Twelvefield

To Kyro: our money is supposed to ease your pain! If I pay enough for a game, I shouldn't have to be lectured on the parts of the gaming business you guys find distasteful. On the other hand, if you guys force us to dance to your drummer too much, we'll go away and find other games to buy -- maybe not on the scale of Starforce, but on the other hand, who is happy with how that turned out? I still don't see how I can avoid where if I want a boxed copy, that it's going to cost me more

I like to maximize research and exploration, once I have my colonies laid out. Usually, I rush buy colony ships, but I won't rush buildings very often. Exploration gets you into contact with other Civs. Research will give you techs you can trade. If you are on the curve, you should run into a Civ or two that doesn't have your techs, but also doesn't have techs you need. These Civs are excellent to trade with, because you can trade a tech for money. Once you trade away a tech, be s

I see this as some gentle arm-twisting on the part of Stardock. We are entering the first phase of the inevitable "our way or the highway" mentality that ends in STEAM. I would much prefer buying a boxed game in the store. Overseas shipping costs a fortune, if you're buying product one at a time. At least a mortar and bricks store will eat some of that cost. And it's not like I live in Upper Volta, I live in Vancouver Canada, continuously voted one of the top three cities in the w

Vista is the software support platform for Direct X 10. I'm not sure that Win XP can handle DX10, but I do know that it's being optimized for Vista. If you want DX10, not only are you going to need Vista, but you're also going to need a DX10-compatible graphics card. And if you think there's a mystery behind the partnership bewteen Microsoft and ATI, you've got some education due to you. If Halo2 is getting an overhaul with DX10, then there's another X-File solved, Scully

1.31 REPORT: I am pleased to report that the 1.31 patch has solved the issue I was having with deleting buildings and the game crashing. Unfortunately, 1.31 has a tendancy to crash seemingly randomly. I am trying to discover a pattern to my crashes.

This makes me feel better every time a Space Shuttle gets launched in real life, knowing that there's another layer of defense (other than glasses of stale water and baseball bats) against extraterrestrial invasion, and me being forced along with the masses by alien overlords to build a giant gun to shoot at a planet I've never even heard of. Not that I spend a LOT of time worrying about this stuff, but hey, you never know what the future might bring.

The thing is done. I've sent my SmartException files. Good luck and happy bug hunting!

Step two, audio drivers update: complete. Result: My universal audio settings have been reset to default in Windows. Sadly, updating the audio drivers did NOT solve my issue of deleting 3 builings in a row. I will now send you my SmartException files, as I suspect the problem lies with 1.3. As they say in "The Princess Bride": Have fun storming the castle!

All right, step one, update video drivers: complete. Result: Some improved game performance (!) that I didn't know was an issue, but, unfortunately, updating sound drivers did NOT fix the issue regarding deleting three buildings in a row. Sorry! Next step is the audio drivers, and if that doesn't work, I will send the SmartException thing.

Okay, I will. I'm goofing off from work here, so I won't be doing this right awaym but soon.

I will do both.

Hi, I hope you can please help. I've never had GalCiv2 crash on me since the first patch. The only beta patch I have used was the first one. My patch is 1.3. What is happening is when I go to a planet and delete 4 buildings in a row from the building queue, the game freezes and crashes to desktop. This crash is easily repeatable. Here is my entire, unabridged, unedited debug.err file, I hope this will help: Debug Message: Version v1.3 last updated on: Wed S

REPORT UPDATE: I can easily replicate the crash I am having when I delete a number of buildings from the build list. I will open up a new thread and post by debug.err, as you requested.

My 1.3 game crashed when I set up a queue of 3 factories to build, and then changed my mind and deleted them all. It froze when I deleted the last factory and then CTD.

Thank you for the new patch. I've been looking forward to it! Please keep up the good work.

I bet you wince every time they mention the Kessel Run in Star Wars. Although, I have to agree with you. "One parsec is the distance at which a star would appear to shift its position by one arcsecond during the time in which the Earth moves a distance of one astronomical unit (au) in the direction perpendicular to the direction to the star. Using this unit makes it easy to compute distances: the distance to a star, in parsecs, is simply one divided by the parallax, in arcseconds. If

In the book "Dragonfly" (the Russian nickname for Mir), there's a part about how the Russians agreed to take up a Japanese journalist who immediately upon reaching zero-gee got hopelessly spacesick and nearly vomited himself to death. Not the finest note to end one's career on.

While we're at it, let's fix the landing pad that the shuttle uses for landing from being the major gavity source in outer space in the opening video of the campaign, or that the sun appears to be bewteen the planet and its moon in the game's splash screen. This stuff is just as important.

You East Coasters with your Elvish last names go to bed way too early for those of us who live on the West Coast. In my case, it's also a bit expensive to fly out to Georgia. I am hoping, then, that the panel presenters will please also post their discussions on-line, so that those of us who choose not to attend can still participate. I know I have some solid, first-hand views on the topic of "3D" vs. "Traditional" art. I could write the book on that.

There was an old game called "Breach" that tried to do that with space combat. Another game along these lines is "Crown of Glory" about the Napoleonic Wars. Very cool diplomacy system linked to a good battle system, although it's a little too abstract for my taste for naval battles. Then, there is the "Total War" series -- it would be tough to make a game that could beat "Total War: Rome". Of course, none of those have FPS in them. The closest thing that I can think of to a FPS game

Actually, I think just keeping Windows stuff on the C:/ is a good idea. It's what I do. I never ever get viruses on my D:/, and it makes it easier to wipe out and re-install Windows when the time comes for that, usually every six months or so.

I seem to recall reading that homeworlds require 3x the usual amount of influence to flip. The would explain in real life why the Martians have yet to flip, even though Paris Hilton has released her album.

You can give a minor race any number of your colony ships and troops ships. I'm going by rumor here, but rumor says that the minor races will get around to using them. I don't think a minor race will be all that effective unless it feels that it has a real chance of defeating some of its weaker foes. It's not going to throw its military might against the Drengin if the Drengin already own most of the galaxy. I do recall a post long ago by another user who claimed to be the kingmake

"Star Wars: Empire At War" presents an exceptionally pretty tactical combat, with reasonably accurate LucasArts-endorsed franchise ships in the bargain. I suggest that folks wanting tactical combat should go play that game, and not try to make GalCiv into Empire At War II. However, that being said, I do like the idea of having individual fleet strategies set up: recon, line of battle, feint, retreat, etc. I kind of think that Stardock is coming to grips with this idea, given how the

I don't think I halfway agree or disagree with the original poster, in that what the OP thinks is not fun, I think there are valid work-arounds. Likewise, things I find not fun in the game other people love. For instance, I don't play on really large maps. I don't find them fun at all. But a bunch of wormholes on a medium-sized map just would not make sense. That, and I usually leave the diplomatic victory on. If I know I'm going to win a game anyway, it's a quick way out. If I