First of all, I don't do drugs (at least not often).

Second of all, I'm just trying to be a bit humourous (notice how I spelled that word the Canadian way).

Although it is somewhat dry and insulting.

And Scout, it was (at one point in time) Called Operation Iraqui Liberation (and I know I'm spelling Iraqui wrong).

I didn't come up with the "OIL" pun myself, I heard it from someone else.

And another reason for why I'm poking fun at the American government is because alot of Canadian citizens were against the war in the first place. It is just a wast of life.

And instead of trying to subdue Iraq's "terrorists", the US should spend more money towards getting an Anti-ICBM "shield" up and running.

However, I will stop my political ranting (for the time being, I will get bored again sooner or later and resume my "raving").

So I apologize for damaging any patriotic nerves that I may have tweaked over the last few posts.

And my replies aren't too structured, because I usually don't have the time to type, but at the same time I want to keep up-to-date with all the things going on in this post. So I write short answers mostly in order to mark where I have read up to in the post, so that I can recommence my reading from there. However if I do have more time on my hands (or if I am really passionate about a certain argument), I will go into writing longer comments.

And before I leave, I have played Heroes of Might and Magic as well. The fifth instalment and it's expansions are wicked!!! I love the gameplay, and combat is more realistic than it has ever been!!! However, if your largest army gets shitkicked, It's quite hard to get back into a good fighting position afterwards. You just become roadkill from then on.

I think I will stop now before I get too off-topic.......

I am glad we are all in some semblence of an agreement. Now, about the tech tree: a good way to add some diversity would be to have different types of RP that are produced by different types of lab building to research different kinds of tech: the way it is now, civs use the exact same lab spaces (and one would assume the exact same laboratories) to research everything. As an armchair scientist, I find that truly absurd.

Different use of the term 'state' - the head of our ambassadors to other nation-states is I think more what is meant in context (Edit - evidently not, it was originally Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and became Secretary of State due to domestic duties being added.)

Although yeah, for awhile I was wondering what the hell was going on with the "Department of Homeland Security" - can we get a little more nationalistic please - I thought for sure we were going to have something named like "Night-Watch" from B-5 any day now. If anyone has the stomach to read them - DOJ released Nine of the Memos the Bush Admisistration was using for legal cover - there's one of them where they were arguing pretty explicitly that George Bush wasn't bound by Posse Comitatus. Honest to God, I think we were one Reichstag fire from becoming a plotline by JMS.

Jonnan

As much as it pains me to bolster Extant Faora, you are not using any standard definition of the term 'invade' here; From Wikipedia

You may or may not agree with the rationale for the invasion (I do not - the rationales given were verifiably untrue at the time (If someone attempts to convince you to take an action with verifiably untrue arguments, then it is a reasonable assumption that  in their judgement, if you were aware of the true facts, you would not agree to it. THe slow trickle of factual data over the last eight years has done nothing to undermine this axiom.), the costs were far too high for any conceivable returns, we already had a justified military action in Afghanistan which this would divert badly needed forces from. It was a bad idea, dishonestly proposed and incompetently executed by ideologues.) but the blunt fact is by any standard use of the English language attempting to say it was not an invasion because of our motives is like OJ trying to say his motives made breaking and entering not a crime.

Sloppy thinking of the highest order.

Moreover, despite Saddam's monstrosity, the deaths caused by the invasion are from 50-100 thousand verifiable deaths, with more accurate statistical models giving death tolls of between 500,000 and 1.5 million. These are the same statistical models that estimate over 600,000 deaths over the entire 30 year reign of an acknowledged bloodthirsty tyrant, so if they are overestimating the deaths we've caused, they are in all likelihood overestimating the deaths caused by Saddam by the same margin.

So in a relatively short time we have certainly averaged more deaths per year than Saddam had, and in likelihood caused somewhere between 80% to 250% of the deaths in mere 6 years as Saddam did during his entire thirty year reign of terror.

Even adding in the estimated upper limit of approximately one million casualties (both sides) from the Iran-Iraq conflict merely brings his thirty year death toll to 'parity' with what we have accomplished in merely seven.

Without mentioning of course - we funded that.Oh yeah that. To quote Molly Ivins (as best I remember) "Don't tell ME Saddam is a monster - I was saying that 20 years ago when your hero Ronald Reagan was sending him goddamn nerve gas."

