Hello,

Often, I put 4 farms on each planet.

When I invade one, it has about 3 to 4 (I think).

Would you mind tell me how much farms you put on your planets?

Maybe I can do better!

You can think of it like being pylon blocked in Starcraft. You don't want to build too many pylons at the start because it's a waste of resources. At the same time, you don't want your unit production to stop because you don't have enough pylons!

In galciv, you don't want to build farms at the start. You should only build them when your population of a planet nears the cap. Then build 1 farm. Then wait for it to get close again, then build another  (or upgrade the first one). Etc.

Yeah. I did a calculation a while ago - it turns out for a class 16 factory world, the ultimate manufacturing output comes with roughly 8 farms and 8 factories -> as a rule of thumb.

Actually,  you want to maximise and equalise your percentage gain in manufacturing and raw production - but that's a pain to calculate! So I use the rule of thumb above.

But again, a farm with no population being supported by it is useless. Hence why hospitals are so crucial - they increase your population growth substantially meaning you can get high pop faster.

Morale is also really key,  since low Morale hurts both raw production and growth - a double whammy on 2 crucial and related stats.

So how does this work in practice? If I colonise a class 14 world and decide to make it a manufacturing world, I would

1) build a few factories.

2) build a hospital. 

3) build more factories until the world approaches pop cap. 

4) build first farm next to hospital

5) build more factories until all hexes used. Add solar collector then start upgrading.

6) every time the world gets near pop cap, either upgrade a farm, or destroy a factory and replace with a new farm.

7) when I hit 6 farms surrounding a hospital - and reach pop cap again, destroy the hospital and replace with a food distribution plant thing.

This should  leave me with 7 food buildings and 7 manufacturing buildings - and a lot of manufacturing to produce ships with!

Only Power Plants and Antimatter buildings, but they are classed as Hubs.

I think there is internal c++ code that starts the initial planet layout, from looking at the xml's, Governors are kicking in after x amount of improvements or x% of planet tiles used (or a mix of both):

    <MinPerceptPlanetFilledGovAssignment>0.20</MinPerceptPlanetFilledGovAssignment>
    <MinNumBuildingCountGovAssignment>2</MinNumBuildingCountGovAssignment>

At least that is what I think these mean in the GalCiv3AIDefs.xml . But then it could be purely related to Player's assigning Governors(I never do so cant be sure).

So it is possible for the internal code to have the ability to build uniques. I never paid it that much attention before modding the Governors to build more stuff

Well, at "higher" levels the ai cheats heavily.

Apparently genius is the highest level of actual AI - on incredible and godlike the AI just gets artificial boosts 

Ok here's my question then what would you rather play a more challenging game or would rather the ai get more bonuses. I called them cheats not because noone else did them but because i wanted a more challenging fair game with a better player.

I just thought some things were missing from the AI that needed fixing. Better Blueprints, missing Improvements, weak Starbases, better Invasion chance, a more random Technology picking based on personality, are the main reasons I tweaked the AI.

I only play on Gifted or Genius(usualy to get my butt handed to me these days). TBH I have not looked that hard at the difficulty "boosts", but yeah free techs(or anything free for that matter) that is just plain cheating .

Have not really paid it that much mind on what or how my changes effect the handicaps, mainly because I am not that great at "micro management" to be able to test the higher difficulties

And yes, I know the AI in civilisation cheats heavily. That's beside the point.

Galciv series has a (well deserved) reputation for the best AI in the genre. The bad news for the devs is that means players set the bar higher

The problem with 1 attack per turn is that it can lead to some extreme abuse with regards to 1 ship tiny fleets. 

I think the "closeness" or "size" of the battle should determine how many movement points it uses. 

Ie a giant fleet vs a single scout should use just 1 point. Whereby a massive fleet vs massive fleet battle should probably end the attackers turn outright if they win. 

I have been playing on Godlike for a while, but just recently I ratcheted back to Incredible.  Either the AI has gotten generally better or it is better able to take advantage of its obnoxious level of bonuses and free stuff at Godlike.  Either way, I offer this as evidence that the AI is already under continuous improvement and development.  The farm-to-specialty ratio sounds like a productive area for progress, but it will be a subtle point to implement without making things worse.  Other AI work continues, the devs read this stuff and take notes, and we all will have to see what happens, I guess.

Just to climb on my soapbox, I have lowered respect for gamers who discuss handicaps as cheats.  It is lazy and deliberately provocative vocabulary.  People cheat, the AI just does what it s told.    Yeah, the bonuses for Godlike are so heavy as to be painfully apparent.  I'm really glad to be backing down to Incredible.   I'm not really a good enough player to be at top difficulties and don't really enjoy that environment.  But that is what you get if you insist on that level of challenge and cannot arrange multiplayer.  There is really no reason to use value judgements and perjoratives to discuss software behaviors.  Unless it's about the Drengin, of course.

Wether we like it or not, Stardock has established it's operating model as selling a Ferrari that only goes 30 mph.  It looks great, and technically still counts as a functioning vehicle in all important aspects. It's fun to drive for a while,  but it's obviously flawed in some fairly important ways. Over years, the dealer will upgrade it so maybe someday it will drive its top speed.  So, it's a patience game for us buyers I guess.

Whatever we call it, what we all want is the same rules for everyone - human and Ai.  In the end that will make the game more challenging and fun because it will be balanced.  None of this the Ai can do stuff the human cannot and vice versa crap.

Also, if all the Ai flaws that are discussed all over these forums were addressed, there probably wouldn't be a need for Ai cheats/handicaps/buffs whatever you want to call them.  They could all be left in as optional tick boxes or sliders in game options screen so if people found stuff abusive, they could restrict it themselves.

One of the best wars I had in GC3 was way back (1.2 or so) against a godlike Yor AI which was swallowing up other empires. I can't really remember if it was them or me to stop ignoring the other, but when war broke out it looked like david vs. goliath with them having like 10x the zone of influence of me and 3+x the number of worlds. My civ were peaceful researchers for the most part of the game and at the start of the war I was really struggling, not being sure I could turn out enough ships in the long run to combat the tide of Yor ships. I eventually got the situation under control and started invading their worlds and not vice versa... the game ended earlier due to my research victory. (ok... enough of the memory lane)

So, I don't think the actual absolute balance of AI vs. player is what I want. But what I do want is the illusion of it. I want to be able to roleplay my tech civ to be highly advanced but vastly outnumbered. The current AI difficulties can't give me that. either I am not that much ahead in tech or the AI doesn't build hordes of ships that corner me despite my technological advantage.

Maybe we can put it like this: If you ahve to apply lots of handicap to an AI, then the AIs weakness is lacking human behaviour (suboptimal builds, low micromanagement, ...). If you don't need to apply a lot of handycaps to the AI, then it has game-inherent weaknesses, e.g. being easy to conquer when playing tech heavy. And It hink this is what it comes down to, when we (or I at least) say we want an AI that plays the same game. We don't want it not to cheat or not to be handicapped, but we want that it's playstyle has drawbacks, not that it is an AI.