Wargazmo

Reply to Doing well in this game seems to depend too much on pure luck. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I think crippling or below it's possible to win on any given map, once you get masochistic or above then it starts to get tricky. Once you get up to suicidal the only way to win is to reload until you get the perfect start, and even then some people reload every colonisation until they get uber bonus tiles and every anomoly until they get 2500 cash, personally I think that's lame and you may as well just play on an easier difficulty, which is what I do.

Reply to How can I get rid of those new annoying planets that are toxic and what not? in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Also it would be good if the worlds actually had bonuses and penalties that were appropriate to the type of planet. For example heavy gravity worlds would get a natural defence bonus because it's harder for foreign soldiers to mobilize, but might take a produciton hit because it would be harder to work. Radioactive worlds might get a boost to production because the nuclear material could be used as a power source but take a morale hit because of radiation sickness. <

Reply to How can I get rid of those new annoying planets that are toxic and what not? in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I think they're annoying because the AI always researches the tech and colonises worlds in my territory, then it gets pissed because of my influence and starts acting like a jerk. I'd prefer it if you could colonize them all at the start, but needed to research the tech before you could build on them. It would be cool if there were a way to lower their frequency or turn them off at galaxy creation

Reply to Trying to figure out how AI players choose abilities in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm interested to know this as well.

Reply to dark avatar choppy even with graphics all the way down in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm having the same problem as well, it's not really an issue for me though since I play the entire game zoomed out to icons, I find it's easier to keep track of things that way and know what's going on.

Reply to How do you guys deal with a superpower? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Hi! What I don't understand is how you're supposed to get a race that's twice as powerful as you to agree to an alliance. I mean you have to get relations to close, but even with much of the diplomacy tree reserached I still get neutral at best from a civ that powerful. You have to check what they think of your race. You can find that in the diplomacy window under the third tab. IMO t

Reply to Very basic rule-of-thumb strategy guide in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Playing this game is a bit like going to prison - if you don't kick someone's ass the first day, you'll spend the rest of your time there being someone's bitch. Basically once you get all the habitable planets around you, and you have all the basic Xeno techs (xeno reserach, xeno entertainment etc) you want to start thinking about invading someone. Researching planetary invasion takes about the same time as researching one of the colonisation techs, and it has the bonus of ta

Reply to How do you guys deal with a superpower? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

What I don't understand is how you're supposed to get a race that's twice as powerful as you to agree to an alliance. I mean you have to get relations to close, but even with much of the diplomacy tree reserached I still get neutral at best from a civ that powerful.

How do you guys deal with a superpower? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Hey just wondering if any of you guys had any good ways of dealing with a superpower. Usually when there's 2 or 3 powerful Civs you can make them attack each other and slip under the radar but in my current game on crippling the Korath are about twice as powerful as the next race (me). I've already bribed every other civilization to attack them but they're beating the snot out of everyone and taking planets left right and center, no one has anything that could even hope to compete with thei

Reply to DA Starting strategy which doesn't screw your economy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Okay I tried this strat without the torians, and it's still somewhat effective, the main difference being you launch colony ships with 1 pop and then pick up population from your homeworld since the secondary planet can't regrow fast enough. The other difference is you need to find a better secondary planet than the one in your system, because for some reason the Torians get a 5 tile secondary planet whereas most other races only get 3 or 4 which isn't really enough. <br/

Reply to DA Starting strategy which doesn't screw your economy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

This strategy only works with the Super Ability, Super Breeder. You should specify that this is a Dark Avatar strategy. And yes, it works. Super Breeder is perhaps the most powerful Super Ability. I have been playing around with the Torians, and if used right I think they are the now the most powerful civilization. You can play incredibly aggressively as you can almost instantly build up a huge population that can power

Reply to DA Starting strategy which doesn't screw your economy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

That makes ~3600BC. With what will you fund next 10 colonies over next 30 turns? Not that much because after the first couple of turns of research you're putting 99% into social so the factories are partially built when you buy them and don't cost the full amount, obviously you don't rush buy the starport because it only takes 1 turn anyway. Notice after 5 turns in this game I have just over 2700 left after filling out my secondary planet: <img

DA Starting strategy which doesn't screw your economy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Hey guys, just thought I'd share with you a good way to start that I've found very effective, I didn't originally intend this post to be so long but I guess I had a lot of info I wanted to share haha The trick to this strat is to power up your secondary planet rather than your homeworld for rushing, which frees up your homeworld and it's sweet, sweet taxpaying population of 8 mil+ to concent

Reply to New patch seems to have improved the AI a fair bit. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I've been playing all weekend on crippling and the only time I've won was a tech victory which was literally a race against the clock with me finally managing to research it with about 4 planets left. Bearing in mind I used to win about half my games on that difficulty level I think these last few patches have improved the AI a huge amount.

