Phaedyme

They arrived five years too early, per Brad. Loupdinour, something that the Thalan have no way of knowing. But let's assume they do: Preventing Alan Bradley from going back in time and becoming Draginol means that he never does anything to the Telenanth, causing it to explode, change the laws of physics, and cause intelligent life to come into being ... in which case, there'd never be any Thalan Empire, nor any Altarians, Drath, Drengin, etc. Destroying humanity before the Drea

[quote]Destroying humanity in its entirety would also prevent them from doing any good (fusion, hyperdrive, etc). So it only makes sense to go to the pivotal time when they 'went bad', to turn them around.[/quote] Most importantly, it would prevent them from putting the Dread Lords and Korath clan down like dogs. While not as bad as destroying the universe, that is still a fairly bad outcome.

Of course, it's not a minor part when you end up with thirty randomly placed spies on your worlds, or multiple civs dumping agents on you. :)

I've seen some PQ 2-3 worlds, I don't recall seeing any 1s. Also, it seems like the terraforming bonus on those worlds isn't as good as it used to be, but that's probably just anecdotal evidence on my part.

There were more troops on the transports than on my homeworld, and my soldiering was worse. My enemy was Drengin or Yor, and I had no bonuses.

Ah, reductio ad absurdum, I haven't seen you in weeks. Aren't you being - dare I say it - a little bit pissy that someone's disagreeing with you?

I totally agree with you. Once, in trying to test an invasion-related bug, I started a masochistic game on a tiny map with one opponent, made contact ASAP, researched invasion ASAP, traded the tech to the other race, gave them transports filled with soldiers right next to my homeworld, and declared war. The transports sat there without moving for over a year before the AI pulled them back to its homeworld. I did not have any ships in orbit.

No. The sliders are too abstract. The agents are too expensive, especially given how easily they die. I wouldn't mind a hybrid system - espionage and counterespionage sliders for getting information or blocking it, the Espionage ability to mean something, the ability to target planets for sabotage. I'm not getting pissy, but I was annoyed. The agent strategies aren't stupid, they're actually more interesting than moving a slider around. Yes, the AI doesn't (and appare

I'm not sure I adequately communicated what I was trying to say if you're taking what I said as being the same as the usual build up strategy. What I meant was you that had nothing to work with and had to spend ages researching enough technology just so you could have a good economy, some production on more than one planet, and some research on more than one planet. When I played Thalan in beta, I literally had nothing to do beyond building a colony ship every few turns until the rush w

True that. My niece might grow out of it as she gets older, but right now she has fun with the arbitrary violence. Blue turtles in Mario Kart bother her more. Hi, SapphyAngely. :)

[quote]One word; Fertility Clinics.And, if you do get X-Worlds 05-F... the new gimmick in town - Demographic Capital.[/quote] That's [i]totally[/i] two words, mang.

[quote]You are much better off designing your own ships. The core ships are never very good.Research the hull techs to get the larger hulls, and research the weapon and defense techs that can counter what the AI is using.It's a lot more fun to design your own, as well.[/quote] Plus, it takes a while for the core ships to adjust to shifted priorities. I like that if I manually update a design, that all the planets building the old design switch to the new design, so I can get a

[quote]Yes, it is CRAP. I seriously doubt the AI is smart enough to do anything like that anyway. And I'd also argue that doubling the strength of a planetary invasion is WAY out of proportion for how much it should be allowed to help. I don't care if this is James Bond working together with Jason Bourne, no stupid "agents" should be a deciding factor in any PLANETARY scale invasion, ever. So I don't see the point, other than that it added a bullet that Stardock could put on the expansion's feat

Just to be on the clear side, I'm not saying that the current system is perfect. It has some good applications that weren't possible with sliders, and I'd hate to lose those. It does, however, need the overhaul it'll hopefully get in 2.0.

[quote]It's a crap feature that we'd be better off without.[/quote] No, it's not. What we should have is the option to use the old sliders instead of training agents. When I can use spies to double the strength of my invading troops, though, I have to argue that they're not crap. The problem is that the feature isn't well developed. Also - ToTA is fanmade? No, it was designed inhouse at Stardock, by people who worked on the first two installments. Plus, 2.0 wi

It takes billions of troops to successfully invade other worlds. When you take those troops off of their worlds, they stop paying taxes. The population growth technology means you get your population back faster. As for the boosting tech, you can balance your population against your morale ability - races like the Krynn can afford to add a few farms for more population and thus more taxes without breeding a rebellious populace. Your normal colony has a population maximum of 8 billion, w

The spy system is mostly superior to the old slider method, given that you can use it to help invasions or make worlds more vulnerable to influence flipping. Of course, the problem is that the AI likes to flood you with spies. If you have multiple opponents, they can easily overwhelm your ability to counter them (until you get counter-espionage centers online, but those are not cheap).

[quote]Were the Thalan adjusted between February and launch?Most definitely. I wasn't paying close attention to the costs, but the tree gained essential starbase modules and advanced governments.[/quote] Good stuff - I was really hoping they'd get something. I think part of the difficulty I had at first was how they played vs. everyone else, but part of it was the lack of essential techs, and part of it was just plain having to spend forever getting to the point where you could

Were the Thalan adjusted between February and launch? I played them recently and found them a lot easier to handle than during beta. Specifically, it seems like tech costs were reduced significantly for the early pre-industry/economic/research techs.

[quote]I guess I just figured a game where you can have sex with hookers then kill them to get your money back would be a turn off for females. But hey, I'm male, I know I sure as hell don't understand women, and probably never will.[/quote] I've never done that in the GTA games. GTA is [i]not[/i] explicitly about luring sex workers into your car, having sex with them, and then killing them to get the money back. That's one thing you can do in the games, but you do have other options. T

It's easy to forget UP resolutions. I'm hypersensitive to that particular resolution because it derailed one of my GalCiv 1 games. :(

[quote]Use the spy on farms+morale buildings prior to an invasion (1 turn before for farms) - makes it much easier![/quote] I would've posted this - I think it's probably the best use for spies in the game ever. :) You also don't risk losing them as the AI never gets a chance to counter them. You don't need to put spies on the farms/stalks whatever one turn before invading, though. I found that while the planet information still reads the original population (say, 10 million fo

[quote]People play games they like regardless of their sex.You'll find girls playing Total-War games and you'll find guys playing Hello Kitty adventures*.* I don't mean that to be sterotypical, just for an example...and to poke some fun. [/quote] Yes, exactly. There is nothing "inherent" about gender-based videogame likes and dislikes. It's all social.

I play GTA. I have GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. Been too lazy to pick up IV.

I find most games specifically aimed at girls to be extremely patronizing. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with designing and marketing games with women in mind. I don't think any really big budget projects are likely, though, for the same reason that Fox canceled Firefly (even if they can get a large female audience, they don't want that audience). I also think that lots of guys do spend too much time discussing whether women play video games (and how well or p