random50

Here's the thing...GC 2 has been out a *long* while now, has had plenty of patches *and* was released in a reasonably healthy state (by current game industry standards). It's very close to the finished article. Space Empires V is bound to be bug-ridden for at least a couple of months and the way these sort of games go, it may well be *nastily* bug ridden. By the time you've finished with GalCiv 2, that "very long time" you mentioned before getting another game will probably be

That would have to be the ONLY way to get more than 1 HP on a cargo hull: I've built "raiders" in the early stage of a game before using a cargo hull. I then attacked troopships, freighters and small/weak enemy ships with them. This was back when the attacker got to shoot first and if you got the other guy with your first shot he never got to shoot back. Even after gaining

I think optimum fleet construction depends on your relative tech level. With a large or even moderate tech lead, you may well be able to design almost invulnerable huge ships, in which case why bother with the smaller ones? You *will* need to micromanage a bit to take full advantage though...withdraw damaged ships from the front lines to repair. If you're way behind in the tech race, the smallest ships packed with heavy offence you can get away with that will overcome the enem

Experience increases hit points only, and only if some hit points are first lost during battle. Just to expand on that, only if hit points are lost *by the fleet* during battle. A ship doesn't have to get hit itself to start getting experience.

To me, the screenshot just shows how you can customize their personality, the other tabs would allow customizing the starting techs, bonuses, etc, just like you would with a custom player race (or when customizing a standard race). Maybe, but I suspect those tabs are exactly as they are now meaning you can pick racial abilities, but only up to t

Are you sure you get partial credit when replacing one type of building with a different type? I have never noticed this happening. Under 1.2 before morale buildings were nerfed I used to have 2 or 3 on every planet with tax rate bumped up to 80%. What this meant was when I captured new planets I often had to build an entertainment building as

As an afterthought, has anyone utilized the move home planet feature for reasons other than war. I've often thought of doing this later in the game once I've found a really good planet, but didn't know if doing so incurred some sort of penalty or something. Anyone got any thoughts on this? I'm not sure it actually does anything. When I tried it

Any chance of a more detailed customization screen for those of us who want to use it? It'd be great to be able to set the bonuses (or penalties!) individually for each race. For example, make everyone great at research without touching anything else.

Sounds like it's mostly just the roll of the dice, then.

Interesting. Assuming the AIs were balanced (big assumption...I see no reason why developers should deliberately make all races equal!), they must have been balanced mainly at some particular setting. I play without tech trading anywhere from crippling to suicidal. No tech trading in particular I could see having a big impact since it wasn't in the original release.

I play with very fast research which speeds up the game. I think this makes the game harder because the AI gets aggressive earlier in the game In my experience, the AI gets aggressive once the colony rush is over. On suicidal, they can turn out new ships so quickly from newly settled colonies that the slower colony ship speeds doesn't have much

If espionage is that big a deal to you, then GC 2 is not appropriate since there is currently only a token amount in the game. (You pay money, you learn more and more about the race - that's pretty much it) However, Dark Avatar should be out reasonably soon and that is supposed to have espionage in it, so maybe wait and see what that's like.

Well, do they ever get second place behind you at least. In my games, the best AI is usually the Drengin or Arcean but most of the others put up a good show every now and then. The Terrans and Thalans, though, always seem to get wiped out early unless I play parent. Is that a common experience or not?

It does look rather cool.

random50 claims the ultimate goal is to maximize *production*. I respectfully disagree. The ultimate goal is to enjoy the game!!! Where's the fun in that?! Oh, err... (random50, anal retentive extraordinaire )

Have you ever tried the same kind of score maximizing strategies you currently use at a lower difficulty level? Or to put it another way, does suicidal actually maximize the score?

Income is based on the square root of the population. To make up for cutting the tax rate in half you would have multiply the population by 4. With the complexity (and non-linearity) of the morale equation, I don't know how to precisely quantify the income difference. Clearly, you won't be able to raise population by anywhere near a factor of four. I'd estimate that halvin

I also agree that it would be very problematic for Metaverse scoring. Maybe make it unavailable for Metaverse games. I guess that's easy for us to say.

Eric, I don't think anyone suggests suicidal and abundant everything is the *hardest* combo, it's just what a lot of people like to play. And yes, I think it might be because it's the path to the highest metaverse scores (don't play Metaverse myself, so maybe others can confirm or deny?) Lots of people say less planets is harder, but I'm really not convinced. 1) The human player can make much better use of speed on their colony ships. 2) The number of colonies the human pla

Where does it all end? With the heart of the game ripped out just to try and slow down the 'uber' players which is a losing cause to start with. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Put an option in to deactivate tech stealing and I think even *most* of the uber players will be struggling now. I like the spirit of the 1.31 changes, and to

I meant attacking before the AI has completed its initial military buildup. Sounds like neither of you are doing that so I was completely wrong assuming that's what most successful strategies at this level use! How are you avoiding war that long? By the way, rare anomalies makes an enormous difference. Think how many extra planets in the colony rush each of those 2500BC anomalies fund...

Yeah, I think Frogboy said the AI is optimized for the medium galaxy. You deserve a medal for playing Gigantic though. I would never have the patience to see the game through to the end. I often don't. Most games have a point where it's blatantly

I forgot to mention - rare anomalies. I use that setting because the AI doesn't seem to make any attempt at all to exploit them beyond simply setting their survey ship to "auto survey".

No tech trading, very slow tech speed, gigantic map with lots of habitable planets (although this last bit probably doesn't matter that much and may be harder at other settings.) Makes for an extremely tough game IMO. The very slow tech speed makes it difficult to really get your war machine going quickly enough to use the "early attack before the AI is ready" type strategies. Also, the practical differences between tech are far more significant at the lower end of the tree which mean

Come on people...so it wasn't the greatest analogy. You all know what he means! And he's right. The calculation of military strength in the game is deeply flawed.