Jonathan Moriarity

Worked like a charm. Thanks so much! Now I can play!

I suspect debug.err will show that I quit from the program with ctrl-alt-del, because that's exactly what happened. There was no other way to make the empty black screen (with no sound) go away. Nonetheless, here's the debug from TA: Debug Message: Version v1.91 Twilight of the Arnor last updated on: Thu May 1 12:15:51 2008 Debug Message: Checking DX Version. Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.********* System Info Time: 5/18/2008, 17:11:56 Dire

Like the original poster, I formerly had no problems with GC2, then got a new monitor and suddenly the screen goes black every time I try to start the game. The new monitor is a Samsung Syncmaster275T. I reconfigured the Prefs.ini files for the monitor's native resolution of 1920x1200, but the only difference is that now my entire screen goes black, instead of just the upper left 1280x800 pixels of it. I have all the latest drivers for both monitor and video card insta

Back when it was released, I had to take a pass on Etherlords II because it had the Nasty DRM Program Which Is Not To Be Named. Now I'll have a chance to actually play it. Yay for Stardock! And a very big nyah-nyah to that other Star-something.

Lucian: Dude, if I wanted to be an accountant, GC2 in its current state would be my dream game! Apologies to everyone else for sort of hijacking the thread. I didn"t mean to, I swear!

Lucian: That's cool. H5 isn't really work though. GC2, in its current form, is (too much management required for optimal play). Which is why I've kind of lost interest in it. I'll keep checking the developer journals periodically to see if they do the production carry-over thing. If they do, I'll be right back with you all. I'll buy the expansion too; the features sound great. Have fun conquering the galaxy!

Lord Seyton: I can see why you would enjoy that element of realism. But is it realistic to have the ability to adjust production levels to within a single percentage point? Is it realistic that a galactic emperor would not try to run things as efficiently as possible (i.e. play with the damn sliders every freakin' turn) when the survival of their civilization is at stake? It appears I'm in a tiny minority in this. Everybody seems to prefer having to babysit the sliders (or else neglec

Actually, it has an enormous effect on gameplay if used as an exploit. Move your ships, save the game, load the game, hit "turn". No production, but your ships have movement points again. Now move them, save, load and hit "turn". In this manner you can explore the entire galaxy on turn 1. It can also have a significant effect if you decide to save your game while an enemy fleet is moving toward one of your planets where you have a ship under construction. If you save your game, you're

Lucian Gyiira sez: The social element adds a dimension beyond mere victory Yep, like...uhm...I dunno...sociality? What in the name of cheese is so great about this "social element"? I've played MMOs, I've played multiplayer, and

Against human opponents, yes. The social element adds a dimension beyond mere victory, so when I'm playing games with my friends, winning is a secondary consideration. It'll be fun whether I win or lose. But when I play a game against a computer, there is no social element at all. The fun lies almost entirely in overcoming the challenges presented by the game, fighting as hard as I can and using every possible resource (short of cheating) to pull a victory out of the fire. That challe

No.118 sez: You don't actually have to do that if you don't want to... I do if I'm playing to win.

Looks like some fun stuff, but sadly, I've grown tired of the kind of micromanaging that GC2 requires. All they'd have to do is apply excess production to the next item in the build queue and I'd be placing my preorder immediately. But if I have to keep moving the production sliders one percent at a time and checking my planets' production levels with each and every repetition on each and every turn, then not even the great-sounding features of this expansion pack will provide any enjoyment for

I know this has been mentioned elsewhere, but here it is again. The feature I desire most is excess production (both military and social) carrying over to the next item in the build queue, rather than being lost. This would reduce micromanagement to almost nothing, and make the prospect of playing large maps a great deal more attractive to me.

Short version: HoMM 5 is pretty much HoMM3.5 with much prettier graphics. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Slightly longer version: There are some substantial gameplay improvements, and the six town types are all interesting and fun to play for completely different reasons. I was worried that replacing the old hex grid with a square grid on the tactical combat screen would make the battles less interesting, but it hasn't. The new skill system is fun, and the maps are pretty good. H5 does

Looks like my understanding of the system was not as strong as I thought it was. Mea Culpa. I still want to play with excess production carried over to subsequent turns, though.

MarshallONeil sez: I actually don't micromanage the military production all that heavily. You'd win more often at the highest difficulty levels if you did. You're quite correct in that it's possible to win without grinding through the acco

Actually, excess social production is converted into military production. So when military production is wasted, it often consists partly of social production.

Here's the problem with realism: it's not as much fun as idealism. If you want to play GC2 seriously, and apply every possible effort to achieving victory, you must micromanage the hell out of those sliders to prevent waste. The sheer amount of cash that can be lost to excess military spending is more than enough to swing the balance of victory. As it currently stands, whoever micromanages best will greatly improve their chances of winning. Getting rid of waste would certai

Holy crap, I had no idea I was being charged for all that stuff! No wonder I kept losing at high difficulty levels. Now I know what I was doing wrong: I wasn't micromanaging enough. Of course, I'd really rather devote my efforts to larger strategic and diplomatic matters, and Veblen's proposal, if enacted, would allow me to do just that. Jeez, that really would make the game more fun... Brad, are you getting this?

SDC gave me some serious problems at first; turns out it doesn't like Firefox. After I re-installed MSIE (gack) the problems went away. And I agree that a play-as-you-learn tutorial is superior to a .PDF or a movie, but GC2 is still a relatively low-budget title, so they couldn't afford some of the AAA amenities. Once you get over the initial learning curve (a not inconsiderable task), it doesn't matter though.

Apparently I was unclear about what I meant by "Ironman". I don't mean it in the sense that the entire game must be played in one sitting. Wizardry 8 had an ironman mode, and I can't imagine anybody completing that in one go (it's even longer than an epic Galciv game). Here's what I actually mean by ironman mode (those of you who have played W8 will find this pretty familiar). You start your metaverse game, but there is no "save game" option

Unless a ship has a TON of experience points, I can't imagine why anybody ever upgrades anything. For the money it costs, you could buy a whole new ship from scratch. Outside of a massively experienced crew, I can't think of a single good reason to ever upgrade a ship.

...and again with the secret handshake. To those of you who care about grammar and spelling: you can learn useful things about a person by their writing, whether it is correct or not. Don't rail against the mistakes; just file the information quietly away so you'll know whose opinions are and aren't worth paying attention to. To all native English-speakers who can't be bothered to learn your own language: pay no attention to us. I

By now everyone knows about the one-turn production loss that comes with saving and loading a game. It's disruptive, but some consider it necessary to avoid the cheese of repeated saving/loading to obtain a desired result. Question: what if all Metaverse games were played in Ironman mode? Would this be an effective solution? If so, how difficult would it be to implement it? The one wrinkle I can see is that players could crash the game (or h

Yay!!! Now I can buy Heroes V!