So the civ-wide bonus does multiply again, that's good to know. I don't think it changes much though, it just means that civ-wide bonuses are really powerful and that it's only the planet's econ bonus (basically the number of existing econ buildings) that should count in terms of the stock market vs farms balance.
One thing to consider when balancing farms and stock markets: Economy bonus is additive, so for example while four stock exchanges means a 100% bonus, the next four stock exchanges will just increase that bonus to 200%, so in total you triple your income instead of quadrupling it (doubling twice). Farms, on the other hand, increase population, which affects the base tax income, which is multiplied by the entire economic bonus. So for some generic race in ToA, let's run the numbers, as
The big combat change is that ships now fire simultaneously each round, which removes the huge advantage that used to be held by attacking ships. Not sure if the sum of all changes is documented somewhere, but if you scroll backward through the news posts on the main page and the "Journals" section, there tend to be announcements of the major changes for each new version (1.1, 1.2) as previews of what's coming that are much more concise than the lists of everything they actually did.
I'm not sure what exactly is being considered "exploiting" the AI or not. I can beat the game pretty easily on crippling, but I don't do anything that feels too exploitative - I buy factories to power up the initial colony rush, deficit spend based off of the starting cash and anything from anomalies, and tend to research to stock markets fast to turn my economy around, start making a profit, and then build up industry, research and military. I don't play with tech trading on. I'm not
Well building survey ships isn't really all that technology-intensive, provided you build your own designs with survey modules rather than getting all the techs to build the core survey ship. All it takes is Sensors I, which isn't all that hard to get, and on a big map with enough anomalies, researching up to sensors I and impulse drive or so and building a few survey ships can power massive deficit spending for quite a while with all the cash anomalies you'll get, not to mention ability bonuses
I'm not sure about this, but isn't there a specific type of anomaly that gives you either 25% progress towards your current tech or nothing? Might Creativity make it more likely that you get that 25% of research bonus instead of the "you found nothing useful" or whatever it is result?
It sounds like you have Windows XP professional, that counts as XP, so you should download the drivers for Windows XP/2000 on the nvidia site, I believe. I think there might be one set of drivers for all their cards, but if not, and there isn't a GeForce 4 option, you might try under GeForce MX, you'll find the GeForce 4 cards there.
Try updating your video drivers, they're not as old as some of the ones people post problems with, but they are over a year old and could very well be causing the issue.
You can put on basic support modules even without researching anything, they are available under the modules tab of the ship designer. You can research better life support after researching basic logistics, and each life support technology gives you a blanket range bonus for all ships, including existing ones, as well as a more efficient life support module. You can also extend your range by building starbases with constructors, I believe. Engines are not at all related to the range o
Still, it would be nice to have more balanced choices at the beginning, because it seems like the long-term benefits of good aren't especially greater than those of evil, (at least to me, though I've yet to see the fundamentalists show up). It would be nice if the event about a life-force draining research machine or whatever gave a big research bonus but population penalty for evil, a smaller research bonus and no penalty for neutral, and a morale bonus for good, for example.
Not sure if this will help, right now I'm playing and (I think) winning on crippling, but I'm not yet bored of that and haven't tried masochistic, so I don't know from personal experience if this will work. But maybe you could try setting some of the AIs to genius and some to incredible - as long as the incredibles don't just expand even more at the expense of the weaker ones, it might make for something of an in-between difficulty level.
I was playing today and fighting he Torians as the Drengin, mostly winning but without enough defenders to keep a few transports from sneaking through and attacking my planets. One very nice class 22 was under threat, so I had it buy a ship to protect it. However, the Torian transport reached it that turn (before the bought ship was actually built), and took the planet. After they took it and my next turn started, the ship I had bought showed up as a Torian ship in orbit around the planet they h
Is there any way to allow changing of the default options regarding auto-upgrading of improvements and auto-building of tile upgrades (soil enhancement, etc). I just found these options (in the details area I think of the colony screen), but decided it wasn't worth the time to go through and change them for every planet. If I could default to having the tile upgrade version off that would be very nice, because I much prefer to wait for a planet to fill up before unlocking new tiles, or to just w
Tarbo's explanation makes sense, but just to elaborate, the number given for research spending does not equal total research, only base research. Anything from bonuses is 50% paid for and 50% free, but the amount you're paying is shown under "Bonus Research/Production" (or some similar title), not under research. So if the 232% total bonus is right, and the total research is 2513, you should be paying 757 under "Research" (for that planet) and 878 under "Bonus Research/Production" for the planet
It's often better to not make balanced planets, but to specialize instead, based on planet quality, location, and bonus tiles. Like Tiger8 said, high quality planets, especially with farming or approval bonus tiles, are very good moneymakers. Build a few factories, entertainment to keep morale up, farms when the population maxes out, and cover the rest of the planet with bank type buildings, with an economic capital on the best planet of this type you have. Other planets can be specialized for r
Yes - there are up arrow, down arrow, and x buttons that can change building priority or cancel construction once you select it in the build queue. You can also click the circle-ish icons in the corners of the social, military, and research displays to "focus" on that part of production, shifting some of your other production to that type, for controlling what you do on individual planets. It's not the complete individual control by planet you want, but I think not being able to do that is a des
To elaborate, space determines how much you can fit on one ship. The maximum space available is based on your hull size, modified by your miniaturization ability (this actually increases availalbe space rather than decreasing the space requirements of components as the name would suggest). The 0/whatever bar you see is the amount of space used/total. Each component takes up a certain amount of space, which scales so that they take up more space on larger hulls. Cost determines how many units of
I don't have any information on my crash and it only happened once so I'm not sure how useful it will be, but I figure I'll chime in because I had a very similar crash to the OP's. It was on the siege campaign map and I stole Doom Ray from the Dread Lords, but when I went to the shipyard there didn't seem to be an icon for the doom ray component - I still put it on my ship and the game crashed when I tried to save the design, and when I reloaded and to
If you want to try it out, here's one strategy that's working quite well for me so far on the first Dreadlord level. I researched up the sensors tree to whichever one lets you build the Eyes of the Universe, Sensors IV I think, then built the Eyes. I did a bunch of engine research too, up into the warp drive techs, and then built a few ships with cargo hulls, one laser, a few life support modules, and all the engines they can hold. They can see basical
Driver Date: 7/12/2004 04:50:00 (Video), Driver Date: 5/25/2004 18:58:04 (Sound). That's probably your problem, especially the video driver, if you update those, it will probably run fine, especially as what you're getting right now sounds very similar to what I had before I updated my video driver. Edit: It also looks like you're running GalCiv II version 1.0, so downloading 1.0X is probably a good idea, though it's still likely
Well maybe have a different setting for each AI? So the Drengin would look at you, assume that if you were ahead in tech you'd be invading them in a few years (because that's what they'd do), and attack if they felt they had any chance at all, while the humans would be just as happy to let you grow into an economic monster and trade with you. Perhaps the player's alignment could also come into play, so that the AIs would be more likely to attack an evi
What you're saying makes sense in some ways, but not so much looking at it from another point of view. If you are ahead in economy, industrial potential, and technology, but behind militarily, it makes even more sense for the AI to attack you - how else could they ever possibly win? Maybe you will manage to build a huge, technologically superior fleet before they can take enough to make up for the difference in infrastructure, but at least trying the a
