CraigHB

Reply to Special offer for old customers wanting to buy TotA... in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, that's a great deal. I went for it when it was first offered, but I think the price has gone up $5, still a great deal though.

Reply to Are the Terrans really the most popular race? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, I'm pretty surprised by that pole. I would have thought the Terrans would be at the bottom. But, I guess people just like being Human regardless of anything else. BTW, I voted for we...I mean [I]the[/I] Thalans, hehe.

Reply to What's up with time? in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Could have been a glitch with the HF transmitter in Colorado. I have an atomic radio clock on my desk and it's okay. Yours should update to the correct time tonight.

Reply to What is Twilight of the Arnor? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I'd like to add that these expansion packs are pretty significant. They're extensive as far as how they affect the game. The original Dread Lords (aka DL) and the subsequent expansion, Dark Avatar (aka DA), are really quite different, both worthy of lengthy interest. Twilight of the Arnor (aka TA) will be a whole new game even more so and I'm really looking forward to it. Also, the expansions do not overwrite the original game, so when TA comes out, you'll have 3 games on your computer to ch

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Only the PCIe x16 port links directly to the Northbridge. The x1 PCIe ports link to the Southbridge through a much slower bus. So, the only peripherals that get the benefit of a direct connection to the Northbridge are the video card, memory, and CPU. Go to Intel's site and look at the chipset system diagram, [link="http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/P35/index.htm"]WWW Link[/link]. You really need a PCIe x8 RAID card to surpass the throughput of a SATA bus. Some boards do com

Reply to Bored at work, random question in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, I'd say influence is right up there for me as well. Influence really does the job when playing neutral so that's why I still play it quite a bit. Evil gets by far the best stuff and if it weren't for the negative affect of the MCC, I wouldn't play otherwise. I'll be looking to see if anything changes in that area for TA. [quote]"paper tigers"? I'd call that an AI bug then, cos that wouldn;t fool a human player.[/quote] Not really a bug, just a bluff. Looking at military rat

Reply to Bored at work, random question in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Hehe, nice you can do something at work when you're bored. In any case, my number 1 priority in the game is military rating. Makes diplomacy just a piece of cake and keeps me in control of who's fighting who. Doesn't have to come from actual warships. I often use "paper tigers", in other words, some cargo hulls sitting in orbit loaded with nothing but weapons.

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Parity is just a bit flag that marks a nibble/byte/word for an even or odd number of ones. In RAID5, It allows a failed drive to be restored on the fly since the controller can figure out the missing part of the stripe. It's mainly used on "mission critical" systems so a disk failure doesn't result in downtime, but it also provides error checking. One of the disks is dedicated to storing it so yea, the actual storage capacity would be minus one.

Reply to Hey, just bought the game and played it through in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]i have it on bright and its still sucking[/quote] I think names for the difficulty levels and AI intelligence are a bit ambitious. DA is a notch or two harder than DL, but I think things could be shifted a level or two. The game doesn't really get hard until the AI starts getting bonuses. Even so, when it comes to fighting, the AI could be more agressive. It sounds like you should be playing at least on Painful. Also, don't randomize intelligence, play with all races at the intel

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, I think it's actually pretty enjoyable building your own systems, however, when you have problems, it can get ugly. But, like I said at the beginning of the thread, that doesn't happen often. You just have to be ready and willing to deal with it if it does. It's also way too easy to get caught up in the "gotta have the latest" trap. To be honest, I wouldn't normally have built another system so soon, but I was highly dissapointed with the last one. I acheived only a small increase in p

Reply to Hey, just bought the game and played it through in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]also, im aware a.i's can only initiate a trade with one another every 8 turns, but are they likely to do so whenever they can? and when they do will they trade one tech or alot of techs? [/quote] The AI trades tech like crazy, minors included. To see for yourself, give a minor all your sensor techs. The AI never researches this line. In a couple months, you'll see everyone has them. In DL, there's no limit on how often you can initiate trade so the difference is more subtle. In D

Reply to Unsure of use of approval ratings in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]As far as the 10% approval bonus for being Neutral, I don't think on a whole it out-weighs the benefit of being evil[/quote] I tend to rely on the abilty to influence planets my way so I'm still playing neutral a lot. If it weren't for the MCC bug, I'd always play evil.

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Nothing costly, it's basically just a stock one with a nice mounting system and a better fan [link="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835114073"]WWW Link[/link]. It does provide a little more cooling. Since my last post, I found a program called Orthos Prime that provides a slick front end to Prime95's torture test, [link="http://sp2004.fre3.com/beta/beta2.htm"]WWW Link[/link]. Unlike Prime95, it can initiate 2 threads to fully load both cores. It's pretty handy.

