HydroAC

I just checked, and here is how Tourism income works. Total tourism: 1bc for each 100B population of the galaxy. This total is divided between the races based on influence. This means that early in the game this will be minor, but later it may be more, and much more in galaxies with abundant planets. As for capitals, the increased influence only is present on the races first capital or any minor races' first planet. If you check, you'll see a pretty high IP for capitals wrt ot

Quite true, and an important lesson. I only play at Painful too, but all the AIs react strongly to your military power. I try hard to have at least a military rating of 100%. Nothing is worse than to get dragged into a war very early in the game since then you lose control. Having a military gives you options, which is always a good thing. Hydro

I set my autosave to 2 turns due to game crashes. Every time I tried to Alt Tab out the game crashed, and sometimes the game just...stopped, requiring a hard boot of my PC. When I upgraded from 512MB to 1.5GB RAM and increased my SWAP file to 4GB all my problems went away. I can Alt Tab out, and when I go back in there is only a small delay. Performance improved significantly with the new RAM. I guess I'm lucky that the increased RAM seems to have solved the problem. It looks

Ships move. Starbases don't. Plus, you have to defend starbases, which ties down your fleets. In the early game a SB with an attack of 10 and ~40HPs can hold its own, but by late early game or mid game they die like stuck pigs. Building a worthwhile SB takes a LOT of constructors. Plus, you can upgrade ships and they can defend planets or take the war to an enemy. You get the point. That's why it is generally better to build ships, with the possible exception of strategically placed ec

My understanding is that tourism income is a function of galaxy population and your percentage of influence in the galaxy. Building influence starbases would, therefore, increase your slice of the influence pie. Whether it is economically worthwhile depends on how much tourism income you’re getting. For instance, building a few influence bases in empty/unclaimed territory on a large or bigger map isn’t going to get you much more of a percentage of the influence pie. But, the population of the ga

I played Terrans on Painful before the last few patches and found planet buying a cheap way to cinch the game very early, with or without Diplo Trans or all the diplo techs. As the last phases of the colony rush continues as the AI builds space ports at new planets the colony ships have very little populations. You can buy these low population colonies for a song. Heck, for an economic and/or research treaty the Krynn basically gave me 2/3 of his empire. I documented this in an AAR a while ago.

February 2232 As predicted, the turns just float by. I was spending 85% or so of my budget on research, and by September of 2231 I’d finished all the colonization techs. As those planets came fully on line I noted that my income balance had dipped significantly. This is likely due to all the planets that were now at full throttle, which is good. Then I proceeded down the economics and government techs, the next research tech, picked up planetary bombardment to ensure I kept a good groun

I'd be interested in now the AI-AI tech trades work, too. I might be a little less irritated if I knew how the rules worked. It's hard to say who offered what in the debug.err file, although it is clear who got what. Some of the trades defy logic, where diplomatically challenged races get a tech you couldn't pry out of the cold, dead hands of the AI. Hydro

Or turn off tech trading. That will level the playing field and give you a different game. To see how you can use DA tech trading to your advantage see Wyndstar's Altarian AAR. He used it to generate obscene amounts of cash. There are also a number of other provocative ideas and strategies in this AAR, too. Hydro

I just checked my game, and my trade is as follows: • Weekly trade income: 1647bc • Number of trade routes: 7 • Source of my trade routes: all originate at my capital system (capital or side planet) • Destination of my trade routes: 3 to Altarian capital, 2 to Krynn capital, and 2 to two different Drath worlds • All my trade routes go through 3 economic starbases, which have trade bonuses that range from 20% to 30% each. Getting these extra bonuses is key, so having one

I’ve just finished the first of a 3 book series that reminded me strongly of GalCiv2’s universe: Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. In this book Humanity is in competition with innumerable alien races for very scarce habitable planets. The protagonist describes it as tens of billions of humans against trillions of aliens. Relations between the races are generally…unpleasant, and the book describes this situation from a ground-pounder’s point of view. It isn’t a ‘Isn’t War Great’ book full

The March 10, 2007 edition of The Economist listed the top city economies. Tokyo came out on top, followed very closely by New York. The Economist made the observation that the economic output of NY or Tokyo was the same as all of Canada! I was also interested to find that Chicago (where I live) had just been nudged out of 4th place by London, but that Chicago still had a larger economy than Paris. Even then, Chicago was 1/3 the economic output of NY or Tokyo. To me this shows what we

