[quote]Well of course it has an advantage, it has all kinds of massive advantages. Yet Suicidal is not even difficult to beat on a regular basis using regular planetary builds.[/quote] My point is that if the AI knew how to actually play, you would never be able to beat it on Suicidal. It wouldn't be a challenge; it would be a flat-out mathematical impossibility. [quote]You stated it's a BAD mechanic to have GOOD AI, solely so you never lose.[/quote] No, I di
[quote]Oh, and Alfonse, it stands to reason that two games with the same engine will play in the same manner. As you yorself said using an analogy with Civ 3, you can change the techs, units, improvements, and other "moddables" to something sifferent, and it will not change the play style. That is dictated by game engine.[/quote] It all depends on how "enginified" it is. Some "game engines" can only make games similar to the original game (if there was such a thing). Others ar
[quote]Incidentally, a "One Steam future" would be one without Stardock making games. Our business model is based on the assumption of digital distribution in which a third party isn't collecting 30% of our revenue.[/quote] When Microsoft was sued for monopolistic practices, both MacOS and Linux existed and had marketshare. Yet Microsoft was found to have a (legal) OS monopoly. Just because someone else has an alternative doesn't mean that there is [i]viable[/i] co
I think Justus has the right of it. The difference between retail and downloads is this. Excepting the cost of gas and the time of transit, going to any store is approximately as invasive and expensive to your day-to-day routine as going to any other store. So each store has a relatively level playing field with its nearby customers. This is not the case for downloaders. If you have one installed already, well, you have it. To use another one is to add one more thing that does
[quote]Classes (from smallest to largest) Interceptor Craft Multirole Craft Fighter Craft Light Bomber Craft Strike Craft Medium Bomber Craft Defense Craft Cloaked Ship Heavy Bomber Craft Corvettes Frigates Destroyer Escorts Cruiser Light Cruiser Destroyer Heavy Cruiser Battlecruiser Dreadnought Cruiser Battleship Dreadnought[/quote] That's a lot of different types. I thought the point
[quote]i dont see any games exclusive to xbox comin out on ps3![/quote] Yes. That's because then it wouldnt be an [i]exclusive[/i]. Just as FFXIII is [i]no longer[/i] exclusive. Also, that's what happens when you're the #3 console maker; your exclusives go away. Just like RE4 was ported from GC to PS2. If you can't accept that this happens to the #3 console maker, buy the #2 or #1 consoles instead.
I don't know. The whole hull size thing always bothered me. Look at how unit construction worked in Alpha Centauri. Each "hull" (chassis) was a specific type of movement mode. And each hull conferred special powers onto the unit. The purpose of this being that (in theory at least) newer hulls don't make older hulls obsolete; they simply give you more tactical options. [quote]With this system, a fleet of fighters would be equal to a capital ship of simelar tech, and cost about
[quote]upsetting the traditional balance between the interests of copyright owners and the interests of the public.[/quote] No matter what you can say on this DRM vs. consumer rights issues, the cold fact is is that consumers broke the rules [i]first[/i]. We had a nice set of rules: rights holders print some media, consumers who purchase that media within the legal provisions of Fair Use. Fair Use would be ripping your legally purchased and owned CD to your hard drive. Fair Use would
[quote]These things don't sound very "good" ethically.[/quote] In GC2, "ethics" don't mean what you think they mean. It's best to look at "good", "neutral" and "evil" as A, B, and C. There are rules about what happens when you choose A, B, or C, as well as how other races look at you based on your race's natural inclination. Races of ethical alignment A tend to get along with each other more than the other two. Nobody much likes races of alignment C, even other races of alignm
[quote]Um, no. Steam's DRM can still be broken to play single player games and games on private servers. I would not call that "effective."[/quote] Then your definition of "effective" is meaningless. Like I said "[b]effective != perfect[/b]" [quote]That's also what got Microsoft in trouble with both the US courts and the EU. That's also why browsers stagnated with no innovations for so long with IE6, until Firefox came out and shook them up. That's why we have
[quote]What happens if the customer's computer is destroyed and the customer has to buy a new one?[/quote] Then they can just redownload all their stuff. That's half the point of digital distribution, and is one of its greatest strengths. [quote]And of course, what about compatibility with legacy devices that were created before the DRM?[/quote] If it couldn't be used on "legacy devices", then it wouldn't be ubiquitious, would it? [quote]Effective DRM will requ
[quote]Anyways, refering to what you quoted, unless it has changed lately, you must run the Steam client first to be able to play the game (even if it's in Offline mode), while with Impulse I only run it whenever I want to check for updates or check the store.[/quote] Technically, you are not "running" Steam; it runs itself. It's just a start-up process that's always there. You do have to tell it to go into online mode, but that's about it.
