By focusing on my sliders on my economy and buying AI ships to boost my military rating, I've not been threatened much in my games. Choosing pop growth picks also help to boost economy faster. Remember that your overall might is a factor of both your economic and military rating.

With a good start, any AI can become "Strongest" in both economy and military very quickly and start to throw threats around. The best way to weaken their ratings is to get it into wars.

If that Strong AI is pretty far away from you, there is no real need to be afraid to go to war with it. From experience, they would usually offer peace after a period of inactivity and the AI is poor at waging long range wars. Quite a few times, I've seen the AI offer peace just when their transports draw near to my undefended systems. :notsure:

~SDC~

Hello everybody.

Just wanted to drop in and give you all an update on life in Rohan.

As you've no doubt noticed I've been eerily quiet lately. This has been in part due to me creeping away and playing Pool of Radiance, but there has been some real life factors which have contributed to my absence. My wife is still having complications from childbirth (yes...my daughter is now over 15 months old and my wife is still having trouble). She is currently in the hospital and is scheduled to undergo surgery today. I've been having to take care of the baby by myself, which most men would agree is not an easy task.

So that's what's going on in my world. Hopefully things will return to normal sometime soon.

I thought you'd run off to Kiwi-land for the LotR premiere with the rest of your hobbit friends

Hope everything goes well with the missus and the littlun!

Has everyone seen Brad's news item on the expansion?

http://www.galciv.com/index.asp?action=full&NewsID=424

Looks exciting!

Take care of yourself and family, Theoden.

vincible,

The new features that are planned, especially those for the Metaverse, do look exciting.

Those would go a long way in retaining the attention and participation of the Galciv community and also help to set the stage for Galciv 2.





~SDC~

Good morning, all!

My wife's surgery went well. She was released from the hospital last night. We all stayed at my in-law's house last night as it's closer to town than our house. Didn't sleep worth a damn, so I feel like hell.

It seems SpecFor is getting a little close. It may be time to rally the troops and crank out a few games. I've got to admit, until the fixes come out I'm not crazy about playing 1.12. If I vote on the permanent taxation of war one more time, I'm going to scream!

We need a fix really bad...

Theoden - Glad to hear your wife is okay!
-Cypher

Thanks Cypher! I hope this takes care of this...I hate to see her going through all of this. Can you believe she wants another baby, even through all of this?

Glad to hear things went well, Theoden.

SpecFor is close indeed--Jeff Desilva joining gave them a big bump.

*Gerakken sneaks behind Fellowship lines to meddle and get some good seats*

There hasn't been a fight this good since GROSS vs. the Fellowship. Now, where is that MWC popcorn of mine? I know I brought it...

Someone posted something a long while back about how the photon mines mod improved the AI's performance by making it defend its planets properly. Have any of you tried this?

This got me thinking about whether it would be possible to cover up other deficiencies in AI performance through mods. Unfortunately we're pretty limited in what we can do with those mods so I didn't have many bright ideas, but I was wondering if anyone else might be more clever than I was.

One idea (not originally mine) would be to lower the maintenance and/or improve the performance of many social improvements so that the AI doesn't wreck its economy when it builds them all. I vaguely recall some strat forum post regarding this ages ago but I can't find it... anyone remember anything about this? That would really change the game and would be good for variety if nothing else.

Another idea might be to add some extra benefits to the military techs--like research Overlords and get a +10 influence bonus or some nice social improvement or something. This might help with the AI's tendency to single-mindedly pursue military techs. I don't think this is such a great idea since it's basically rewarding the AI's stupid behavior but I'm throwing it out there in the hope that it will inspire someone.

hi ringers - just droppin' in



best wishes to the missus, theoden

Interesting ideas, vincible.

Will be trying out mods once they fix the bugs in the latest updates.

~SDC~

Good morning all! Thanks for the well wishes for the wife. She's really, really sore and just a bit on the cranky side. Ah, the joys of marriage! LOL

Decided to play a Huge/Uncommon/Painful. Yes, Painful! I don't have a lot of time to play right now, so I just want to have a little fun. With so little time on my PC, I don't feel the pull of the Pool of Radiance for now.

It's supposed to snow/sleet here tonight and tomorrow. It's certainly a little bit early for that kind of action around here...looks like it might be a hard winter.

I've still not tried any mods. But I think vincible's got something there. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has any success on that.

