Twirlip

Reply to Help! Minor Races & Trade Goods in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

...on the other hand, *new* minor races seem to be rather dangerous, because even when everybody's set at a very low difficulty, a new minor seems to start with ALL of your technology with the possible exception of the last one you researched, including ones restricted on the basis of alignment. And, if an AI major race beats you to capturing that new, minimally defended world, it'll possibly (always?) get a tech. If not captured, it gets to run around with basically all your tech, pos

Reply to How do I load troop onto a transport? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When you get the message that it's been built and the game takes you to the planet view, select the ship from among the icons representing orbiting ships. Those icons are in a box on the lower right. Once it's selected, you need to adjust the slider bar below that box, where it asks you how many troops you want on it -- it defaults to half the selected planet's population. Then push the green "Launch" button.

Reply to Bug Report Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Minor issue in 1.03A.057 (if it matters, the installation results from a "download/archive/restore" of that build, the Bonus Pack, et al): An alliance victory still shows the Galactic Alliance movie, but the overview text following it corresponds to a cultural victory.

Reply to I got this game in a trade, and now I can't get updates!? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Lokiju -- If there IS a way for the original owner to solve this problem by changing the profile information on Stardock Central so that it's tied to your e-mail address and a password that he mails you, then it would seem to be his responsibility to do so.

Reply to Suggestions to Improve Espionage in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

A rather strange thought that had occurred to my addled mind was -- what if you could use your spies to *support* another empire? For instance, say an enemy is destabilizing one of your allies, or perhaps he's just lost an election. Perhaps you could provide some covert assistance to him. I'm not sure that people would actually choose to do this very often, however. As for ships... defection in space seems a bit tricky (depending on crew size, this would be VERY hard to pull off...), but it

Reply to Can all the nice and kind gurus give me some tips? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm not a guru, but as for the game mechanics... Resource bases increase the relevant ability score(s), which applies to your entire empire. Enemy planets systems -- select the system, and you should see a list of ships in orbit represented by tiny icons just as you would see ships in orbit if it were your own system. The survey ships, when they stumble into the clouds, do get bonuses to your racial ability score -- e.g. when it says "increases foo by x%" it's not talking about just that ship.

Reply to I got this game in a trade, and now I can't get updates!? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Perhaps he has a serial number, but it's stopping him from registering the same serial number under a new account on Stardock Central? I don't know how paranoid SDC is; if it's /that/ twitchy, then there probably needs to be a way to cancel/transfer a registration.

Reply to Whats the point of production bonuses?? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Have you checked whether the ability bonus gives you base production or bonus production? Base production costs BC, but bonus (such as part of the extra production from improvements) does not.

Reply to When Installing new verisions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

There's no reason to do so as far as I can tell... unless, perhaps, you've been playing with mods that touch the official files. That might have interesting side effects.

Reply to Quick Terror World question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It almost seems it'd be faster to pile up constructors and escorts near your victim and build your Terror Star there, rather than painfully waiting for one to cross half of a huge galaxy...

Reply to Can't stop winning! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I seem to recall that in the lower-left corner of one of the start screens, there's a checkbox to let you do so. But for a game that's already in progress, war might be the only quick option. 'course, you could build a culture-heavy starbase and trade/give it away...

Reply to Can't stop winning! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If you don't want to disable cultural victory altogether -- which you can do when you set up the game -- getting yourself into a war should suffice.

Reply to Bug Report Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's probably already mentioned, but it seems that in v. -057 (patched right after installing, so I don't know about older ones) any espionage/destabilization spent on a minor gets attached to a major instead.

Reply to Enemy Cheat? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Could they have gotten those by trade from a minor who doesn't exist anymore? Or an event? For that matter, are you sure that every tech they have that you don't have is on the table, trade-wise?

Reply to Would you buy it? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I don't buy games if I suspect they'll just go onto the shelf, and judging from the comments on CSIPGS, that's exactly what I think would happen for MOO3 in my hands. On the other hand, a certain other 4X space game seems to have gotten quite considerable, mostly positive discussion on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic.

Reply to Dear Frogboy.... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Hmmm. If you want good game support, it seems you need to buy from the "smaller" names -- Battlefront (of Combat Mission fame), Illwinter (Dominions), A-Sharp (King of Dragon Pass), and Stardock, for instance. All of those companies have devs who frequently, fruitfully conversed with customers, be it on csipgs or web forums, and all provide pretty darn good support. (e.g. KoDP came out in 1999; the 1.7 update came out in October 2002! Dominions goes back to at least October 2001; the most re

Reply to "Die Humans" revisted in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Heck, it even showed up in one of Brad's gameplay examples...

Reply to Tactical Fleet Combat is Required! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Tactical combat in MOO2 was, for all intents and purposes, as meaningful as enabling "god mode" because the AI had absolutely no clue about either ship design or battle tactics. I've seen it ignore critical specials, spend most of its space on plasma weapons and then blithely let me keep the range far enough so its plasma webs were useless, build doom stars filled with nuclear bombs... in other words, it lowered the difficult several notches. It was also, essentially, cheating in Space

Reply to changing the screen resolution... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Unless Galciv has some inherently three-dimensional data to present, or some other elements that would significantly benefit from that sort of thing, there's no reason it should go 3-D. Some types of games benefit from that sort of thing -- the "Combat Mission" games use it well, for instance, because terrain and line-of-sight *really* matters there -- and some don't need it at all. Imagine, for instance, "King of Dragon Pass" with a 3-D rendering engine for, oh, viewing your tula. Unless the

Reply to My GalCiv Haiku in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

A (frequently implicit) seasonal reference is also usual, as "Flowers bloom, roots grow / Life reaches for the heavens / A new dawn for Man".

Reply to Question about victory condtions for the A.I. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Hmmm. I was under the impression that an alliance victory required that ALL surviving players be allied with each other -- in other words, that includes the player. If the player holds out, there's no alliance victory. If the player joins the rest, everybody that survived wins.

Reply to The Mirror Universe Scenario in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

*shudder* I don't think I'd want to be cuddled by a Drengin...

Reply to Brad, give us our daily fix in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yup; AAR ==after-action report.

Reply to galciv has been pirated:( in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Sure it can. Most people have a rather limited budget for entertainment, I'd figure, so some would rip off Galactic Civilizations and use the money to buy other stuff instead. A free supply affects how much people are willing to pay, after all.

Reply to Galciv v MOO3 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Realtime (more precisely, continuous...) strategy can be done; it's just extremely rare. "The Ancient Art of War", for instance, achieved it by having TWO "scales": a strategic map, in which you moved around squads (up to 14 guys per squad, and at most a mere 20 squads between you and enemy) that, when they got near, fought on a tactical map with only pretty general orders available ("archers attack", "knights hold" for instance). Battles were over pretty quickly, strategic movement was slow,