With apologies, your blithe and dogmatic assertions of how much better Iraqi life is now, after our 'not-an-invasion', do not stand up to analysis - Jonnan

But, but... What do YOU want to see in GalCiv3???

Political UP meetings that mimic current world issues?

Back to topic, gang -- or take this whole 'discussion' in a new thread of its own.

I have to agree with Zyx here... all of this political debate (which I have to admit I had a hand in starting) belongs in the off-topic section, not here. I'm considering creating a thread for politics, however, and would appreciate your input.

Agreed - just can't stand blithe assertions. I'm better now.

That's it. I'm starting (in the off-topic section) a political debating squad. It shall be titeled Political Debating Squad!!!

Uhhhhhhhhh........... Extant........... you might want to take a look @ this: WHAT!!!??? There was a stickied thread in the off-topic section telling people not to post political/incendiary threads, and now it's totally gone! I will update if it comes back, but...

Riiiiiiiiiiight...............

Get back to me on that one.

I don't want to get kicked of the forums (just yet).

Something else I would like to see in GC3: sensor jammers for starbases. If an enemy ship gets within the area of effect (you know the highlighted(sp?) circle), its sensor range decreases by a certain %. Nothing too drastic, but enough so that they miiiiiight just miss that undefended PQ30 planet or the newly-established econ resorce starbase. It also might be cool to have modules that actually INCREASE said area-of effect. Again, nothing too drastic, butenough to make them worth building.

Oh, and one more thing: I KNOW the circle looks better, but please have the AoE appear as highlighted grid squares! I get rather annoyed when I try to figure out if that little bit of circle that is bulging onto my planet's tile means it is included or not! I even lost a game from this: The Altarians were bottled up in a tiny corner of the galaxy with me, and the rest was infested with Dread Lords & pirates that I had let get totally out of control. My only hope was to flip their (the Altarians') planets before the assorted nasties tackled my last few colonies (I had reserched culture as opposed to weapons & there was no time to build up my forces). So, I built a culture starbase that I THOUGHT encompassed all of my planets, and started improving it and building Cultural Exchange Centers. The starbase did not cover all of my planets. The Altarians did not flip. The Dread Lords did not wait. I did not win.

You were using it wrong, whether or not your planets were in the AoE was irrelevant. Influence bases do NOT increase the influence of your planets; the modules they can have increase the influence generated by the base. The correct placement for an influence base is touching the enemy planet, because the influence from a base drops off far faster with distance than that from planets.

Oh. Oops.

I think there should be admirals or something with a rank that you can customize to say whatever you like. These admiral rank officers can be assigned to a fleet and provide a state bonus, Again this bonus can be customized much like the states for a custom race. Finally you can add a name for the admiral class warrior and a gender. They can even set themselves flagships, so if that ship id destroyed in combat the admiral dies.

so in the end you could end up with something like:

Admerial Henry
Provides a +10% sensor bonus,
+2% Engine bonus,
+3% Hit point bonus to all ships in his/her fleet.
Is currently stationed on the Star fury-00197(or whatever the ships name is).

Warlord Kraken
Provides a +5% bonus to defence,
+10% bonus to weapons to all ships in his/her fleet.
Is currently stationed on the TNN-BattleHeart(Custom names for a ship can also be desplayed).

Everyone could design their own hero and the AI can have a hand full of preset Admirals. Ofcourse there would be limits, to train an admerial class warrior you'd need time and alot of money. somewhere in the 2500BC range. Also you can only have a grand total of 5-10 Admirals ddead or alive. in custom race states the maximum admiral capacity can be raised.

Command training
Determines how well equip your command is and whether it can support more squabbling commandos.
1 extra Admiral 1 point
2 extra Admirals 2 point
3 extra Admirals 4 point

The only reason I'm responding is because of this hypocritical, blithe, and dogmatic statement.

That standard definition came from what's called a dictionary (not taken out of context), but regardless, if I said we are liberating Iraq, Extant would have probably said that is wrong... that we are invading them (which can technically be said to be the same thing, but they do have differences in common meaning).

Saying "In 1944, the US launched a brutal invasion against European nations, taking territory and causing destruction" - which is what Extant PM'd me saying this is what he believes, even though Canada also played a role in this.
technically is the same as saying
"In 1944, the US began liberating European nations against the Axis Powers"
but they display different meanings in their use. Perhaps you should learn how to discern such differences.

