misterwolf

the downside is the 500 cost per throw. Which is dirt cheap, in my opinion.

Good idea! = Maybe there could even be minor benefits attatched to being the first to do something, like the speed bonus you get for being the first to circumnavigate the globe in Civ IV.

Good civilizations have a huge, hard to quantify bonus: everybody likes yoou by default. Good civilizations like you, nutral civilizations like you. Evil civilizations hate you, but everybody hates them, and they don't co-operate, so It kind of sucks to be them.

Playing 1.11, crippling dificulty, huge galaxy. The Drengin declared war on me, and I commenced handing them their ugly green bottoms, as they never had a chance. I don't question the war declaration - the Drengin got shafted in the colony rush, and my empire bisected theirs, putting most of it under potential cultural threat. And I'd just gobbled up the Carnoids, so I can see where they would feel pre-emption might be a good idea. But about halfway through the war, after I had near t

Rock and roll! It's great to see an indie publisher win for once. You guys so deserve this!

I can't rember what my current mix is, but you can't go wrong with eccomoics, diplomacy and morale bonues.

Anybody else really want to hug a developer? I want the developers to be the fathers/mothers of my children! Best. Game. Ever.

Nooooo! If you make them better, then the computer's planets will be harder to conquer! Because of course, you're right, I never use them myself.

The bonuses military starbases provide are jaw-dropping, since they're applied per ship . Even if you just drop two constructors, one to build the starbase and one to build a single weapon bonus, each fleet's firepower is going to go up three to seven points. That's way more powerful than building another two warships, which are probabally going to be more expensive than two constructors anyway. Of course, how valuable that is is going

Starting patterns are very important. There seem to be several valid ones, but this is mine: I usually take bonuses in ecconomics, diplomacy, and morale. Federalists are the best government by a long shot, though populists are nice as well. So I start the game, and hit ctrl-N until I'm comfortable with the galaxy. I set the spending slider to 100% (and leave it there for the entire game, usually), raise taxes until morale is in th

Having endlessly shuffled around captured alien populations in MOO II and Space Empires IV, I can tell you that I think it is a HUGE pain in the butt, and am glad such details are missing from GalCiv.

Thank God. I HATED those things.

Oh, furthermore, I don't think they can be improved to the point where I would use them, because I can't imagine anything a planet-based defense structure could do that I couldn't do better with space ships. I'd way rather use those tiles to improve my ecconomy or research, which will in turn let me build more and better space ships, and make me harder to attack.

I never build them. I don't like clogging up my valuable tiles with deffensive improvments. If I'm concerned about a plent being attacked, I build a single defender - my biggest hull packed with weapons and armor - together with a starbase and a fleet or two of fast ships to intercept attackers.

...cursing a certain racial group. I dunno... I have a lot of choice things to say about the Dregin.

See, complaints like this are a result of the game falling victim to it's own reputation. The AI is excellent, but it's still only AI. People hear that the AI is amazing, and the expect miracles, rather than basic competence in many areas, which is really the best modern AI can do. Plus with the ship design and the open space combat, the AI is being asked to do some pretty difficult things.

I've often felt moved to question Nirto Mancer's sexuality; but I'm pretty sure he's male in sex. Not that I've checked.

Dude, just take a 10% diplomacy bonus and build the diplomatic translators, and you should be able to not only pee on the AIs collective legs and tell them it's raining, in terms of tech trades, but make a fortune selling them umbrellas. The ideal situation, starting from a position where you're behind technologically, but gave a good-to-excellent diplomacy bonus: Step 1.) Find an alien race with weaker diplomatic skills than you

In my mind the best tactical combat I've encountered in a 4X game is the combat in the Total War series. It is also important to note that I don't LIKE the Total War series. Having to constantly switch between detailed, hour-long tactical battles and a grand-strategic game is just too distracting, no matter how good each individual component is. Plus in real life, no leader would do both.

Stardock and the having to sign on business. Can't stand it. Whatever happened to buying a game and being able to just play it with your friends ? Actually, I find Stardock pretty convenient. Plus Frogboy and the game have had my e-mail since 2003, and I've never gotten an ounce of spam out of them. G

In all versions of the Beta, I have observed the computer responding to my ship designs. If I leave a missile/sheild ship hanging around, I will see the computer start to field gun/chaff ships. If I switch to beam/armor ships, and leave them hanging around, I will start to see beam/sheild ships opposing me. Of course, this is limited by the amount of money the computer has to upgrade and how much time I give it. If I'm out for blood, I try t

Yeah, I noticed that, myself, in one of my games.

It IS odd that GalCiv doesn't have a sophisticated espionage system to match it's fairly rich diplomacy. That being said, I myself don't miss it much; I hated the complicated intelligence rules in MOO II and Space Empires IV, and generally took spying penalties and ignored them.

I'm currently playing a game with all the majors and myself as a custom race, so yes, it is possible. We'll see how it goes in terms of slowdown, later in the game.

I set planets and habitable planets to "occasional"; this keeps things from getting to cluttered, even on the larger maps.