varis2000

It has been reported that you partner to be would also need the Alliances technology. If they don't know what an alliance is, there is no point in proposing one.

Constant slider-twiddling is something I'm not likely ever to adopt, no matter how much I like having won a bit of a rank in my obscure AltMeta niche. Plus I have to "role-play" my gov't tech, and no Star Democracy could survive Mumble's math. And I guess I should mention that, for me, the way the elections work is one of the silliest parts of the game. How hard would it be to vote based on average approval over the last year instead of just this week? Th

Well, not that boneheaded perhaps. Suppose you could change the mod data mid-game. Then you as part of your changes, you'd remove the data for one type of planetary improvement for example. Now, when you load your game where you have those built, the game can't find the data ... and it might just crash. Or otherwise do something unexpected. Or some other data might become corrupted. So probably SD didn't want the headache of designing sane behaviour for those situations, and just went with the s

Like random50 says, maybe this could be useful to showcase and playtest some suggestions for play balancing. Just need to figure out mod packaging and how we handle copyright issues around here to release it. I already did quite a bit of the above rebalancing, but I think I should study weapons and defenses more to understand all the balance aspects involved for covering that area as well. I also added a morale bonus to all farm improvements (equal to the +food) so they can act as a cou

Thanks. Still confused by hulltypes, I added my hulltypes.xml with the few extra types to C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Mods\vbalance\Data\ShipComponents, but none of them show up in the game. If I just put the same definitions into GC2Types.xml it works... Are ship components somehow different from say the tech tree, stuff showed up there just fine?

I made copies of some of the original big datafiles into my custom Mod directory, for rebalancing the regular stuff, and added also a few smaller files with fully new tech. Now the problem is that I for example get all planetary improvements twice... I tried renaming the original files, but now I just get an unexpected error when I try to run GC2. I skimmed through the brief modding guide but didn't notice the place where it says such details about handling the files. How do I

How about a mod with these specs: * Nerf high-end influence starbase mods slightly (+80 maybe, not +100): encourages players to build the diplomacy branch of mods too * But boost influence buildings: more use for high pop planets and influence overall * Boost morale buildings: ditto and they should become useful again * Make guns/massdrivers useful - eg. cheap in the beginning, powerful in the end * Fine tune beam balance * Nerf missiles very slightly * Nerf supe

Making a bomb tech tree with the associated invasion types would be semi-trivial I suppose. But adding new modules for mission specific ships or prequisites like that for invasion types is something the community can't do, right? So we'd have to wait for GC 3, I too would really like to see some more options in mission modules for ships (EW, point defense, cloaking etc).

Considering the victory conditions and what you should do to achieve them, I think only the Research victory is really unique. With Research goal, you just need to figure a way to survive long enough, but there you can use different means of your choosing. Plus then you need fast research, of course. But once you get far enough victory is certain, it does not matter if the enemy is at your doorstep, you win when you just reach that one set goal. With conquest, alliance and infl

Phew, finally completed the game with influence victory. At the mid-point I really lost my patience at the slow going of the influence game - I think I couldn't develop my planets fast enough and the logistics/starbase cost thing was a bottleneck. Even with no inherent military bonuses, I just researched some suitable tech, took on the Torians and basically nuked them. The bastards then threw themselves into the arms of the Altarians... By that time I was ready to spam hordes of constructors and

I performed further experiments, and I think I can put forth a straightforward theory on the effects of ISBs. In the spirit of Hypothetical-Inductive science that acknowledges the merits of Popperian Falsificationism, one can make predictions on any planned influence starbase project and give an estimate on the expected influence effect on enemy planets. So far the predictions hold pretty well, with a +/-100% range of error (in the unusual case), typically predictions can be very accurate but th

I did some testing, started with an alien planet with 48 IP and 0.09 alien influence, most of that mine. I built one ISB just next to it, influence jumps to 0.18... so apparently an effect of 5 IP. I built 2 other ISBs, at 2 and 4 squares away. Upgraded with low end influence modules up to the +30 one, and monitored changes in the influence. Based on this it seems: * An ISB by itself will project 5-10 IP into its environment. * Module upgrades will add to this value, and th

By the way all that information in the wiki needs some tidying up, there's been lots of patches since 1.1. For example the page claims that individual ships' attack values are added up for a single fleet damage roll, and then later it claims that each individual ship does its own damage roll. (And well at least the ships are displayed individually for damage in the combat view.)

Hmm highbies will always have the upper hand to newcomers, I guess. In Eve you can fly a cheap low-end frigate and if you band together with more established players, you can still be very deadly by providing the needed support. I wouldn't classify Eve as 4x either, and you are free to do whatever stuff in it, including roleplay. But still I'd say it offers everything the OP was explicitly asking for. Of course you only control the single ship at a time - if you want to control a fleet

Do we have this in the wiki yet?

Do you use some ready-made script to parse the XML data and then import that in CSV format to your plotting program? Hmm... varis2000 feels another re-balancing mod coming up...

I played on my strenghts - I just bought 1-2 planets full of xeno labs Getting teched up a was a breeze - I researched just a tech or two, then went for a trading spree and got almost a dozen more. Only the Torians are withholding what they have, agonized over that for 2 days and only now I figured it must be because it's Bright and not Normal - you can tell the difference! Wow I still have to sa

I restarted the large galaxy. 4 opponents, all normal except the Torian lizards are bright. Abundant habitable planets (I have a system with 4 colonies, heh). My race is a clone of my Salari race from another context, who are very influential anarcho-social pacifists. At the moment I have a +50 social bonus, very strong in influence as well and not bad in diplomacy and economy. I was way more balanced with the rush this time, I think I didn't buy anything on lease at all, becau

3.5 years of Eve history here, though it's off and on but mostly off. Those subscription fees add up very fast. Eve is the best game for PC, ever. And that is saying a lot coming from someone with over 25 years of regular gaming history. It is simply the versatility - something for everyone - unbeatable. It's not a bad game overall, though not for everyone, but the vastness and complexity just adds to it. They have been building and balancing it up over the years and the hard work shows

The supplies were supposed to arrive on Saturday, but we received none. We are out of ammo. We have caught mowgrats for food, but since Tuesday there have been none. The well dried up yesterday. We now use it to deposit our wounded. This morning, the Insurgents tried to break in through the Eastern doorway. They dispersed when we dropped stones on them. It is our belief that our Glorious Leader will return tomorrow at dawn to punish these traitors... ---2nd Lieutenant Sgorkk, in charge of

This is perplexing... 1. How can missiles be so overpowering, generally speaking? Did you miss some factor in the analysis? 2. ...such as defenses for example? Can you give us similar tables for different defense technologies? 3. And what is the point of mass drivers at all, generally speaking? 4. And why do you have the super weapon at a certain point in the particular branch of the tech tree? I suppose it's nice to have a primary target at a later point in t

I loaned mine from brother just this week, and already wonder why he didn't give it sooner, maybe he really hasn't played it... But the background is we both like a bit different games, but MOO and MOO2 were something we both played a lot. I'd like to make this even longer and connect to all the other strategy games over the years but... First first impressions WOW: MOO2 clone MEH: Too much opera and too little space (why can't we get those grim and realistic settings like