Code Monkey

Reply to Bug Report Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

This afternoon I completed a game: I won by alliance victory but the summary text that came up was for cultural victory. I assume this was because the game would have been a cultural victory except for the fact there had been a 3-way alliance against the Tor and Drengin keeping me at war permanently. This prevented cultural victory but allowed immediate alliance victory as soon as the final Drengin planet surrendered. Second observation, which I don't know if someone else has already no

Reply to Brad's Starbase Thread... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I like the population idea. If you could place one SB for free in any given sector, but then had to have 10 billion, or maybe even 20 billion, pop *in* a sector for each additional SB that would do wonders for eliminating the spam while also keeping things mind numbingly simple.

Reply to Starbases make the game too easy in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"the AI cheats so why make the AI even stronger??? " Oh for a killfile on this board. The AI not only does not cheat, until you set it to Intelligent, the game "cheats" in *your* favor, and it's not until Genius that it finally receives its first bonus above and beyond what you get. If you're having problems with the AI, I suggest you study what it's doing. I've learned a lot from puzzling out what the AI is doing _fully_ within the same rules that I play by.

Reply to Was Morale nerfed recently? It seems way too easy to keep high. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, I don't know what the difference is, but I'm not getting away with 80% taxes with a +40% morale boost from being the populists and additional racial bonuses. At anything above 60% taxes I experience a sharp drop in revenue and "population" due to dissatisfaction. In fact, with that boost, harmony generators, entertainment network, and a couple of morale resources, I'm still not able to go above 40% taxes and keep approval higher than ~90%. There's something different going on othe

Reply to Was Morale nerfed recently? It seems way too easy to keep high. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm not seeing the morale "problem" that some of the posters do. One of the things that I hate about games like Civ at the highest levels is the amount of nannying I have to do to my cities to keep the citisens from rioting. Me, I'm not playing these games to role play Mr. Mayor-who-feels-your-pain. It might need some tweaking, but if there really was a major difference in the first versions of the game (started 1.01x), I don't want to go back there. What a couple of hardcore masochists

Reply to Brad's Starbase Thread... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My take is that we need something along the scaling maintenance suggested by others, although I would have only the first SB free, and all subsequent ones acruing fees. An alternative would be to make it so that some modules simply don't stack (i.e. limit 1 per sector). Maybe you can build all the low level mining bonus modules you want, but you only get one party palace and MSD no matter what. I said in another thread what I don't want to see is the introduction of an AI just

Reply to Starbases make the game too easy in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

On the flipside, why, if you think that it's too easy to abuse SBs with current rules/AI, do *you* do it? It's really not all that hard to not build more than 1 SB per sector - no one is forcing you to spam the galaxy with culture bombs or whatever your favorite cheese tactic. One of the things that I have seen with just about every strat game in the past decade is some vocal group whining about how the game designer is responsible for stopping their mouse hand from acting of its volition...

Reply to Was Morale nerfed recently? It seems way too easy to keep high. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It may be just an artifact of using an old save. I updated midway and did have a rather happy empire (along with everyone else), but in the game I started fresh last night the morale issues seem to be back to normal as far as I can tell.

Reply to Metaverse posting in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes, some sort of feedback would be good. What I've taken to doing is saving right before I win, submitting, then checking to see if it actually updated. If not, reload, win yet again, resubmit, check... Just dumping you to the front screen regardless of success or failure probably wasn't the best design choice ;p

Reply to Can we get a tech tree like in Civ 3? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes, agree as well. I've seen Brad comment he thinks it destroys the sense of exploration - uh, yeah. Maybe for the first game. After that, you have an idea where you want to go and the current UI is just a hindrance. Not including something like Civ3's tech tree and encyclopedia are definitely glaring holes in an otherwise solid game. The bar has been raised for the needed refinement of the interface.

