RemingtonRyder

Reply to Dungeons - Dungeon Keeper clone in development in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

It won't really be the same unless a certain voice actor is on board.

Reply to Favored Political Party? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Technologists. Winning a war is easy if you consistently outclass your opponent's ships. While they're still tootling about with Stingers or Pule Cannons on their fighters, you're already building capital ships fitted out with plasmas or phasors. Of course this assumes that you build an economy to support lots of research and the production of capital ships.

Reply to Michigan and Video Game Developers in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I would love to work in game development. Unfortunately with the lack of enthusiasm for recruiting in the UK (they seem to prefer to squeeze more and more out of the people they already have) chances of me getting onto the job ladder at all aren't very good. If it wasn't for me spending a few days a week working in the stock room of a charity shop, I'd have nothing much on my resume at all. :P There's nothing stopping me from getting the hang of the programming languages,

Reply to Evening the odds... in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

As far as resources being gobbled up goes, you could really do with having some cheap constructors built during the colony rush. Your survey ship (and scouts if you build any of those) often uncover resources and if you're paying attention you can easily beat an AI constructor to them. However, even if the AI does beat you to them, you can be pretty sure they will get into a war at some point and if it goes badly for them all their bases will go poof. Have a few constructo

Reply to Would you trade HD Graphics for Gameplay? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I suppose it depends whether the cost of producing HD graphics can come down at all. One component of the cost is whomever is getting paid to make them, the other is the computing time needed to render them. While the salaries of graphics designers may not change particularly quickly, the cost of computing time can definitely get lower as more processing power becomes available for the same or less power consumption. This then means that your average designer isn't spendin

Reply to Speed Kills, I need it in every game! in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

You can win without a speed advantage. As far as colony rushing goes, sure a +2 speed advantage out of the gate is useful, but it's slightly more important to build cheap colony ships and lots of them. You should aim to research Interstellar Construction and get access to the Small ship sizes as soon as possible. This will save a small amount on the construction of each colony ship. You can also research up to Impulse Drive and net yourself a +1 free speed boost that w

Reply to Would you trade HD Graphics for Gameplay? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote quoting="post"]It seems to me that game development might have crossed a line here. FFXIII is regarded fairly poorly, and some of the main criticisms leveled against it is the pathetically linear and non-interactive nature of the game - the removal of illusion of freedom offered by previous titles in the series. Essentially, the removal of towns, optional quests, NPCs and the over-world hurt the game, and they were removed because to create them at the level of vi

Reply to Small GalCiv II updates? in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I think you can create teams of civs, just not through the start screen. It's something which you could do as a scenario, if you fire up the tools supplied with TotA, you'll find out quick enough. Obviously for Metaverse games you can't start out with AI civs at war with each other.

Reply to What is your favorite invasion tactic? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Tend to use Tidal Disruption a lot since I play with Tech Trading off (hence, most sturctures are gonna be destroyed anyway, so why not reduce the enemy's advantage factor?) or when I really don't care about keeping a planet I will happily use Mass Drivers and then evac the survivors before destroying the colony. Before using Mass Drivers at all it isn't a bad idea to get High level intel so you can view planets and figure out what the PQ would be if all possible terraforming was done

Reply to Why the hell are the Thalans so powerful? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I routinely turn Surrender off when launching a game, if it isn't already off. Obviously this means that my enemies can't surrender to each other and create a much bigger combined threat, but on the other hand they don't make me more powerful in the blink of an eye either.

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I do think that the AI should consider the fact that by the time they're finished warring with one civ, they may be vulnerable to attack by another, that they may very well get stabbed in the back by their so-called allies. Building a decent military should prevent an immediate war declaration, I have no argument with that - but competing for the number one spot in military terms should generate animosity.

Reply to Why the hell are the Thalans so powerful? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, I agree, sometimes they research really well, for example improving logistics so that they can get their fleets big enough to take on the human. If they get left to last they can easily master one of the weapon trees and one of the defence trees (to match your choice). But sometimes they research all sorts of things that they don't need, like Warp Drive when they desperately need to cram weapons technology. It's not going to matter how fast their ships can move if the

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Ack! Double post.

