Question for the developers: Will wasted production (from overflow on the last turn of a project, or from not working on anything at all in the case of social production) be stopped and somehow refunded in the xpac?

I really want to like this game, but that's a big complaint of mine about it. If it's going to be addressed in Altarian Prophecy, I would definitely pre-order.

~SDC~

Why are so many people hung up on that little item?? Sure it would be a nice little thing to have, but lots of folks for some reason seem to consider the issue to be a major shortcoming. I don't get it.

It comes from my desire to play the game "optimally"; if you're okay with knowing money that could be better spent is instead vanishing, then I see why you don't have a problem with it. Currently, you have to micromanage if you don't want to waste money, which isn't fun. However, for me, not microing and thereby knowing money is going down the drain isn't fun for me either, so it's lose-lose for my enjoyment of the game. I also think it's a little odd to punish people for not building any social improvements on a planet.

Civ3 has the same problem, but at Civ3's workforce system at least allows you to customize each city, through tile placement, in order to minimize waste of production. With global sliders, GalCiv does not allow any real solution to the problem even on the player's part.

~SDC~

So if theres not enough intrest you will cancel it for the general users? i can understand that, but ONLY allowing Drengin.net users to have the expansion sounds pretty poor to me, if thats the case you can forget the whole idea for a lot of users, i dont want all the other stuff that Drengin.net offers, and i dont see why i should subscribe to something i dont want for the sake of a expansion pack. Then what happens to the general users who dont have the expansion? discontinue support unless they subscribe to Drengin.net?
Very capitalist, you can forget my pennies, im not going to bother to continue to learn the game anymore, this comes on the day i posted what was to be the first of many scores on the metaverse, i can see from your cyberpoll what the result will be, theres just no point, im not subscibing to Drengin.net for a percentage of the expansion that was promised, that just compounds the insult. Sorry i thought Stardock was the 'mutts nutz' as developers go, seems i was wrong after all.

My 50ps worth.

Darkspire, this has already been answered in the thread My concern of a pay for expansion pack...

join the evil empire. your brothers await you!! http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=503

with your morality you would fit right in
~SDC~
[Message Edited]

Just so we're clear:

The expansion pack will NOT be available at stores. Only through GalCiv.com

Also:

No, "wasted" production won't be refunded on planets. It's not a feature we ever planned nor discussed having.

Similarly, if your local manufacturing plant stops making widgets for a few days, the costs don't significantly go down because you can't just fire everyone and rehire them the next day.

 

[Message Edited]

hi frogboy. thanks for a great update!
hopefully after the few problems get ironed out,the game will be awesome

any news on the minor races expanding too quickly prob?

~SDC~

Thats what you said about GalCiv, and i bought that from GAME, and with the amount of games released these days with original + expansion in the box it might be worth thinking about.

Frogboy:
When the expansion info was first put on the newspage it was said if enough intrest was generated etc, so then you replace the expansion cyberpoll with the stellar frontier and a while later on the newspage it is announced that the pack will be released febuary, no mention of pre-orders or anythng like that so i was under the impression that it all had the go-ahead, i would be putting in a pre-order at the end of next week when i get paid, i know one order dont count as much but your saying the deadline is the end of November, no mention of this on the news post either, ive never ever taken the time or trouble to pre order ANY game , let alone an expansion and by international money order, i love GalCiv , ive been playing 4X games since the early eighties , and this is easily the best ive seen , thats why im so up in arms, i really was looking forward to all the new bits and pieces, i have no use for any of the other bits Drengin.net offers, and a 'watered' down expansion pack just isnt a viable option, i wouldnt really use the editors, ive heard that the metaverse wont accept scores from it, i was more looking forward to the new races and diversity offered on the tech tree for moral status etc, and they are the pieces that are probably going to be cut.

Sorry for the long post, im not a happy camper :notsure:

Just to lighten things up

http://www.columbia.edu/~sjt59/mr_nice.swf

Anyone got any more of these silly links??
[Message Edited]

funny LOL LOL

~SDC~

Brad, you should make this clearer than it is now, in a thread whose title is more interesting than this one (it's really becuase I saw Frogboy was the author that I read it). I think most people interested in the expansion pack aren't aware of anything said here because the title is bad. An 'important' or somesuch would help the thread visibility IMHO. (of course I may be totally wrong)

It wont be available at stores?

Oh well I guess I wont be buying the expansion pack then.
And i can bet a lot of Gal Civ fans will feel the same too - and just when I was slagging off Firaxis on Civfanatics.com for their rampant and blatant profiteering and corporatism and congratulating Stardock for its way of doing things, you turn around and prove to me you are just as bad as Sid Meier.

Im highly dissapointed and retract all of my earlier comments about Stardock being a great company that should show the others how its done - apparently you are exactly the same as the others.

angelscotboi ,

I'm sorry but i don't quite see why you are dissapointed with Stardock because it wont be available at stores. Is that because you feel alot of people will have a hard time downloading it or ?

Indeed. That's a truly mystifying criticism. I can only imagine what you would say if they did make it available through stores but then raised the price because of the added costs (including, as Brad has pointed out, an increased difficulty in getting paid!).

angelscotboi, ask Strategy First not Stardock, if you want the game to be distributed in stores. Of course it will cost them, but they are not a publisher, they are developpers, and they just won't get paid if they put the game in stores.

Strategy First passed on publishing/distributing the expansion pack.

It is not that Stardock wouldn't want to see the expansion pack in the stores, it's that we have no way to do so realistically.

We nned a store owner that sales computer games to get in touch with Stardock, does anyone know such a person?

Or a volunteer network - if a dozen galcivvers held a copy for distribution in their countries - particularly if it is serialised - it could be done....

Alex


~SDC~

To be honest, I think the Expansion is quite interesting but the problem is that I don't have a creditcard and I don't have cheques. So basically I can't pre-order the game. And don't think I'm going to call from Belgium to order it.

If I could wire some money to some account I could order it. And would probably do that but not yet. I would wait until I know it has released.

I am in the process of upgrading to drengin.net to kill multiple birds with one stone, but getting the expansion pack as part of the deal is a BIG reason for upgrading. Does this count like a pre-order?

Bill

~SDC~

Almost forgot about this thread. I upgraded to Drengin.net two days ago, so that is one more toward the limit.

i preorderd the cd.......but the shippin' cost nearly killed me. (I'd love to join drengin.net but i az only got a 33.6k modem and the thought of all the downloading makes me funny in da head)

anyway, hope it helps!

There are other publishing companies out there you know - im sure you would find SOMEONE willing to distribute a doubtless highly popular expansion pack for a highly popular game.
And if i was willing to pay 39 pounds for the Play The World Expansion for Civ 3 - massively overpriced for an expansion pack - I would be willing to go up to that for the Gal Civ expansion, especially since it features so many additions and changes it isnt even funny.

Hey, Frogboy, when might the first beta of PM show up? I'm seriously jonesing to give it a spin (alpha, beta, whatever...)! That ancient copy of President Elect just doesn't cut it anymore. LOL