There's no link. You have to use Stardock Central and you have to be a Drengin.net member to have access to it. Want to be a beta tester, join Drengin.net. Want to be a pirate, get lost.
I'll also suggest Jagged Alliance 2. Strategy First released a goldpack last year that's usually not too hard to find that contains an enhanced version of the original game and the standalone mini-sequel for $20 or under if you can find it. It is by far the best game I've ever played on the computer. It's over 5 years old at this point, and I still fire it up about once a year or so and play the bejesus out of it for a month or two. There's also a total mod of JA2 out, and an
Some early (for me) feedback: I would like to see the underlining with hyper-linked items go away - it's an unecessary cluttering up of the otherwise clean interface. Either change the cursor to reflect that something can be r-clicked or maybe even a color change, but the underlining has got to go in a future update.
It's odd that I keep seeing people mention SMAC as a good example of 'simple' ship design. It's been too long since I played to remember exact figures, but the combinatorics of that 'simple' ship design system ran into thousands upon thousands of possible unit designs and the AI fell apart completely because out of multiple thousands there were really only a handful of combos worth building. That is the downfall of any ship design system: there are always much more optimal paths and unless the A
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[quote]Thank you for a condescending and insulting response to an honest exclaimation of surprise. I feel the world is a better place because of people like you. Sir, I salute you.[/quote] My philosophy is to search to see if things have been answered before I ask. This is an old, old, old topic that's been beaten to death and a glance through the older threads would have revealed it to you (or a glance at your economy screen for that matter).
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[quote]WTF? You keep paying your debts to a country you are at war with?[/quote] And this is news to you because? GalCiv was designed first and foremost to be a *game* that plays well, not a simulation. Is it realistic that every agreement is through some omnipotent galactic escrow system? Maybe, maybe not, but for the reasons Gerakken stated, Brad has stated, I have stated, and a gazillion others have stated, that's how it works. In spite of your childish 'WTF', the g
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If my games were cultural in nature I might agree with you for once, but since they are 80% military aided by cultural elements, you're quite wrong. The culture countdown is just a deadline for me to get my military forces in place for the final countdown if it occurs. Since when you're winning militarily, you're also winning culturally, I wind up having to declare war whether I'm ready or not about 40% of the time.
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Yep, for some reason they decided that it was counter intuitive to have a culture so in love with you that they become assimilated while you're mass driving their planets ;)
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[quote]It has a great side effect of avoiding the senate approval.[/quote] Now that part I did not know, hehehe. Not that I've ever had a Senate war block but once, but damn was that annoying.
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No need to turn it off, I just use that month 0 left til cultural as my deadline to declare war if I haven't already. Otherwise you're really just milking things.
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It's not the military versus culture that's your beef here (although that's one problem with the scoring), the other is the very, um, strange effect of the lack of difficulty bonus balancing. The catch-22 of the higher difficulty issues is that a large chunk of your score comes from things like wonders, dominating in tech, economy, culture, etc, and these things are much easier to achieve on lower difficulties. So, although you are given a bonus for increasing the difficulty, the gains
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Their usefulness is also very map size dependent. On a medium sized map there's a very good chance the AI will have multiple defenders and some battle axes long before you can get your first transport within range of one of their systems. In this case, star fighters are next to useless but vettes with their higher defense actually can punch through the AI defenses for that early game military punch. If you wait on battle cruisers or freighters, you'll be wasting time and spending more money on t
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I'm curious about this as well. I'm so busy right now with life that it's going to take something new to get me back into staying up all night for game playing ;)
... don't ... feed ... the ... trolls ... - that is all.
You imply you work in IT and then publicly claim you had difficulty figuring out something that's no more complicated to configure than an email client. I hope your boss never sees this post ;)
The only potential bug in relation to TGs is that although it has a home planet, losing that planet does not prevent the original owner from still trading it. Since it can't be stolen, either, why does it exist on any planet at all?
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[quote]Just my opinion[/quote] It's a game by Brian Reynolds, the real creator behind Civ2 and SMAC, but you'll diss it based on one game mechanic that goes against the grain. As you say, it's your opinion, but it's not one that anyone should be putting much weight in. Now, personally, I think there's a lot of room to criticize this game, but this mechanic is far from it as anyone who's ever played a real RTS such as TA or WBC/WBC2 instead of all the crap SC/WC/C&C gam
[quote]Another thing that would help the AI out is if every social improvement was actually worth building.[/quote] Based on interviews with Brad, it seems that the amount of schmutz in the social queue was intentional: punish the gotta build one of everything players. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired in that the only entities building a lot of this crap are the newbies and the AI even on the higher difficulty levels. Reasonably intelligent humans figure out that Infon
[quote]Besides, wouldn't the computer deal correctly with it if the money was simply trnsfered to reserach? In such a case, it simply brings a higher % in research, which the computer already deals with. But I guess someone already thaught to it so I'm wrong?[/quote] For the same reason it does not deal with it correctly already. Currently, the computer, as best I can tell, never chooses to build 'nothing' unless it's economy is completely in the toilet. This is why you find su
[quote]But I know nothing about coding so I can't say if the time it costs is worth. In an expansion perhaps? [/quote] Coding recycling the money is trivial, coding the AI to weigh whether to build something versus getting "free" money is the difficulty. Weight it one way and the AI is still behaving the way it does now - always building something but now being really disadvantaged towards the human who's rolling in money - or an AI who's chasing the money to exclusion of building need
I believe the rationale, such as it is, was this method made things simpler, both to code, to write the AI for, and to play. It bothers some people because it seems unintuitive, but it has no effect in terms of gameplay.
Um, Civ Monger, have you played this game? Single check, 2 turns needed would be about a million times worse than what we have now. There is simply zero way to avoid being in danger of flipping for several turns, sometimes years. The issue discussed is not the base mechanics of flipping which are fine, but the lack of reset and the lack of intelligent design regarding the source of the morale checks. Also, warning EACH turn? Good lord, there's already quite enough crap to click
[quote]Is there a mandatory year in which the game ends like in Civilization?[/quote] No, you can play indefinitely, but the given game mechanics make that nearly impossible (e.g. if you're dominant, you'll eventually absorb everyone culturally unless you take steps to avoid it) or impossible (if you're not dominant, someone will come and kick your butt). Of course, if you want to play forever, you can manipulate the game to let you: turn off alliance and cultural, set research
I think the most logical system is this: When a system is located in a sector where another race has 2X the influence, it makes a morale check each turn. After the first failure, you get the skull indicating it's on the cusp of flipping. A second failure and the system defects. A skull is just an indicator that there is a failed morale check flag present for that system. Although the skull may be present, a system must fail two checks from a single race, the skull has its causa
You have to have 'close' relations with a major before an alliance is possible.