conquests etc, AI NR (depending on the difficulty lvl) will have accumulated 150-300k credits, and start accumulating big fleets, that is almost streamrolling esp for the other AIs. (btw I noticed there's no charts / statistics for the Pentastar Alliance but I could guess this is a limit of the engine (originally having only 3 factions)).

Btw, small suggestion. If this is indeed the case (of NR starting from multiple locations) and if you want to keep NR starting from multiple locations in FtGU scenario so that "you fill" the galactic map as you want (with NR in outer ring etc), you could just script the bonus NR takes from conquering planets to be less than the rest factions.

Edit: I just tested a game FtGU as NR Vs the rest and I noticed that this time IR may start from multiple planets, conquering simultaneusly multiple planets taking multiple planet capture bonus credits etc, so whatever was said about NR is valid for IR in case you start as NR, etc. So a balancing of that scenario should be considered regarding who starts from multiple locations etc.

2) Speaking about game play and infrastructure, a vanilla gameplay lack of scripting that carries on is that AI doesn't build money making infrastructures. I dunno why some basic scripting of "if planet borders with enemy planet, build normal infrastructure (which emphasizes defense buildings as we know) while if not then build basic infrastructure (less defense buildings, you be the judge of it, say barracks, light factory + turbolaser maybe) and money making buildings" can not be implemented. While you could also code a priority "if planet base income equal or more than 60 then if border planet build 1-2 money making buildings if not then build all 5 money making buildings", etc. The thing about it is that when the income that comes from conquering of planets stops (and in case of every scenario besides the From the Ground Up scenario) this happens very fast, the AI stays only with its "basic planet" income (multiplied according to the difficulty). Well, we all know this is not enough. As soon as the human has established his economical infrastructure AI will lose the attrition war or fleet stacks of doom war or spam of capitals and supers war etc. The "challenge" once again goes outta the window.

3) A small comment about the maps. One of the excellent new features in FoC was that you could preview the tactical land map, see how it is, see where the potential buildings are, as well as the build pads etc re-arrange your units and buildings if on defense or make your strategy as you make your land invasion. Well, this is only valid here (in TR) in the "official"(?) maps? The TR's "new" maps do not have that feature. You zoom in to see the land tactical overview of the planet and it's completely off. You only see a generic view of the land map. This is not a gamebreaking issue but if it's fixed it would be awesome

I also noticed that at the strategy map the planets don't show the special abilities (ie mining colony) even if I enable it through the button by the minimap and many a times I have to read the planet info (and guess where it's not apparent) or alt tab to the manual to double check it. :-/  (Btw, excellent job on the manual as well!)

4) Btw, graphics all set to high (till I at least hit that "critical mark" that everything lags down lol) and maps look wonderful. Great detail, beautiful landmarks etc. The units, both land and space look excellent as well, beautiful and detailed (in high settings), while very descent in lower settings. Excellent work guys!

5) Speaking of land maps again, I see quite an absence of build pads. While there are some maps that have enough of them, many maps don't. I can understand that this was an intentional decision and I'm not saying to start spamming build pads all over the maps, but I would wish there were a few more. After all, the build pads along with the defensive infrastructure is one of the advantages of the defender (cuz the defender should have some advantage in defense Vs the attacker advantage of attacking with a multitude of land forces). So when you are attacked by a stack of land forces your build pads is one of your defensive advantages to at least cause some considerable casualties to the attacker. Your tactical battle would focus around those build pads and turbolasers if existed and so on, while when you attack, the only thing that prevents you from attacking with a tiny/small force (and thus spend credits for land infrastructure and units (as you should and as the AI does) early on for better gameplay balance) or at least that thing that at least causes you some casualties, are the enemy build pads (I just wish AI would build on them more often (always) than occasionally, but maybe this could be scripted?). So I'm not saying spam them build pads, but at least put a few more to give the defender a small advantage or at least counter Vs the attacker bringing a whole stack to attack. - Again, not a game breaking issue but more of a wishful suggestion.

