Roxlimn

Reply to Ship design strategy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Different ship designs for different purposes. I never build Huge ships except to dominate ship to ship combat. If your purpose is to destroy enemy fleets, you want a big nasty ship with plenty of the correct defense type, or else only weapons and engines. For this purpose, you build as large as your tech will allow. You want lots of engines on this one - it helps it to destroy as many fleets as possible. For garrison duty, I build only Small and Tiny ships. Sometimes,

Reply to Should Starbases protect Planets? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I attack AI starbases to good effect. You can actually sense the AI struggling economically when you take apart its economic routes. It's great if you can take out its merchant fleet itself, but taking out the econ starbases also takes out modules it may be using to increase production. The military starbases are also a valid and often very sensible target. It goes without saying that resource starbases are very nice to take. I'm not seeing this problem. Sure, I like to tak

Reply to I'm a miserable failure... in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I'm hardly anyone to give advice, since I only like to play at the Tough setting on DA, but it's quite doable. I can win on DA even when I'm isolated on the far side of the galaxy with like one or two habitable planets in range - the map placement is less of an issue precisely because of the environment changes. Never research Extreme Colonization tech to start with. Ever. Especially if you have no prospective planets to colonize. Generally speaking, I only resea

Reply to Delete in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

For my part, I usually consolidate all my trade routes into one or two close paths that I then stud with Econ starbases. The starbases are placed for optimal multiple coverage - large areas of overlap between adjacent starbases boosts the trade income like nobody's business, and the effect on the nearby planets' manufacturing isn't too shabby either. Since I overlap the bases, placing them all on optimal lines is less of an issue. I optimize the bases by weighing both route coverage

Reply to DON'T PASS THIS BY! READ IT FOR YOU OWN SAKE! in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You sure you weren't ripped off by the store, or got invaded by malware through your broadband? Some pirates steal serial numbers from legal copies and liberally sell copies of said game with that serial number. You could have been sold a pirated copy, or your copy could have had its serial number compromised.

Reply to I'm a miserable failure... in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

One of the most important corollaries that must be realized is that you must not indulge in 100% research unless you know what you're getting into. In most cases, your planets may not be equipped to handle the research you're doing. The most basic example of this is getting really, really advanced weapons and defense tech and then have crappy manufacturing planets. You'll be building better ships, of course, but the relative benefit of the research is laregly stunted by your civ's stat

Reply to I'm a miserable failure... in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

jwburks: Your problem is population growth and money. 1. Do NOT set your tax at 49%. You need to grow population, and that needs good approval. Many recommend setting approval to 75%, whatever taxation is necessary to maintain it. Keep this in mind. Your maximum tax rate should be defined by your target approval rating. 2. Make an extra Colony Ship and later on a Transport Ship for the purpose of ferrying colonists. Colonies grow relatively fast onc

Reply to Buying the galaxy through diplomacy in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Oh yes - take it easy on the influence. Diplo techs that don't gain influence are best. What you want is to own the galaxy, not to inundate it with influence. Get only enough influence so that your bought planets don't revolt. Stop there. You definitely don't want the relations hit from a too-high influence count.

Reply to Buying the galaxy through diplomacy in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Buying the galaxy has always been extremely viable. That had been my winning Impossible strat in MOO2 so I immediately tried it on GalCvi2 the moment I played. It's viable through all versions of the game, at least at Tough difficulty or less. Super Diplomat, Diplo Translators, and at least a three Diplo tech advantage will provide the baseline. You'll need a large treasury. Techs are nice for buying stuff, but generally speaking, it's better to buy with money. Popu

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think it'll be interesting to merge the models. Have Small and Tiny Ships deplete defenses, but not Medium and above ships. We already know that Medium + size ships are major players in warfare. Giving the firepower of smaller ships a little extra "oomph" could give them the significance they currently lack.

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

"Super Shot" phenomenon certainly makes defense and offense planning a lot more complicated and a lot less transparent - not a good thing!

