JMiddleton

Improvements like your Manufacturing Capital and Power Plants will boost production for factories on the planet where they are built by a percentage. The more factories, the greater effect they have. Research co-ordination centers and Technology capital boost the output of labs on the planets where they are built. Locating these improvements on specialized planets with a lot of factories or labs greatly enhances their value. Output from factories and labs can be further enhanced if they are i

In ToA I build a farm on every planet except my homeworld. Once you research intensive farming, the population cap will rise to 14 billion without using a bonus tile. With one entertainment structure per planet, you can raise taxes to 79% and maintain acceptable morale as long as you fully research the morale/entertainment tree and all the morale trade goods. I will use a 2x farming bonus tile - which raises population cap to 20 billion - if (and only if) the planet has 2 or more enterta

I've been using a 52" DLP TV for the past 3 years. Resolution is 1280x768. Viewing distance is roughly 8 feet - from a nice comfortable La-Z-Boy. Control is a Logitech diiNovo Edge keyboard and MX Air mouse that replaced my original Gyration keyboard and mouse earlier this year. The system works well as a media center (I use SageTV), general home computing and casual gaming. The air mouse is great for games like GalCivII and SoaSE but lacks the precision you would want for most real-time game

There has been a secondary market for intellectual property as long as it has existed - libraries have been around for thousands of years and authors, like software developers, only get paid when a copy of their work is sold - not each time it is read! The distinction raised in this thread is that software has an ongoing support burden while movies/music/books do not. I accept that a software company might need to charge a license transfer fee to offset this burden but I don't think t

Try reloading the game from an AutoSave - which should place you within 5-10 turns of the end and check the civilization manager to see what is about to happen. Normally the game will warn you via GNN when one of the other Civs is close to victory and, as mentioned above, the defeat screen should tell you who won and which victory condition they achieved.

Adding life support modules extends your range and the value of a trade route increases with distance. Once established, I believe the routes will get more valuable with time. Researching trade also unlocks your econ capital which can be a major revenue enhancer.

If you're having fun - you're doing it right, even though you're unlikely to win against tough AI as a novice player. If it starts getting frustrating, play a few games at normal difficulty on medium maps to get a feel for the game. If that's too easy, start advancing the difficulty and move to larger maps. The forums and wiki discuss 3 quite different games. The original DL (Dread Lords), the first expansion DA (Dark Avatar) and the latest expansion TA (Twilight of the Arnor). Make sur

With only 2 planets your civilization's potential is capped at a very low level. Unless your home world is blessed with some exceptional bonus tiles, you'll be well behind the other civilizations, economically and technically, before the end of the first year and falling further behind at an increasingly rapid pace. Population plays an important role in both revenue and influence - with 2 planets, you won't have much of either! If you choose to play this game, instead of using CTRL-N to generate

XP was designed for ease of use in an era when security wasn't as big an issue as it is today and Microsoft has taken a lot of flak for that choice over the years. Vista represents a 5 year, multi billion dollar effort to create an inherently secure platform for Windows. I find it interesting that people hate Vista but love Server 2008 - which is essentially the same codebase. Seems the corporate and consumer markets are looking for different things. While I believe Vista could (and should) hav

The sliders affect your entire civilization. You can adjust what happens on individual worlds using focus. There are a lot of threads in the strategy section on how best to use the sliders from 100% factories (using focus for research) to 100% labs (using focus for military/social) and every combination in between. Most of the strategies work but some require a lot more micro management than others. About the only thing everyone seems to agree on is that the default 33/33/34 setting is not the w

A fascinating thread. I'm 56 and have enjoyed strategy gaming since playing the Avalon Hill board games at university. We also played Adventure (Crowther and Woods), Star Trek and Kingdom (Hammurabi) on KSR33 Teletypes connected to the university mainframe. No quarters required - just lots of patience at 110 BAUD! I'm currently single which means I can get away with putting a computer in the living room, connected to a large screen TV which adds a lot to the gaming experience. An air mo

The main advantage the AI has over the human player is its ability to micromanage every asset on every turn. Most of us don't have the patience to do that. With a fully "optimized" empire the AI will usually be able to grow population, and hence income, faster than the human player - giving it an edge in the colony rush phase of the game. I put "optimized" in quotes because the AI doesn't make very good decisions about what to build on its colonies. All else being equal the human player should h

That worked, thanks. Game icons are covering the installed and available version information on the update screen. Probably because I am using large fonts.