[quote]As soon as it is more defensively effective to park ships in orbit than to use active defensive fleets, that's all anyone will do. The balance you want to achieve is nearly (if not entirely) impossible.[/quote] You've stated that you've never played a Civilization game. [i]Every one of them[/i], all 5 with their various expansions and so forth, have given the defender various advantages. None of them bogged down into "race to the end"-style stalemates. Well, except for CivIII,
The holy-grail of DRM is absolute ubiquity. That is, every device capable of playing the DRM'd content is fully capable of detecting the person playing the content, and can thus transparently authenticate the content without any real knowledge by the person using it. Or, from the user's perspective, they can put the content on any device that can execute it without restriction. Steam provides that. The more Steam gets used, the more ubiquitous Steam is. The more ubiquitous Steam is, t
[quote]You keep saying "defensive ships will cost more but be more effective defenders." But the question, really, is "if two civs spend the same amount, one on offensive and the other on defensive, which civ will generally be in a better position?" If the offensive civ will be, then we've got no change from the GC2 dynamic. If the defensive civ will be, we have turtling.[/quote] Why does it have to be all of one or all of the other? Let's say you want to go to war w
[quote]Quite simply, no. If we take your 50 ship example to be what you intend, the offensive player and defensive player are spending the EXACT SAME on their fleet. So the turtler will have the same research, the same production, and the same economic power. AND an artificially high defense.[/quote] Considering that it is [b]my example[/b], I think I'll listen to myself when deciding what I put into it. And [b]I[/b] put 50 defending ships, and the number of attacking ships neces
[quote]This is utterly irrelevant. The specific topic was interstellar societies mingling with respect to technology being cheaper to research as more civilizations researched it . It was not a defense of the current Influence system.[/quote] Did you even read what you yourself wrote? Here's what I said that started this bit of conversation: [quote]Again, you're assuming that GalCiv3 must be
[quote]Ok. But we weren't talking about influence. We were talking about interstellar societies mingling.[/quote] You said: "Given that SD has stated there is a long, convoluted, pre-written backstory to the GC universe, this seems like a safe assumption. I find it hard to imagine they could change whether interstellar societies mingle without significantly rewriting their history." You assume that this backstory involves substantial interspecies mingling, and thus
[quote]Your explination is exactly correct, and the changes you ask for are stupid and unbalancing.[/quote] Nonsense. Other games do it. The fact that you've never played those other games does not make them wrong. [quote]I don't WANT a game where 90% of my fleet is stuck in orbit.[/quote] Nobody says you have to do that. But you have to accept the consequences of not properly defending yourself. Further, it doesn't matter what 90% of your fleet is (not) doing
[quote]It's a planet that is strategically located and it's conquest would fucking cripple me.[/quote] Theoretically, I can agree. Unfortunately, that theory doesn't work in GC2 for this simple reason. Mathematically, it is more effective overall to just build a big offensive military and use it defensively than to build actual defensive buildings and leave ships in orbit. That is, it is better for you to simply surround the planet with several fleets of ships than to re
[quote]a distinction between what I consider fun and you do. Making strategic decisions in resource management is, for me, fun - it's the only reason why I would play a civ style game. If I wanted to play Warcraft, then I'd stick a warcraft disk in the drive.[/quote] First, "Warcraft" (you didn't say which one) does have "strategic decisions in resource management". More importantly second, what you're talking about is [i]not[/i] "strategic decisions in resource management". I
[quote]This is neither a new, nor an unrealistic choice to force people to make.[/quote] But it's not good gameplay. And I would also contend that, with a [i]planet's[/i] worth of resources, it isn't terribly realistic either. [quote]Speaking strictly in terms of offense vs. defense, "weaknesses that can be strategically exploited" is another way of saying "defense that talks big but walks with a limp". I have to assume that "weaknesses" in this case refers to non-milita
[quote]Problem being out-teching the defender swings the advantage back to the attacker.[/quote] That's the point: if you want [i]perfect[/i] defense, you have to pay for it. If you want [i]some[/i] defense, it costs less than the equivalent attack power, but you have weaknesses that can be strategically exploited. [quote]So setting up defenses would be useful, but there is an avenue for endgame that doesn't involve three generations of Altarians hurling themselves against bar
[quote]There is not that many variables involved here. It is not even bad AI programming, it is more of 'neglected AI programming'. They got caught up in the graphics too much.[/quote] Galactic Civilizations 2. GC2 got "caught up in the graphics too much". You're really going with that one? You're really saying that a company that is [i]run by the AI programmer for GC2[/i] was "caught up in the graphics too much"? A game who's graphical quality and art direction is... weak at best was