Reply to New patch seems to have improved the AI a fair bit. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Is it still obsessed about smaller ships? The AI was building quite a few capital ships in the games I've played. Does AI attack your asteroid belts when in war? Yeah but it's rare, it's happened a couple of times, but generally they'll leave them if there's other targets like starbases and planets anywhere. <br

New patch seems to have improved the AI a fair bit. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Lost a couple of games on crippling today, the AI seems a lot smarter now, it goes for engine techs more and it seems a bit smarter with some of the diplomatic decisions it makes. Keep up the good work guys, I'm really enjoying the challenge.

Reply to 7 Best & 7 Worst PC Games in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

@Wargazmo Yeah I remember Twinsen's adventure, I've got a copy of it in fact. Haven't been able to get it to run under XP But I also seem to recall something, Twinsen's Odyssey. Is that a different game or am I just misremebering? Odyssey was the sequel, not a bad game but I never played it thro

Reply to 7 Best & 7 Worst PC Games in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

The best best is pretty hard to define since you've got to take into account what was out at the time the game came out, a lot of the older predecessors of newer games still held my interest more than some of their flashier clones due to sheer originality. 1. Starcraft - still the best RTS of all time, great story, fantastic balance, perfect implementation of the "easy to learn, hard to master" philosophy that has seen so many Blizzard games become successful. Still

Reply to DA 1.50X Race & ability picks in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I've always found the +70% population growth bonus for 6 points to be the best, and it's the first bonus I always take. It directly translates into a huge economic boost early on because your colonies will be populating that much faster and you will have that much more taxpayers and can therefore afford to colonise much, much more worlds early. Also it's exponential growth so the more people you have next turn, the more growth you'll have the turn after so it actually translates into your coloni

Reply to Research order for DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I try to research some of them early, remember they are worth quite a bit in tech trading so once you've claimed all the planets of that type you can trade it for other techs while essentially giving the AI nothing.

Reply to How do they do it?! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'd be very hard pressed to believe that fast buying a market on a newly colonised world would be worth it, but I haven't crunched the numbers so I can't say for sure. You'd need to make more off that market than the cost of the fast buy in the time it takes you to get a market normally in order to make it worthwhile. With a low population on a newly colonised world I would hardly think that's possible.

Reply to How do they do it?! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Most people tend to get into economic trouble early because they think the early game is all about grabbing planets. The primary goal of the game at the start should be to get your economy making money before your reserves run out. That's not to say grabbing planets isn't important, but a balance needs to be struck. You need to be able to grab as many planets as you can afford , not as many planets as you can. Grab the biggest planets you can straight away, remember that if you have a smal

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

But how many Blizzard expansions were pretty much based on player feedback and requests? Seems to me, most of what is in DA was pretty much brought about from this forum and the people who made suggestions. having been an official beta tester for SC:Broodwar, and Diablo 2 and an unofficial one for Warcraft 3:TFT (yarrr) and following just about every Blizzard game closely through their development, I can tell you that Blizzard not

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The campaign is a minor part of the expansion pack. As someone who played and enjoyed Starcraft Broodwars, there's no way Brood Wars compares to the kind of game improving changes that Dark Avatar delivers. If immersive campaigns and movie-quality cut scenes are your metric of a good expansion then Blizzard is the standard bearer. But if new features and content that expands the game play is your metric , then Dark Avatar is th

Reply to AAR: Thalian Hive in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

I love your writing style, great read. After playing the thalians a bit I think the super hive ability is downright overpowered, my biggest expense early is getting my industrial base up and running to pump out colony ships as well as setting up new colonies for production and super hive almost cuts that out completely. Take the +70% pop bonus as well and you can get ridiculously powerful, ridiculously quickly.