CraigHB

Reply to weird starting planet - PQ 19 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, that's likely it has. I haven't seen it for a while and I don't always keep up on that sort of thing. In any case, I've only seen it happen once or twice myself.

Reply to weird starting planet - PQ 19 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, Ctrl-N goes wonky sometimes. It doesn't happen often, but I've had it lock up the game before. Other times I've seen it to set intelligence on one or more of the races to "fool". I would probably just chalk it up to that and forget about it if it's not happening all the time.

Reply to Research Problems in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I am hoping you get the TA soon.[/quote] TA is definitely worth it. Aside from the obvious differences, it has some really cool additions/features within the interface. Mainly, the tech tree view is much more informative, but there are some other things that are really nice as well. It does take a while to get a handle on the unique tech trees though. Even so, I have not had any desire to go back and play DL or DA.

Reply to weird starting planet - PQ 19 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Dont' know what exactly you're doing to the .raceconfigxml file so I don't what to tell you there. If you're not playing Metaverse games, you can simply edit the CustomPlanets.xml file to set up your home solar system however you want. Better not to mangle the original file though. Copy the file to a mods directory, point to the directory in the game options, and enable mods. If you are playing Metaverse, I wouldn't go furth

Reply to Campaign Mode vs. Sandbox? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Oops, hehe, guess I should use a spell checker when complaining about spelling and [b][i]grammar[/b][/i] errors.

Reply to Research Problems in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I believe starship bonus gives you a hitpoints advantage. For example, the Stellar Forge for Arceans in TA gives you both a weapons/defense bonus and a hitpoints bonus. As far as alignment, yea, evil has always been my favorite regardless of Metaverse. With evil you get all the good colonization events, great weapons, and the Mind Control Center is a game winner. The Artificial Slave Center is awesome too. Neutral has some really cool bonuses as

Reply to I just unwittingly bought a preowned copy of Ultimate Edition. Any advice? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It's like 6 of one half dozen of the other. Other games require registration to install, but updates are freely provided. GC2 does not require registration to install, but requires registration to update. Pick your poison. Every game publisher uses some kind of control to mitigate free distribution of their games. I certainly like Impulse better then Steam, but if I had my druthers, I could do without either. To the OP, return the box

Reply to Economic event frequency at higher difficulty levels in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I don't see the mega-events since I play with them off, but I usually get several of the regular events, influence, economy, pop growth, etc. I play TA at obscene to suicidal on on large to huge maps with 4-7 races. Games usually run around 4 years. As far as a specific event, I think that's randomized just like topics for UP meetings so an event is pulled out of a hat when one is triggered. Based on what I've seen in the erro

Reply to Campaign Mode vs. Sandbox? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I just use Notepad, but an XML editor does all the nice color coding for you and can render/error check. I never got into the campaigns much, but I've picked up a lot of the backstory through reading text here and there. To be honest, it doesn't interest me all that much. I've always gotten plenty of enjoyment out of sandbox mode. And yea, there's *a lot* of spelling and grammer errors. It's kind of understandable though. There's a whole book

Reply to Can't Successfully Mod Racial Abilities -please help in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea I've gotten bit by that one before. Those files overide any settings in the RaceConfig.xml file. I routinely clear those out of the "My Games" folder for that reason. Also make sure mods are enabled and the game is actually loading the file you're working on. It will default to the original file if it can't find it.

Reply to Research Problems in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

You can't "guide" the overflow points. That's one thing that's kind of annoying, when you're blasting through a branch on the tree and it plows straight ahead all the time. It's actually the order in the list of techs contained in the TechTree.xml file that determines where the overflow points go and the order you see the branches in the tree view. However, when you get to the end of a branch, those overflow points end up in the bit bucket.&nbsp

Reply to How do you decide where to place your ships during peacetime? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Even a rating of one-half or even one-third of the strongest AI seems to prevent them attacking on that basis alone, giving time to build decent ships and larger fleets, and picking the moment to go to war rather than being forced into it.[/quote] Yea, military rating makes all the difference. If you get it high enough, you can pretty much control the game. Building the spin control center and putting some ships loaded with weapons in orbit around it

Reply to How do you decide where to place your ships during peacetime? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Early on the ships are so slow and impotent, there seems little point in going to war with anyone[/quote] Well, it's all relative. If the enemy is coming at you with small hulls and a couple weapons points, you can beat them with small hulls and a few more weapons points. The AI fights with small hulls for a while. They don't come at you right away with the heavy stuff. It's true that you get a weapons bonus for planets in

