Cauldyth

Fair enough, cancelling the alliance at Warm instead of Friendly would make sense. Either way, as Lord Nova said, the AI shouldn't stay in a relationship that's deteriorated into abuse! Those AIs need some self respect!

I'm not sure it's entirely fitting for a game like GalCiv2, but the Total War games have this sort of feature. It's obviously much more relevant to settings like Medieval Europe though. Nonetheless, it's great fun managing your family, getting attached to particular members, watching them grow into old age (all too often leaving incompetent spoiled children!), marrying off your daughters, etc.

It seems like two changes would fix this: 1) Have alliances not affect relations. A Close relationship between races would drop to Friendly just as easily with an alliance as it would without. 2) If relations drop from Close, the AI will cancel the alliance. There should probably be a grace period of a few turns for #2, to account for minor fluctuations and allow for the player to attempt to repair relations before the alliance falls apart.

Some of the concepts submitted are so interesting that they've inspired some new features to be added to the expansion pack. We like features! <

Count me in for UP upgrades along these lines (though I'm guessing it would require AI enhancements to deal with it correctly). Anything that adds to diplomacy gets a from me! -Cauldyth

Because its now impossible to play with no military on anything less then huge Who in their right mind would want to ally with you if you have no military? What do you possibly have to offer them? You're like the ultimate moocher! You want to sit back an

One thing I want to make sure people are aware of is that the GalCiv II team consisted of 3 full-time developers and 2 full-time artists. 5 people. There were other people occasionally in there but it was a pretty small team too (plus this is our second iteration, as opposed to 5th ). Oops, thanks for the correction. That makes it all t

The Space Empires games are targeted somewhat differently than GalCiv2. They're aimed a bit more at "control and detail freaks" (of which I include myself as a part-timer). For example, GalCiv2 has its feature set carefully managed. The feature list is kept manageable for a variety of reasons: a) accessibility, b) balance, c) AI competence. The result is a streamlined, well balanced game, with an AI that can kick my butt on a regular basis. Space Empires goes the other route -

Hehe, I feel your pain. The product I work on is based on code developed by a university research group, and we went through almost 2 years of development on our branch, separate from theirs. Now comes the time to merge those two conflicting beasts together. It's enough to drive someone insane... -Cauldyth

How about a super powerful invasion fleet of either good or evil beings. They have only a certain number of uber ships ... BUT ... the least powerful good or evil race ally with them, riding on their coat tails to achieve galactic power once again. Babylon 5? <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Wink.gif" border=0 ALIGN="absm

Bah, beat me to it! -Cauldyth

Thoughts on possible carrier implementations: 1) A ship component (takes up a lot of space, can only go in larger hull sizes) that shares the range attribute of the "mothership" with all (or up to a certain number) of tiny hull sizes that accompany it. Perhaps there's a also component that's available for tiny hull sizes that causes them to be potential recipients of this effect (e.g. something worded to give the impression of rails or attachments that allow the tiny hull to be carried

Count me in. When I play these games, I don't see myself playing it like a game of chess, where I'm trying to win on an even playing field, with well defined and pre-existing rules, and no surprises apart from what my opponents do under those same rules. Instead, I see it more like I'm "writing" history as I play through the game. Winning or losing a particular game is secondary to simply having an interesting story and interesting situations develop during the game itself. I

Nah, alliances aren't broken. Are you saying you should be able to buy an alliance with anyone you choose? That would make for a dull, dull game. Some races will like you, some won't. Work with the ones that do to eradicate the ones that don't. That's much more fun than being able to say "Hmm, I think I'll make the Arceans my allies," and the Arceans having no choice in the matter simply becau

How strong is your military compared to the other race? Having a stronger military than them will make them more inclined to like you (just like having a weak military makes them more inclined to see you as a waste of time or, worse, as easy prey). AI races, like nations in the real world, generally like to cozy up to a bigger dog. Allying with someone stronger than you earns you a degree of protection you could never muster yourself. Allying with someone weaker just exposes you to g

Hehe, that's pretty cool! Now you just need to mod Civ4 so you can play it as a non-human race! -Cauldyth

For example, if you remove ship to ship combat, would this still be a playable game? Technically, maybe, but it'd just be fleets of constructors building influence bases and trade routes and there would be 10 people playing it who really love influence building. Well, I'm not so sure. SimCity was very popular, and SimGalacticEmpire might be too!

In the end, these games boil down to 3 main aspects of gameplay... ship to ship combat and conquering planets. Everything else, espionage, custom enemies, asteroid fields, planet environments etc are just extras that set the game apart from other similar games or affect a small portion of the overall game arc Keep in mind that many of us don't n

Heck, even I can make a PTW-type expansion for you, that's not tough. I just need a cardboard box and a pooper scooper! Personally, I'll take DA instead. -Cauldyth

Everyone relax. I love how you mention all thes expansions Except the one that matters Civ3 PTW. Perhaps Civ3: PTW was a huge expansion (I never played much Civ3). The point is that, in the context of the average expansion out there, DA fits in just fine. Perhaps there was an expansion (Civ3: PTW) that went above and beyond what a typi

For me, I'm totally excited for Dark Avatar, especially since I know it will include the all-important AI updates (which seriously, seriously mean a lot to me, especially since they make a noticeable difference in the game. Oops, how could I forget to mention that? To be honest, I'd happily pay $20 (on top of what I paid for the original game) f

Well, personally, I like what I've heard so far about DA. It should spice things up quite a bit (and I'm confident the AI will be up to the task of using all the new goodies). It sounds like there's a good chance multiplayer will show up in the second expansion. As for tactical combat, while I'd like it, I can't think of a single game that completely replaced the existing combat system with a new one in an expansion. That's sequel material, not expansion material. What I wou

"How could anyone not like him?" - Mrs. Seinfeld -Cauldyth

The magic system in MoM was indeed inspired by Magic: The Gathering. The rest of the gameplay, of course, was very different (and great). Add me to the list of people interested in a fantasy game from Stardock! AoW was okay, but just didn't do it for me. -Cauldyth