BiffMan

Reply to Starting allocation of Points in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yeah, gotta love that +15%PQ... It's just too fun to be able to colonize 12 quality planets, slap on soil enrichment and be instantly at 15 quality. Really nice way to sneak a couple of planets behind enemy "lines" to help with your culture spread... :) But back to the original question, there really aren't any bad choices and you can have alot of fun taking a different tack at the game based on what you choose. Just give thought to your government/ability choices (don't

Reply to TNN RIGHT NOW!! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I also cracked up at that reference in the planet guide, but of course then my geek side had to kick in and immediately notice that the line should be "THIS is Ceti Alpha 5!", not "This IS Ceti Alpha 5!".... ;) Granted the whole line is shouted, but the emphasis is definitely on the first line. :p ~SDC~

Reply to Metaverse Scores in Strategies Stardock Forums

It at least doesn't seem like faster = higher score, or at least it's not as big of a factor as population. My latest game didn't register the first time I submitted it to the Metaverse, so I went back in to my last auto save, reloaded and tried to finish it off again. Since I had won by cultural victory, I wound up having to wait an extra 10 turns or so for the culture to kick back up, but instead I ended up absorbing the last couple of planets through rebellion. So the game took 1

Reply to The master stratigy...... in Strategies Stardock Forums

There are purple stars as well and while they often do have good planets in them, it's not a given. I've seen one as high as 26 and I've seen one as low as 15. Don't know whether they're naturally any better than yellow stars, but they're at least more rare. ~SDC~

Reply to i know AI doesnt cheat, but how is it possible? (no flames, just a question.) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

LeeAbe - Yeah, that continuing to head to an already appropriated resource/planet is an odd behavior by the AI. It's particurally noticable in the larger galaxies. I've seen an AI civ send 10-20 colony ships out to an area that I've already conquered, and that's on intelligent. It's not wrong for them to be trying to grab the planets, but if they have contact with me, they should be able to tell when something, especially a planet, has been conquered. ~SDC~

Reply to i know AI doesnt cheat, but how is it possible? (no flames, just a question.) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Brad - I guess that begs the question: Do you want the AI to be able to see resources? -John ~SDC~

Reply to A 14.95 quality planet is still just 14 quality? in Strategies Stardock Forums

mlepenski - That's precisely what I'm wondering, but it doesn't seem to be calculating with the percentages and according to Scott Jensen's post a couple above yours in this thread, the game rounds down (truncates) all decimals. I'd just like to hear back from someone on the design team how the game handles it and whether that was by design for play-balance reasons that escape me. ~SDC~

Reply to A 14.95 quality planet is still just 14 quality? in Strategies Stardock Forums

True and it's easy enough to plop down on a 13 which immediately becomes 14, buy soil enrichment instantly and wind up with a 15 class planet that no one would have touched. But in these days of new-fangled computing devices, I'd think that we could have the hidden "actual" values calculated at least to one decimal place. No need to tell me that a planet is a 14.9 as I can always go figure out the precise math myself if I want and displaying it as 14 is just fine for convenience, but

Reply to A 14.95 quality planet is still just 14 quality? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Sorry, math goof there. Meant to say that 10%/15% bonus would be the same for 10-13 quality planets. 14 is the cusp where 15% would give you a +2 quality bonus. But this would also be applicable to techs like soil improvement and such. Does soil improvement (+10%) make a 19 class planet a 20.9 or just a 20? ~SDC~

A 14.95 quality planet is still just 14 quality? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Been messing with planet improvement starting abilities and am wondering if planet quality is being handled as whole numbers or not internal within the game. Starting with the +15% planet quality (expensive but interesting) seems that it should be helping out the 13 quality ones (13*.15 = 1.95) a bit more than just the one point (class 14) that it displays. So obviously the quality isn't being rounded to the nearest whole number, so is it at least calculating it as a 14.95 class inte

Reply to A non-accusatory subject heading in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Booya indeed ~SDC~

Reply to What do the number of trade routes mean? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

That's total for you (other empires have their own). Techs that increase trade routes by +1 will give you extra trade routes, aka a Good Thing(tm)... Don't confuse that with the +10 trade techs which are actually adding to the percentage income you get from trade routes. ~SDC~