Reply to All of americas energy needs for industry & cars from 6% of land in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Very interesting stuff, LTjim. When people talk about the WWII bombing of Japan, they never mention what the consequences would have been otherwise. I'm in favor of nuclear power. I totally agree the issue is mostly political. Though it's understandable. People are scared by nuclear waste and the potential for nuclear accidents. It's interesting that when the technology was developed, scientists expected that all powe

Reply to Sensors? Fog? Detecting hostile ships? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Gotta get your eyes, I usually go after that one as soon as possible. Sensor range becomes quite expansive with that. If you can't cover your perimeter with fighters, build cheap scouts and place them where you need to. Putting ships on guard or sentry makes the game automatically select the ship after the turn button is pressed when your ship sees an enemey approaching. Otherwise, enemy ships can not be detec

Reply to How do you decide where to place your ships during peacetime? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I usually start my games in a state of war with all races. My fighters immediatley attend to perimeter guard if not invading. I build them as big and heavly armed as I can. My transports are light and fast with no weapons so they hang behind my fighters. I believe defending planets with ships in orbit is futile. It's best to stay on the offensive and intercept transports before they even get within sensor range of your

Reply to game setup for long game? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Oh gosh, the sky is the limit with this game. Every file you find in there can be superseded by a modded version. So, I'd say that 90% of the game is modable. It's really quite brilliant. There are some things hard coded into the game engine, but pretty much all of the game structure is specified through those xml files. The files I would suggest playing with first are RaceConfig.xml, GC2Types.xml, and PlanetImprovements.xml. There are some r

Reply to Newbie Questions about the Different AI Races in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Do it. You'll find that assigning points in various areas can have a noticable effect on how the race behaves. I've actually done that myself to a lesser extent. I'm running a modded game with pre-assigned bonuses changed in a custom RaceConfig.xml file. However, they still have their unassigned points to do with what they may.

Reply to game setup for long game? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Normally, settings files are located in the program files directory, but it depends on where you told Impulse to install your games. For Twilight of the Arnor, the default location for settings files would be as follows, if I recall correctly; C:\Program Files\Stardock\Games\GalCiv2\Twilight\Data\English User specific files are normally located in; C:\Documents and Settings\ \My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor The .raceconfigxml&nb

Reply to Newbie Questions about the Different AI Races in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

You can assign the other races their points if you like, but they do it on their own if you don't, it just doesn't show up in the race selection screen, but the bonuses are there after you start the game. You can look for yourself by running the game in cheat mode and switching to the race using the hot-seat key combination. Look at bonuses in the stats and graphs section of the civ manager. There's some other interesting customizations you can do on the race

Reply to Is this site dead? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Hey Neilo, how ya doing. Haven't been on the forum much, but I still play the game when I get time. Been getting into the mods lately, lots of fun.

Reply to Does the computer play by different rules? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It depends on what you consider cheating. Sometimes I wish the AI would cheat a little better. They don't cheat in the sense they have to play the game in the same manner as a human player. They do have a lot of advantages, but they need them. If they didn't have those, the game would be too easy. For anyone that finds the AI too intense, simply turn down the difficulty level. You may want to adjust their intelligence individually. I haven't found the

Reply to game setup for long game? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Metaverse requires you to use the stock settings files. If you want to play a modded game, don't modify the original files. Meteverse checks those and will flag the game if it detects any changes. I believe the whole Metaverse thing is fairly idiot proof now. The game will tell you right out of the gate if there's a cheat flag thrown. Older versions didn't do that. You wouldn't find out the game was flagged until you submi

Reply to Ah, back to Galactic Civilizations love in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I rarely visit the forum (I'm here to look for some mod information), but I still play the game often. This game has wonderful replay and I imagine I'll be playing it for years to come. Please keep the fixes coming. This is my all time favorite game and I'm really getting into the casual mods now. It's amazing the depth and ease of customization with this game. What a masterpiece.

Reply to Need some honest advice regarding which game to buy in PC Gaming Sins Forums

Thanks for that post varis2000. I'm not a big gamer, but I'm always on the lookout for a good game to play on my PC. I've played all the GC2 releases quite a bit as well as Sins and have found that space strategy games are really my thing now. I put Sword of the Stars in my shopping cart and plan to pick it up when I get a chance. I also like war strategy games. I enjoyed Company of Heros. I'll check out World in Conflict when I get a chance.