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Reply to What to do with 24 billion robots... in Game Talk Stardock Forums

[quote]Finally, the most you will ever need on any planet is ONE farm. On a non-farm bonus tile you will reach a population maximum of 13B, and using the 100%Farm, a threshold of 18B. NEVER ever use the 300% tile unless you are looking for trouble.[/quote] It's not like it does you any real harm. One low morale planet is very rarely a big deal. Given the choice between no bonus and 300%, I'm using the 300% every time for the extra income.

Reply to Economic changes (not liking it). Am I alone? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

[quote]As you may have guessed, I have concluded that your return on investment for keeping Morale at 100% = rapid population growth just isn't worth it. What's the point of having LOTS of happy people if it means you don't have the cash to keep production running at 100%?[/quote] Income scales by the square root of population. In the early game (roughly the first 3-12 months, map size depending), the absolute difference between a tax rate of, well, *anything* and 0% is minuscule and i

Reply to Economic changes (not liking it). Am I alone? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

(scratches head) You shouldn't be finding it *that* tough. I'm not trying to be funny here...have you tried raising your tax rate? If you focus on getting racial morale bonuses (from resources, the morale techs and trade goods) you should be able to put the tax rate pretty high without having to spam morale buildings on your planets. In the early colony rush stages, though, keep your tax rate low so you can keep morale at 100% and get the big population growth bonus

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

[quote]Imho, the underlying problem is the curent inferiority of mixed strategies. *This* should be analyzed and addressed.[/quote] It has been analyzed. It's inferior because of the sliders and focus buttons. Therefore, to fix it, change the way the sliders work. ;) (Nerfing the focus button further, or even removing it completely, won't address it, by the way. Focus is useful but not crucial to the strategy)

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

[quote]Finally, I don't really understand why some people demand a decoupling of sliders. This would take one of the strategic decisions out of the game, and I *want* to make strategic decisions in a strategy game. The reasons provided seem to hint at a misunderstanding of the sliders' meaning, which is "budget allocation", not just "workforce assignment".[/quote] I very strongly disagree. At the moment I have a *single* strategic decision to make - am I going to go all-factory or all-

Reply to New copy protection comming for Spore and Mass Effect (EA) in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

What I most dislike about the current trends in DRM is that most of the schemes are hardware sensitive. Last time I upgraded (fairly major overhaul, keeping only case, drives and peripherals), I spent two days running around trying to get all my software reactivated on my "new" computer. Even now, months later, I have the occasional issue. I'm not even going to bother setting up a "games" hardware profile with all the miscellaneous junk turned off like I used to since I know it'll stop everyt

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

1. Decouple the research and production sliders (or have it as an option) so that we can run labs and factories at 100% at the same time, as we logically should be able to. All-X finally becomes redundant! That's my only *major* complaint.

Reply to New Space Rangers Add-on in Space Rangers 2 Stardock Forums

"The title wiil be Space Rangers 2: Reboot, and the game will be published in the USA by eGames this June in retail and online shops." http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=2038&page=5 Does this mean no availability through TotalGaming? Sucks if so since I just bought 10 tokens!

Reply to Economic changes (not liking it). Am I alone? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

[quote]This renders Evil essentially unplayable[/quote] You what? The big military production bonus, free starbase upgrades, best colonization events and early access to powerful weapons aren't enough? Evil is strong without the MCC. With the MCC it was massively overpowered, as I think the metaverse shows. Personally, I'd like to see it fixed properly to the original intent, or the economy bonus put to something a little more reasonable.

Reply to Cheaters in Metaverse Stardock Forums

Mumblefratz, for "loophole" perhaps read "bug". Maybe there's an extremely freakish combination of results that lead to division by a very small number in the scoring calculation? Very unlikely though, given it's only happened twice.

Reply to Cheaters in Metaverse Stardock Forums

I agree, just playing devil's advocate. Probably no point doing that in this case...it's just too extreme!

Reply to Cheaters in Metaverse Stardock Forums

Metaverse scoring isn't *exactly* about playing well, it's about knowing how the points system works. The highest scorers all deliberately engage in various suboptimal plays (from the point of view of winning the game) purely because those plays increase the score. Isn't it possible these superscorers have just found an extreme loophole in the scoring system?

