HydroAC

Ah, the Kzinti – one of Niven’s finest creations (among many). I remember the Kzinti mainly for their race in Star Fleet Battles. My drone chuckers were feared throughout the galaxy, particularly with speed 32 drones. My main opponent was a wily Klingon who taunted me with the name Eater of Grass – a vile insult. But I held my tongue until my drones shredded his rear shield and I then pounced with joy with a furious point plank knife fight. Kzinti ships were particularly good at knife f

Wait - doesn't mass driver wreck the planet even if it fails? Or are you saying this is a freebee to eliminate hordes of enemy population with no loss of the improvements at the planet (assuming you lose)? Also, you're using two transports for your invasion - the failed attempt and then the real attempt. Even if they're very inexpensive transports with only one standard troop module (0.5B troops) on it there is still the specter of having to build another and get it to the front. <

Raknor - I'll look into GIMP! Thanks for the tip! And yes, spoo refers to B5, one of my favorite SF shows of all time. *~*~*~* February 2231 The Torian’s capital fell in July 2230. I made the mistake of giving their companion world time to rebel, but instead they surrendered to the Korx. Of course once the planet was controlled by the Korx the planet went into revolt again, but I should have paid better attention. The companion world had a Progenitor Library,

October 2229 My gamble to take out the Drath paid off. My squadron of 5 destroyers easily removed all of the Drath defenders and my fleet of three transports with 5.5B troops barely took his capital using information warfare in September 2228. My ground combat was 72% so I had a big advantage there even if I was terribly outnumbered. When the dust settled I had ~700M troops left, so it was a near thing. I had another 4 transports waiting just in case. The companion world started to go i

You're right that the images are grainy. Any suggestions on another imager? I'm using ImageShack now. Hydro

March 2228 Any delusions I might have had that a closely packed galaxy with few planets would lead to slow development and the slow development of wars has been summarily eliminated: war is erupting all over the galaxy. There is of course my war of aggression against the Terrans. In the last six months everyone has at least one war going on, and the Arceans are lucky to have five. I got a call from the Drengin, Korx, and Torians that I was a warmonger and had to be eliminated in Decembe

July 2227 I declared war on the Terran ~March 2227 to make sure I could paste his starbase around the morale resource before he could give it offense. My little attack 2 destroyers wouldn’t stand a chance against an 8-1-1 starbase with 42 HPs. So, his starbase died and I spent the next few turns cranking out cheap constructors and maxing (+19%) both my moral starbase and my liberated morale starbase. I’m positioning to also take out his influence starbase not because I need it but becau

Arcean Arrival To continue my quest to experiment with all the races I’ve decided to work on the Arceans. I’ve never played them before (except in passing) so I’ll need to give it some thought to figure out how to best use the race, its Super Ability, and allocate my pick points. The First Strike special ability clearly says one thing: high offense on ships. I want to be able to kill them at the first strike or it really doesn’t matter. That means that although I may want some

August 2232 Just as I was coasting to victory when GC2:DA threw me for a loop. The Drengin surrendered in November 2231 and the Korath in early January 2232. I promptly got a message that an Influence victory was pending in 10 turns. So I cleaned up and prepared to hit TURN 10 times. On January 15, 2232 I got the Xenophobia Event. Ack! It was like the AI was trying to thwart me! After a moment of reflection I realized it didn’t matter since I still had more than enoug

The GC2 developers have left the good/neutral/evil balance stand through many fixes and upgrades so there must be a reason. I wonder if Brad and company simply see the universe as an Evil place where the end justifies the means, and where Good is Stupid? Or maybe there are balance issues I just don’t understand, or perhaps it is built in to the back story. The overwhelming opinion is that Evil gives the most of the raw advantages, with neutral as a decent option. Good isn’t even consid

I have to admit I’ve never done a turtle/tech strategy before, but in a rare-everything galaxy that may just make the most sense. I noticed the level of the AIs is different. Any reason? Did you observe any difference in how the AIs worked? Also, I’ve only occasionally starting wars between others, but it is a powerful too. Hydro

October 2231 Per the plan I got to phaser 3, set military production to 60%, and then stood back as swarms of CAs and transports flowed across the galaxy. New construction headed to the Korath. I declared war on the Korath shortly after March 2231 and started cleaning up the few planets he had peppered in Drengin space. [URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/5282/image16militarystandingry1.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Image 16: Massive Iconian Military Buildu

