MeridianMale

Sure, I know the journals are there, but it's time consuming to wade through all of them and take out the choice bits of info. I just thought that maybe if there are others out there in my shoes who could use some "up to speed" material on the current state of DA. I was reading around and all of a sudden I found stuff about engine nerfage to prevent sneak attacks, and I had no idea it was in there, or what the limits were, or how to find out more information. To make matters w

So I've been absent for a long time from the GalCiv2 community. I devoured the first game and played it endlessly, then pre-ordered Dark Avatar and before I was able to really sink my teeth into it, I got pulled away and haven't really been back since. Now that I see the ramp-up for the new expansion is in full swing, my curiosity is piqued again. What's troubling me, though, is that while I was able to keep pace with all the patches and changes made to GalCiv2, I never really did any

I agree that super spy still sounds kind of weak. I wouldn't take it up against races with warrior or diplomat bonuses. I like that they got the counter-intelligence tech up front, that's good, but maybe they should also be partially immune to spying, also? I have two ideas for this. + Super Spy ability has the added bonus that their capital world is automatically immune from spies without building a counter-intelligence center OR + Super Spy ability has the

Not sure if you were intentionally altering the pronunciation there or not...but the correct pronunciation of procyon is, in fact, "PRO - see - on". Though the more common pronunciation is "pro-SAI-on".

You know, what would be sweet is a screen with two lists it. On the left is your "Tech Advantage". It shows you a list of your techs that the slected opponent doesn't know. Underneath, is a pie chart. The colour of the slices matches the colour of the techs, so at a glance you can see if they have more yellow techs, or red ones etc. On the other side of the window, is your

You know, a lot of people use the diplomacy window to see what techs the other civs have. The window in the foreign screen is a bit of a jumble to read. This might be a bit annoying. I always thought it would be great if you could "hide" certain techs from that window. Maybe that could be something that "defensive" spies could do. I d

I like a lot of these but they will obviously need value-balancing. The one I don't like is the super-spy one. Unlike all the others it actually removes a strategic option from the player, at least for that opponent. I think a good compromise value would be to make it so agents are less effective, cheaper to remove, have X% chance of being discovered each turn, etc... That way I can still spy on them, and hamper their production, but it makes it much more difficult, and still adds a strategi

My note for you here writing-wise would be to cut out at least half of the "very"'s. Sometimes it's appropriate, but I think from a grammatical standpoint you're overusing it a bit. As my writing professors in college always told me: adjectives and adverbs are crutches, use strong nouns and strong verbs instead. Good flavor text though, it captures the essence of the races very concisely.

The dawn of 2225 saw a great schism on the Human planet of Earth. For decades humans have utilized Artificially Intelligent constructs to run their factories, manage their finances, and generally do their bidding. Over time these programs became more and more sophisticated, intelligent and independent. You guessed it, they decided they didn't want to rebel. But being intelligent, sophisticated beings, and having processed every cheesy earth movie about computers, robots or AI conqu

If I were brad I would have gone after the Drengin instead of the Yor. The drengin ALWAYS cause problems if you leave them to their own devices long enough. As soon as I'd seen they'd taken a minor world (usually a class 15) I would have been ALL over them, if for no other reason than to have that class 15 in my possession, to say nothing of the fact that they now have a military edge on par with your own, and if you let them develop that they'll mak

I don't tend to have a specific research order. In 1.0X i liked to research up to impulse drives quickly so that I could out colonize the AI. I'd sacrifice a colony module and stick 2 or 3 impulse engines on a colony ship that can take planets the AI would ordinarily get to first. In 1.1 that gets too expensive, so I've been rethinking my strategy. I will usually go for research techs and economics early on, start getting a couple starb

I find that when I have planets with tons of factories I have a difficult time balancing my budget. I'll have a 700BC capital ship done in 2 turns, which means I'm paying 350BC a turn for it. I usually run my budget pretty close to the red line (close to defecit spending) so I don't usually have a surplus of cash. If I try to crank ships out fast, that's great for the war effort, but it sucks for my economy. I find it better to have 3-4 worlds that

The crazy number for number of weeks till election sounds like an uninitialized variable or something...it probably doesn't get set until you actually have the tech. HOpefully the API responsible for the UN thing will reset it when the 3 years expires. If someone attacks you first you should be ok...just provoke them a little.

