Maybe change NLC prereq?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I kind of hate making this post, because I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot.

I think maybe the Neutrality Learning Center ought to have Invention Matrix or Discovery Sphere as a prerequisite, instead of Research Academy. It is better than a Discovery Sphere for research and you can get to it much, MUCH faster than you could ever get to DS.

I've played a number of a games since the NLC was added, started building a bunch of them and not only have I won all of them, I have become almost godlike before the game would have been half over otherwise. I almost feel like I'm cheating or exploiting a glitch by using it. That NLC makes the player far too powerful, assuming they have the sense to use it.
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Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
....Almost like being Godlike with weapons that out damage anything else on their repective trees? How about the almost Godlike shields that you can get WAY earlier then the other good ones?....i think it's fine the way it is.....i LOVE neutral

Speaking of which...why isn't my Alignment medal showing up?
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think maybe the Neutrality Learning Center ought to have Invention Matrix or Discovery Sphere as a prerequisite


That kinda destroys the whole point of being Neutral.

Like Damiun pointed out. Good gets the ridiculous defenses. Evil gets the all-powerful weapons. Neutral gets the ability to actually reach the end of a weapon tree in a modestly-sized game.

Now, you might say that it makes Neutral more powerful because research is more than just weapons. But you can't just move NLCs and not give us something mid-game that lets us go toe-to-toe with Good or Evil.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's so horribly broken. I've never seen the AI go for ethics, and I usually don't bother: I have since 1.1 comes out, and the evil weapons are far too unbalanced. 12 versus 3? It's not an 'advantage', it's making a mockery of the whole weapons tree!
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But the good's defenses balances that.
The Neutral research balances that.

As a neutral, I fought evil races with evil weapons and won.
It just depends on using the benefits of the neutral alignment.
Same thing for good or evil.
This is on tough and now working on painful.
Granted they are not giving me much of a hard time but thats why I'm going up the difficulty ladder.

If you think the AI is too easy with the ethics, try a harder difficulty.
Also, the AI does use ethics.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
hate to disagree duckness, im playing hardest(suicidal?) right now against drengin.... i kinda feel bad cuz im using the missile one (psionic something?) and ive taken over enough planets to steal the prereq to the mass driver one.... so once they wise up and get defense against me im gonna just switch-doesnt seem like he got ethics . I think the AI should prioritize that (like the manufacturing techs and planetary invasion... some techs you sort of need)

"balance" between the ethics choices in a single player game only affects how much easier or harder it is for the player against the AI using each of the options-i dont think putting NLC farther down would make it so playing neutral is "as easy" as playing, say, evil, as those weapons are ridiculously strong. Haven't tried good yet so can't tell with them....

As a side note... is it possible to steal unique techs? Anyone know?
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Since I have never ever seen the AI:s research NLC and have only once seen one of them research Xeno Ethics, I don't think it's that they are too good that are the problem. The problem is that the AI:s ignore them which makes it easy for the player who don't.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Except in a game that dragged on and on, I've never seen the AI bother with ethics, unless I traded it to them. Which is exactly how I discovered the NLC in the first place (I took a neutral civ's planet that had one).

I still think NLC should require a higher level of research facility before you get to it. Everyone else stops at discovery sphere, you get an extra step beyond that once you research it. I mean I can research up to it before the colony rush is over with, crank up social production to 70% and wait for that tech tree to start shrinking. Everyone else is using stingers versus my photon torpedoes and droid sentries.

As for balance.... well you get more trading routes and your planets go way up in quality automatically. That's an advantage right there. I play with few habitable planets and it usually creates poor planets, so I'd never seen how powerful a bunch of very high quality planets can be (Class 32 and higher). Fill empty tiles with stock exchanges until you need them for something else and you can just BUY a fleet of dreadnoughts outright in a few turns.

So, I say the NLC should branch off the invention matrix OR DS instead. Or the AI should be tweaked so that they're more likely to align one way or the other sooner.

I think I'm going to play that ideological scenario and see what happens when everyone's already got an alignment. That oughta be interesting.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As a side note... is it possible to steal unique techs? Anyone know?


Yep. I've stolen Arnorian battle armor and psionic shredder from the Dread Lords before. And the Arceans traded Neutral Shipping and Balanced Vision to me before, after I'd traded xeno ethics to them.