Alfonse

I posted about this on Pennyarcade and my blog as well. Tycho's going to have a field day with this one. Oh yes, I can't wait till Monday for him to rip StarForce a new one. He's already publically decried StarForce (specifically) and StarForce-like crap in the past. And PA actually has

Is StarForce run by a bunch of jerks? I mean, it's one thing for people to praise GC2 for a lack of heavy copy protection. It's quite another for the pre-emenant copy protection maker for games to actively urge people to pirate anything that isn't using their stuff. Indeed, that might be illegal. You should consult a lawyer to find out. I'd love to see those jerks get slapped with a "cease and desist". Or worse. <TABLE cell

For example: Social Production. Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done. This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed. And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasu

Well, goldenocean, you have told the developers about a potential exploit. The developers have acknowledged it and have said that they will give it its due attention. However, it's certainly not getting fixed tomorrow, and they may not fix it ever. You explored the game, and you found a button that allows you to distract the AI until you win. That's all well and good. Indeed, your style of play tends to find that sort of thing. A

I would like to ask that the StarDock team please stop justfiying the reason for no multiplayer. We forgive you (for those who even feel the need to offer forgiveness. From my perspective, the case for no multiplayer was made when you said its a strategy game). You shouldn't feel that GC2 is in any way inferior to other games simply because it doesn't have multiplayer. PC game reviewers consider multiplayer like 3D graphics: every gam

Most people on earth think digital wristwatches are a pretty neat idea. I think they may be on to something That'd require doing something crazy... like taking your eyes off the screen. Crazy, I know. (Not being sarcastic. It's hard to not look at the screen, particularly when

This reminds me of the CivIV debacle - same 'new technology' - same "extreme modability" - and same utter lack of guidelines. As if it wasn't bad enough to have to do the editing for the coding team with no GUI - we have to spend hours sifting for information scattered online too If you're buying some

How does it feel that your 60 minute-to-write speech got owned by 60 seconds of rebuttal? Pretty good, considering that: 1: The 60 second "rebuttal" clearly addressed nothing in the first half of the piece. 2: The presence or absence of the auto updating feature was ultimat

1) No dramatic shifts in net revenue that aren't user controlled. That's why we have the social spending as-is. To prevent a scenaroi where smeone ends up going from +3000 per turn to -2000 per turn because they traded some tech with an AI. 2) No increase in micro management. 3) Does not involve totally red

Remember moo2s planetary batteries? missile silos? orbital platforms? That's nice for MOO2. This is Galactic Civilizations II. I know they both have 2 in their name, but they are different games. <TABLE cellpadding=8 width="95%" align=cente

In MOO2 and MOO3, any and all planets are terraformable. That's nice for the MOO series. This is about Galactic Civilizations II. A different game. Just because their both set in space doesn't mean that there are any real design transferances from one to another. As Martimus poin

One might argue that the social spending "wastage" is realistic. Come on, you know better than that. You've made innumerable decisions in this game's design that aren't "realistic" in the slightest that were done for the purposes of gameplay. You can't suddenly single out one decision and justify it b

SC3 had some good ideas in it. The problems with the game were: 1: It damaged the SC universe. The mysteries mentioned in SC2 were [i]all[/i] solved. Thus making them not mysteries. And the solution to those mysteries were kinda silly and underwhelming. Possibly because the original makers of SC2 were not involved in any way with SC3. 2: The ideas were never really taken to their logical conclusion. The design was interesting, but

Wasn't Master of Magic a ripof of Magic: the Gathering? I seem to recall playing it (for like 30 minutes), and then seeing Magic cards with very, [i]very[/i] similar abilities and concepts (5 colors, summoned creatures, etc). I'd rather Stardock focus on creating something with an [i]original[/i] universe.

I agree totally, but they are a major gaming site and I thought i would alert everyone who feels the way you do. I mean, come on, if GC can get a 9.0 on Gamespot, and IGN gave MoO3 a 9.3, GC should have gotten a 11.2 on IGN. I'm not a fan of game ratings period. But 8.7 shoulds pretty reasonable so

I prefer entering (ie, copying from an email) a 28 character string to having to install some kind of malware onto my computer just to play the game. Fordson, you don't need to activate anything? Yes you do. If you want to get updates (as I recall). Even so, it's not like the activation harms your computer. As long as yo

I thought I told the game to SPEND ALL INCOME. No. You told the game to spend 100% of the income that can be spent on each planet. I'm a long-time Civ player and I've never played any GalCiv before. So, when I looked at it, I understood what they were intending to convey with the sliders ev

I'm all for expansions, but putting in features based on user suggestions strikes me as good business -- makes people more likely to buy your next game. Depends on the game. And the developer. If you're making a strategy game, this is not an unreasonable proposition. However, you have to ma

Excuse me, but what's up with that?! If I have 12 bc, why can't I have it produce 12 flasks without completly hampering my military and social production? Because that's the game design. You have to make choices. And those choices have consequences. It might be interesting to let the 3 glob

AlFonse, upgrades are automated by default but can be turned off. Really. Let me make sure I understand the progression, then. You have this idea with production resources (military and social) that, when not using it, it doesn't come out of your treasury. Fair enough, considering how valua

But never think there's a "best" system. There is only, at best, a system that annoys fewer people than the alternatives. There is a best system; it's the one that is transparent to the user. The one where the player doesn't have to wonder things like, "What exactly does a Research Center do? Is it r

Actually, GalCiv, thanks to its emphesis on starbases, can almost work out OK without the land-grab phase of the game. The reason is that starbases make cities better. And if you focus on them, it makes them betterer. The reasons why this isn't enough are 2-fold: 1: You need tech to get them and to get upgrades (and tech to get more of them). The guy with more raw land will get tech faster than you. 2: The guy with more

[CD copy protection doesn't stop piracy] On this matter, I would have to disagree (though this depends on what you mean by "CD copy protection"). It stops casual piracy. People who don't know how to make CD images and mount them on drives, or how to burn an image onto a disc or other such things won't

It's not a bug. It's really important on the forums especially to distinguish between features or design aspects that one doesn't agree with and bugs. What we will probably do is have it based on difficulty level eventually. That is, if you're playing at a high level, then there won't be a debt cap. But to a new pla

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