Voqar

Working fine for me today... (same work IE6 setup that I was having problems with recently)

I like to use ctrl+n to get a map that looks good to me. I'm less concerned with resources on my planet or in sight than I am with seeing a good spread of planets. I also don't like much to start in the middle. I haven't played 1.6 yet (busy with Civ IV BTS but likely to switch gears to GC2 again in the near future) so I don't know if the "AI resetting into stupidity" bug was fixed - I don't recall reading that it was fixed. It pretty much makes ctrl+n unusable.

I'm getting the same junk as Mumblefratz at work on IE6 and have been for a couple of days - whereas prevously I had no problems. I don't think anything has changed here at work and all other sites I visit regularly continue to look just fine (and of course I'm viewing the site just fine now on whatever old version of Firefox I have installed that I only use once in a blue moon for debugging other people's totally messed up javascript). I'll have to try my IE6 at home too.

The great new Civ expansion has a setting called no technology brokering,"Players cannot trade technology they have not researched themselves".I would love to this included in the update. Yes indeed - this is one of the best things to happen to tech trading IMO - it totally makes sense and gets rid of the cheese of AIs (and players too sometimes) essentially doing group research.

Preface - opinions about hardware are a dime a dozen. There are 1000's of components you can build PCs out of, so there are ridiculous numbers of potential combinations, and almost an equal amount of information and opinions related to them. When I'm about to build myself a new PC I do a ton of forum reading, review reading, hardware site scouring, etc to try to get a composite view of the present and near future states of hardware and I *hope* to make good buying decisions. I love PCs and PC

Nice article. Can't wait for that fantasy strategy title to come out. Indeed, just that rough mention of it sounds very interesting.

I would agree with the original post. I've nothing against random chatting but I come here to read about GalCiv2 and don't care about the off-topic stuff, and don't want to see it either.

UFO:Extraterrestrials doesn't look that good to me and I wouldn't buy it without a demo. I've read mixed reviews/thoughts on the game and if the devs have abandoned it, that's not a good sign, and there likely won't be a demo. Maybe the price will come down in a few months - I'm not that tight, but I still can't see spending premium title money on a game like this right now. I also prefer the SAS movement/combat system from the UFO:Afterxxx series way more than pure turn based. Turn

IMO, the purpose is to have fun - just like with any other game. VG has some pretty good lore, excellent character classes, some very nice content, a massive world that feels open and huge, and fun loot. The diplomacy minigame is pretty cool too, even if it doesn't quite feel like a (typical) MMORPG element. SOE is working hard to improved VG, and it's coming along nicely, IMO, but this was a game that was forced to release before it was done, that had a very rough release, th

You might check out Dungeon Runners for some Diablo-esque hack and slash action. DR has what most diablo clones lack - randomized dungeons/content. Beyond that, the gameplay is pretty much basic hack 'n' slach/diablo. I'd like to see the return of squad based tactical games like XCOM. XCOM was an excellent series and few have taken that format and done anything with it. Silent Storm was decent, but had horrible AI. I like the UFO:Afterxxxx series a lot, but the developer is pretty

Given the list Frogboy posted, I'd most like to see StarDock take on the XCOM franchise. GalCiv2 is a nice replacement for MOO such that them redoing MOO seems kinda less needed. There are simply not enough squad-based tactical TBS type games (UFO series by Altar is decent, and their SAS system is very cool). Silent Storm was decent (looked great, played ok, terrible, terrible AI). XCOM was such a great franchies that just died and it's tragic. Maybe it's just me being nostalgic, bu

Not a bad idea. Another idea might be to make the +farming tiles give +1/+2/+3 MT Food instead of a percentage, which would be very easy to impliment, I think. I'd prefer to see typical max population of planets (before ridiculous amounts of +morale are needed) scale more with PQ instead of being a magic number (currently 19B I think). Lower quality planets should have morale problems at lower population levels than high PQ worlds, and if you have a fat PQ planet it mi