6) One other thing about land battles is that to my pleasant surprise they are more balanced! At last, human player gets to have some casualties. No more streamrolling with zero casualties. The infantry is where it should be, no just cannon fodder but also contributing, with great casualties nevertheless but not just cannon fodder any more. The artillery is no longer the end all, esp. Vs infantry. This is mostly because of the infantry speed buff that you gave (which actually worked) but I dunno if you also tweaked artillery's dmg table, but whatever you did, you hit a sweet spot! Don't touch it! lol

7) Speaking of ground battles, the only thing that I do not like (and it's quite an issue tbh) it's the scaling of units. I am playing at 1920 x 1080 resolution on a 21,5 inch monitor and well,, a unit or 2 of 4x tanks lets say, just fill my screen. I have to scroll up down or left right to target something that I want or to see who is attacking me and so on. I could zoom out from tactical map and see better, but I won't get to see my minimap and I will miss those beautiful graphics. I dunno why the scaling of space units is much more balanced while the ground units scaling is off. Quite off.

8) And finally my last comment is about the super capitals and the capitals of quite a large pop cap (say 7 or 9).  Usually those units are the end all. They are so good performance wise that usually, in all mods I play, all the other units become obsolete in the end and all human does is builds stack after stack of such units with the add on of the max number (if there is a cap) of super capitals he can get his hands on. Usually making 2-3 "fleet stacks of doom" and then it's game over. Then he comes to the forum and complains that the game is too easy that there's no balance etc...lol

So anyway, the biggest problem of any gameplay balance is the presence of such units (big capitals or super capitals) that can be spammed and their performance is superb. Since after a while their cost doesn't matter, it's all about how many such ships you can "squeeze' into the battle or have with you as reinforcements. This totally breaks the gameplay balance and makes all other units obsolete. It's a shame to have all those units in game, and even more in mods, but build none of them cuz they are obsolete. The game becomes so boring if you spam just a couple of units.

Now, I noticed/read somewhere that you have a cap regarding the supercapitals, but I wonder if that is enough? I can see the executor being buildable and well, even 4 of them can streamroll everything. Maybe you could decrease the cap of supercapitals or limit it only to hero units?

Or about the other ships of 7-9 pop cap, maybe you could put a cap on them too so that they are not spammable?

(I know there is a faction that doesn't have supercaps and relies on them 9 pop cap ships so maybe you can increase the cap of those ships for that faction.)

It's indeed a shame to have the majority of smaller ships being obsolete. I usually end up modding those "OP" ships out of the game lol

Well, I guess this could be all my initial comments from a first impression point of view as I just installed your mod. I only took my time to post such a lengthy post because I see your mod is very promising

Hope I helped,
Kind regards,

PS: I read you build Ascedancy mod for SoaSE. As a SW fan, I play that game as well and I look forward to your mod there too! - I have tried other SW mods there like Requiem, E4X + Interregnum etc (SoGE I didn't even instal cuz as I read the gameplay balance there is completely off), so far Interregnum looks the most promising but no mod yet managed to reach that point of "this is it". So looking forward to Ascedancy!

[Mat8876]

This must be the largest or top 10 largest post on this forum.

[tlmiller]

1.  FTGU - ONLY the human player starts with a single planet, all AI players start with multiple.

8.  With Executors, can build only 4 at a time, 7 lifetime (for GC's like ICW that have era progression).  For the Viscount, I think it's 1 lifetime (AI ignores this).  For the Sovereign, I think it's 1 at a time, 4 lifetime.  For the Vengeance, it is hero only.  Jerec is the only Vengeance in the game.  Same goes for the Eclipse, Pally is the only one in the game.  If you limit supercaps to heros only, then the IR wouldn't really be the IR.  The whole thing that made the IR what it was were the supercapitals that were horribly inefficient but got the point across.

[Slornie]

Hey Mastrody, welcome to the forums! And thank you for such a comprehensive set of feedback and suggestions.