The Impulse setup download is fine but, when you run it, it seems to pull a lot more data from the Internet and will display a status line with a byte count and a percentage. It freezes at some point during this phase, once at 6%, a couple of times in the 20% range, once I made it all the way to 45%. I just ran it now and it got to: Status: 920,448, 6% It's still running but it isn't doing anything. Once I left it for 30 minutes to see if it would start moving again. No luc

There is a known issue with escalating research cost that pretty much cripples any player, AI or human, affected by it. The problem is supposed to be fixed in the 1.95 update.

Last night I was enjoying a TA game when I encountered the escalating research cost problem. My opponents didn't seem to be affected and quickly built up an overwhelming tech advantage so I resigned the game and decided to download 1.95. SD Central 2.54.522 doesn't have TA 1.95 (or Sins of a Solar Empire 1.05) so I searched for Impulse, eventually found a link to the site, clicked the download button and ran the install. The application would get some random distance, 45% maxim

The easiest way to get what you want is to play Sins of a Solar Empire (also from Stardock) which includes carriers and a variety of "force multiplier" support ships along with multiplayer, tactical combat control and a few other things frequently requested on this board. Choices have consequences so Sins is a very different game than GalCiv2 but a lot of us enjoy both.

Anomalies regenerate in DA and TA making survey ships much more valuable. Make them as fast as possible. Include your best sensor tech. If practical include enough life support modules to cover the entire galaxy and finally try to find space for enough weapons/defense to deal with vengeance fighters and super dominator corvettes. Upgrade them occasionally as you advance through the tech tree.

Researching (or trading for) the techs will add a percentage HP bonus to all ships - similar to Xanthium hull plating - even if you don't install the module; well worth doing in my opinion. I prefer defensive modules if they fit but the HP modules take less space so you can often squeeze one in where nothing else will fit.

Improvements like capitals, power plants, research coordination center and stock market boost a planets output by a percentage which makes them a lot more valuable on specialized worlds. Specialized factory planets also build ships a lot faster. I would rather have a few planets that can build a dreadnought class ship in 10 weeks rather than a lot of planets that need 100 weeks to produce one.

I've had good luck with the following strategy in TA playing Terran Alliance: 1. Research Trade as quickly as possible which lets you build an Econ Capital on your homeworld. 2. Do not purchase a colony ship. With only $3K starting capital you can't afford it. Instead purchase the initial factory on your homeworld so ships, and other improvements, build a lot faster. I also purchase a lab on my homeworld at turn 2 so research goes a lot faster. 3. Use your initial colony ship to exp

The mega events you get seem to depend on your style of play and try to force you to change your strategy. If you are pursuing a non-military victory, be prepared to have the JK or spies shake things up. Those pursuing military victory seem more likely to encounter pirates or peacekeepers. If the conditions are right for Jagged Knife there is a chance you will see them again even after a reload. I had a DA game I was enjoying thoroughly some months ago and chose to reload rather than deal with J

I notice you still won the game by changing strategy and pursuing a different victory condition so the mega event(s) worked as intended. Another option would be to exit the game and load an autosave from before the mega event but, if you don't want to work with the radically changed universe these events create, it's easier to turn them off. I think it would be nice if the developers could allow us to toggle mega events individually instead of all or nothing - but the events you get seem to depe

While supply and demand are evenly matched today - demand, mostly from the developing world, is growing much faster than supply. Like it or not, prices will continue to rise until people change their habits. In the short term the only thing that can bring prices down (or even slow the rate of increase) is demand destruction. America, with 4% of the world population currently consumes 25% of the oil and will have to make a substantial contribution to that demand destruction. Longer term, you have

I play and enjoy both games but agree with the others in this thread that GalCivII offers more strategic depth. Sins will improve through updates and expansion packs - as did GalCivII - but it is unlikely that any real time game will ever be able to match the strategic depth of a turn based game. Just the nature of the beast. I do like the way the various ship classes in Sins tend to cover each others weaknesses and the value of several classes is almost entirely their force multiplier