SDC is very nonintrusive since you don't have to run it to play games and it doesn't stay in memory when you're not explicitly running. It's a harmless "copy protection scheme" and a decent app for other stuff (download manager, finding trials/demos if you want to). I also love the fact that I don't have to have a CD/DVD in the drive to play GCI/II - that is priceless to me because I hate that crap. I bought the CD + download for both GC I and II but it wasn't necessary since I always

1. Click on the planet. On the right-ish side of the planet display at the bottom of the UI, you'll see ships in orbit. Double-click a ship to get it out of orbit. For newly built ships, you'll see blue icons on the right hand edge of your screen. Left-clicking takes you to the planet that built the ship. Right-clicking launches the ship out of orbit and takes you to it (unless you have a rally point setup for the planet, then right-clicking just clears the icon off the screen).<br

My take: While the built in civs have extra bonuses, you are stuck with those bonuses. With a custom races, you can create anything you want to work on a concentrated strategy you may have. I can definetely see why the devs lowered racial bonuses for custom races. Otherwise, like the manual says, why even use a default race? Stock races have 9-10 points, a slew of built-in bonuses, some of which you can't replicate with points, and often have more tech

IMO, one sign of a good strategy game is that there is no "one way" to do anything. In this case, I have an entirely different opening strat that works great for me and I'm sure there are other ways to kick off a new game successfully too.

Only problem with wide screen monitors are that they offer less viewable area compared to their 4:3 brethren. That's only really true if you go between similar sized LCDs. I switched from a 22" CRT to a 24" widescreen and have noticeably more viewable area. And my desk is no longer bowing due to a 70lb monstrosity. Like going from a 19" 4:3 to a 19" widescreen LCD won't really gain you much - and to me would be a downgrade. But going from a 19" LCD t

DA, and I don't have the latest - haven't even tried it yet - (and saw no mention of this in the sparse patch notes). This was happening prior to the most recent (72?) patch. I stopped playing because you can't see the AI intelligence levels at the beginning of a new game (even with contact) and I didn't want to spend 1-2 hours playing long enough to see when this was happening. Kind of a drag to start on "Tough" with no AI randomization and end up playing against all "fools",

I don't really neglect my economy, I've gone so far as to specialize planets. But it doesn't matter when your planet has .5 billion citizens. And I've gone hours just to see a planet reach 1/2 of its potential. Just what the heck is going on with the slow population? P.S. I set my taxes to 45%, Production to 100%. Maybe this is the problem? A problem with buying out structures is that they have maint costs AND your production/research costs you BC, so i

It is caused by the Ctrl-N bug that will sometimes reset (dumbs) AI intelligence level when you use it. I've had this happen to me too in a sandbox game. Game set to tough, no AI randomizing, did ctrl + n several times before seeing a map layout I liked, ended up with all AIs at the lowest possible AI setting. I tried to start another game and couldn't see the AI levels of oppenents early in the game, which makes figuring out if this is

I've had this happen to me too. The problem went away after I quit and reloaded the game, which is something I don't like to do since influence seems to take a while to settle after loading a game, and sometimes this can lead to flips that shouldn't happen.

Nobody else has this issue? If there's something I'm doing wrong (other than pressing ctrl+n) than do tell!

A couple of things... 1. You have a bug and support forum...I would hope it's monitored or used to get bugs to devs! Saying you're not aware of a bug that's been heavily discussed here is kinda wierd. 2. Why the secrecy about patch notes lately? Even if an update only fixes one metaverse issue it'd be nice to know what the update is doing. The game is getting stellar reviews and most of us know that Stardock patches aren't just about fixing an utterly broken game which is

Does AI attack your asteroid belts when in war? I'd only attack asteroid belts if I'm doing a war of terror (like AI declares on me with no hope of invading, I don't even have tech to invade, and I destroy their asteroid belts just to be annoying). If I plan to invade, they'll flip, so attacking and rebuilding them is a waste - why destroy what will soon be yours. The AI doesn't seem to ever destroy them, but I don't think it's that big a deal

That's pretty funny, now if only the race icon looked a little more like a big yellow smiley face it'd be perfect!