robotrevolution

This is a TL;DR type of post. Summary at the bottom. So. I'm not new to online gaming (I was there playing Warcraft 2 and Diablo when Battle.net launched). I love Sins. I pre-ordered Sins and played it pretty regularly when it came out. Dropped off for a while, but the past few weeks I've been playing again. I remember I tried one or two online games when Sins first shipped, but to get back into it I just played against the AI. I came to the forums to tr

No. Without the ability to test scientific theories about supreme being(s) creating the universe, intelligent design cannot qualify in any way as science. Also, Ben Stein and the movie producers were extremely deceptive in their tactics to get interviews. Why not be honest, if they're claiming their opponents are not being honest?

Paul Krugman, an economist and writer for the New York Times, recently put out a fascinating (and funny) paper he wrote in the late seventies about interstellar finance and trading. I know the trade aspect of SoaSE is fairly simplified, but Krugman's paper proposed two fundamental theoroms of interstellar trade: 1) When trade takes place between two planets in a common inertial frame, the interest cost

I would recommend starting a "Drop Out" thread where you list all the people who quit without finishing a game. Those people can defend themselves (extenuating circumstances, etc.), but it would be a nice resource to see who quits before the end of the game and who will stick it out.

[quote]1) how can i stabilize and be more offensive, before enemies gets too strong to defend against--> aforementioned pillow suffocation[/quote] It's a long, slow grind. I just won my first 4-player FFA (me vs. 3 comps). I had to target one of them for most of the game, while just holding off the other two, but soon I had two enormous fleets and half the galaxy under my control, with ships to spare to defend random planets (~10 ships to make a mini fleet for defense). Even when the AI

[quote] The funny thing is, you and the people like you need to do a lot more growing up than anyone else. The fact that you interpreted that as "ignorant hate-speech" makes you look like an idiot. Being mature doesn't necessarily mean being a pathetic wuss who wants to give teddy bears to communists. [/quote] Referring to a group of people in a derogatory manner, as the OP did in his title, is offensive and ignorant hate speech. What's next? Will you

To #3: How does locking teams work? I haven't heard of that before (I usually just select a map (medium random, usually), choose my faction, and hit play.) To #2: I used pirates aggressively. Only once did the pirates come for me, and that was because I missed the sound queue that they were about to launch. Someone should create a mod that flashes a big warning sign in the corner of the screen or keeps a running tally of the bounty on each player visible at all times so I don't miss tho

I'm going to quit playing free-for-all games against the computer with three or more players. Every time I end up having a better economy (though not necessarily a bigger fleet), they'll start coming after me. It's really crappy when the computer teams up and won't attack each other, but all three will go after me. And with the lousy way to earn a faction's trust (I'm not sending a fleet of ships on a suicide mission on the other side of the galaxy just to destroy five tactical structures, than

[quote] Quick diplomacy fix: make everyone start as neutral instead of shoot on sight. This would make the current diplomacy system useable atleast. You would have to declare war before your ships start shooting others down. Be sure the AI doesn't exploit it too. [/quote] This is a really good idea. There's not much motivation to complete the missions set forth by the AI when it'll take at least 4 of them, generally, to get up to

Agreed!

[quote] Ok, so currently, my empire is sprawled halfway across the map. My Metal and Crystal income is good, but my Gold income rate has slowed to a crawl. Why? I thought that the more planet you have acquired, the more tax income you receive. What's up? Thanks [/quote] Try building more gold mines. Make sure you have at least 6-7 peasants going into each gold mine, depending on the distance from yo

[quote] Behold: #1 at Gamespot: [/quote] I hope you paid off Gamespot with some advertising or you won't get a good review! It's rare they give scores above 8 to anything that doesn't advertise, from what I've seen. I've been taking their reviews with a grain of salt since well before Gerstmann-gate. This game did come out at the perfect time - well before Starcraft 2, the only other major RTS coming out for months (

First time I played a game through to completion (my third try while learning the basic gameplay) was a two-player easy on the smallest random map. It took a little over 3 hours. This is not the type of game you sit down and play in one session, but it's more like WoW or some other MMO, where you play for a few hours at a time. But to the OP, there are ways to speed it up. I don't know if custom maps enable you to change the extraction rate of asteroids, but you can speed the b

I never played the game when it had numbers, but it would be nice if the techs that you couldn't research due to a lack of research centers were darker colored than the techs you can't research due to a lack of resources. I'd also like to see two numbers available somewhere - possibly on the button at the top that takes you to the research screen. One number would be the number of civilian research centers and the other number would count the military research centers. That would be ver

[quote] Hover the Mouse over the Research Tree Icon and it will display your queue. What I really want is a way to adjust the Queue so if I got a few things researching and suddenly realize that I need another capship or more fleet supply I can get that done now without having to go through and unqueue/requeue everything. [/quote] Thanks for the tip! And I agree with you, it'd be excellent to be able to click and drag in order to change what will

[quote] Update: Some people are complaining that we're simply catering to "whiners". I would remind those people that Stardock has many many years of experience in putting together lists based on user feedback and making its own judgments on the matter. The GalCiv series, for instance, has evolved plenty over the years and it's unlikely you're going to find any reasonable person who would say that we simply make changes based on who is loudest. <

[quote] If you're just trying to defend your planet, I think that the orbital guns are the best "bang for your buck". Cost is similar to a light frigate but they're an order of magnitude more powerful. [/quote] Unfortunately, frigates quickly make me reach the fleet cap. Fighter hangars and gauss guns are awesome planet defenses when you're trying not to level up your fleet caps too quickly to avoid paying increased fleet costs.

Quad cores will significantly improve your performance when using software such as Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, but will not improve gameplay or general system performance much. Put your money on a good dual core, like Intel's Q6600, and it'll last a good long while.

A single player campaign would be terrific, but they're hard to develop for 4X games.

If you build one, you can hold the mouse over each ability after selecting the built ship. That will provide further description. Unfortunately, this doesn't help when choosing what to build. I suppose you could save the game, build a ship, and if you don't like it, load that previous save up and build something else until you figure out what the abilities do.

I cut short his complaints and distilled them down for easier reading. [quote]1. Its too slow[...] [/quote] Only compared to frenetic, 30-second games like Command & Conquer 3 or Call of Duty 4. It's deliberately that way, and some people won't like it. But the game does start to pick up once you get a few more planets going. It can get kind of crazy. [quote] 2. (condensed version) Pirates are dumb [/quote] There are ways to build anti-pirate defe

Agreed! I downloaded the game, and if someone could even type up quickly in a post on here the keycard with all the shortcut commands, that would be brillo.

The Empire Tree is a huge step forward in game design. It's a realistic implementation designed to make information easier to attain. Starting out, it was very hard to use because I wasn't familiar with the icons. But once I learned which icons represented which units, I used the Empire Tree more than almost any other navigation feature. I love being able to Shift-click units from a variety of areas into one command group. I love being able to easily locate and upgrade my capital ships.

Great tips. Thanks!

These pictures are beautiful.