Soulfire777

Reply to Suggestions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When offering diplomatic deals, it would be really nice to have some indication of whether an offer has a "reasonable" chance of being accepted before you actually offer it. This way you have some guidance on what are fair/reasonable deals without having to make a ton of seperate offers (starting high and working down until they finally accept it which wastes a lot of time). Civ3 had a feature like this that really added a lot to the game...especially when you are new and don't really know wha

Reply to Bug Reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When I get status reports, it tells me I have fallen behind technologically even though my technology is by FAR the highest of all the races in this game.

Reply to Whats wrong with this AI??? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I am not sure the bigger games provide more metaverse scores...it sounds like it is based more on difficulty. And maybe these games you THINK you are winning might not actually turn out that way if you actually FINISH the game. I saw a few play examples where people thought they were way ahead only to have everything unravel on them later in the game. If you are indeed as good as you say, please finish some games and submit your scores and then they can use that data to improve the AI. :)<br

Reply to Can someone tell me why I should play this game? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes, you can change governments back. As is realistic though, the more dictatorial forms of government are progressively less efficient in many ways (you make more money on the more "free" styles of government). You have to remember this game is more like a space civilization simulator than a war game. You can do pretty much what you like, but with realistically modelled consequences (including politics). You can get rid of the politics if you choose, but there is always a trade-off.

A few questions: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Hi, I've been playing and enjoying the game, but have a few gameplay/strategy questions I need help with. Any assistance would be much appreciated: Trade: Does the planet that actually BUILDS/PRODUCES a freighter determine the "origin" of the trade route? If true, this would seem to mean only your financial capital would ever be likely to build this unit and you could not trade for freighters because you would just be establishing a trade route for the empire that built it?<b

Reply to How Do You Get A Ship To Do A "Sector Sweep" in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

What exactly IS a "sector sweep"?

Reply to Suggestions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I did not realize there was a special thread for suggestions, so I posted this in a seperate thread. I am reposting it here where it should be: One major suggestion that would help ME enjoy the game a lot more (especially as a newb): please add a functional equivalent to the "civilopedia"? I know you can go to JavaScout's web page to get all that, but it really needs to be accessable in-game. As a newbie, when I see the list of things I can research, I need to be able to see what exact

Reply to Is GalCiv what Stars! Supernova Genesis might have been? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

One HUGE difference is that Stars! AI was REALLY BAD. To get a decent game, you HAD to play multi-player. One major drawback to that is that my experience with human players has not been the best: they tend to quit when they are not winning. The problem with this is that when a player quits in a game with lots of other players, it leaves a huge power-vaccuum that unbalances the game. Basicly, the human players near the quitter have a much easier time expanding into the unmanaged territory gi

Reply to What happens to unused build slots? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

*bump* I would love an answer to this too. :)

Suggestion: Needs "Civilopedia" in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Hi, One major suggestion that would help ME enjoy the game a lot more (especially as a newb): please add a functional equivalent to the "civilopedia"? I know you can go to JavaScout's web page to get all that, but it really needs to be accessable in-game. As a newbie, when I see the list of things I can research, I need to be able to see what exactly they do so I can make intelligent decisions about what to research and why. Basicly, everything should just be hyper-text linke

Reply to I found an addictive little shareware turn based strategy game. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"Strange Adventures" was entertaining, but the demo got stale pretty quickly for me. There was not enough different in each new game, so it felt like you were doing the exact same things over and over. It is quite possible the FULL version would stay interesting much longer. You also need the ability to determine which weapons, etc. are better->best to make more intelligent decisions, but presumably that would also be documented in the full version of the game? If anybody h

Reply to What impressed you the most about this game... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

For me, the biggest draw is the promise of challenging AI that doesn't cheat. I'm really tired of how in almost all TBS games (like Civ3 as much as I love the game overall), my supposedly "elite" units ROUTINELY get slaughtered by units of lesser experience and/or technological quality even when I have the advantage of being defensively fortified. Sure this is going to happen sometimes, but it shouldn't happen MOST of the time. If the combat rules indicate that my unit should have ab

