When out to the local games (computer and board games) shop ( http://www.tradition.se ) yesterday, they had a few copies of Galactic Civilizations on the shelves :) So, it has made it over here now... at least to this chain. I wonder if this means it is getting distributed in the rest of europe too now - I havn't read any official word saying so yet, but hope it is happening! /unic
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I agree that this is a big problem with GalCiv... the whole point of saving a game, and then loading it is to return to the same point - if I play contineously, or save and load a few times in the middle should not make any difference! Not to my influence, not to what the AI chooses to do, not to anything. Saving and loading should be external and not effect things inside the game... if I load a game, it should be exactly as it was when I saved it... continuing a loaded game, should be
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... while I don't get how people can play on anything larger than 'medium' ... and even medium felt drawn-out and boring to me. People enjoy different things... and GalCiv lets us both play what we enjoy :) Long live GalCiv! Thanks to CariElf and Frogboy and the rest of the team for such a great game! /unic
And 88%, which is a good score. Nice to see such a positive review from one of the (few, especially now that I lost my trust in Avault after the debacle around their GalCiv review) sites which I tend to trust and find informative. /unic
Another thing to point out is that the AI's extort money from other civs too, just like a player can do, and especially the Drengin seem to like doing that when they're strong militarily, in my experience. Looking at the debug.err file after a game, it's nothing rare seeing them extort a few thousand bc's out of other races regularly. /unic
Yay! Go Apolyton!!! :) Now... ´poly only has to win the MSDG too :P (And of course, keep this position at the Metaverse...) /unic
http://www.brimd.com/azakain/index.php?showpage=news Has a updated and improved version of the manual in .pdf format. /unic
Do you guys have the latest patch? As far as I know, this got fixed in one of the patches, and my last game (in which I did save and re-load a few times), I didn't observe it. The influence curve looked just as smooth as it should, without the downward spikes for save/loads which I had in my earlier games.
I agree about the name :( Usually I use just 'unic' but that was already taken on stardock, so had to use something else :( And having used that as my nick online since '94, I didn't want something entirely different... so ended up adding the fnord. Oh well.
I just go sell a few tech to random minor race, whenever I'm running short on money. Worked for me so far, though I'm only up to normal AI level... But then, I am selective on what improvements to build, and prioritize getting trade up and running.
I use it a lot. Happier people = better population growth = more taxes and productivity for me, their ever benevolent dictator!
Two things which would cut down on the fiddling around in the game: * a/ The ability to lock the economy sliders for military, social, and research spending. * b/ The ability to set a target morale for planets, individually or empirewide, which would cut down on the need to go in and change the propagande slider so often. For more discussion of those suggestions, see http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=38921 in this forum. /unic
I wish there was a way to freeze them too, or that they were absolute instead of relative. As it is now, I always know what percentages I want to end up with, then fiddle around with the sliders until I get that. Would be easier if I, when wanting 20% military, 30% social, 50% on research, could adjust it one slider at a time, instead of having to juggle all three. To me, it feels unnecessarily fiddly and cumbersome now. So mostly, I don't change them often because of that.<b
IGN has their review of Galactic Civilizations, giving it an overall 8.2 / 10, up now at: http://pc.ign.com/articles/392/392858p1.html Overall, it's a positive one. Quoting the Gameplay summary section at the end: "Gameplay: First-rate AI, offering an intensive strategic workout. Skewed game balance, due to random events. Abstract feel to gameplay. Repetitive space anomalies. Research tree is excellent. 8.5 / 10" /unic
Sounds good, Frogboy :) That would make diplomacy more streamlined!
I too would like to see the AI be able to go after alternative win conditions. To let people choose, along with the possibility we now have a the start up screen to turn win conditions on or off for the humans, let us set them to available or unavailable for the AI as well! That way, those who get frustrated by the AI winning a sudden tech victory when they had almost conquered the AI can turn it off if they don't want it to happen... but those of us who want the AI to play b
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Not start of turn! That was one of the things that annoyed me in Civ ... I set a unit to automove, the computer did its move, resulting in me wanting to move that unit somewhere else, but before I could change its orders, it auto-moved, thus wasting two turns for me (one with its now erroneous move, and one to undo that). The galciv way as it is now seems fine to me. Though, even nicer, would be a button or command 'automove now' ... so that they automove when I press that, or if I do
"#7 by Avatar Frogboy - 4/3/2003 6:55:04 PM + Possibly some [?] buttons by things such as approval to help you understand why a certain value is something. I.e. explain how you got to that number." Yay - that is great news! Very nice to hear :) In order to avoid cluttering up the interface with too many buttons, I'd suggest either hyperlinks (click on the line with approval rating to pop up a new window with more info about it), or mouse-over popups (like in Europa U
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Ooops, forgot to paste the actual link. Here it is: GalCiv review at Avault: http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=galciv&page=1 /unic
Adrenaline Vault has now posted their review of GalCiv, presently to be found at: They only give the game 3.5/5 in overall grade, and among their categories, especially 'Gameplay' (3.5/5) and 'Intelligence & Difficulty' (2/5) stand out to me as surprisingly and undeservedly low. Some quotes from the review: (In the 'Intelligence & Difficulty section, the AI more or less gets straight out accused of cheating) "As a reviewer, it is seldom prudent to accuse the AI of
I agree... it's a great effort by Brad and all the other Stardock people. Great support here, and on IRC. And an awesome game, which with this kind of support will get even better! Thanks to Brad and company for stealing so many hours from my life with this fantastic 'Galactic Civilizations'! :) /unic
I very much agree - this is very annoying. If I save and then later load a game, I expect it to be *exactly* the same as if I had kept playing it - that's the point of a save feature, in my opinion.
http://www.sps-systems.co.uk/trolleyed/141/index.htm is the link to the actual page where it is... at the bottom. And £40 is high... but if you want it cheaper, you can always buy direct from Stardock.
www.strategy-plus.co.uk has it listed under 'due soon', for 40 quid. (Saw this in the Apolyton forum: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82371 )
Games Domain has reviewed Galactic Civilizations now, giving it 4.5 / 5 :) http://www.gamesdomain.com/gdreview/zones/reviews/pc/apr03/galactic.html Hopefully those good reviews it is getting will cause even more people to buy this awesome game!