March 2231 All I have to say is the galaxy is freakin’ huge. It takes forever to get anywhere, and although this game is essentially wrapped up it is close to torture to keep shoving my ships around. It takes 25 bloody turns to get across 2/3 of the galaxy, and that is just too painful. But perhaps I should be thankful. After all, I could have gotten a random gigantic galaxy with abundant stars and abundant habitable planets. Now, wouldn’t that have been fun? There would have

First, in DA the AI does colonize PQ1 worlds. It doesn’t do so frequently, but it does. Also, as a neutral with 2 or 3 terraforming techs a PQ1 planet can instantly be a PQ16 to 19 (!!!). Granted, this is later in the game, but it is a nice way to influence bomb the AI. Normally a low PQ (or any) planet in AI territory will flip or be near revolt due to enemy influence. With enough cash you can colonize the planet, have it go to PQ15+ instantly with a good intrinsic influence, buy a fe

I see plenty of single transports with no escorts, but by mid game the are grouped depending on logistics ability. Note that if a race has a poor logistics ability it may not be able to group two transports and/or an escort together. Hydro

As for trade, my experience is that the worth of trade routes depends on map size. A larger galaxy size, of course, increases the distance and therefore the value of the trade route. In my current Super Breeder AAR (gigantic map) my trade income is 1600bc/week due to a special even that doubled trade income, which is very nice. But even at the normal 800bc/turn that is quite a haul for the investment of only 8 or 9 trade routes. Some of that is due to alien’s trade routes with me, but not that m

Excellent take, and a unique angle – kind of a GalCiv2 retrospective! And perhaps an explanation of how humanity developed star drives before anyone else? It’s not clear why the Huth ended, but then a single worker on a planet probably wouldn’t know this. The voice states what he (it?) knows. I also love the monologue with the stilted language. It sounds like a scattershot diary, although it has no real sense of time other than being sequential. I might quibble with you on a f

I have to admit I appreciate Wyndstar’s can-do spirit, willingness to experiment, ruthless determination, and insight. There’s nothing like an honest to goodness demonstration to blast hardened opinions to little tiny pieces. That is why I like the AARs - I learn much more by reviewing an example than by uber-scores or quip-like tactical throwaway comments. The former gives no understanding of how (and suggests twisting the mechanics to up the score) and the latter lacks context. <

Master Wyndstar, Thank you for an excellent AAR. I appreciate the insights of your thought process, tricks, tactics, and your thinking-outside-of-the-box strategies that makes for a top notch read. What I particularly enjoyed was how you were able to use unconventional strategies, and also how you demonstrated how various Super Abilities can be used to better effect. For those of us who are **ahem** more linear thinkers this was a real eye opener. Very nicely written, too: cle

May 2230 The Terrans have been eliminated. In early March 2230 I finished the Tir Quan, which increased my ground combat and that is always a good thing. I had fleets positioned to the Terran’s east and a few ships to the north. My first cruiser showed up for the adventure. When I had accumulated three fleets of 3 transports and 3 fleets of ships (logistics 15) I declared war and moved in on March 2230. A few other straggler ships and transports also moved in from the west with a few sc

May 2229 The two minor races are now conquered. The Jessians were subjugated in January 2229 and the Lentzlandians in May 2229. In the process I worked through shock troops and also planetary defense for a total invasion bonus of 45%, which is more than enough against minor races. I also had to research 2 levels of logistics to get it up to 15 so I could group 3 transports for 6B troops during an invasion. My ground combat plus technology advantage meant only 1 transport was deployed an

No tech trading is a different game. Tech is more valuable, which means a couple of things: • Getting tech via espionage might make it espionage more valuable since • Invading is more powerful due to the free tech. After all, if you can’t trade – just invade! • You don’t have Group AI Research. If you’ve poked around the turn files you’ll see quite a bit of AI to AI tech trading going on, with a shocking number of good deals – none of which you’ll get as a human player. The AI e

As to war, well it's too late. My alignment was ever so slightly 'good' (just a touch above neutral) and I got a generic message stating "The Korath have declared war on the Altarians. Do you as a good aligned race want to support them?" or something like that. Note that I am not 'good' but just lean that way. After giving it a moment of thought I decided I did want to take on the Korath. I’d recently finished conquering 2 minor races and was at loose ends. Although the Terrans are an e

March 2228 The turns have slipped by, I’ve gotten a little lethargic and I need to stir things up. I’ve researched through laser 3 and have gotten 1st level miniaturization so my speedy little frigates now have an attack of 3. Having one or two planets producing these keeps my military rating at the top, which is good. I’ve researched industrial, research, and trade planet improvements, so almost all my planets are busy. I’ve also gotten the first terraforming technology so my planets c

Yikes! The images are too small to read. **sniff** Is there a way to enlarge them? Hydro