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Reply to Pink Blob of Doom in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I played a Thalian campaign recently too. I took a different tack though. The third planet I colonized had a Precursor Library. I built that one kick-butt building on it and suddenly I had 16x8=128 research on one square. I quickly researched the techs for the technology capital and built that too. I then stopped my colonization rush entirely (ended up with 7 planets in the initial rush a large - common game), and researched a ton of techs. Then I colonized a total of 6 more planets, mostl

Reply to TA, the tech tree and the new races. in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Don't forget that TA is coming with tools to make it relatively easy to heavily modify the game. So anything you don't like you can change any time you like. They idea is to allow the community to decide the future of the game until, and even after, GC3.

Reply to Ship Naming Strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I am a pure Hydran's man myself. If I got my first three turns timing right (which I used to do about 70% of the time against the people I played) then my opponents biggest ship was eating so many fusion blasts at range 0 or 1 on a single shield that half of them would surrender then and there. Especially if the year was late enough for me to have fusion fighters with Phaser G's as well. If my timing was off, THEN it was an even battle. In other words, I won at least 85% of the time....

Reply to Ship Naming Strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Duh, (meaning both the poster a couple above, and an exclamation) I totally forgot about the Dreadnaught class from SFB until I saw this: (MIDN) Huge hulls I think I might just replace my BB designator with DN, and make my BC's BB's instead. To make this work I will probably have to redo half my list... thanks a lot!

Reply to Earth Planet Approval Always Low in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I generally try to have a population cap of 16b on PQ12 and above planets (including 9's that will be 12's with all three terraforming techs), and a cap of 10b to 12b on PQ11 and below planets. Morale is easily controlled with a 16b cap, and with a few econ boosts on the bigger planets I can easily make plenty of money without needing to use morale buildings at all.

Reply to Ship Naming Strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Interesting responses, some people have some neat ideas. I just want to point out that my system is all on a spreadsheet that fits on one page when printed. So I just have that sitting next to my keyboard and if I can't recall what something should be named I can look it up very quickly. So it is actually quite easy for me to use my system, takes no time at all.

Ship Naming Strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I thought I would reveal my ship naming strategy to everyone since I have spent a lot of time on it, and I thought I would also ask what system other people use. The name of all my ships follows the following basic format: Race-Designation-Total Weapon Strength - Total Defense Strength - Speed Here is a quick sample: Ter-DDK-20-4-9 Unarmed ships (colonies, constructors, etc.) do not include weapon and defense strengths though, so a colony would be: Ter-CNY-5 I sometimes

Reply to Question to hard core players in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Mumblefratz, just to confirm, are you still playing DL-only games? Yep. However once I get my TA disk I'll finally have the latest DA version without being forced to use SDC which I refuse to do. [/quote] I certainly don't want to get into an off-topic debate over this, but let me just say that I consider SDC to be the greatest game distribution system ever. I can understand other points of view,

Reply to influence + approval theory in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

If you want reasonable morale on a planet you don't want to produce more than about 20 megatons of food. I personally never build more than two farms (or one on a +100% tile) on any planet, because otherwise the population will never have high morale no matter what I do. This is just how the game works, so its better to learn to work with it than to try and find a way to work around it.

Reply to sorry but the game story has it wrong about Stargate's. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

FTL communication has already been shown to be possible (via quantum entanglement), though the technology to make it practical is a long way off. Read the book Ender's Game (referred to there as "ansible"), for an example of the potential practical application of this phenomenon. If FTL communication is possible, then why not FTL travel? It may be very hard, and beyond our current understanding, but quantum physics clearly show FTL happens all the time, it should just be a matter of fi

Reply to I think i'm doomed in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Sounds like an entirely awesome mod, I would love to give it a try.

Reply to YOR Super Ability has to change in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

If I was going to suggest any change for the Yor ability it would be to make the speed the square root of the ships normal speed with a minimum of 2. Then the fastest you could go would probably be 10 (normal speed = 100) or so. Most late game ships would move around 5 to 8, depending on the players playing style. The nice thing about this is that it would be very easy to calculate the remaining speed available when entering or leaving the interdiction zone.

