Tertullian

You should also look at your tax rate-- For the first 20 or so turns I keep taxes to zero to get the 100% morale population bonus that gives me max population growth. This improves the overall tax base (base tax income is based on population) and gives me people to man my colony ships. After that, I increase taxes to lower my deficit spending while keeping morale between 70-80% (again keeping up the population growth). Build an entertainment center on higher population plan

There are pros and cons to the idea. Ultimately, by mid to late game your economy should be making loads of money so buying a manuf plant doesn't put a dent into your wallet. It also adds some strategic considerations as to when the best time is to research the faculty upgrades.

This idea has potential... It creates a continuum between lovey-dovey peace and all out war for extermination of the race. It adds more realism in terms of "experience" to the warfighters. I'm sure it would be a bear to program, and to try to get an AI up and running with good strategies. A nice challenge for Stardock!

If the game is so outdated and pathetic as you think, then why do the reviewers (gamespot, etc) give GalCiv2 such high marks??? Hint: if everyone on this thread plus the game reviewers disagree with your premise that this game sucks, just perhaps consider that you may be wrong, and the mass of humanity is right. Perhaps you should try your hand at designing, programming, and publishing a world-class game. Then we can become your critics.

#2 certainly IS a personal preference. I for one would not want to hear unintelligible gibberish when in the diplomatic screen--it rapidly will become tiresome. I'd rather hear the funky music. Besides, once you have the universal translator, everything would come out in your own language negating any benefit whatsoever of hearing alien gibberish. And that is MY preference. I have a few other preferences regarding your unhelpful post, but since this is a family-oriented forum, I will

If you don't like the game, xtrak, don't play it. And from your entirely negative post, it seems that you don't like it. End of story.

I like the idea of changing the difficulty level mid-game as an added option. One way it could be added as part of the story line is for GNN to report for example that the Torian race has a new, more aggressive/efficient leader. The Torians would then operate under a more intelligent AI setting then they were previously. The opposite can happen and a lengthy civil war within a race can result in a dumber AI. AI alliances would also be good to gang up on the live player if the live pla

Never seen it myself. Recognize that PQ4 planets are capped at 2.6 Bil, PQ5 planets are capped at 4.3 Bil. That is their max potential. But the OPs problem is unusual--the max capacitiy of a PQ10 planet is around 26 Bil. So it shouldn't stall at 17 Bil with enough farms and morale. ...Unless it is the dredded lost production bug.

Early in the game--research level 30rp/turn. Harvest the research resource adds 5% to your research--so you are now up to a whopping 31rp/turn (rounding down). So no, initially you won't see much of an effect. But later in the game--base research level 200rp/turn. Research resource built up to 25%, now you are up to 250rp/turn. Now you are getting somewhere.

Nice work! However I would expect the research cost to attain a certain weapon damage to be monotonically increasing, but your graph does not show this. That is the cost to research a level 3 weapon is the research cost to get a level 1 weapon, plus the additional cost to research from level 1 to level 2, plus the additional cost to research from level 2 to level 3. Because to get to level 3, you need to get to levels 1 and 2 first. So the graph should show the cumulative costs, not

Of course, if North Korea launches nuclear missiles at the US and they either fail in flight or get shot down, the "planetary quality" of the US doesn't decrease, does it? The "special" attack failed completely. Simply, the developers have introduced a fairly simple model for planetary warfare that is kept simple to eliminate easy exploits or cheese. Could someone come up with a more complex model that accounts for a partial effect of thes special attacks? Yes, but then it is much har

Also, build them near your planets that lie in the enemy's sphere of influence. This helps to keep them from flipping over to the dark side. If you are going for an influence win, it also pays to put them in areas where no one has influence. This expands your own sphere of influence to those areas. Influence starbases create their own infuence, not simply provide bonuses to your existing influence in the area.

My understanding is that bonus prod/research is at half cost.

As said "bug 1" is an intended feature of the game, NOT a bug. However one should not be reluctant to save a game and quit the program. This feature applies to all races, not just your own, so the AI works under the same constraints of no production/research on the first turn after a restored save game. Everyone is on a level playing field here. I typically do not complete a game in one session, but save it for later. I find no problem with the first turn after restoring t

I agree that alco75's description of how the PQ bonus could work universally is reasonable and logical. However, the way it is implemented in the game appears to be as designed. Therefore it is NOT a bug, but a feature. I reference the (much maligned) GalCiv manual where it states the characteristics of the civilization abilities: "Planet Quality raises the base number of usable tiles available after you colonize a planet." Note that it says colonize, not fl

I think the PQ bonus is desinged to work only for planets you initially colonize. Planets won through infuence or war will not receive the PQ bonus.

It may be that your social production slider on your domestic policy management screen is set to zero...this means you are not spending anything on social production (to build improvements). Also, when there is nothing being built and you start to build something, the screen initially shows "never" for time to build because the unused social spending was funneled to military spending. But it will begin building the improvement. If you exit the colony management screen and then go back

The "borders" are not actually territorial borders. Territorial borders only extend to the planets themselves. The "borders" are actually areas where your cultural influence is greater than that of the other races. So, similar to the high seas, open space is open for free passage of all peoples and races. It would be hard for any civilization to assert any type of control over millions of cubic parsecs of space that they might claim their own. That being said, some of the A

I AGREE!!!!!!!! KEEP THE FORUMS!!!!! Despite their flaws and weaknesses (if it weren't for that we would all complain to you about something else...to paraphrase another saying, a b****ing gamer is a happy gamer) they do provide a great service. From a business perspective, and I know Stardock doesn't do it (entirely) for the love of the game (although they have shown very clearly that their hearts are in it), it does make some sense. You need a thick hide to hos

I've seen this on several occasions--one of which I'm playing now (Large/challenging/4 races + me the Terrans). My 52 planets have nearly finished populating the planets tiles with various structures. A Yor planet flipped to me on influence (Yor were never involved in wars, have built only 1 combat ship, own no resources or other starbases). The planet that flipped (Class 9) only had 4 tiles populated and it had colonized it the same time some of mine were colonized that are now full

All good points. After playing a few games one "learns" the best strategy for winning and after that it is simply the same game with different planets/locations/bonuses, etc. And it becomes boring. This is the point to: 1) up the difficulty setting--for me going from challenging to tough forced me into a different strategy and has inserted a sense of newness to the game that had become a bit stale. As I become accustomed to tough, I will need to move up another level.

The Thalans will insert a computer virus into all computer video drivers so that no one will be able to play GC2. Updating your video drivers WILL NOT solve the problem.

Here are some possibilities: 1. check you morale. If it is too low pop won't grow as much (or at all). In the first 20 or so game turns I set taxes to 0% for 100% morale to get the pop growth bonus. 2. If you are actively colonizing worlds, this slows down your growth rate initially, although over time due to the extra worlds things are good. If the computer players aren't colonizing, their pop will continue to grow. 3. In the early game you describe the pop limits likely ar

In the interface section of the game options page there is a checkbox to "show full fleet battles only if both sides are fleets"--if this is checked you will get the phenomina you are writing about. You may want to see if this is the case.

The challenge is that it is hard to intuitively and easily project a true 3D space onto a 2D computer screen. So we end up with flat galaxies. Ascendency did a pretty good job at it, but with the larger maps it did become somewhat difficult to navigate through and get the view I wanted (I am NOT a pilot!). Now if someone came up with a true 3D computer display (i.e., holographic projection onto a 3D space) that would be awesome.