Gambler

Reply to Alternative suggestion to Right of Passage Treaty in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

any ship of theirs in your space can be blown up without declaring war, thought it will cool relations with whoever's ship you just blew up. Sounds too complex. I'd say the simpler way is: 1) Every ship of an empire that does not have PT with you has to get out, or they are automatically go to war. 2) Either they stay out, or go to war. 3) If you click on an closed territory yourself, you get a warning like you do before attacking someone. 4)

Reply to Alternative suggestion to Right of Passage Treaty in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Later I'll try to post a big message about realism in games. IMO, its importance is severely underestimated. But for now... (1) Hide or obscure the values of enemy ships, tied to espionage and a little random factor (2) Make it easier to prevent invasions. Strongly agree with both. Both make a lot of sense, and not only on suicidal difficulty. Player's knowledge of the exact stats feels like cheating. It could be controlled by a checkbox

Reply to Alternative suggestion to Right of Passage Treaty in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

It is, ultimately, a game, and realism isn't always fun. Every time I hear this from a game developer I mentally cringe. This is not a constructive approach. I know what is realism, and I know why it is important. But you dismiss it in favor of fun. What is "fun"? What are we supposed to write in response to your idea then? You can say: 'Ships that move out of enemy space for no apparent reason is fun.' I can say: 'No, realism is

Reply to How radical should expansion packs get? in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

GalCiv2 is the only game I ever bought an expansion for. In general, I don't really like expansions. Mostly, they are purely commercial crap that sucks life out of the original titles. There are 2 reasons I did buy DA. One, StarDock does extremely good job at patching, so it didn't feel like buying a patch. Two, GalCiv2 is an objectively good game, which defies the horrible trends in modern gaming. So, would it make sense to develop expansions past TotA? I'd say only if develop

Reply to Official Carriers/Orbital Bombardment Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Coding some changes in the existing variables is trivial. However, I bet adding new interfaces and AI support is not. What I like about your idea is that it would allow to build bigger carriers by adding extra "hangers".

Reply to Alliances should trump treaties in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It hasn't happened to me either, but it sounds like something that needs to be addressed.

Reply to Approval and growth in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The moment you get to 99%, the growth abruptly drops to 150%. Thus, you need to check all the new planets every turn and adjust taxes accordingly. On the other hand, with a curvilinear population bonus you would not need to do all that micromanagement. You simply would need to insure that your approval reasonably hight, and you would get reasonably high population growth.

Approval and growth in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

As far as I know, popularity gives you a boost to population increase only after you surpass certain boundary conditions. * planet's approval modifier is: - 0 if approval is less than 21%. In addition, you lose 10% of your existing population per turn. - 0 for approval between 21 and 40% (pop doesn't grow). - 1 for approval between 41% and 75% inclusive. - 1.25 for approval between 76% and 99% inclusive. - 2 for 100% approval witho

Reply to Complaint: Silliness in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

[...]current literary theory [says that by] criticizing these texts in the game, you are denying the "author-ity" of Brad and you are trying to occupy a position of superior knowledge [and show] a colonial attitude. God save us all from the 'current literary theory' and its purveyors.

Reply to Official Carriers/Orbital Bombardment Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

No artificial limits should be needed beyond a maximum number of logistics points that it will affect. What will happen if the fleet has more logistics points than the "hanger" can affect? Aside from that, the idea sounds good.

Reply to Complaint: Silliness in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I find myself partially agreeing with the OP. It's not a big deal, but the tech descriptions definitely leave a dent on my impression from the game. Lately I just ignore them. The idea of having humorous tech description is fine, but some of them are a bit overdone... The problem isn't just with the kind of humor that is used there. The problem is that there is too much of it, and it's too obvious. They also lack in consistency. I would definitely appreciate something more subt

Reply to The memory limits are starting to bite in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Wouldn't it be possible to store rarely used objects in some kind of database without direct memory mapping?

