Tertullian

Reply to Isn't seeing who is where on the glatic map a cheat? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Anything not covered by the fog of war will show up correctly on the minimap. The fog of war only allows you to see stars and (with the Stellar Cartography tech) planets.

Reply to Isn't seeing who is where on the glatic map a cheat? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Also, in the game setup, you can select "blind exploration" which will hide the location and influence areas of other civs until you have explored that area of the galaxy. I like to play it this way to make it a bit harder on myself, not knowing who is where and how fast they are expanding compared to me.

Reply to Ship designs from old games in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The brute force way to "save" your ship designs for an old (but still being played) game without having them show up in your new game is to move the "old" ship design files from the ships folder under MyDocuments, and when you want to play this "old" game, move them back. There is no in-game way to do this except by "obsoleting" them when they show up in your current game, which as you said you already know about.

Reply to Are there really four victory conditions? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You can also disable some of the victory conditions on the setup screen when starting a new game.

Reply to Planetary bonus question in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Not sure exactly what you are asking here, but your analysis of the interrelationships between morale, taxes, population, and morale buildings shows that you do understand how these play together. And that is one of the beauties of this game, you need to account for a lot of factors in managing your empire. And yes, sometimes you will find a 100% or 300% farm bonus tile on a lower PQ world that you do not dare build a farm on or your population will explode to a point where your morale

Reply to Dark Messiah- Best Game Ever?? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I agree with The Sabre--the M&M series has been mired in its own pit of mediocrity. HOMM 5 killed any further interest I have in the series.

Reply to Why is it so hard to find in-depth strategy advice? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

There are a few good threads that deal with initial game strategies. However, there are many strategies that will work and so it is hard to pin down a single "cookie-cutter" approach. Further, as you go higher in difficulty levels, a strategy that works at one level may utterly fail at the next more difficult level.

Reply to Morale population bonuses in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

In an effort at precision and to foster good use of the English language, the terms "moral" and "morality" refer to the concepts of good and evil (and neutral). The term "morale", frequently incorrectly written as "moral" in these forums refers to the level of happiness/approval. And to confuse matters again, your your choice of moral selection can affect your morale!

Reply to why use lower tax in place of high tax when approval is at maximum? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

random50 claims the ultimate goal is to maximize *production*. I respectfully disagree. The ultimate goal is to enjoy the game!!! For some, this means getting the highest Metaverse scores, for others to successfully run an empire according to your whims and passions of the moment. I understand and agree though with what you mean, random50. That is one of the great beauties of this game--each person can obtain gratification and satisfaction according to their own goals.

Reply to AI scripts in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Most game developers will focus their effort on the glitzy aspects--cool graphics and an interesting rule-set. This leaves them with little left over to design a worthy AI. And so they end up taking the short cut of loading up the AI with advantages the human player doesn't have (i.e., "cheating"). Consider the chess example--how long did it take for the best minds in computer science to program a computer to beat a grand master? You really need to hire a strategist and game theory expe

Reply to why use lower tax in place of high tax when approval is at maximum? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I would say that the lower tax rate, for the same number of morale improvements will support a larger population. This may be of advantage to increase either your influence and trade income, or allow you to build larger invasion fleets for an initial assault on an enemy. It seems to be a matter of preference based on the player's style. The geeks among us could better quantify the income difference between 80% tax with lower population versus 40% tax with higher population. My

Reply to Immediate CTD when starting Campaign and more... in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

First, make sure your video drivers are up to date (this is a typical problem with getting CTDs when playing GalCiv2 which relies on the most advanced features of video drivers). Then if the problem persists, post your debug.err which is located in the GalCiv2 folder where the game files are stored (typically under C:/Program Files/StarDock/TotalGaming)

Reply to Earning BIG CREDITS!!! in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Sorry but I think you have the tail wagging the dog. You don't "earn extra credits" by not building anything on your tiles. The credits were earned through taxes or trade. The advantage is that you are not SPENDING the credits you have earned, and thus get to keep more money per turn. Same with research. Manufacturing buildings and research buildings do not make money.

