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[goblins]

it would be better if an active open source movement got a hold of this game - it was decent for its time but the sequel never happened i dont think.

[Borodin]

Originally posted by Eagle of Fire@Dec 10 2004, 02:40 AM
Not really. In fact the AI is extremely poor.

I played the game quite a while when it first came out. While the sound breaks up a bit these days, it seems to play on my XP. I'm considering starting a new game, but I'm curious: has anybody tried the patch? Does it in fact make the AI smarter on the neutral setting?

[Eagle of Fire]

The patch doesn't make the AI any smarter, only more agressive. I personally did not notice a change in either trait, especially since the computer always seems to declare war when it less benefit them (when you are winning).

[Borodin]

Originally posted by Eagle of Fire@Jan 3 2005, 04:52 AM
The patch doesn't make the AI any smarter, only more agressive. I personally did not notice a change in either trait, especially since the computer always seems to declare war when it less benefit them (when you are winning).

I'd expect the other players (except your allies) to gang up on you when you're winning. The same kind of "no person allowed to get too far ahead" mentality has been part of the Civ series and Alpha Centauri for quite some time.

But I'm sorry to hear they don't build better, or research more productively. The game had a lot of nice ideas, and the project leader was the same guy who put so much energy and creativity into producing Betrayal at Krondor, one of my RPG faves.

Hi,

I played the game several years ago, but did not finish it.
The alien races, ships and tech were all nice and original.

But I noticed several annoying things:

* there is no production queue - each turn you have to go thru all your planets,
which gets more and more tedious as you gain more planets

* Auto-building does not work properly - I discovered that it even demolished buildings that I had placed on 'optimal' (red,green,blue) squares for their type.

Even the placement of buildings on conquered planets looked quite random,
so I decided not to trust construction on my planets to this feature...

* the 3d-map of the star-systems looks nice, but is actually harder to use
than a 'good old' 2d-map (e.g. as in MoO2), because you can only see
a small part of the map and need to scroll around like in a maze.

* It takes forever to bring your ships thru the warp-lanes to some target-system.
You also have to be careful to send your ship into the correct star-lane or it can be stranded (one-way warp-connections, limited fuel/engine-lifetime...).
There is no auto-pilot, and you cannot attach notes to the ships,
so you must keep notes for each ship (by hand) - which means even more micro-management :-(

I was doing quite well (about half the galaxy was mine), but I could guess
"to conquer the next planet, I need x big ships, they will take y turns to build +
z turns to travel there", but that means going thru a lot of management-cycles during those turns.

So, basically, the game got too tedious to be fun anymore.


-HaJo

[User42]

Wow ive seen this game before...

I was over at a friends house, and his dad had this superfast computer, and he showwed me a game that hadnt even come out yet, accordning to him, his dad was a game designer and he was workin it, it was playable but not done yet..



The day I saw it, I decided not to go home, because (things sucked) and I was kind of running away, I ended up getting almost dragged out of that house by a policeman about 3 hours later.

Funny, I can specificly remember the 3 screens of that game I saw, but I cant even recall what state that was in at the time(moved alot).



And this game is allready abandonware.... I feel old now

Anyways, downloading now about to play it

[goblins]

LOL ive got the original CD and manual still here in a box somewhere - interesting game but youre right it has been replaced by much more advanced games - good for its time but suffered from the lack of smart AI etc.

And the tedious micromanagement might have been a big thing back then but nowdays it doesnt stack up

[LuckyLlama]

I don't think Ascendancy should be shunned just because of weak AI. I think the gameplay makes up for that. I mean, I never even heard of it before, and know I can't stop playing it. I'm hooked!

[Eagle of Fire]

Well lucky, Ascendency been considered as the best game of it's genre for newbies. So it's great that you have found it first, have fun with it. k:

[Borodin]

Originally posted by goblins@Jan 10 2005, 06:48 AM
* ive got the original CD and manual still here in a box somewhere - interesting game but youre right it has been replaced by much more advanced games - good for its time but suffered from the lack of smart AI etc.

This sounds like "decade old game = lousy AI." But there are 10 year old games with great AI, and some very popular modern titles (like the Age of Wonders series) that have truly awful AI. The problem with Ascendency's AI was that it had too many options to consider, and not enough time spent on that aspect of development. According to Sid Meier, a good AI really should take most of the development time on any game, but because it's behind the scenes, game designers focus on graphics, audio, etc. And when you get into features crawl--adding new features as the game progresses in pre-alpha stage--then the AI has to be reconfigured to allow for all that.