March 2231 I’ve had to be very careful with all the high firepower Drengin ships floating around, but I’ve captured the Drengin capital (Aug 2230), two former minor worlds (November 2230 and March 2231) and a PQ11 world (March 2231). Each of his high firepower ships in orbit took out one of mine, but since I was in a fleet during the attack his ship died. Still, that is a hard trade, and 2 to 4 cruisers died to take each world. The ground combat wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Granted I g

Thanks gents! And now...the saga continues!!! *~*~*~* August 2230 My attack on the Drengin was successful but quickly bogged down. It took half a year to get full transports and some cruisers that could take on the Drengin ships into position. I decided to take out a PQ6 world near my sphere of influence and a PQ11 world with LOTS of manufacturing and research bonuses. The attack resulted in trading cruiser-for-cruiser. The hard part was the ground combat. We’

July 2229 It’s been a busy year in the Galaxy of Death. There were a number of events, such as the gratuitous declaration of war by the Drengin on the Torians – likely to get Dominator ships. I paid the Thalans 1200BC to declare war on the Drengin when he was on his way to the Torians and in the middle of Thalan space. It worked pretty well since a number of Drengin fleets got wacked. The Thalan military rating hasn’t gone down too much, either. There was also another Ethos Ev

July 2228 War has arrived. The Korath declared war on the hapless Torians. I did a quick check and almost all Korath planets have one or more spoor ships! Worse, both the Korath and Drengin how are hostile to me. I don’t think it will be long before the Drengin (and maybe the Korath) declare war on the Iconians and/or the Thalians. With that in mind I’m going to research through plasma and then medium hulls, and at that point I’m going to crank up the military building. All th

November 2227 My colonization is done and there are only a few low PQ planets left, and even if I wanted them they are far from home and would be difficult to defend. Now my task is to defend what I’ve got and develop my advantage. With more planets and galactic resources I have an advantage that will only get bigger as time continues. The economy world Hatch is starting to kick into gear, and will do even better with a farm and upgrades to advanced markets. [URL=htt

M - thanks! More to come. Hydro

January 2227 Boy, the turns seem to slip by. Of course, I’m only shoving colony ships around. My little fleet of 5 survey ships is on auto and they’re busy snagging all the anomalies they can. So far they’ve done a terrific job of supplementing my treasury and, of course, the occasional increase in my racial abilities. I haven’t been keeping track, but it will add up even if it is only 1% at a time. I love anomalies that speed research, particularly if I have a project with a long lead

Iconian AAR I picked up GalCiv 2 after an 8 month hiatus when I got an e-mail from Stardock on the upcoming expansion Twilight of Arnor. ToA looks fantastic, and just thinking about how much fun GC2:DA has been was enough to pique my interest again. So I got online, upgraded DA to 1.8g, and off I went to get reacquainted with the game. After playing a few games with the Krynn I recalled how much fun the AARs were so I decided to continue the effort. I went through the list of

A few more thoughts. It may be easier to treat the Progenitors as they are in GC2: mostly long gone, but still somewhere behind the scenes. Frankly, you could have them have almost the same back history as the Ancients in GC2. We know the AC Progenitors are an impossibly old race (billions of years), that they are in a ideological and fratricidal war, and that elements of their billion year old works (such as Manifold 6, which they’ve managed to ‘forget’ about!) are just lying about the

An interesting project: SMAC in space! The key question is how to integrate it into GalCiv2. Here are a few ideas: • The Progenitors return and evict Humans from Manifold 6. They seed the major factions on other planets for reasons they don’t tell us about. The factions discover FTL travel at about the same time (a Progenitor-engineered coincidence? Or some loose lips by a Zakharov researcher? Artifacts with the secrets of FTL on the planets?) and then the race is on. <br/

the Star Fleet Battles I loved that game. I still have all the bits and pieces hidden in a closet. No one would ever want to play with me unfortunately . I loved it too. My SFB stuff is squirrled away in my attic. A friend passed away and his family gave me his SFB stuff, so I have two sets. Lucky me. Finding a group to play SFB is tough, and I just don't have the time... Hydro

In addition, there are many things that are not directly testable via the scientific method, such as the age of the Earth and the origin of species, so I would hesitate to label them as being true science. It's my opinion that science should deal with what is directly testable and observable - it's the testable and observable stuff that gives us our technology, inventions, and advances. Actually, the age of the Earth is well known via radiometric dating.

IMHO, science simply a way to explore our current physical world. It cannot and should not interfere with religious beliefs. I do not believe it conflicts with religion. I would agree, and in many cases there is no reason for conflict between science and religion. In fact, my mentor (head of the geology department where I was an undergraduate) was a devout Methodist who had a very spiritual life, and is a man that I deeply admire. He was a paleontologist