Reply to 90% too much for Cultural Victory? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Idleprocess - Nope, you just have to have control of enough sectors and then eventually you'll get a countdown that you're going to win culturally in 2 years if the situation doesn't change. You can have it happen at any point in the game. The cultural conquest and surrounding tech items just give you piles of starbase modules that'll help you get there. ~SDC~

Reply to Fun WAR story--post yours, too! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Delphic: Yep, one of the coolest things about the game is that everyone is really looking after themselves. If you have good espionage on a given power, you can sometimes tell how much of their trade is from who and have an idea if you're going to really make someone angry. But yeah, if someone's making 50% of their income from another power and you start munching on that power, they're going to look after their own self-interests and come after you. Best plan is to have more trade g

Reply to Fun WAR story--post yours, too! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Think my favorite "whoops" moment was fairly early in a game on a small map... Had just finished exploring the map, all the initial planets were colonized, and I was going to try a little bit of quick genocide against the minor races (need all the planets I can get on small) before they inevitably got out of hand later. So, against their one defender, I line up 3 corvettes and a 1-bil transport which should have been plenty to take out their 2.5-3bil population. As always, I try to ta

Reply to Metaverse: My in-game score was 1800 but only "132" gets posted? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Guess we need to have a trash-talking forum as well, eh? ;) Nice to see a little good-natured rivalry going on anyway... ~SDC~

Reply to Metaverse: My in-game score was 1800 but only "132" gets posted? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Make that ***VERY*** heavily weighted towards galaxy size. A game of the same difficulty level will be about 30x higher on gigantic vs tiny. Kinda kooky since for me at least the larger the map, the easier it is to win. Had a cakewalk on gigantic produce a 3500+ pt game and a real knuckle-biter on tiny give me ~130pts. ;) Best plan is to just not worry about the metaverse scores and enjoy the games. I know I enjoyed my painful/tiny game a heck of alot more than the painful/gigantic

Reply to Could a minimap of some sort be on the main Planet Screen? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's actually pretty easy to navigate when you're on the F2 planets screen if you use the tactical display for the left hand (main area) as you'll get to see the whole map and can run down your planets pretty easily there. Single-click on a planet in the right-side list and it'll highlight it on the map for you and then you can just change production without ever having to bring up the full screen planet view. Since you can do most normal tasks from the planet list and the tactical v

Reply to How do I get a high score? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Yeah and it's heavily balanced toward larger galaxies, etc. Good plan is just not to worry about the scoring so much and just keep enjoying the game! :) ~SDC~

Reply to A terrible evil is growing in my strongest planet!!! What heck is that? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It'll get worse before it gets better... but it is "resolvable" in the long-term. Just not fun at all. One of the more clever random events IMHO... ~SDC~

Reply to Suggestions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Stellar Cartography - Since the AI players all in effect start the game with this tech, I'd recommend that it just be given outright to them. As it is, the human player can trade the tech to an AI player for cash/brownie points/whatnot which is odd for what is a useless and redundant tech for the AI. Either just have the AIs all start with the tech or at the very least make it a very undesirable item for trade for them. ~SDC~

Reply to GalCiv AI Cheating at all diff levels? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's not a cheat, it's a starting advantage. At least the AI plays by the same rules you do which probably makes this game unique in all strategy games. ~SDC~

Reply to An Open note to StarDock in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Uh-oh... Brad's gonna have groupies following him around now... :d ~SDC~

Reply to GalCiv AI Cheating at all diff levels? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Panzer - Selling Stellar Cartography to the AI brings up a question that's been nagging at me... If they're starting with the equivalent of Stellar Cartography already, why don't we just have all of the AI already possessing that tech rather than being able to make a few bucks/brownie points by giving them a reduntant tech. Or at the very least have them seriously undervalue stellar cartography in a trade since it's of no use to them... ~SDC~

Reply to GalCiv AI Cheating at all diff levels? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

And for that matter, how do the other races talk to each other when they haven't yet developed universal translators... ;) ~SDC~