Whillowhim

Reply to Auto movement and End Turn in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Note that this is broken in the current non-beta release. I haven't tried the betas, but there was a post by a stardock employee that stated that it was fixed for 1.1, so its probably working now. The way it worked in GalCiv1 is that you'd hit turn, all your autopilot ships would start moving, and if any finished and still had moves left it would center on them and wait for you to move them. The turn button would then change to a "skip" bu

Reply to G4's XPlay gives GalCiv II 5 out of 5! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

They finally posted the link to the video on their site. I haven't had a chance to watch it since my work comp has issues with flash, but the video should be linked at the bottom. Turn down your sound when starting it, since they force an ad on you before the video and the volume is often set rather high. Link

Reply to Grrrrr............ in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The answer is obvious once you look at the dread lord's fleet number in the second screen shot. Obviously their fleet had sold its soul for an extra invisible defense bonus.

Reply to G4's XPlay gives GalCiv II 5 out of 5! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Congrats! They're the reviewers I usually pay attention to, due to their format, humor, and an honest rating system. Its a lot easier to get a feel for a game by watching video of it being played instead of just reading some text and looking at screenshots, and even if its a game you'd never play normally, they tend to add enough humor to keep their show interesting. They have videos of many of their reviews up on their website, but they u

Reply to How do you turn off Minister Reports? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Think there's an option in the options menu that says something like "display window when special building completed". Hunt around for something like that, think its on the left side of the interface screen. Don't have the game available at the moment or I'd give more exact directions.

Reply to Best and worst kinds of weapons in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Which file are you using to get this data? I was looking for a list of the costs and such earlier in order to do some data parsing of my own, but I couldn't find the right info and gave up. Is there an xml file in the directory that I should be looking at? Also, what size hull are you basing the data on? Since the size is not a constant, that might throw off your calculations a bit (though probably not by enough to affect your results).<b

Reply to How do I increase my military rating? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Since at higher levels your military power is important in order to keep everyone from ganging up on you, it pays to optimize it. The formula for each ship is: attack + defense + (ship health / 10) and your military rating on the charts is just all your ships added together. During the start of a game when I'm in expansionist mode and not feeling like a war, I tend to make tiny or small ships with no engines and as many cheap weapons as I

Reply to upgrading my flagship in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Absolutely nothing. Its just a name and has no bonuses/negatives as far as gameplay goes. Of course, if you're trying to write up an after action report on a game or make a story out of it, it does help add some realism to it. "Sadly, emperor Whillowhim the 1st fell in battle when his flagship was destroyed by a cowardly sneak attack by the humans. Since the ship he was using for his goodwill tour of the far end of human space

Reply to Forum Software is some sort of abstract hellscape. in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Although I hate to say so, the only advantage these forums have over pretty much any other forum software I use is the medals at the bottom of people's posts and the integration with the metaverse accounts. If you can mod a preexisting forum package to add those two things (and whatever graphical theme you want, of course) you'll be miles ahead of where you are now (assuming the software scales to this type of load). List of issues I've per

Reply to Join The Browncoats in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

As a slight change... favorite quote from the director's commentary on the pilot episode: (paraphrased) "Its an awkward thing to ask an actress, especially a young acress to do, but the first thing she said to me when we took her out of the box was 'Does this cryogenic chamber make me look fat?'"

Reply to I can't attack the enemy! in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The ship that survived the rest of its fleet being destroyed must be bugged. You might try removing that ship from the fleet and trying without it. If it lasts past a save/restore, they might want to see the save game to see exactly how the ship was bugged, but I'm not sure.

Reply to Best planet evar! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Best I've gotten so far was a class 26 with a +46% PQ bonus from the precursor artifact choice. Only two bonus tiles, however, and both were influence. Still, with the economy boost event the planet was pumping out around 3.5k bc per turn, and even after it finished it grew to the point where it was over 3k.

Reply to Opinion: Why should I care that the AI doesn't cheat? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've always hated AIs that cheat outrageously, but only because I hate players that cheat against me as well. Yes, I know the AIs in games tend to be stupid and need some advantage against good players, but allowing them to do things that are impossible for the player really rubs me the wrong way. To me, its the same as people teleport hacking in WoW, using aimbots in a FPS or using a fog of war cheat in a RTS. Its a huge, unfair advantage that to m

Reply to Why no Precursor Library? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

From what I can tell of the gc2.xml file, its just a listing of all the files in the directories and their md5 checksums. I'm guessing its for verifying that the game is properly installed, and doesn't actually affect gameplay. None of the other .xml files reference it either, and it doesn't appear in plain text anywhere. I'm guessing its at least partly hard coded and will take a mod or a new version to change it.

Reply to Why no Precursor Library? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've been wondering the same thing. Its either very rare, I'm unlucky, or it doesn't exist.

Reply to Starbase Conquest Strategy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

The description seems to confuse people, but there's nothing special about that tech. It just gives you upgraded modules for your military bases.

Reply to Starbases and Constructors: Living the Micromanagement Dream in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Here's what I'd be willing to settle for: 1) The ability to make build queues for starbases, and assign those queues to starbases. So when a constructor does hit a starbase, it automatically builds the first module on the list that hasn't already been built. This gets rid of the 5 billion "please choose a module" popups while still allowing you to have somewhat customizable starbases "this one is in someone else's territory, so I'll put

Reply to Crazed fans in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

A race of Sith Lord Ewoks? Aren't those called the Snathi.....

Reply to Ship Moving Strangness in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

They move before the enemy. While a "move autopilot ships" button might be nice, I don't think its a major drawback.

Reply to Tech victory/Long game needs help in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Buying starbases depends a lot on who you're buying them from. In my last complete game, the Iconans had a couple resource starbases I wanted, but they weren't willing to give them to me for less than all my tech, all my trade goods, and about half a dozen ships. Not exactly a good idea, so I gave up and started trying to out-tech them so I had more to offer. A couple dozen turns later, however, I noticed that the starbases I was interested in had c

Reply to Getting my ass handed to me in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

One tactic I have yet to try is sending them a sacrificial planet to keep them appeased. Its really the only good use I can think of for the class 4 planet you start with, and if you do it right you might be able to "re-gift" the planet several times if you can get it to culture flip back to you quickly. I'm thinking that setting up a couple influencer bases next to the starting class 4 planet, gifting the planet to someone to keep them off your back

Reply to Some diplomacy questions (regarding alliances) in Diplomacy GalCiv2 Forums

I've never really seen an AI form an alliance. I'm guessing they just don't get close enough relationships to form them, since it does take a bit of work to get there.

Reply to My ships keep going off on their own! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Hmm, selecting planets sounds like a better workaround than what I've been doing. I found that the way to avoid it was to click on the square with possible problems, and make sure that every ship or fleet there is deselected before moving on to the next ship. The problem seems to happen when you have multiple ships/fleets selected, then move to annother ship. It doesn't tend to deselect the ships properly (sometimes the first one is deselected, some

Reply to Diplomacy: How can I make demands? in Diplomacy GalCiv2 Forums

Exactly. One of the most annoying things in some earlier titles was allying with a race, having them attack someone else, and then getting dragged into an aggressive conflict, but that doesn't happen here. If someone attacks you, your allies are obligated to attack them back. If someone attacks your allies, you're asked to go to war with them or break the alliance. If you decide to attack someone, your allies will sit back and watch while the perso

Reply to Anoyone know how to put your Metaverse awards in your forum posts? in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

I'm still not sure what my problem was, but I tried it on annother computer and it let me set the default char. Guess thats good enough.