Reply to Unsure of use of approval ratings in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]After the thread for no morale buildings, i stopped building them except for on any home worlds, where the population gets larger than the rest. The extra tile i get on every planet is worth the slight loss in taxes. But the i only build one farm per planet and never on a bonus tile, giving all planets (except home worlds) a poplulation of 13 Billion. Doing this allows me to still tax at 60-something percent. [/quote] Yea, you don't *really* need morale buildings except on 16b homewor

Reply to Unsure of use of approval ratings in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Whatever you want to call it, happiness, morale, or approval, I'm only concerned with the number for each planet individually and the overall number (displayed in the console). The planet number needs to be above 41% to keep population growing. The overall number needs to be high enough to keep my party in power for elections. It doesn't have to be kept up all the time, just during an election week. I normally run taxes as high as I can without losing population growth then drop taxes just f

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

That's good to know if I ever decide to take the plunge, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen any time soon. I'm just happy to have a system I can call fast. Speaking of fans, I installed a better HSF today, much nicer. That Core 2 sure is a cool running thing. Let's see, it's 70F in my office right now and my CPU is sitting at a whopping 79F. I loaded up both cores and it barely broke 110F. Gotta love that. Your PSU fan probably shut down because it didn't have anything

Reply to Hey, just bought the game and played it through in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]i seem to find that military victory is easy on this difficulty, or did i just get lucky?[/quote] No, the game doesn't start getting hard until the difficulty is up higher where the AI isn't handicapped. You should probably jump right up to Painful or Crippling if you're finding the game easy already. If you get overwhelmed at that level, drop it a notch or two. [quote]how will the game experience change if i turn off tech trading?[/quote] With tech trading enabled, the

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I didn't know that. I assumed the chipset handled that function as a true hardware RAID implementation. In any case, CPU overhead or not, I know you can get a huge increase in disk I/O with a simple 2 disk array using the chipset's RAID. The same may be true using any other implementation, but if I do it, it will be via the chipset. That's a known quantity for me and it's really the least trouble. For Vista, it's just a matter of one setting in the BIOS, a little more hassle with XP because

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I've never looked into an actual RAID add-on card so I have no comment on that, but my understanding is that software RAID does not perform as well as hardware RAID due to CPU overhead. I don't know exactly the difference performance-wise, if any, but with the availablity of inexpensive chipsets incorporating hardware RAID, I wouldn't bother with it. Also keep in mind there are various levels of RAID that offer different features. The main thing I would be interested in is the improved I/O pe

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]but i just realized my mobo doesn't support RAID[/quote] Yea, you need the ICH9R Southbridge. Your board has the ICH9. Be aware that when you use the ICH9R in AHCI or RAID mode, you'll need to do the "F6" thing with Windows XP to load controller drivers before starting the installation. I believe Vista has those drivers built-in so it's not an issue there. In any case, hardware RAID can really soup-up your disk I/O speeds even with just a 2 disk array. It's totally worth it. Per

Reply to FURIOUSLY MALCONTENT in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Me too, I spend the majority of my time in iconic mode, it's really the most useful. However, it *is* fun to zoom-in on things for the pretty pictures once in a while. I could live without the fancy graphics, but you just can't get away with that market-wise these days. I think most people expect something remarkable in that area. The game probably wouldn't be taken seriously by reviewers without it.

Reply to what's the purpose of the new poll? "favorite race" in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The Drath would be my second pick in DL, but their super ability is not very helpful in DA. The big advantage of the Yor is their hefty miniaturization bonus and their super ability can be helpful. I think they would be my second pick for DA.

Reply to computer technology chat in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

All these auxilliary power connectors in systems these days are kind of a pain. Some motherboards require an "EPS" 8 pin connector and some use the ATX 4 pin connector. Some power supplies come with only a 4 pin connector and some come with an 8 pin connector, but may also include an 8 pin to 4 pin adapter. Some even come with a split 8 pin connector where one half can be used on a 4 pin motherboard. There's also the PCIe auxilliary power connector. Video cards may or may not require that 6

Reply to Q&A Newbs ask Vets in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Why are my games taking so long. 8 game years on a large map for a political victory. Am I just not very good? Underaggressive? Or do I need to play on a smaller map?[/quote] There's lots of stuff you don't *have* to do in the game that can be time consuming and can make your games run a lot longer. For example, you don't *have* to set up trade routes. You don't *have* to build any starbases (except resource ones). You don't *have* to build defenses around all your planets. You do

Reply to Stardock, My word in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

So, how's it running on the new machine? I haven't had a chance to try it on mine yet, might be a little while.