On worlds, toxic and otherwise

Dark Avatar changes what the galaxy looks like in two noticeable and important ways. These changes not only add more variety to the game, but they also address some of original GalCiv2’s points that I felt were weaker.

First, there are now asteroid fields. These are located within star systems, just like planets, and can provide Industry Points to a planet if mined. Mining stations are created by mining ships, and can be upgraded for better output with sufficient technology. This is a good thing for gameplay because there is now one more thing that you’re going to want on the map. With planets occupying a single tile and not needing any of the surrounding tiles to be efficient, the percentage of map that you absolutely need to be secure wasn’t actually that high. Also, there was only one map feature – resources – that you would want to control or fight for. Asteroid fields, thankfully, add another.

Frankly, the benefit of asteroids isn’t that great. They do not provide enough industry to make a big difference on your advanced worlds – however, they’re very good for the more specialized economy/research planets which don’t have great industry to start with. Sending asteroid output to such planets could provide a pretty useful jumpstart for these planets to develop their infrastructure.

It’s also worth noting how asteroid mining bases are another thing to attack when you don’t want (or can’t) engage into conquering planets. Now, when you’re fighting a war, hitting the enemy’s asteroids in addition to their trade routes is going to be a good addition to economic wars.

While ultimately not the most significant feature, asteroid fields do add another positive side to the game. Still, I would like to see their output boosted slightly in one of the updates, seeing as trade routes and mineable resources are much more potent for your economy than asteroid mines.

Second, the galaxy is no longer made up of habitable and uninhabitable planets. This is definitely an important change. You will now find planets that can be colonized but require some tech to do so – the planets will have one of several possible reasons for being normally uninhabitable (such as having a toxic atmosphere, being made up of radioactive materials, etc.), and there is a separate technology for each of these conditions. Actually, there are two technologies – the first lets you make use of the planet, but it will only be half as productive, whereas the second technology eliminates the productivity penalty.

This feature affects the game positively in several ways, although there also some rough edges. Colonization is no longer over early in the game, as each civilization rushes to grab as many planets as possible. Some of the planets will not be available until later (the respective colonization technologies are fairly costly), and on maps with many such planets, it might be a fully-fledged second phase of galactic colonization.

Additionally, it gives civilizations that ended up with fewer planets in the initial colonization a chance to still grab some more planets if they can research the relevant technologies first. There are also civilizations that start with some of the colonization technologies, giving them a jump-start in getting to these worlds.

Unfortunately, there are also some negative issues that have crept into the system. One is simple – you can not set the number of these semi-habitable planets when starting a new game. The number seems to fall under the general “habitable planets” setting, but the setting makes no distinction between immediately habitable and conditionally-habitable planets. I would like to see a separate option for it that, on one extreme, makes all habitable planets habitable immediately, and on the other one, makes most planets require a tech to colonize.

The second issue relates to the game’s AI (a topic which will be mentioned many times in this article, of course). The AI is extremely poor at judging the value of extreme colonization technologies in diplomacy trading. It always values these technologies highly, which is right much of the time, but very wrong the rest of it. Obviously, in a galaxy with no Aquatic worlds the Aquatic World Colonization technology is practically useless. It will still be held in great esteem by the AI, however. This is not really a problem because the AI will research these techs, but rather because you can sell these useless techs for a very real price.

It’s really easy if you start with one of the extreme colonization technologies. Even if not, it’s still quite possible to pull it off. I did so by buying an extreme colonization technology from a minor race (which are generally convenient to trade with), and then I went to sell this technology – useless on the map I had that particular game – to several AI civs, each of which paid me a good price.

Given that the Dark Avatar AI does a better job at recognizing the strategic importance of certain technologies in some situations, this is a fairly disappointing inability. And one more footnote – some of the extreme condition planets show up as Class 1. In reality, after terraforming technologies are available, these planets often have very good potential. Still, the AI seems to shun these planets, seeing them as a liability, which they really only are in the short term.