Unspeakable.Elvis

Howdy. I've been using the all factories approach for a long while now, believing (rightly) that it gives one a distinct advantage. Besides this I've been playing Gal Civ for at least a year. Nontheless I still struggle breaching the "Tough" difficulty level. Having considered every possible approach, optimising my strategy, and being a relatively experienced gamer, I'm currently wondering exactly what the ingredient is that I'm missing in order to go for year zero victories on

[quote]Or... even later[/quote] Ah. Well, fair enough. J.

The front page says April 23, and on Stardock Central I'm still being offered the beta. J.

[quote]what the heck am i doing??[/quote] The object of the game is to win. Things that make you win: 1) Wiping out all other civilisations (Conquest Victory). 2) Getting your sphere of Influence to cover 75% of the galaxy map (Influence Victory). 3) Establishing Alliances with all other civilisations. (Diplomatic Victory). 4) Researching all the technologies in the Technological Victory tree. I've tried all of these and none are rea

(Double post... damn pigeons...)

[quote]However, if you are building something and you produce 100 points but it only costs 10pts, the other 90 points are wasted.[/quote] Out of curiosity, how does one circumvent this problem? Should one build a portion of one's worlds solely for the construction of smaller ships (fewer factories), and others for bigger ships (many factories)? Or, once one reaches high production capability on all worlds, should one simply not build cheaper ships? Or even, should one drop all Military

Speaking generally, by the way, I've never liked this paper-rock-scissors thing with the weapons and defense types in GC2. It rather lacks flavour, in my opinion. J.

1. You only get the party bonus from your chosen party, and only if your party wins the elections. This is a function of approval; if it drops low enough you will be voted out and you will lose your party bonus. You don't get any bonuses from other parties. 2. There are slight differences in the weapons types relating to research cost and eventual strength. Missiles, I believe, are broadly speaking slightly more expensive but at the end they're more powerful; beam weapons are cheaper bu

I remember there being serious problems with ships in 1.8e, not too dissimilar from what you're describing now (in fact, these errors were in 1.8c up to 1.8f). Currently I'm playing 1.8g, in which these errors were finally fixed. Now, I won't speak on behalf of Stardock, but my gut tells me you might be playing an older game (1.8e) while Stardock Central thinks you're updated to 1.8g. Just my opinion, yours is likely a problem that users can't address. I hope you get some help from the

Howdy. Another user idea to be sequestered to "maybe in GC3" (if it even gets noticed). Approval should react differently to tax changes. The problems with the artificial population in GC2 are: a) they react with total naivety to changes in tax; with sudden and precipitous changes they completely forget what the tax rate was like a week ago; and b) their happiness is absolutely, linearly proportional to the tax rate. Now, I'm not a psychologist (nor an economist), but I thin

Almost the very first thing I do is raise the tax rate from the starting 33%. You can push it to 39% and still have happy colonists. Generally I don't [I]buy[/I] any ships right off the bat anymore, but buying that first colony ship is quite feasible. The first things I build on my homeworld: factories. I like good production early on, so I'd go for two or three of those, buying the first one and enqueuing (sp?) the others. I'd also add to the queue two labs, an entertainment n

This actually sheds some new light on the trade goods thing for me. I always assumed they conferred bonuses but were strictly and exclusively tied to the improvements that confer them. I'm not really into trading in my games, so I never experimented with them; but now I've discovered that they might actually be a bit more useful! However, wouldn't it make more sense that one civilisation retains the monopoly on manufacturing and trades only the [I]product[/I] to the others? I mean, toda

Title: Kraken (a.k.a. Earthmonger) Description: There is one indispensable and invaluable resource in GC2: Planets. I will ruthlessly colony rush as far as I can go, then greedily colonise whatever the other civs leave behind, provided the planets aren't threatened by foreign influence (though, even if they are, I'm likely to push my luck). This means I leave [I]no[/I] habitable world alone. I tend to blitzkrieg minor civs I find hanging around for their PQ15's. War is always di

I'm not totally sure how experience works, but ships [I]do[/I] gain some HP when they gain experience levels. I often have fighters flying about with 10/8 hit points. This seems likely to have happened in your case. J.

[quote]something like this would really put mass colonization on hold until later on in the game.[/quote] Do you mean that this mod [I]postpones[/I] the colony rush until later, or does it actually [I]slow down[/I] the colonisation process (i.e. does it obviate the old colony rush?) J.

[quote]I think just increasing the cost of the colony modules would do the trick the best as then the colony ships would be built really slowly. They would be expensie to buy of course as well.[/quote] I agree. That would make a colony ship a major project, not something you just pop out of your starport every three turns and fritter away on class 3 and 4 worlds. It should, after all, be reasonably costly (even relative to other ships) to construct a ship capable of transporting 250 mil

[quote]It is true that they ignore a lot of ideas.[/quote] I'm [I]tempted[/I] to agree. Though I'll wait until TA is done before making up my mind about how open the devs are to players' ideas: I've been a regular at the Ideas forum since the release of DA, read (and posted) many thoughts, and although no-one gets an indication of which ideas they find attractive, I'll see how much of that "sea" makes it to the new expansion. I confess, though, that I'm not holding my breath.<b

How do you mean? If you'd like advice about the game you're certainly in the right place, but I'm not sure how an empire would help. I myself haven't joined any empires, but I've learned quite a bit from the forums -- if you're willing to dig a little you're bound to come up with a few gems. I'm actually not sure what all these empires are for: there are a few official empire threads around with oodles of posts (don't know what they say, since I don't really visit them) so it must be q

Haven't come across any essential mods yet. Personally I've been using Kryo's Hull System, which is nice for [I]really[/I] designing ships from scratch; it doesn't change the ship design process dramatically though. I'm also playing with Gauntlet's Race Mod, which is certainly fun but again, not essential. Dunno what the other guys have been playing with. J.

Not so secret now, are they? ;)

[quote]Just wanted to say that I thought 33% does not mean only 33% of your factory tiles get used, it means that all your factory tiles get used at 33% capacity[/quote] Saying that a portion of one's factories remain unused is just a different way of saying that a portion of each factory remains unused. The point is that you might have enough factories to produce 300 mp (and you'll be charged for their maintenance), and yet for the vast majority of the game you probably won't sap more

[quote]4) Output. (This is the big one.)[/quote] I agree. The yardstick is not what you [I]are spending[/I] but what you [I]can[/I] spend. With a Research slider at 50% you're paying to power 50% of your factories, etc. This mechanic poses a particularly annoying problem: since two sliders power factories and one powers labs, and the three sliders' sum must always be 100%, you can never use your factories and labs to their maximum potential. It's like you're building all those factories

[quote]I will continue to support this company as long as you continue to treat your customers with respect and continue to go above and beyond your duty to us. [/quote] I'll freakin' second that. J.

Everyone gets bored of the invasion screen, sure. I myself have thought up dozens of ways in which it can be expanded past the "two lines going at each other" paradigm. The problem, however, is that if you make it any more intricate it might make invasion too much of a chore. If I'm going for a conquest victory on a Huge map I don't necessarily want to spend half of the entire game time managing ground battles on different fifty worlds. It's really all-or-nothing; if the game [I]doesn't[/I] impl

Interesting question. I'd look at it this way: A Stock Exchange gives a +25% economic bonus. Thus, theoretically, if you've got 13b people paying taxes, you get 25% more out of each individual; at the end of the day, with that stock exchange, you're getting as much money out of 13 billion people as one would out of 16.25 billion with no economic bonus. So, in replacing your stock exchange with a farm, in order to break even you have to add on population equivalent to 25% of your colony'