I'd wish there was a possibility to fleet your ships with the ships of your allies. Basically all you would need to is open the diplomacy screen, open a dialog called "Fleet Command", and suggest the ships you want to fleet together(each ship would be listed under their respective owner). If the AI accepts then autopilot should pull all related ships to a rendezvous point, and fleet them together. The command of the fleet should be with the one who suggests it. Either party can disband the fleet at any time they choose. The fleet should be only be able to engage targets that are enemies of both parties.

I suddenly felt that the minor races should have their unique tech-tree, too!

I really wish the History tab in the Civilization Manager would list the Ethical, Mega, and the normal Random events when they occured. Seems like something that would logically be recorded in "history", no?

You can build that older, cheaper model of factory by selecting the "old" buildings with the building selection tab and then ordering the planet to build it first. It requires a tiny bit of micromanaging, but it's far from an overwhelming task.

Some notes on Abilities and Treaties that I posted in another thread a couple'ish weeks ago...

1. Now that Inter.... er... "Purchase Now Reduction" is a viable ability, it would be kind of nice if it was a Race pick.

2. War Profiteering is an awesome new ability. However, it would nice if there was more granularity in its effect. 5% War Profiteering gave a good chunk of income (~400bc per turn) in my last game. If the same income you can get now from 5% is gotten from 25% or even 30% (and thus, the Mercenary Academy would give 30% War Profiteering) instead, I think the ability would be fine. It could also make a nice Racial Pick at 5% for 2 points (I kinda want to give all Races at least 1% War Profiteering too, though).

At the least, changing the granularity of the War Profiteering ability would make it more useful for modding.

3. I know Influence affects tourism income, but it would be nice if there was a Tourism ability that directly increased the income you got from tourism (ie: if you get 100bc tourism from your Influence and you have 25% Tourism, you would get 125bc total).

It would also create a nice parallel of synergy between Trade/Trade Routes, Economics/Morale(and Max Pop/Pop Growth), and Tourism/Influence in that one ability increases the actual money you get from a source of income, while the other(s) determine(s) the capacity for getting that type of income. In a way, this parallel also exists between War Profiteering/Diplomacy (getting other races to go to war so you can profit from it) too, I guess.

4. A Tarrifs ability that steals income from Trade Routes going through your Sphere of Influence (kinda like the one ability Evil alignment currently gets) would be nifty too.

5. Espionage (if it already doesn't) should be changed to be "free" bc when spending money on training agents. ie: if you have a Espionage budget of 100bc and 25% Espionage, that 100bc you spend each week on Espionage would actually count as 125bc.

6. I love the effect the Luck ability has on attack rolls in combat, but I really think it needs to be weakened. If it was changed to have half as much effect on attack rolls as it does now, I think it would be fine.

7. Courage could act as Soldiering score only on Planetary Defense, and maybe 1/2 or 1/4 as effective as Soldiering on Planetary Invasions. It could also increase the minimum roll possible on a Defense roll in ship battles (like Luck does with attack rolls, but only half or even less as much).

8. If the number of Trade Routes was uncapped, I think I would seriously consider putting points in the Trade Routes ability for the Korx or other Super Trader races. Trade Routes could also influence the number of times a freighter can be destroyed before the route collapses (which could make it nice for non-Korx races or at least for games where the Korx (which are the only source for the new Protected Trade Routes ability, besides that UP event, I guess) aren't present).

9. The UP Event that protects trade routes should probably be changed to give the Protected Trade Routes ability to all Civs in the UP instead of (I'm guessing) the old effect of not being able to attack the Freighters to be consistent with the loss of the Galactic Privateer.

10. Open Tourism and Open Trade Agreements. These would work like the Economic and Research Treaties in that they are one way, can each Civ only has one to give away, etc.

The Open Tourism Agreement would increase the Tourism income the Civ it is given to based on a percentage of your own Tourism income.

The Open Trade Agreement would increase the Trade income the Civ it is given to gets from routes to your worlds by 25% or so.

If Tarrifs ability is implemented, there could also be an treaty that could be given to a race that makes them immune to your Tarrifs ability.

Heck, there could be an Open Espionage Agreement that gives the race it is given to free money towards the training of Agents too.

When you build a Glactic Wonder why not add a little paragraph explaining what it does.

I like the graphic tech tree view. I have found that when I've established espionage against an opposing civ, I have had trouble understanding the paragraph form of the civ's technical accomplishments. I'd like the graphic tech tree to be viewable for opposing civs.

Galen

Thanks, that SMAC to GalCiv2 thread also made me realize another potential ability, though:

Support - Reduces the Maintenance costs of your ships.

With the recent changes to ship maintenance, I think such an ability would not only be viable, but a better alternate (IMHO) to just reducing the costs wholesale to fix the problem... but, alas, TA seems to be feature frozen now... Maybe for 2.0 *wink, wink, nudge, nudge



Suprised no one ever mentioned this before. Certainly would be better than the large block of text we get currently. Probably something that would have to wait for 2.0, though...

Try right clicking on the blue ship icons that scroll down from the top on the right-hand side of the screen.

Allow ships to carry multiple constructor modules.

This works just as it sounds, as your miniaturization tech goes up and you get larger hulls, you can add more then one constructor module to the ship. You can then build with all of these modules when you build/upgrade a starbase.

Of course if you don't use them all in one shot, the extra modules disappear.

This will remove some of the drudgery of building and managing all these constructors. It will also allow civilizations with high productivity to pump out and replace starbases quicker.

I suggest addition of a second ”surrender option” in the setup. This would be very simple and say that ”a civ can only surrender to a civ it is at war with” The current surrender option, in my experience, rarely does this. That is OK, but gives a very different gameplay (more frustrating and longer game) than the new addition, and requires a different strategy. The current surrender option could be changed to ”always surrender, if possible, to a civ you are not at war with” in keeping with usual practice. A second improvement would be to have a seriously outgunned civ surrender earlier. (In my latest example, even with no ships and only one planet left, it would not surrender to me, but after a long time surrendered to another civ). It is boring to keep on slaughtering a helpless civ, and unrealistic as well. The real prize is to get some well-functioning planets that you do not have to decimate before taking over.

No doubt. It seems so illogical to have a limit on those particular parts when not on others.

I didn't want to read through all the posts, so forgive me if it's been suggested.

It think it'd be nice (and relatively easy) to have the ability to sort planets by the amount of influence they're putting out. (From the planet list of course) or at least have it display on the colony management screen.