Ostsol

Reply to minor races in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

That option was you you to surrender to them. No, I know about the option on my side of the diplomacy screen, but I've also seen it on their side.

Reply to minor races in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I'm pretty sure that you can ally with them in the same manner as you can ally with major civs. When your relations are "close" you can ask them to ally with you. With such relations it may also be possible to ask them to surrender to you. I've had that option before, but never decided to use it.

Reply to Another Use for Colony Ships? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You could, but except for the purpose of relieving population pressure, there's not much point. Unlike many other games in the genre, GalCiv2 has a flat population growth rate, affected only by morale.

Reply to Research centers? in Research GalCiv2 Forums

I'm no expert, but here's how I understand it: Research centres produce research points, where are automatically spent on whatever research you are doing. The more labs you have, the more research points you can potentially produce. It does cost money to use those research points, though, so the more money you have allocated to research, the closer to your maximum research potential you will be. It's the same with factories, too

Reply to Need help with economic strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Another try! This time I was able to manage my economy such that I never had to buy a colony ship. I did end up dropping my industry slider for a while toward the end of the initial colony development phase, though the lowest it got was around 35, I think. I also tried setting a couple planets aside for economic support . Both planets were far enough back in my territory that it would take about four or five turns for them to reinforce my

Reply to Over population in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Has anyone ever turned an entire planet into a population-farm to simply produce a heck of alot of tax revenue? Basically just max out the population capacity with food production and entertainment centres to keep them happy. Perhaps put the economic capital there, too.

Reply to organic ships in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It might be difficult to do really well, such that you don't end up with many really obvious connections. The best way I can think of would be for the ship-design part to define a skeleton and for the game to procedurally generate a skin around it to give it a smoother, blended look.

Reply to Need help with economic strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Heheh. . . I certainly did get pretty lucky in my colonies. The map in general seemed to have much more habitable worlds than I usually see, with my settings -- at least for the Drengin and me.

Reply to Event Movies Stutter in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

It used to happen to me, too. I did a few things, but don't know what ultimately fixed the problem. I turned off anti-aliasing, updated my video drivers, and increased the size of my swap file. Now my swap file starts at 1.5 GB instead of 768 MB and maxes out at 2 GB instead of 1.5 GB. The game generally caused my swap file to peak at 1.1 to 1.2 GB anyway, so I figured that I might as well have it set to above that by default.

Reply to Need help with economic strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Based on what I've read in other threads, the the social projects slider is very important. Any money allocated to social projects when none are being built is apparently wasted. As such, when you're really needing to ramp up the war machine, dumping the social projects slider down to nil may really help research and ship production. Something that rea

Reply to Spying in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

and helps to avoid random events that can instantly cause war between you and them. Ah. . . like those political assassinations. Hasn't happened to me, yet, but I've seen it happen between AIs.

Reply to I need some Rationalization.. in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The starlanes made the 3d effect in Ascendency primarily cosmetic. Starlanes also make AI easier to program, since it allows one to easily defend choke-points. (Not that the AI in Ascendency was particularily good. . .) A fully 3D galaxy would be cool, but it might also complicate gameplay to the point where the AI's advantage is immense. Navigation would be somewhat more complex and a mini-map would be very difficult to implement in a us

Reply to Big Fleets ! Read in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The Power Duel scenario allows for this. I don't know if it works in larger, multiple-opponent games, though. . . Link

Reply to Memory Issue in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Debug Message: Bit Depth: 16 bit. Debug Message: RGB in format 5:6:5, Masks reported as f800:7e0:1f Are you running your desktop in 16 bit colour? If so, try switching it to 24 bit (or 32) colour.

Reply to surrender in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've managed to get the option before, but I was on really good terms with that civ. I don't think I've managed to get it while I was winning a war. . .

Reply to Need help with economic strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I tried some of the things suggested, particularily managing the military/social/research slider, and the results were better. On my homeworld I concentrated entirely on production, almost entirely ignoring research. I dropped the research and military sliders to nil and completed building on my homeworld very quickly indeed. I ended up buying about three colony ships, which I probably could have avoided doing simply by shunting the budget bac

Need help with economic strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

When I first started playing, I didn't even touch the industry slider in the Domestic Policy dialogue. I left it at 50% and found that sufficient for beginner-level games. Of course, the AI is very limited at that level. With AIs set to Bright and the AI's less impeded, 50% simply didn't cut it, so I started setting the slider 100% right off the start. 100% obviously allows for a faster start, though it saps the treasury rather quickly

Reply to Ally question in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Technically they can, but that'll break the alliance. I'm pretty sure that they AI won't do that unless your relations with them really start to sour. As long you remain on good terms with each other there shouldn't be a problem.

Reply to The value of a good defense? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I must say that I found your post very annoying, even more so since it is a double post. No one is going to read through that massive list and I'm sure that it would be much more effective to post an analysis and conclusion rather than all that raw data.

What to do with poor planets? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Poor planets like Mars only have a few usable squares for buildings. What do you guys do with them? With Mars I've tended to build a single factory, a lab, some food production, then convert the factory to an entertainment centre. This way it produces some tax revenue and a bit of research. I'm not sure how useful this is, but it seems that its better than trying to put a starport there (unless there happens to be a square with a manufacturing b

Reply to Where are the pirates gone? in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I've had the random event a couple times. . . but they never seemed to do anything to me. I guess they showed up in other civilisations' territories and got smacked.

Reply to Major Memory Leaks in Bug Reports Stardock Forums

When I exited the game last night, I noticed Windows reporting that I was running out of virtual memory. Looking at the task manager, peak usage was at something like 1.2 GB.

Reply to 1.0X Preview in GalCiv II News Stardock Forums

Just a small question: wouldn't enabling v-sync work adequately as a framerate throttling measure?

Praise for Stardock! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've pretty much fallen away from the genre during the past five years or so. I got started back on my Commodore 64 with a GEOS game called Cluster Wars. It was pretty simple: planets had a set economy, you build ships, and send them to destroy your opponent. There wasn't much depth and the AI had a nasty habit of tossing his entire fleet at you without worrying about his own defense. Still, it got me stuck into the genre and in the next ten years I enjoyed variety of other titles.