TheLoneKnight

How about just having the option for the small line of scrolling text on the main bar, having it contain relevant information as well as randomly generated comedic stories when nothing interesting is happening. Something like.. "Chairman of Mitrosoft seen playing catch with Torian teenager - Drengin Warlord threaten to kick him in the shins if he doesn't cut it out." You could even interact with it, maybe - a small icon in front of each relevant news story to give you the option of re

Hah. Diplomacy is far better than research, and you can use the cash you make (you end up making many thousands of billions of credits more than any other race in the game, easily), to get new research/economic buildings. And by the way, for all of you arguing that you never get ahead of the CPU players: You ALWAYS get ahead of the CPU players. Not a single one of them (except possibly the Torians) has every technology in the game. By buying

I agree completely.

Yeah. Exactly. But the tariff thing with evil races shouldn't just be an "Evil race" thing. Nor should it just be limited to whomever builds the Galactic Wonder to get it. It's a diplomatic option, not a "only one faction can ever use it" option. And what do you mean about Galactic Bombardment? It was removed in this version? I dunno. I kinda like the idea of even having specially designed ships destroying a world's population and infrastructure without having to bot

Eh. GalCiv2's diplomacy could be improved, too. There are a ton of options out there that we aren't getting - from recieving set amounts of cash each week (or month, or year) from a race to new treaties between them. Why can't I subjugate a race (perhaps removing my "influence" on them while getting them to pay me money each turn and essentially do whatever I want until they rebel - at the cost of relations with good races who will try to liberate my n

Heh. If they're cloaked, you'll need limits and ways to detect them. For cloaking tech I'd suggest a high cost and moderate size - and them being spottable by specialised sensors (meaning you'd need to use espionage to, perhaps, see if those ships on his planet can see your vessels). Ships that "look innocent" but aren't are an interesting idea, too. I'd be awesome if my opponent, losing his battle, would start using colony ships to ram into

He does make an interesting point, however. It would be nice if we had more methods to play our races rather than just being a member of the U.P. and a universally accepted Galactic Empire. It might be interesting to create nomadic empires (allowing for both merchant-based empires moving from system to system or an empire of pirates), or to give more diplomatic options (create a mercenary empire - we're willing to take certain planets over a

Marshal, the planet I was referring to would likely have farming bonuses - lord knows those bloody tiles are common enough - and you didn't include any economic structures in with your math. +20% per tile can certainly add up with your base cash level is 150-170. Even if it didn't have farming tile bonuses, you could easily get 22 bill from a couple of mid-to-high level farms tiles. The only thing that would really suck up the tile useage wo

Oh dude. Minefields would be fecking awesome. Cloaking tech gets my vote as well, if it's done well. Perhaps the cloaking device can take up alot of space, or can only be put on certain ship sizes (ie; you need max level cloaking research to put it on large ships), or won't function with defensive technologies. Lots of ways you could limit it.

Yes. I got a Class 26 a while back, too - I just had to sacrifice 100 people a day to a semi-benign energy being to do it. On the bright side, it really served to bolster my research.

Total Annihilation and Kohan weren't turn based..

Moveable rally points should have been in this from the beginning. It's frustrating setting a rally point for constructors only to find that you're 1 parsec too close to a starbase, and suddenly you need to make a new rally point right next to it - or move each ship individually.

Fleet managers will likely be stuff to allow you to check the stats of the ships within fleets without having to disband the fleet itself. The ETA for ship movements might be an interesting addon.. but it should probably be optional, and it's hardly a must-have feature - the computer usually auto-centers you on whatever ship isn't moving.

The only thing that ticks me off about the Yor is that they have custom options that I can't use for my custom race. I don't care whether they've got +25 miniaturization or 100% loyalty (though I'll admit both can be a real pain in the butt), but I DO want equality when I'm designing my race. I should be able to create any race in the game with the custom race creator - but I find myself limited. I can't give my races weaknesses,

Creativity allows you to spontaneously finish whatever you're researching instantly. Even when I got it, though, it only happened once in the game. Perhaps luck bonuses improve it?

..If you really wanted to compete with Civ4, you might want to consider giving players more options. New ways to interact with aliens and new options for improving/changing your planets. A bit of newbie-friendly options (automated stuff that is too complicated for new players to worry about) couldn't hurt, either. 'course to do any of this you'd probably have to add an entirely new layer of depth to the game, which isn't really an option for a patch.

Starbases give you something fun to build during peacetime, though, and they vastly improve production/influence.

It can be done, but you'll never have more tech than all of the other alien races unless you trade - or you've got some ridiculously awesome planets. Trading tech can work in any situation, even if you've got the crappiest planets imaginable so long as you can scrape together 500 billion credits you'll be just fine. Either that or you're playing on a sub-normal level. <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Ew.gif"

That sucks.. we need more espionage options.

It took me three or four games of frustration before I decided to look at the tutorial and figure out how to add modules to my starbases.. so don't feel too stupid.

Trade is a nice bonus, but it's pretty limited once you reach a certain level (trade never makes much more than a couple hundred billion credits for me in the best circumstances). Now Tourism.. there's a cash cow without limit. Tricky as heck to do right though.

Hahaha, come on guys. Why don'cha give him a strategy that works? Listen buddy, all you really need is one tech an alien race doesn't have, a couple spare bucks, and a high diplomacy rating. Boost it with your basic race beginning. Don't even consider trying to out-tech the AI - it's not going to be easy. Giving them a basic tech, however, for one of their basic techs is only the beginning. Then you go to another race, trade the same basic tech for a new one - then the nex

Good Civs should either get an equal number of bonuses from events that Evil Civs get from events or they should start getting -different- bonuses. ie; when you pay 300 billion credits to stop a massive plague on your world you should get a morale/approval bonus from your people because they're so moved that you want to keep them so safe. Evil, on the other hand, can get cash from that event by selling the pus (a side effect of the plague) t

I'm amazed none of the "devil's advocates" have actually put out the most obvious arguement against taxing individual planets: Removing the requirement of entertainment centres. Let's say I've got two planets - a 5 billion colonist industrial world and a 22+ billion colonist world I'm setting up for taxes and influence. The 5 billion one might normally require an entertainment centre - and those single tiles are valuable commodities if it's

Yeah. Official mod database FTW.