Greg McDonell

Reply to GameShark Previews Twilight of the Arnor in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the reply. Pity about not being able to choose starting bonus tiles, although I guess dumb luck is a "fairer" way to do it! Speaking of which :) , do you know if they've fixed that old bug where other races intelligence were defaulting to dumb if you restarted a new game with Alt-N instead of going back to the main menu. Irrespective, I'm looking forward to buying this expansion and losing a lot of sleep again over the next few weeks!

Reply to GameShark Previews Twilight of the Arnor in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

My preferred game is always as a custom race in the largest galaxy. What I'm looking forward to in Twilight, and this is the question, is the ability to start my custom race with a choice of any of the technology trees. Am I right in reading the pre-release blurb that this is the case, total flexibility? In a similar vein, how difficult is it to customise your start planet? Can you add any pre-cursor square of your choice? Is this a simple option, or does it require going into the

Reply to AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Firstly, a further apology for the paragraph formatting not showing up in my original post. After experimenting with editing and Firefox options it turned out that my scriptblocker ("NoScript") add-on in Firefox was the culprit, and I've now successfully edited formatting in the original post. Without cross-replying to each, many interesting and informative comments from other readers on Machiavelli and related points. Machiavelli was my example, rather than the sole case, of where th

Reply to AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Yeah, did that, but the formatting didn't come up on the post. Thanks for the helpful advice though ;)

AI needs to read Machiavelli in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think my inability to get a decent competitive game out of DA these days is related to the fact that I've read Machiavelli and the AI hasn't. More seriously, the AI doesn't respond well to devious tactics, and for the human player (me) it requires unrealistic self restraint not to use such tactics. For context, I've been playing 4X since MoO, 15 years ago. So I kinda know what works and what doesn't. And therein lies the problem. I play GC2:DA on painful or crippling, (full

Reply to Disable Agents in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

If you create just one spy, then you can still click on "place an agent" on an enemy world and scroll through their worlds to get intel on each world. Whether you consider this cheating and choose to do so is up to you.

Disable Agents in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I really dislike agents. A hangover perhaps from MoO. But I find agents to be unbalancing and would rather play without them. At the moment Dark Avatar does not have a no-agents option, but this can easily be achieved with a little editing. (thanks to the forum members who pointed me in the right direction on this) Look in the DA\Data\English folder for the file called planetimprovements.xml. For each improvement there is a switch as to whether it can have agents. By setting them al

Reply to A Walkthru of Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Just go and open up the file: gc2improvements.xml which is in the darkavatar\data\english directory In there, find the counter espionage building. It should say something about no spying. Just copy and paste that line to the Planet capital or whatever it's called near the top and voila, no spies. Thanks Frogboy. Looks like the file is called planetimprovements.xml but you are right, for each improve

Reply to A Walkthru of Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Just go and open up the file: gc2improvements.xml which is in the darkavatar\data\english directory In there, find the counter espionage building. It should say something about no spying. Just copy and paste that line to the Planet capital or whatever it's called near the top and voila, no spies. Thanks Frogboy. Looks like the file is called planetimprovements.xml but you are right, for each improvement there is a switch as to whether

Reply to A Walkthru of Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for your reply re modding to diminish spying. Although I've played hundreds of GC2 games, I've never ventured into modding and a first look at a GC2 modding guide is slightly daunting. If any skilled modder can be bothered to quickly tell me how to simply increase cost of spies tenfold, or some similar global mechanism to diminish spying, I'd greatly appreciate it. Of course I understand if the process is more complicated than a quick explanation, in which case I'll go and

Reply to A Walkthru of Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Couldn't find this on search, sorry if already been asked .. Is there an option to disable secret agents? Hope so, but can't see it on sample screens. Personally I hated the unbalancing effect spies/agents had in MOO, and for that reason don't want to be forced to have them in GC2. Only thing stopping me from buying Dark Avatar right now. Thanks for any info, Greg