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

What I meant was, just building a stopgap military force shouldn't give a + to relations for Military Strength, although it could remove a - if the AI doesn't have anything better. You would need to build advanced fighters and capital ships to get a + to diplomatic relations. Similarly if a player's ships never actually see any use, or the player's tactical prowess is poor, they should get a - to relations after a while. Obviously though if an AI is to succeed in combat,

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There is a difference right now between simply seeing the outcome on the galaxy map (they go boom or you go boom) and examining the outcome more closely on the battle screen, even if it's just to skip straight to the report. You can see which ships were destroyed, and how long it took for their defences (if they had any) to fail. You can assess whether the design gives you value and/or durability for bc, or simply crams lots of firepower into the first round, meaning you need to

Reply to GalCiv III tactical battling in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I wouldn't count the AI out of being able to fight well in tactical combat. Look at Gears of War 2 for example, you have AIs who are nasty enough to be able to frag tag an unwary human player. The problem with tactical combat is that it isn't necessarily going to be as efficient as letting ships decide for themselves what to fire at, concentrating all their attacks on one target, and then moving on to the next when that's been obliterated. That is, unless you add mechanics

Reply to Why the hell are the Thalans so powerful? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I was fighting against the Zylons, a custom race with the Yor tech tree. They were the leading galactic power and I wasn't conquering them very quickly because they had better weapons and I had gone for a starbase strategy and well, you know how long it takes to get enough constructors in one place for the attack bonuses. So then the Yor notices that the Zylon military power is beginning to crumble from all the suicide sorties and jumps right in there with a backstab, despite th

Reply to Galactic Civilizations: The case for no multiplayer in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It's fun so long as one person isn't on the seat for two hours at the later stages. Either you scale down the size of the arena, or you need to decrease the amount of player input required. For example rather than having a huge empire to direct every turn, you could play in one part of it at a time, and the rest would be handled by automation. The automated sections of your empire would supply battleships to the controlled section of your empire as needed,

Reply to Fleet battle - a DRAW! in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

Draws result when both sides have fired a large number of times without either being victorious. Consequently it goes into sudden death with, as you can see above, each ship firing for much more damage than usual until one side is completely eliminated. At least, I think that's what is going on there.

Reply to Scratch Civ V off my buy list. in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Well I'm not buying Civ V if it means I have to add another digital distribution program to my PC. I can only just about tolerate Impulse and its refusal to play ball with a limited user account (Windows XP). I keep it around so that if something goes wrong with my Stardock software, I can re-download and re-install it without any hassle. I do not want three different programs for updating and downloading different games and if that means I have to go to retail and p

Reply to Small GalCiv II updates? in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

It would only be trouble if there was an inadequate visual aid to help the human understand what's going on and fine-tune things as needed. So for example, if there's a highlight painted on the main galactic map to show you the worlds which match the requirements for a production queue, you should be able to CTRL+click a world to add or remove it manually. Mousing over a highlighted world should give you a brief readout of why that world is producing that ship. The compu

Reply to Small GalCiv II updates? in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Oh, I totally agree. But it would make more sense (assuming that the constructors are going to a rally point) to have a galactic military production queue. That way, you further simplify things for the player by handing out build assignments automatically to the colonies which are closest to the rally point, if they're capable of building one of the required ships in the time it takes the most productive planet to build say, half of what's in the queue. If they ca

Reply to I wish there was a way to turn off espionage in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The easiest way to deal with spies is to build Counter Espionage Centres. Especially on planets which have bonus tiles in use, but also on any planet that has a significant number of economic buildings. It won't stop spies completely unless all your planets have them, but the spies will no longer be able to debilitate your economy.

Reply to Galactic Civilizations: The case for no multiplayer in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

A game doesn't need multiplayer for you to tell your buddies to go check it out. Unless you're the kind of person who turns off their phone and locks themselves in their bedroom so nobody will know that you're playing Final Fantasy XIII. Great single-player experience, definitely something to shout about. GalCiv 2 rocks so much without multiplayer that there's this like community of people who talk about it constantly. No really, I'm not making this up. ;) <a

Reply to Is a new patch being worked on? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I wouldn't say it was wishful thinking, there have been hints about getting the AI to use the full capabilities of a multi-core to do analysis. That said, any analysis the AI does as part of making the next move is always going to be an imitation of what human strategists do instinctively. How does an AI tell when a player has made a mistake that creates an opportunity, rather than a ploy which will result in certain defeat? Or in other words, can you make it think '