Reply to What the stupidest thing you ever saw the AI do? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Very interesting thread. I wish more other games were critically analyzed like this. Too many forums succumb to the fallacy that criticism and complaints are evil... Overall, I am very impressed with the AI. This is the best AI I've ever seen. In fact, it is one of the reasons I think GalCiv2 is one of the few truly innovative games (unlike the so-called "next-gen" titles). However, the overall intelligence make the occasional flaws even more obvious. Much of what have been po

Reply to Official Carriers/Orbital Bombardment Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Hm, so by adding all three modules to a ship a player will be able to get something very much like a carrier. Sounds good. Although, it would be cool if the size of the ships played a role, as well as the stats of this "carrier". I like meaningful bonuses much more than generic "+x to something" stuff. It make sense that only smaller ships can benefit from speed and defense bonus. It also makes sense that a carrier doesn't just give a bonus to speed, but makes the speed and range of sm

Tooltips in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've bought DA soon after the release, bit I'm just starting to play seriously around now. Very addictive. However, I managed to forget most of what I knew about game mechanics, and so I had to re-read the manual and some forum posts. It would be extremely helpful to have more tooltips that tell you what produces certain things in the game. GC already has that with approval, but many other planetary attributes are a mystery until you do tremendous amount of online research. A

Reply to Official Carriers/Orbital Bombardment Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Here is my idea about carries. I'm curious what you think about it. 1) Add a carrier module to ship designer. 2) Add certain adjustments to the calculation of the fleet speed. Namely, if a fleet has a big ship with a carrier module, than all the ships that are n sizes smaller receive equal speed, unless they are fast enough already. 3) Viola! The good thing about this ides is that I would not need any new graphics (except, possibly, some icon) or any other extensive mod

Reply to Economic Treaty Trade in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm glad to hear that this thing is fixed. I thought I updated the game, but it seems I did not due to messing up the serial number. Well, I corrected the number and I'm up-to-date now. Sorry for essentially meaningless thread.

Economic Treaty Trade in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I gave them economic treaty. They gave me economic treaty, all their techs, all their money and bunch of ships (which I did not receive). The fun thing is that their economy is much stronger than mine, so it should be me giving them extra stuff. I believe it's a bug. Please fix it if possible.

Reply to Mass Effect in Adventure GalCiv2 Forums

Graphics of this games are amazing, but the story is a bunch of cliches, and dialogs seem to be rather bad (judging from the videos/screens). I believe that the story and character development should be the #1 priority in the game, so I'm not really looking forward to it.

Reply to Five Reasons Windows Vista is good for gaming! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

For those of you complaining about Windows Vista, don't get it! WoW.. isn't that so simple? Your argument is meaningless. If it's okay to praise Vista for people who like it, it should be equally okay to post negative comments for people who dislike it.

Reply to Five Reasons Windows Vista is good for gaming! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think Vista benchmarking is going to solve any real problems. From what I know, it rates your computer by the worst part in in, while the games get rated by the most dire requirement. Some additional facts. MS recently launched Games for Windows campaign. It's official site links to xbox.com everywhere and even displays XBox controller on the main page. It also links to Dell site that in turn links to xbox.com. Obviously, MS wants everyone to upgrade, preferably to 360. <br

Reply to Dark Avatar: Which features do you want the most? in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

As a MoO1 fan I wait for the addition of spies the most. I like spying. People already said about pirates and using class 0 planets. I second that. Well, it's not that game needs those things, but I think they would fit in perfectly. Pirates or rebel armies could be "generated" by some planets with low approval ratings. Oh, and could you please fix space anomalies? They are the only substantial flaw the game has, IMO.

Reply to So what game do you want Stardock to work on next? in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Go here if you're interested. This is the first time I ever regretted that I specialize on non-MS languages.

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar Announced! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

This will be the first expansion I ever bought.

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II cracks the top 10 in sales in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I'm glad to see that good games can compete with overmarketed and mindlesss AAA titles. Congratulations.