Reply to How copy protection creates pirates in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Here's a little something. I'm from the Philippines and piracy is a way of life around these parts. More than half the machines in the country run on pirated software, and of the gamers I know around here, almost all of them play from pirated copies. It's not that we like these games. Pirated copies have lousy side-effects on your computer. Sometimes they contain malware, and sometimes they cause your computers to crash. Sometimes they cause the game to hang mid-game and ne

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

1) Yor are extremely frightening in battle. Their luck bonus combines with their miniturization bonus to give them quite an edge. If you want to be invulnerable to their 70 attack ship/fleet, you'll need to field in at least 140 defense. The mini bonus ensures that you'll probably have a hard time meeting Yor with a defense strategy, though it's still possible. Outproducing Yor with Attack Mediums AND lots of manufacturing proves a good strat for me, at least until I can get enough t

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

No more decreasing in size and cost!!!! Please!!!! It already takes forever to put suitable defenses on a Huge Ship. Increasing defense values per unit without changing cost will have mainly the same effect as making them smaller and cheaper, without the hassle of attaching 30 defense units to every ship you design.

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think that more can be done with the system as-is. Simply changing up the numbers in the xml files would do a lot. However, a change back to the DL mode of defense for capital to capital ship fire would probably clean up the all-or-nothing problem.

Reply to Tech Victory not worth it? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It can be quite fast if you're built up for it the right way. This typically means that you're NOT built up for winning it with military might. You'll need lots of economy - lots of money to turn into lots of tech. Then you'll need lots and lots of tech planets - like maybe half your planets. This kind of setup isn't suicidal. You can keep them off with tech offerings, money, and/or diploimacy while you research the tech. Having lots of tech resource bonuses and bonus research tile

Reply to Very basic rule-of-thumb strategy guide in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I don't know that colony rushing is the only way to start off the game. If you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no planets in sight, the only way to salvage the game is to build starbases pronto to get to the good planets. Colony rushing won't help you there because the good habitable planets will most likely already be taken. If you only play the game when you're in the middle of a fat clump of planets, then sure, colony rushing is always the right thing to do. Games w

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I disagree. The problems we've been discussing have nothing to do with the off-type defense bug since we don't try against off-type defenses. This means that even if the bug is fixed, it won't improve the situation. Defense is still too all-or-nothing. The "all" of it is just as problematic as the "none" of it. Small defenses not meaning much of anything is a big problem. The sudden turn into invulnerability is also a problem.

Reply to New patch seems to have improved the AI a fair bit. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, actually, they do. When you declare war on a substantially weaker civ, some of them do send out Tiny ships with an engine and a weapon to take out your freighters and asteroid bases. That is, if you don't wipe them out in a couple of turns.

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

We're not talking about vastly superior technology here. We're talking about like, a one or two defense tech advantage, offset by a one or two weapons and/or logistics tech advantage on the counterside. You can be functionally invincible without all that much investment in defense technology. Conversely, once your defense tech is superceded, it becomes obsolete for some purposes almost immediately. This "all-or-nothing" property needs to be remedied.

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Upgrading the value of defense techs would certainly be a step in the right direction. However, if all we're doing with the new algorithms is try to approximate the old, why have to change the algorithm at all? As Rataan attests (and most people will suppport, I'm sure) Smalls and Tinies still won't win wars against larger hulls. Mediums won't win against Larges, intentionally mixed fleets don't make a whole lot of sense. It's the DL situation all over again, so what's the po

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Rataan: Not at all. Defense Ships still win. Against anything less than maximum fleet power (and there can't be too many of those), your Defense Ships can handle them handily. If the attack edges higher, include one all-attack ship with a mostly Defense fleet. The purpose of the Attack Ship is to exchange with one of theirs. The exchange is in your fleet's favor because it lowers the attack of their fleet below your defenses.

Reply to Starbase NEEDS in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Japan's economic might comes from its use of neighboring countries to supplement its income. While it doesn't technically own most of the land in Asia, Japanese corporations owning much of the economy devoted to building cars, for instance, in Thailand and Malaysia, makes it a moot point. The cash flows to the mother country, and that makes it powerful. As well, its population is not all that small, and they're mostly fanatically loyal and possessed of nearly insane work ethics. That

Reply to Farm and overpopulation in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think that 300% food tiles just need to be taken out of the game, since they have such limited and debatable benefits anyway.

Reply to Defence now IS too powerful in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Wyndstar: My point, typically, in bringing up the highest difficulty level is that if there is something the AI can't do there, it can't do it anywhere, so it is a hole at every level. The problem with your approach is that while your statement here may or may not be true the converse certainly is not - while something a high level AI can't do may be indicative of a system wide problem, solving the same problem at the hi