It snowed here yesterday

I need to continue my story.. but I need to know the name of an elf (or someone who understands Ancient elvish) so that I can include them in my story.. Also i'm still waiting for others to input into my story..

(also I'd like to earge all fellow ring Wrathes to get stuck in and start playing more games.. I'm currently busy playing another gigantic masso)

Keep your eyes open for another interesting read from Smeagol..

I for one will probably begin playing again when work eases off a bit. (Hopefully tomorrow!)

Matthew Downie is an elf.

Smealgol O

I'm back playing. Hopefully we can get the engines refired pretty quickly. I'm really not satisfied with 1.12, though and really looking forward to some fixes.

Looking forward to the next story!

No, it's pronounced 'Downie'!

Tonight, I'm going to try a game with points mainly in research, since throughout the game, I typically spend far more money on research than on anything else. Someone posted a while ago saying that they did a test which indicated that your starting research bonus is free production--if that's true, I think a research/diplo combination will be quite strong!

Welcome to the Fellowship, John!

Singapore has a 2 1/2 years mandatory military service for all male citizens. I'm a Lieutenant in an Air Defense Battalion, operating the Mistral surface-to-air missile.

Good to see that you are active in the forums already. Beyond strategy discussions, we are also committed to contributing to the forum discussions and the game.

What other TBS/RTS games were you playing before you picked up Galciv 2 weeks ago?

I'm currently playing Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic while waiting for the next Galciv patch. Was thinking about playing it multiplayer but saw that there aren't many players in my time-zone. In addition, I read that the best players play maps which they have perfectly memorised - I mean how interesting is that?

Welcome, John!

Just submitted my little score for the cause. I think the Fellowship is going to really get back once the update comes out.

How many of you really weren't happy with 1.12? Lots of bugs in my opinion.

Well, it's snowing like crazy here and I'm exhausted, so I'll talk to you all tomorrow morning (about 8 hours from now!)

Welcome to the Fellowship!


Theoden, I haven't played enough 1.12 to really have an opinion. The UP thing is annoying though.

I'm halfway through my second game on 1.12. The research pick is really working nicely! Almost all of it is free production--I wasn't in the mood to test rigorously but it's at least 2/3. But it requires more slider micromanagement early on for me--I'd memorized the costs of all the early game techs, and now those costs don't apply anymore.
[Message Edited]

vincible,

As far as i remember 2/3 of all research bonuses are free (i'm pretty confident that this is the case). Try maxing out 3 research ressources and see how little that affects your income.

Thanks Ray and Theoden for the warm welcome! I am still new to GalCiv so I am sure there will be some questions, in fact there are some that will follow. I will add that Theoden's responses to my inquiries on empire selection aided greatly in the recruitment, as well as my fondness for LoTR.

Ray, I served as an Infantry officer in the US Army. I started as an enlistee and made it to Officer Candidate School. In one of my courses I was proud to serve with an infantry lieutenant from your Army. A very fine officer, at that!

If you don't mind, some questions from my current game (the first I've actually playing through to completeion, the others having gross beginner's flaws).

First: Starbases. I am currently at war with a minor civ. They have a planet right on a sector border. I set up a starbase on the other side of the border. It is essentially planet border starbase (all very close) but the border runs between the planet and my starbase. I have enhanced the starbase with cultural improvements hoping to effect the planet but then I wondered (yes, after the expenditure ), have I wasted the money? Should I have put the starbase on the other side of the sector border. The base and planet are one ship icon apart but the border runs between... I have a large fleet of ships headed to take out the defenses and I have about 10 transports loaded and waiting one move away....

I noticed when I saved the game last night that it shows victory conditions and gives percentages. I have a 26% for military and 24% for cultural. The rest were at zero. I am assuming these are good clues as to where I should place my emphasis at this time?

I have another civ, the Yor, that I have a "very close" relationship with. Can this be pushed to an alliance of sorts and how?

Oh, as for other strategy games I play... mostly oldies. I also play Alpha Centauri, Civ 2 and 3, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, and MOO3 (yes, I am one of the ones who likes it). Right now, it is GalCiv though. I find it to be incredibly satisfying. I also play my first fascination with computer games...the roguelike. I usually play Angband and a couple of its variants (these I can sneak a little in at work ). I enjoy RPG's too but like the ones that allow more freedom of choice rather than a narrow storyline to follow.

John