PM from Extant "They (the Allies) kidnapped Germany's rocket scientists, and anything else that they could lay their hands on." - You sound a bit Pro-Nazi here Extant, please refrain from sending these type of PM's to me.

 Apparently you think countries are better off with the government murdering their citizens then having those citizens be able to fight for a democracy and freedom against those who may stand against it. Your assertions are more blithe than my own. Perhaps you feel the same way that the US was not better off during the Civil War to fight for equality among people.. similar scenario, but with outside help. Please don't be a hypocritic (unless you are against these things, who knows??).

I could see you giving a similar argument about Hitler back in 1939. But to compare deaths due to war, against deaths due to a government murdering it's citizens is about as idiotic as a comparison can be. Hence you are OK'ing those actions since it seems to be out of your comfort zone. Iraq also used chemical weapons and did actively put forth efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Perhaps you should defend Iran and say they should have the right to own nuclear weapons under their current government. If they do, military action will be taken against them, if not by us, by someone else. Iraq may not be 'better off now' (which I never implied it's a paradise over there, the new vacation spot of the world... you put words in my mouth to try to push your own idea), but neither was Europe during WW2... but Europe is better off now that the Nazi party was defeated, hence things usually go 'They get better after war' (if done right, which we will have to wait and see). You should be smart enough to know that statistics tell alot, but they don't tell the whole story. I will say the war shouldn't have happened at all, but please try to be objective in your arguments.

This thread-jacking needs to end, make a new thread somewhere else and leave a post whoever wishes to continue, I really do not. SD should keep his politics to himself, or go elsewhere with it.

You could always take a page out of the Total War book, where you have special characters who affect the fleet they are in or help the planet they govern. I don't know about constructing such people, as there is plenty of customization options available.

You could also combine it with CivIV's unit experience. That is, if they go into battle, they gain experience and can get new skills from a small palette that you choose. That way, you're encouraged to make sure that these guys survive battle.

The downside of course is that the more they survive battle, the more likely they are to survive the next fight. Eventually, they could become uber-powerful. CivIV did this with units, so they avoided it by making it unlikely that one individual unit would last that long. But if these admirals actually improve the fleets they are in, they could become rather powerful.

If you hadn't responded, the thread jacking would be over now. You were the one who revived it after everyone else moved on two days ago. If you want it to end, stop talking about it!

Yes, GD. I have gone to extreme lengths to keep EF from starting another flame war, and do not want to go through this entire disaster YET again. Please keep your politics to yourself, or go into another thread.

I am going to make a post soon but need to put all my ideas together and write some of them down. Also I am going to scan all these replys too. It might be a little big and take awhile...  

I reckon the biggest Plus that GalCiv3 could give us is Parrallell Systems/Processing - ie proper use of multi-core and the underused GPU.  The latent power sitting on User desktops right now is terrifying.  The first one to bite the bullet and really grip the whole question of proper use of multi-core and gpu processing in the Games industry, is going to take the market by Storm - quite literally.  It just needs the courage to do it and take the initial hit on cost ...... I reckon Frogboy would be up for it, may be doing it already on the quiet, he likes a challenge

The effect is self evident when you look at areas where its already applied - even in its current imature state.  Inside the BOINC Platform, the project thats doing a 3D map of the Galaxy (Milky Way Project), the processing time of its standard work unit crunched on home user PCs (almost all maths based crunching) has recently gone down from around 15 mins  to 7 Seconds  by using an ATI based code and ATI GPUs, and they have only just started getting this stuff right.  The effect for games processing is phenominal.  ATI & NVIDIA are racing each other at present to be seen as the best gpu crunching merchants.  Expect the price of Tesla cards and CUDA based development to plummet in the not too distant future.  Its a whole new world that is re-writing the dev books, old rules and old thinlking on development are rapidly become irrelevant, as does old logic, however much current proponents of existing systems may want to think otherwise.  Its a Horse V Motor Car parrallel from the turn of the last Century.  The beauty of this Revolution is that the hardware is already out there ........

Are there issues, yes for sure, always are at the leading edge.  This ability however is not mere Evolution, its going to Revolutionise the Computer industry.  Users already have the hardware ......  so the move to desktop massive parrallel processing is "merely" a software issue.  Its also a case of needing someone who will take the time and effort to pursue the Possible, not waste time pointing out issues to cover their "cant be bothered" tracks. 