There's loads of things I'd like to respond to, so lets see how we get on:

1a) Balance

Balance across the period of Star Wars covered by the mod is tricky as the relative power of the factions, and their ships/heroes, changes hugely over the sixteen years between Endor and the Vong War.  The Empire/Imperial Remnant declines from being the single power of the galaxy to an impoverished shadow of its former self, while the Rebel Alliance/New Republic goes from strength to strength with new and better vessels at it's disposal.  As most of our GCs are based on these "historical facts" this means that some are naturally easier for one faction than another. 

In the early eras (where you started in the Imperial Civil War GC) the Empire is basically at the height of its power (sans Emperor, Vader and Death Stars), whereas the New Republic is very much in its infancy with pretty much the same ships and vehicles as it had during the Rebellion.  When you get to the later eras (which it sounds like you didn't reach as the IR) the tables are very much turned around as the Remnant loses access to its SSDs and the New Republic gains access to significantly more powerful ships like the Nebula Star Destroyer, MC90 and Bothan Assault Cruiser.

/Side note: The EotH aren't in the Imperial Civil War GC, so I assume you mean the Pentastar Alignment (Imperial splinter faction with access to those 9-pop mini SSDs known as the Praetor II).  As you've noticed those Praetors are pretty powerful which coupled with the New Republic's pretty weak state at the start of the game probably explains their poor performance here.

1b) Starting positions

As tlmiller has already said, the AI factions in From the Ground Up start with multiple planets by design.  We originally had it with one each, but found the AI just threw the towel in and didn't do anything.  So giving them a stronger starting position allows this format to function.

1c) AI credit income

The credit modifier from the difficulty level should actually apply to any income, whether it be planet capture bonus or regular income from the passage of days/weeks.  In easy mode this is 2x base amount, rising to (as you mentioned) 10x on hard.  Any lack of activity is categorically not down to lack of credits.  Because the AI is literally rolling in money this may serve to reduce any coded "desire" to build income generating structures - that plus it gets to cheat and spawn structures and units without cost anyway.

1d) Other points

• The AI in Empire at War is notoriously fickle.  It will recognise some changes and won't recognise others, sometimes quite arbitrarily.  For these reasons we have never invested much time or effort in trying to rewrite it for the mod, unlike say Republic at War or Phoenix Rising.
• The chart/statistics element in the droid log seems to be hard-coded and we have been unable to add the Pentastar Alignment to it.

2) See 1c and 1d above

3) Map previews and planet abilities

• Map previews depend on the maps. They need to be extracted from the map and included in the mod's folder. Every time a map is altered in any way causes the preview not to match and not allow the plotting ability in game.  It's generally been seen as a low priority for the team (and until a recent patch the preview screen didn't work at all).
• Planet abilities don't really exist in the mod in the same form as vanilla EAW so we've removed the icons in-game. I think there are only about half a dozen planets that actually have something which could be highlighted in this way in-game.  And thanks for your nice comments on the manual, I spent *a lot* of time on that in the run up to the release of 2.0 and 2.1.

5) Build pads in land maps

We originally planned to have a technician type unit with an ability to spawn/deploy build pads on demand, hence their general absence from our maps.  By the time we realised for various reasons that this wouldn't work as well as we'd hoped a lot of the maps were already done, and again going through to add static build pads was a lower priority than other things that needed to be done.  Additional build pads have tended to get added when we've had to revisit a map to fix other issues though.

7) Ground scaling

I'm not sure that we've actually touched ground unit scaling at all compared with vanilla, and we're kind of limited in what we can do there due to the actual map/prop scales.  Units in space are much smaller because that was rescaled to suit the additional units, in particular the many SSDs flying around the galaxy.  It's probably possible to change the zoom-level for the regular tactical view although that might have a negative impact on performance (more units/props/etc to render on screen at once).

I hope I've managed to answer some of your questions/clarify some aspects of the mod.  Hopefully Corey will be along later to pick up on anything I've missed and expand on some of these areas.

[Vulcanus]

Welcome to the forums, Mastrody!

