GreatMirror

Did you guys ever play Dungeons&Dragons or any roleplaying game or even watched Star Wars? Good is always penalized vs evil. Evil is always the faster and more lucrative approach, since it allows you to gain more power very quickly, because your main interest is yourself and your own personal gain, no matter who gets hurt in the way. Being good is harder, as it requires you to compromise, show compassion and sacrifice personal gains for others, and therefore a single good character is always qui

SmackleFunky, then I deeply apologize for anything I've said against you. I'm just really mad about Starforce. These guys, and the rest of the DRM guys for that matter are simply against gamers and all of what makes us enjoy games so much. I know that it's not necessarily Starforce's fault, I used to a PC-technician and I work at a computer company, afterall, but I just wanted to find a reason to hate these guys even more. I hope they'll go out of business. I deeply apologize again. I

SmackleFunky, you really are a jerk, you know that? Using your little "satire". What did Stardock ever do wrong? It's not really their "uber master plan " to use this story to their advantage. I know them since GalCiv1, and they had the same policy then, 3 years ago. They did not do it for free publicity, you jerk. They did not do it on purpose, and they did not try to raise an uproar towards those bas%$&*s at starFARCE. They just objected (and rightfuly so, wouldn't y

You are succeeding where alot fail. Nuff said, actually. Keep up the good work! You are a true software pioneer. Here's hoping other gaming-companies will get the hint. By the way, the dude that wrote this blog on his site understands his error and and is saying that he didn't mean to say it that way and he's trying to fix it, but the site just doesn't move due to the traffic of people so he can't do it at the moment. Which and proves just how much the game is hot plus it's even more

You can't just buy your friends. Gain more military might, create some trade-routes, trade some techs with them (trade with them, don't just give them presents) and they'll like you more. Only iIf you have a really strong diplomacy bonus you can get away with buying them off, otherwise they'll just see through your flattery.

Great to know that, thanks for the info

Next time, don't voluntarily give away your ships to others, unless you're getting something for it

I bought X3: The Reunion, and got bored from it after a day. Not a week, a day. It's gathering dust on my shelf. Did you ONCE see me going to the game's main forum and complaining? Nope. I just know that I won't be buying X4, that's all. It's a matter of opinion. I think GalCiv2 is great, better than MOO2 ever was in most terms. I dont have a buyer's regret, and I doubt I ever will. This game might be fun even a year or two from now, when I'll get bored from all the other games and ju

At least if you have the cd, you can pretty much always run a game. Not true with GalCiv2. What if say, Mr. Waddell gets hit by a car tomorrow? Stardock goes under and boom, no one can get the patch anymore If that will happen (god forbid) I could care less about that damn patch. Bah, you're THAT selfish and inconsiderate? Brad, don

Meh, as a former game reviewer and a bit of an "activist" against software piracy, I have to say that you people stink. No, I'm not talking about the pirates, I'm talking about the anti-piracy people. "You scum! You thief! You murderer of innocent gaming souls! You are the main reason for world hunger, wars and politicians!" oh, do shut up... Yes, piracy is not right. Yes, people should buy th

I'm not sure the AI realises that military bases near your colonies is a hostile act - it certainly gets annoyed when you build influence starbases near it's planets, which is a clear double standard No, its not. The AI is culturally attacking you, it knows exactly what it's doing. The AI tries to see to what extent you could be pushed around,

Well, in my slim experience, the more you try to mishmash your ships' roles too much, you get neither role done. The troop transport module is HUGE (can take up to 20 space). You could find better uses for it that sticking it in a gunship. I would like, though, to be able to decimate a colony completely without conquering it using only orbital bombardment. Destroying the entire planet altogether would be cool too <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Smile.gif" border=0

Sorry, double post.

This game is different than most strategy games, because diplomacy is actually very important I believe you're right. Ignore the AI, and it'll start to hold a grudge. The problem with me was that because I won my first few games just with diplomacy, I didn't want to touch diplomacy at all in my next games. And you just can't do that, since dipl

Actually, I think I take everything I said back. I'm just in the middle of a very exciting game, a game of which I have no diplomacy bonuses in it whatsoever, I didn't use colony rush, and I haven't shot a single shot. Not a single one. The secret here is giving everyone what they want, getting stepped on right from the beginning, and slowly starting to build a defensive starbase or two, while teching-up, establishing trade-routes and messing around with build-orders. Near the 60th or 70th turn,

Hmmm, I guess you have a point there. The surrendering system has some problems. Not the whole surrendering part, just the reason they surrender to someone instead of someone else. In my latest game my allies actually surrendered to me, but that rarely happens, I concur.

Sure, you could build a bunch of warriors from your first one or two cities and go crush all other reachable opponents early on, but to me, that's just not an enjoyable game. If I want quick and constant confrontation I'll play RTS games like Age of Empires or Rise of Nations. But TBS games appeal to our desire to play for hours and days on end, cultivating our little empi

If there was such popup, you would soon get annoyed by it and want to turn it off so you could end your &*($*(@&$ turn already It's ok, we all do that. Only heavy-micromanagers, perfectionists and paranoids take a look at their entire empire every turn, don't worry. Zip through until something interesting comes along or you notice something that might turn into a problem unless taken-care of.

ALSO a TOTALLY important thing to the game is a building that stops invasion. like an orbital base that gets upgraded like any other building tile and acts as a ship in orbit with all the latest techs (so that you need a fleet to take it out). it'll take a tile on the planet, but its important since you never quite feel safe with planets, which is silly. planets sho

Thank you, Stardock!! You're the best devs in the whole industry! And whoever thinks I'm just a fanboy, well, you're right! Keep up the GREAT work!

OMG, someone, call the exterminator, quick! There's a huge bug in here!

Dewwar, I tried that with one fully-developed starbase in late-game+9 Lucky rangers (I was REALLY lucky in that game ) and it didn't quite help. But I'll take your advice and try three or four of these, and see what happens this time. Sounds interesting. Thanks!

Nothing happens. You only enter wars that are declared after you two were allied. And it gets better - if your two allies are fighting amongs themselves, you don't have to choose sides, you can just help each of them behind the scenes and remain allied to them both. Even though its a bit unrealistic, I like it that way.

Fot those who find diplomacy and expansionnism is the only way to survive, you should try to play a trade heavy race. Get a lot of trade route and a good trade bonus and start trading like mad with the powerfull (at least one). If anyone attack you, theyll soon face your trading partner in the war, making you quite hard to kill. Chance are, your trade partner will become y

If it hadn't been for those research bonuses, I would have been trashed. But I scraped an alliance victory through being a diplomat Exactly. But like you said, diplomacy is the only real alternative to colony-rush and aggressive expansion. You can't out-tech anyone due to tech-trading, you can't buy anyone even if you have huge amounts of money