Ideal project for a private entrapraneurial Company  ...  sound like one not a million miles from here    ??? ....

Regards

Zy

The problem with using state-of-the-art (or even reasonably current) technology in games is that there are a lot of people (including me, until recently) who have very outdated systems. If you make a game that relies on anything too recent, you loose a significant portion of your potential market, and alienate more than a few people.

The numbers of people without multi core in a couple of years will be very small.  In any case this code is written "use multi / gpu" if available.  New  methodologies, new rules, more possibilities - and there is no need to leave anyone behind - just takes development will to go for it and throw the comfort blanket of the old rule book away.  Its been done already, and the results are plain to see.  Now it just takes the courage to be a trail blazer for general use - the rewards will phenominal for very little risk.

Regards
Zy

It appears that our friend Galactic Doom wants a showdown? Eh?

Well if it's a showdown he wants, it's what he'll get!!!

Through the use of the private message system!!!

With the limit of 50 or 100 (it changes, it seems) messages?

Zydor does make a good point. However, most people only have one GPU and in games it is eaten up making pretty pictures. The programs/applications he talks about do not have to draw a pretty picture 60 times a second and thus can make use of all that processing power for something else.

The developers of the GPUs have already started to push their GPUs for things other than making pretty pictures. I haven't read up on ATI but I know Nvidia recently released their Tesla Cards. Which are slightly gutted GPUs with 4 gigs of ram attached. These cards in up being cheaper and more space saving in terms of crafting a super computer.

In terms of gaming, this won't be too practical, except in a few small areas. One is to fully write the game to make use of multiple cores, at least two if not four. The other is demonstrated by Nvidia, in which you add another GPU for a specific task. Nvidia has a physics engine called PhysX that can run on their supporting GPUs but I am pretty sure it takes away from graphics processing power. So you end up needing two cards if you wanna play a graphically intense game. Three if you want a SLI or CrossFire setup.

One thing I would like to see is a rethink of the plaet quality system. First of all, a larger number range for the quailites, where the numbers are out of, say 200 as opposed to 35 or so. The max amount of habitibility would not increase (sorry, no Eden planets w/ 200 habitible tiles , just a new method of measuring it). Also, have terraforming modules (late on the tech tree, big, costly) that can be used to increase the quality of a planet. Not by much, just three to at most five points on the current system or 15-20 for mine, and there would be a maximum of about four terraforms that a planet COULD take before reaching its absolute max. Also a second, even MORE expensive one that can turn SOME PQ0 planets into marginally-habitible ones. On second thought, all PQ0 planets, but most of the ones that are now PQ0 would be classified as simply "uninhabitible" (gas giants, balls of magma, etc.)

UPDATE: Instead of having a simple Tax slider, I am considering a "tax curve". The approximate number of people in each income bracket would be displayed. As your economy gets stronger, more people move into the upper classes. As you build more production and reserch improvements, more people move into the lower income brackets. Taxing the rich will get you a lot more money, but until your economy grows, there are not terrbly many of them. Also, taxing them causes people to move OUT of the upper bracket, b/c they are attempting to avoid the new taxes, moving to islands that don't actually exist, et cetera. I have a feeling that this might increase the "rich get richer" problem, but it might not, there's no way to tell for sure w/o a whole lot more thought from me, which due to the critical-mass English project due in a little under 12 hours, I do not have time for.

UPDATE II: While trying to figure out which 20th century political figure the fighter pilot in Lord of the Flies symbolizes (I think it's Julius Rosenberg), I came up with another possible solution to that nasty "rich get richer" problem: exponential mainetenance costs. When you build one of an imperovement, it costs 1 bc in maintenance, but whan you build 2 it costs 2 bc, 3 is 4 bc, 4 is 8 bc, and so on. This would make having more planets an increasing drain on your treasury.

RETURN OF THE UPDATE: We have a tech editor, a ship component editor, an imp editor, and a map editor, so why don't we have a starbase module editor and a race editor as well. (I suppose the races can be edited in-game, but you can't make them PERFECT. Actually, nix the race editor: it cross-references to too many other files. Although, it would be nice if "someone" wrote a program that put all of the stuff in the Conversations and FlavorText files into spreadsheet form....