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Reply to How does morale influence population growth rates after the latest patch in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

By the way, population growth maxes out (before morale and race bonuses) at 75M per turn (population 2.5B or higher)

Reply to Race skills in Dark Avatar in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Torian, Thalan and Arcean abilities in particular will be extremely powerful in the hands of the player I reckon. In the hands of the AI, it might only be the Thalans that will be noticeably stronger.

Reply to Race skills in Dark Avatar in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Seeing that list, I'm glad there's going to be a public beta! The balancing is going to be completely shot...

Reply to 70% population growth civilization ability in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I only see Espionage, Loyalty, Range, Repair, and Sensors as almost useless picks. I like repair. It works well with my "all labs" strategy at lower AI levels (up to masochistic). I get a huge tech lead which means I can build ships which take very little damage in each fight, but I can't build them very quickly so a small number of ships have

Do I have to watch all the ships move? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It gets really annoying and slow on large maps with loads of ships having to watch the animation as the AI moves each ship individually, especially later on in the game when ships have loads of movement points. Is there a way to switch this off so that all you see is the ships suddenly pop up at their destination point? I've tried a few of the likely sounding options without any success...am I missing one? If this option isn't in there, it'd be great to see it put in!

Reply to Final Verdict - Release Date? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

They've gone ahead and (effectively) done it despite the concerns of people on here. Yay!

Reply to Final Verdict - Release Date? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Sifting through the complaints of people who have no idea what a beta is to try and find ACTUAL bugs is annoying and difficult enough already. Release an expansion pack early would make this worse, whether you said it was the full version or not. So think up a way to make it work! One possible example; have a restricted forum. People

Reply to Final Verdict - Release Date? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Good suggestion, Bob, and seems reasonable since it is an online only release so everybody can be made fully aware of the situation before buying. Finding the bugs must also be much easier with a large base of testers...

Reply to It's M-O-R-A-L-E in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

"LOL" means "LAUGHING OUT LOUD". Are you really "LAUGHING OUT LOUD" when you write this? Are you? Perhaps we need to try and spread SAB for "smiling a bit"? LOL! Err, I mean SAB!

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I agree entirely. As I said, my suggestion was a bit late! It's nice to see somebody aware of the reductio ad absurdum method. Painfully often, the response is "but that could never happen so your argument is stupid". *sigh*. I am also (overly) fond of the "proof by vehement assertion" technique. In my (younger) youth it earned me the birthday gift of a mug with "everybody is entitled to my opinion" written on it. I often realise that time has tempered things only

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The problem with it is it reduces the effective sample size because you have no way of telling the zeros apart. Taking it to an obviously absurd extreme to illustrate the point, if both a 100 attack vessel and a 10 attack vessel go up against a 1M defence vessel you are going to need a ridiculous number of sample points before the difference you *know* exists becomes statistically "proven" because obviously almost every shot is going to do zero damage. Meanwhile, if you loo

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Bit late unfortunately, but my suggestion would be to test the damage inflicted part against targets with *zero* defence. That way you know *precisely* what the damage roll was for every attack. "Zero" damage inflicted actually involves quite a wide possible range of rolls from the defender and attacker.

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think this data proves anything much at all. 27 sample points is not a lot. Also, having such heavy defences relative to attack is going to skew things pretty badly...7.5 to 9.4 *sounds* like a large difference, but the *real* relative difference in rolls will probably be much lower I'd actually say your data supports there being no significant difference between levels!

Reply to You CAN have too many citizens in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Very, very interesting. Are you *certain* this wasn't related to the 20K treasury penalty? (If you have more than 20K left at the end of the turn, you get an income penalty. Once you dip below 20K the penatly disappears.) I know there's *something* in the game that makes late game income drop below the "expected" levels, but I've never been able to pin it down, so it'd be interesting if it's population.

Reply to Do I get Gal Civ II or Space Empire V? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Fleet Composition in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Whats the skinny on ship levels? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

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.

Reply to Dark Avatar screenshot of the days.. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Decomission vs. upgrading to something different in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Bonus Tile Multipliers. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Dark Avatar screenshot of the days.. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

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.

Reply to Terrans and Thalans...do they ever win? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

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

Reply to Terrans and Thalans...do they ever win? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

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.

Reply to Suicidal Winners...tried this configuration? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

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