Reply to AI Using Starbases in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I had a game that I patched midway - instantly SBs popped up like dandelions on a lawn EVERYWHERE. Winning this game just got a lot tougher :D

Reply to The Terraformer? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'll just pointless say, "ditto", to this.

Reply to Bug Report Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm now getting "mystery" diplomatic messages from minor factions. I'll get a pop up message saying that someone will join in me battle against the Drengin, but there's no indication who the message is from. I've also noticed similar lack of "callsigns" on minor's ships. Clicking on them doesn't bring up any sort of icon designating who it belongs to; you have to bring up the information box to see ownership.

Reply to Suggestions to fix Starbase problems in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

In addition to tweaking the AI to deal with and use SBs more effectively, I really like the simple and elegant suggestion posted above above about making HPs of the SB tied to # modules with adjusted initial HP. The problem, as has been noted a gazillion times, is that once certain high level techs are found, the optimal bonuses are achieved by spamming multiple SB with only a handful of choice modules rather than nursing each one. Again, in the simple and elegant category, I think the

Reply to Is it possible to start the game without the menu screen? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Just create a shortcut to the GalCiv.exe instead of the flash program the default shortcut points to.

Reply to Will there be an expansion in the future with more races? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'd be surprised if the expansion didn't include more races. Given the rest of the strong design of the game, it's probably relatively trivial to do so. With even more varied goals/parameters than we have now, you would have the great situation you had with the SMAC expansion: never knowing exactly what the flavor of any particular game was going to be. For instance: picture a race of hydrogen breathers, can only colonise worlds <= 5 and are inimically aggressive to all oxygen

Reply to Something *really* odd: Dreads cost LESS than BB's?? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm going to disagree with the 'too expensive' crowd. It takes nearly 2X the research to get to Dreadnoughts as it does Battleships - it should be a major change for the warfare. One of the things this game makes you weigh is balancing when you want to do something. Do you go for Corvettes and begin hammering an enemy before they can get to Battle Axes? Do you shift spending into military to pump out Battleships and wreak havoc for those 30+ turns before the first Dreadnought rolls off the

Reply to OT But Get this: Dissed on Moo Board in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Re: Starships Unlimited (Wrath of Dog asked) I never played the retail game Andrew designed, having bought the shareware game and feeling pretty burned when he not just abandoned development for it, but refused to make any sort of upgrade path for those of us who paid his way into getting a chance to work on the retail version. So, my comments are based purely on the shareware (but from reviews of the retail, they're still very similar, mainly changed in graphics and UI). It's

Reply to galciv vs. SMAC in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The interface for SMAC was definitely far more robust - right now you need to do things like grab a mirror of JavaScout's website in order to have an "in game" tech encyclopedia and tree, very little information is accessible other than what is presented right there on the screen, and there are truly bizarre UI choices made such as having you click right/left for a multi category sort when a drop down would have been my first choice. As has been said, far too many UI buttons need keyboard access

Reply to Wanted: Best solution for "wasted" resources issue (Slider allocations to non "active" projects" in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My vote time: I think it should just roll back into the treasury, done and done. If the Alliance government has no intention of building any social programs on planets X, Y, & Z, why would they have sent them the money? It's simple, it makes sense, and I can't why we need to try and make something as simple as not spending the money as complicated as some of the above suggestions. My second choice would be to redistribute within that system only. Again makes some sense - the federal

Reply to FAQ: Demo version in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Re: demo size I think it unnecessary to try and pare the game down to 50 MB. First, it's been over two years since I've seen a demo that small, anyone who deals with demos has long since gotten used to whatever measures are necessary for them to enjoy the bigger, better internet (cable modem in my case ;)). Second, if you can really keep the core game in 50 MB, fine, but if it means that people will only be getting a very tiny slice of the game versus just limiting the amount of t

Reply to Bug Reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Re: message 498 Yes, getting exactly the same problem in the trade screen with the latest build (1.02.040 I believe). The graphics on the sliders are "munged", to quote Phaedyme, and the 'Leave' button is now a 'string not found' button.