Reply to Any ethical choices ever reward "good" behavior? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"From the sound of it, it would only be a good idea to play as evil in a really small map, so that you can reap the benefits before it all comes crashing down on you. But I could be wrong. " From everything I have read, they made a sincere effort to make all three alignments balanced in terms of overall power, while still providing very different play experiences. --Soulfire

Reply to Any ethical choices ever reward "good" behavior? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"I'm sure this probably isn't a great idea as far as making gameplay "balanced" in terms of good vs. evil. But I think being evil should allow the player to have inherently more advantages then if you were being good." Evil usually comes around to bite itself in the ass. Whatever "advantages" there are to being evil are always eventually balanced out by low loyalty and moral, lack of trust and teamwork, and the general effect of what are usually short sighted decisions. So for

Reply to Creating your own civilization (please read) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

MOO2 had the coolest race customization I've seen yet. Aquatic race, telepathic race, etc. were very cool changes. HOWEVER, it was fairly easy to make an almost "unbeatable" race in that game. Simply put, the more complex options you put in a game like that, the more difficult it becomes to keep the gameplay balanced. The AI is also very negatively influenced by the complexity of the game's basic design. Think back to each of those games that had all the "cool customization featur

Reply to Bonus Pack Question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Didn't somebody say the bonus pack was only like a 10meg download? Even on 56K (I don't have broadband), that really does not take very long to download? --Soulfire

Reply to Creating your own civilization (please read) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Does the "backstory" you talk about come into effect when you are actually playing the game, or is it what was printed in the manual? --Soulfire

Reply to Bonus Pack Question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Rusty, you have a Stardock icon? Are you an employee?

Reply to A few metaverse questions: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think it's fine to play however you like too, but I don't think save/reload games or hacked/edited games should be uploaded to the Metaverse. I don't know if there is any practical way to prevent that from happening, but I hope there is. :) --Soulfire

Reply to Multiplayer: Will this be moded? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Everything I have read on these boards indicates the answer is "No, multi-player will not be added". --Soulfire

Reply to The same 5 civs every game, is the AI enough to compensate? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"The same five major civilizations are in every game of GalCiv played. These civs have the same bonuses every single game, yes?" Not sure where it was, but I asked a similar question and somebody (I THINK Frogboy) explained that the AI races do NOT have the same bonuses each game. They purchase their abilities at the start of each game in a similar manner to the way the human player does. I think he said that each AI had a list of abilities to choose from (compatable with that AI's ov

Reply to A few metaverse questions: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Saving and reloading is fine when you are playing by yourself and not uploading your scores to the metaverse. A player who saves before major battles and then undoes every loss, or replays every battle until the get optimum results would pretty much guarantee those players always had the highest scores. They would afterall be virtually guaranteed to win every single battle, because if they didn't they would either undo it and thereby not lose or just keep replaying it until they get the precise

Reply to Can't wait to see a review! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I had fun with Dungeon Siege too, but it sure did have its flaws. I had to think of DS as a graphical update to Diablo 2 to fully appreciate it. The biggest problems with it were that the classes were totally out of "balance" in terms of their relative capabilities, and the fact that the games higher levels of difficulty (for high level characters) were ineffective at providing the correct amount of challenge or rewards to keep the game fun and interesting. It really needed a much better syst

A few metaverse questions: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

1) Will players who play the most games (or bigger game or whatever) generally have higher metaverse scores than players with fewer games if their degree of playing skill is roughly equal? 2) Will certain sizes/difficulty settings of games provide significantly more advantageous opportunities to create a high metaverse score than other styles of games? 3) Is there anything in the game that prevents people "cheating" to get high scores? By cheating I mean either using hacks/tra

Reply to Galaxy size ? (again...) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"it would be cool to be able to adjust the "closeness" of the differenrt civ - that is, have a "spread of civs" parameter putting civs more or less close/far from each other (with some random variance)." On a the two larger map sizes, it would be cool to have all the homeworlds start in the center 60% or so of space, leaving the middle 20-30% or so free of homeworlds. This would leave a little "buffer" in the center of the map for expansion and ensure that your homeworlds were not righ