Reply to Easy to make an AI that can beat a typical player? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

[quote]The human players looks for holes in the program and uses them instead of playing fairly and not using things the AI would never use. What developers are saying though is they CAN program these AI's to use those exploits and cheats just like the human player and defeat them, but, then you would hear much crying and gnawing and gnashing of teeth if the AI did what a human does to it.[/quote] I do *partly* agree with you, but most of the "exploits" in Galciv2 involve taking advanta

Reply to Easy to make an AI that can beat a typical player? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

If he's saying it's easy to create an AI that would beat the typical player *without cheating*, then I call BS. Galciv2s AI (on tough, where no bonuses exist) just barely manages that for people who've played a few games, I think, and it's reputed to be one of the strongest around. If it really is that easy, then please go ahead and do it! I don't see how that would make the game less enjoyable, unless you don't offer any *easier* levels with deliberately suboptimal play. As long as such lev

Reply to New Space Rangers Add-on in Space Rangers 2 Stardock Forums

Any progress? Tokens are burning a hole in my account!

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

(off topic) torfbolt, have you tried Play.com? I used to buy games from them when I lived in the UK (so got the English version, obviously!) - good prices with free and speedy shipping. I mention them because they always shipped from Belgium, so I assume they'd ship the UK/US versions to Germany for free as well. Lack of credit card might be a problem, though.

Reply to Trading tech at higher difficulties is ridiculous in Strategies Stardock Forums

Wyndstar: [quote]Brad's changes to counter the strategies the top players (and myself) were using led to all of us having to adapt. When I stopped being able to trade for everything... and so actually had to research things myself... that is when I actually developed the all labs strategy: it was the only way to get tech as fast as I was used to. Wyndstar[/quote] Out of curiosity, had you heard of the strategy before? I first noticed it *way* back and posted about it (very obl

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

The games companies aren't likely to bother to check whether you're a "good" pirate or a "bad" pirate (if they actually share your view of the distinction, which I doubt). The DRM companies *certainly* aren't going to make the distinction when pushing their products. The sites from which you download get to use you as a statistic when selling their advertising space. Thus you and the other "good" pirates are *very much* part of the problem. You fuel the paranoia of the gaming compani

Reply to The existence of for-pay stuff doesn't hurt you in Personal Computing WinCustomize Forums

[quote]I'd love to put up a module that just changes the United Planets in GalCiv II. Or a module that adds new types of planets or new super abilities or new random events or whatever. But I'm not doing that for free. We'd have to be paid for it. I'd probably ask for $9.95 or something per module. But would we get massively flamed? Probably.[/quote] Would it be that huge a risk to just do a trial run with a really small project and see how it goes down? Must admit I'd think

Reply to Long-Term Development on PC games in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Some excellent posts save me the bother of responding point by point! I'm glad to see Uranium's opinion might be common, but is nowhere near universal. I feel/hope it's only a matter of time until a company tries to make money more directly out of the community's modding skills. There's nothing sinister or dangerous about that - it's entirely possible to generate money by enhancing *everybody's* situation after all.

Reply to Long-Term Development on PC games in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Uranium, try reading my post again. You have totally misunderstood it. "Now first of all, ignoring how absolutely idiotic it is to pay a developer for SOMEONE ELSE'S CREATION who isn't even an employee" Under the scheme I suggested, you're paying the *creator of the mod*. The developer takes a small cut as incentive/reward for creating the modding tools in the first place. "why don't you think about what happens once someone successfully capitalizes on modding?<br/

Reply to Long-Term Development on PC games in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

"I for one would never pay for a mod. That's shady, and lazy." You said that already. *Please* explain why. I'm interested! Especially "lazy"...how does that come into it?! Edit: actually, the shady part doesn't make much sense either! Something that provides you with another, say, 20 hours of entertainment isn't even worth 25 cents?

Reply to Please fix trading! *pout* in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

cityman, IIRC the AI always used to treat the player and other AIs using the same ruleset for diplomacy (and, in fact, for everything!) Assuming this hasn't changed, then the only reason it offers you such lousy deals on suicidal is because it has enormous inherent diplomacy bonuses. This is good news (if you play non-metaverse games) since it means you should be able to fix things to your liking simply by modding in a high diplomacy bonus for your race. Have you tried that?

Reply to TA, focus buttons and the all-X strategy (questions!) in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

'Fraid I do feel so forced. It's the reason I stopped playing Dread Lords so much and the reason I played only a handful of games of Dark Avatar. Other things I consider dubious, such as allowing planets to be invaded just so you can reinvade and steal tech, I can simply choose not to use. But you can't avoid researching and producing, so you have to make a decision where to put the balance. At that point, any choice but all-X is arbitrarily handicapping myself IMO (we'll have to agree to di

Reply to TA, focus buttons and the all-X strategy (questions!) in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Thanks. As long as the advantage isn't so mathematically blatant, I'll be happy (in Dark Avatar, you can clearly match the normal production from a balanced approach by going all labs and focus, resulting in 3 or 4 times the research *and* have enough tiles left over to fund all that extra cost with stockmarkets! The downsides are far too minor compared to that huge upside.) Actually, it's nice to hear the all-X approach does still work...ideally I'd like it to be race and map depen