Yeah the inefficiency varies from purchase to purchase. I'm not sure we have any exact figures given to us as to how that "buy it now" price is calculated...but it's mean to be prohibitive for a reason. If you do the math on the payment plans it makes a credit card look like a low APR. Half the price up front plus double the price over 2 years or so...sometimes higher. If you really wanted to, you could just buy and then save up for a f

I found this game because of Penny Arcade. Talk on the forum leads me to believe they might be responsible for quite a bit of your word of mouth. I'm an avid gamer, but I don't get magazines, I don't buy strat guides, I don't pay attention to inserts in game boxes, I only read reviews of games that someone has linked to directly...I never browse a review site to see what games they've been reviewing. If it hadn't been for penny a

In order to ensure military victory, you need to utterly destory the enemy AI race in a single turn. That's pretty much what I did to the Altarians. They were playing remarkably well given their 2 planet handicap. The torians and yor pretty much grabbed every world they could have gone after. Don'

Oh and he's definitely right about the manual. I learned more about playing this game from the Gameplay examples than I did from that manual. In fact I learned quite a lot about playing the game from the examples now that I think about it.

This was a pretty good review. Glad to see there's a reviewer who finally doesn't go "blah blah blah, no multiplayer, blah blah blah". Maybe with Oblivion out now Microsoft is paying off the reviewers to tone down the 'no multiplayer = bad game' jive.

I'm just coming to the dreaded "mop up" phase of my latest game. I'm playing as Drengin vs the Acreans, Altarians and Yor on a medium galaxy. It was a pretty intense game. I started out right next to the Arceans, whom I was neck and neck with for military strength until they started a war with me. They had a HUGE chunk of territory. Probably 2/3 of the galaxie's habitable planets were theirs. I never would have withstood them had it

I have a question about how you make these screenshots: Do you use cheats/debug modes to "spy" on the AI? or are you doing this by spending tons on espionage. I don't usually spend much on espionage as I'm not that good at managing my economy yet...so I'm usually strapped for cash. I've gotten to the level you need to view planets on several occasions...but not on every single AI player as you have.

Great post. I'm with you 100% on the logistics change. I like fighter craft, as I tend to play mostly on small-medium galaxies...and in those games you rarely get past that point before someone wins. If I really race to them I'll pick up a medium...but I only get to Large or Huge if I slow-play and get there on purpose. If I play to win I can do it with nothing but fighters. It's tough taking on large ships with fighters if your enemy h

Yeah, if you didn't update your video drivers (which the game probably TOLD you to do the first time you launched it) don't come complaining about how the game is buggy. A driver that is older than 2005 is going to be buggy and have problems with this game as it uses brand new technology not implemented in Most of what you see in the patch lists are not bug fixes, they are gameplay tweaks. The devs have only had to pat

I kind of like tech trading how it is now, but I think there was an interesting suggestion made here: time delay after purchase. I would extend that slightly, however and make it negotiable. This would work for ships and planets also. For example, I might choose to trade techs with another race for cash on the terms that I pay now and recieve delivery in 4 weeks. To get delivery in 2 weeks it would cost me more. Same would go

Tycho on Penny Arcade summed it up pretty well in wednesday's newsposts. We all don't like copy protection, but nothing to we is going to stop developers from using it. It's somewhat pointless to "boycot" games that use starforce unless someone in the media is trumpeting your boycot as a big deal expected to have X impact on sales. Between Iraq, midterm elections, and a whole lot of real issues going on right now, I don't thin

Check out today's Penny Arcade. The news post isn't up at this time, but the comic is hilarious. Check out the recent main page post here regarding StarForce for background.