10kLakes

Was playing a game and I noticed that a planet I owned was not increasing in size after I added a farm to it. I sent Stardock a couple of SAV files showing this behavior. I got back their reply and I am passing on. "The reason that the population of Nidil I (and I noticed, a couple other of your planets) is not growing is that there is an additional cap on the population of a given colony outside of food production that is based on the planet quality. Basically, once the populati

The custom race is at a disadvantage at 15 points. I once tallied up the abilities and starting techs for all the races and came up with a value of 20 points needed to put the custom race on a par with the average alien. File .../Twilight/Data/English/RaceConfig.xml is where the race specs are kept and, using Notepad, you can increase the value for the custom race from 15 to something more to your liking (18 gives a good game).

Minor race was the Paulos. They didn't appear to be a late game minor, and were off on the other side of the galaxy.

Just finished a large/painful game on the TA Beta that had an interesting twist. I was a Custom race and the nearby Krynn (the most powerful race in this game) declared war on me. They had the upper hand and none of the majors offered me any help, but then a minor race stepped in and gave me "some of their finest starships". These ships were powerful - much stronger, in fact, in both attack and defense than anything I or the Krynn had. They turned the tide of

Recently downloaded the TA Beta and played several games (large, painful). Saw several problems --- 1) On the Diplomacy Screen, the old problem of truncated cash amounts (I.E. showiing 234 instead of 2345) is still present. I hoped that Ver 2.0 would have fixed this irksome quirk. 2) A more subtle problem. I captured a Krynn planet, yet the game still maintained the Krynn's freighter route from that planet (the game acted as if they still owned the planet insofa

Another point - should you capture a red planet (one for which you have not yet developed the basic or advanced techs yet), you cannot build anything on that planet - but you can BUY improvements and get their benefits.

I agree with Radwen. I have never yet lost a fleet support ship. I put them on the smallest hulls I can - no weapons - no defenses - fast engines to keep up with the fleet - moderate life support capablilty (most battles take place along my borders) - very good sensors (the are the eyes for my fleet, I don't put any on my warships).

In my games I've noticed that whenever spies steal a tech it is usually of a lower quality then what you get by capturing a planet. The code must use different selection algorithms for the two situations.

Thanks for the opinions. The blitzkrieging, backstabbing, "I used to be your pal" approach of building terror stars next to the AI's suns while at peace with them is a novel concept. If the devs are alert, however, they can tweak the code to consider the building of a terror star in one's territory as an act of war. That would put an end to that tactic! I know that if you saw the AI building terror stars next to your suns, you might wonder what they had in mind. Would you simply say "Du

Any one out there like terror stars? I just finished a game in which I used them for the first time. Here's what my experrience was. The game was on a medium size galaxy with everything random (I am going through each race in turn in TA to get a feel for each race's strengths in this expansion - opponents tough). The game set up as super abundant everything - lots of stars each having at least four habitable planets. I was the Drath and the Korath Klan were the bully boys. The

Cheat mode - never thought about using it to get insight into the underlying game mechanics. Good way to do it! I have seen the AI throw out lots of colony ships early on in most games and I've scratched my head and asked myself "How they do dat?". BUT, if they are buying their ships on credit, why didn't that show up on the End of Game Summary??? As an aside on "How they do dat?", I recently had a TA game with everything set to random which produced a galaxy with everything ve

So, some folks out there are using credit - nice to know that. As regards the AI's use of credit, I have never seen it happen in my games. Zydor, you say you've seen it a lot. Is it a level dependent thing? Myself, I've never yet gone beyond Painful. Also, how would you know when the AI used it? The End Game Summary only indicates how much credit has been used throughout the entire game, and does not tell when it was used and for what purpose.

I've owned GalCiv2 ever since it came out and I have never had a game in which I have felt the need to buy anything on credit. More importantly, in all the games I've had, the AI have never bought anything on credit either (according to the End of Game Summary info). Someone obviously spent a lot of effort putting this feature into the game. Has anyone out there ever used it? Just curious.

Another annoying small problem that's still around - on the Diplomacy Screen - offered cash amounts will sometimes be shown truncated (ie - will show 213 instead of 2135). Should not take much to fix this.

Today I saw an article on the ExtremeTech website that compared Vista w/SP1 against WinXP w/SP3 as a gaming platform. Previous gaming comparisons had shown Vista to be about 10% slower overall. According to this latest comparison, it now appears that Vista has closed the gap (but has not pulled ahead so that you would notice). There seems to be no strong reason to switch to Vista unless you want DirectX10. MS does not appear to be devoting a lot of effort on improving Vista, either. Ins

Set up a game yesterday with super abilities unchecked on first screen. However, a few screens later, my Terran character was showing a Super Diplomat super ability. Sent an email w/ prefs.ini & debug.err attached.

Anomalies must play a part too, since I often get one that says the efficiency of my spies is being improved. You steal tech by invading and by having spies out there. My experience has been that the better stolen techs come via invasion, however.

It has been my experience that if an AI is allied to you and also to another AI, they will sit on the sidelines if you declare war on that other AI. I made a post (#22) on the SUICIDAL=IMPOSSIBLE? thread in which I described a game I had in which I made use of this quirk.

It would also be nice to know what tech an AI got when it takes one of your planets.

In one of my recent games: DA (painful) my freighters were bringing in over 3000BC which was about three times my tax income. I had no econ starbases nor did I have the Galactic Privateer. The freighters are anchored to the planet they were built on. I wish it was the planet they last came from instead. I also wish I could specify the the path the freighter will take as well (to avoid hotspots) even if it were the same path I used to get to the planet in the first place. With the trade

I agree with Cityman's comments. The only time I've gotten any essential techs out of the AI is when I capture their planets. And, to me, playing at the highest levels is artificial because you really have to leverage the game mechanics. I play at painful, but with a twist. I posted what I do on the SUICIDAL=IMPOSSIBLE? thread (#22). I don't think many people play this game the way I do. I'm one of those people who loves hitting themselves in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when

Before the forums took on their new format, whenever I went into a thread that I had been to before I would immediately jump down to where I had been on my last visit. Very convenient. Ever since the change over, I am always positioned at the beginning of the thread and now have to scroll down to where I was the last time. Very clumsy. Is this the way it is now supposed to be, or am I missing something?

Hey guys, if you want a prime example of releasing a product before it's ready, all you have to do is look at Windows Vista. It's been out for a year already and the most common user assessment as of today seems to be that "it stinks". I just came from Google News where there is an uproar about killing Win XP. MS PR says "users love Vista", Balmer has called Vista "a work in progress" and is now seems to be saying "maybe we'll let it stay around a little longer". The user rants on the news items

The Total War mods are great. Also those for the Silent Hunter subsims which are spectacular,

Here's another 2 cents worth. It would be sad to see support for GalCiv2 fade away. I'm a retired programmer myself and I know that decisions have to be made. That's the way it works. There is a GalCiv3 (way out there somewhere). That's both hopeful and scary. It's coming (maybe), but will it generate the same excitement when (if) it gets here as you now have with GalCiv2? So many wiz/bang follow up products turned out to be huge duds because by dropping the continuity they los