• Planet abilities don't really exist in the mod in the same form as vanilla EAW so we've removed the icons in-game. I think there are only about half a dozen planets that actually have something which could be highlighted in this way in-game.  And thanks for your nice comments on the manual, I spent *a lot* of time on that in the run up to the release of 2.0 and 2.1.

5) Build pads in land maps

We originally planned to have a technician type unit with an ability to spawn/deploy build pads on demand, hence their general absence from our maps.  By the time we realised for various reasons that this wouldn't work as well as we'd hoped a lot of the maps were already done, and again going through to add static build pads was a lower priority than other things that needed to be done.  Additional build pads have tended to get added when we've had to revisit a map to fix other issues though.

The ICW manual is fantastic and one of the most comprehensive and instructive manuals I've seen for any mod. It really helped me back when I was just a young pup playing his first GC campaign and even later the galactic map from the manual has made things a lot easier when designing new GCs ICW myself. Maximum respect for having the time and patience to do that.

Regarding build pads: Please don't add any more. One of the primary reasons I've enjoyed ICW so much is the fact you can't just spam cheap turrets all over the map which made ground battles a real pain in the ass in vanilla EaW ground battles.

[kucsidave]

Now that we are talking about bugs, i noticed a mayor one.
If you play Wssion manually a bug occures. (land battle)
If you win, and the defender had units on surface they don't appear in the ground battle, and the AI(Warlords was my enemy there) still had a hold on the planet, and my units i sent there disappeared. Luckily i had a secondary ground assault team nearby, what with autoresolve easyly killed the 3 or 4 stacks of stormtroopers defended the planet. When it did so, the units i won the first battle with reappeared on the planet surface, and i could take control of them once again...
I must say it was very arkward though...

[tlmiller]

Now that we are talking about bugs, i noticed a mayor one.
If you play Wssion manually a bug occures. (land battle)
If you win, and the defender had units on surface they don't appear in the ground battle, and the AI(Warlords was my enemy there) still had a hold on the planet, and my units i sent there disappeared. Luckily i had a secondary ground assault team nearby, what with autoresolve easyly killed the 3 or 4 stacks of stormtroopers defended the planet. When it did so, the units i won the first battle with reappeared on the planet surface, and i could take control of them once again...
I must say it was very arkward though...

I've seen this before, but seems to be extremely random when it occurs.

[Pali]

It's been fairly consistently buggy for me, but I keep forgetting to report it. 

[kucsidave]

It's been fairly consistently buggy for me, but I keep forgetting to report it. 

Now you did 
btw I already posted it in PA megathread, but Jerec's space autoresolve is still sucks(maybe seeing him as shuttle).
This bug is annoying me sice 2.0, and i always report it, but i do not see any difference...
Something also weird: In hunt for Zsinj as Zsinj you are not able to build Executors, but in Into the Cluster(It's smaller wersion) you can.
It is weird that you can only build there, where your economy is more limited, and works with a shorter period of time...

[kucsidave]

Just had some time, so i will also post this.
The IR Tech tree is quite... well...(I don't know how to call it.)
In the Hero part:
Era 2: Thrawn's portrait is missing,just like Turr Phennin (I played ICW and he was there)
Era 3: It would be time to remove Ardus Kaine from there unless he is only held there for the Operation Shadow Hand GC, and also It misses the Preator II from the tech tree(It can be built in ICW. I don't know how other GC's work now)
Also one small bug:
In Mon Calamari there is a Rebel Training F. What can't be captured, and only drops out neutral grey soldiers...

[turtle225]

I would have to agree with AI difficulty. One of my favorite conquests is the first one chronologically (I forget the name sorry) as the New Republic, because it's actually an uphill battle for awhile. FtGU is also fantastic in this regard.

My favorite thing about Republic at War is the AI difficulty actually forcing you to really think about how you are going to survive. Anything you guys could do to increase the difficulty would be welcome in my mind. I do however, acknowledge that there is a balance to this, as other people may not want things too difficult (See RaW critics).