Reply to DA Combat System in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think this entirely discourages multiple weapon types, it just defines the circumstance in which multiple weapons types make the most sense... Take this situation for instance: Ship A 1xMissle (4dmg) 1xBallistic (4dmg) 1xBeam (4dmg) 6 PD, 20 HP Ship B 3xMissle (4dmg) 6 PD, 20 HP Ship A firing order: 0-4 ballistic vs. defense 0-2 = avg 1.2667 dmg. 0-4 beam vs. defense 0-2 = avg 1.2667 dmg. 0-4 missle vs. defense 0-6 = avg 0.6667 dmg total =

Reply to Economic collapse during wartime - why? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Another thing to keep in mind during times of war that you may not notice nearly as much in peace is that if you discover a new planetary improvement technology (research, economic, manufacturing, or farming upgrade) then any planet with those tiles that is not currently producing a social or military project goes from being a boon to your cash resources to being a drain on your cash resources. Fortunately this is easily managed by avoiding such upgrades during time of war. Focus inste

Reply to One Starport Challenge.... (or strategy?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I played around with this in a few test games last night. I think this method of play is a "challenge" on Gigantic and Huge with virtually any AI level, and on Large maps it is also a "challenge" with AI's of "painful" and above. However, below that in AI/size I think it is more of a strategy than a challenge. Here are the key points to the strategy: Race choices: Thalans are an excellent choice for the large starting planet and miniturization bonus. However, any race

Reply to One Starport Challenge.... (or strategy?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I am doing it again right now on a huge map, 7 "painful" foes. The biggest issue I am running into is the distances I have to cover. I started in the middle of the lower right corner sector with the Drengin's about 5 sectors away diagonally. So I was able to "arc" out with my colonies about 3 sectors before I hit the Drengins who were coming my way. Then I had to start working the edges until I hit more races. Because of the distances involved and the positioning of the races I wasn

Reply to One Starport Challenge.... (or strategy?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Oops, accidentally hit submit... Anyway, carrying on... I built only a single factory on most planets, the only exception being a planet that had a good manufacturing bonus, there I built lots of manufacturing and then I built all my trade goods on that planet. There was no need for trading because by the time it would pay off I was already making hundreds of bc per turn. The early strategy of lowering taxes to raise morale to 100% hurt in the short run because the rap

One Starport Challenge.... (or strategy?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

So yesterday I decided to set myself a challenge for my evening game: I would not build any starports, and I would immediately destroy any starport I captured from an enemy. Therefore my only starport would be the one I started with on my home planet. I decided to attempt this challenge on a large match, since on anything smaller it would be far less of a "challenge" because of the shorter distances involved, and anything larger would take too long to get done in one night

Reply to Starbase Strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

The reason I'm thinking fleets, is to pop a sizeable (and slightly armored) starbase in one turn, to prevent the "enemy" to snipe my constructors or my base before it can do anything But the idea for rally points is a good idea when operating in my own space indeed. You only would need to do fleets if you were already at war, or you felt you we

Reply to Things I don't understand in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Some advice: BC's are the only real resource in the game and drive your economy. Therefore I suggest Economics as the preferred Racial and Political bonus. It adds exactly the percentage shown to your tax income and therefore frees up spaces on your planet for other buildings. Research is an excellent secondary choice because although it only provides half the bonus it says it provides, the bonus costs NO BC at all. Don't get Military or

Reply to Race Bonuses - Economic, Research, and Morale > Social and Military? in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

Sorry for the double post, I watched the forum for 10 minutes and didn't see my last one, and now that I post this one suddenly I can see both.

Race Bonuses - Economic, Research, and Morale > Social and Military? in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

I created a custom race and loaded up a series of test games with it. In each case I made sure the race's bonuses were only from 1 of each of the 4 categories, Research, Economic, Social, and Military (as well as once with no bonuses). I then modified my taxes and spending to try to isolate the effect of each bonus. This is what I found: Bonuses to Military and Social production were applied to colony production exactly as given, +50% = +

Racial/Political Bonus Observation - Economic, Research, and Morale, > Social and Military? in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

I created a custom race and loaded up a series of test games with it. In each case I made sure the race's bonuses were only from 1 of each of the 4 categories, Research, Economic, Social, and Military (as well as once with no bonuses). I then modified my taxes and spending to try to isolate the effect of each bonus. This is what I found: Bonuses to Military and Social production were applied to colony production exactly as given, +50% = +

Reply to DRM / Starforce vs. Frequent Updates as a means of Copy Protection in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There were a lot of little bugs in the game that weren't immediately obvious during the first week the game was out. The game played fine, and you could win, but in reality some of the racial and governmental bonuses weren't working right, and so it was harder than it should have been. So now anyone who has a version that was hacked from the first week is getting a semi-hampered game, and there are probably further issues they won't fix rig

Reply to Skipped Oregon? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I bought mine online. Was quick and easy and I was playing in about 45 minutes.