Reply to Please fix. in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I see no problem with the wording. Perhaps the initial motion from the UP administrators was for an additional 2 trade routes (note particularly the terminology "considering"), but when the motion went to the floor, there were amendments to make this either 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 added routes. After appropriate discussion and voting, the body came to the majority decision on a particular number of trade routes.

Reply to Ships, Starbases and the Population in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

The planetary population represents the number of taxpaying citizens. Those assigned to ships and starbases presumably have a home planet and thus could be considered to be taxpaying citizens of that planet.

Reply to GRR planetary invasion help please!!!! (noob) in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Absolutely. Any ships in orbit about a planet, even unarmed ships need to be killed before an invasion can take place. That is how the devs designed the game, so it is not a bug.

Reply to ECONOMIC Bonus Tiles & some extra others in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

"Wheh, those bonus's would be more like cheats, 700% influence, approval, and economic bonus's, are simply unneccesary, the game would be waaaaaaaay to easy with those kind of tiles." ...unless your adversaries hold these planets and eat you for lunch!

Reply to Question in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

If you want to keep morale up, then keep planet population in check by limiting the number of farms you build. You need to balance your farms (i.e., max population limit) with your morale boosting buildings. If you get out of whack with that, morale will plummet like a hawk onto a mouse. The third leg to the equation is your tax rate. To raise morale empire-wide, lower tax rates. But then that can wreak havoc to your economy if it was designed to run on the higher tax base. Morale resou

Reply to this may be considered whining but in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

You can look on your economy screen (the one you set your tax/spending sliders) and see exactly how much bc you are spending on ship maintenance. The shipyard screen (where you go to design new ship classes) also tells you for each ship class what the bc/turn maintenance cost is on a per ship basis. As said before...ship maintenance alone is unlikely to cause your economy to tank like you indicate. KleinBottle23 has a point...if you upgrade all of your ships to a new class at

Reply to this may be considered whining but in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The problem may be that by going from building no ships to building ships, you have added military production costs that did not exist when ships were not being built. Going from no shipbuilding to all of your starports building ships can have a big impact on the economy. As was said, it cannot be ship maintenance costs--these are (relatively) tiny. Keep building up your economy!! That way you can afford to build fleets when needed.

Reply to Question about Influence and Planets in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Some races have a loyalty bonus that make them harder to flip over to your side. Apart from that, about all you can say is that it is a random chance with the probability of flipping on a turn increasing as the influence ratio increases. From what I've seen ratios above 10x cause planets to flip rather quickly (within 10-15 turns).

Reply to Xeno Entertainment vs. Stock Exchanges in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

In the early and mid-game, before you have researched stock exchanges the pure morale buildings can be advantageous. However once you research stock exchanges, the wise person would build over his pure morale buildings with stock exchanges.

Reply to I know (have read) that AI doesn't cheat but... in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The 11 attack rating with only 6 Laser V's does point to a combination of racial ability plus one or more military resources. I've played games where I've had 5 Laser V's plus military resources and got an 11 attack rating. Regarding the OPs lack of success on his own attacks, there is insufficient information--what were your ship attack ratings? Did the opponents have shields on their ships and what were their defense ratings? You probably know this, but simply researching defenses doe

Reply to Can you have too many Econmic mines? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Galactic Citizen: "Hey, look at our government has this huge surplus but they are still taxing me at 50% of my income! What greedy leaders we have. Well, I'll just start cheating on my taxes and give the government less money! The government does not need the money as much as I do." I think that would be a pretty typical reaction...hence an economic penalty when you keep running huge surpluses (which can normally only be had through high tax rates).

Reply to Planetary Invasion imbalances in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

As people have said, GC2 uses a simplified model that cannot take in all real-world factors. Having said that, for invasions one would presume that the invading fleet consists of trained soldiers--not Wal-Mart greeters. In my mind, when I load transports up with soldiers, I am conscripting people from the planet, training them up as soldiers and then loading them on transports. Then when they arrive on the planet to be invaded what do they encounter? Some soldiers, but a lot of