Ryan Clifton

Reply to The Number One AI Deficiency in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I should clarify that the I do believe the military AI is screwed and too easy. My point is that once it's fixed if we don't address this issue we'll all be complaining about it immediately after the military AI is fixed. This is completely separate from the computer's ability to choose an appropriate way to invade you. Every civ should always be looking at how best it can survive. If it can ally with another civ (presumably the big civs won't want to because they don't need to), that wou

Reply to The Number One AI Deficiency in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Heh.. thanks for your intelligent, informative, thought-out post 'The Leader'. While military AI is a problem, it's definitely not the only one. Once it is fixed, presumably all of the AIs will be better at military strategy. This gives a net zero effect to assessing their place in the universe. Threat assessment logic still needs to be addressed and made more intelligent. In fact, better threat assessment logic would be a partial fix to the military problem. If the AIs correctly a

Reply to The Number One AI Deficiency in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

To some extent I've seen this, but not always. Whenever I have played strictly 'good' and I am at war with an evil civ, the other good civs do tend to come to my aid. I've received free ships from the more powerful Torians and Altarans several times. If you are neutral or especially evil however, all bets are off. I think the AI is on the right track here, it just needs to be stepped up a bit. The AI needs to understand danger more quickly and react to it faster. Admittedly, I'm st

Reply to The Number One AI Deficiency in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I find that the good civs do go to war together quite readily against an evil civ. The dregnin do tend to be more powerful in the long run, but it doesn't seem to be a big problem in my games. The thing that usually happens to me is that the Arceans manage to get very powerful because they just build up while the good/evil civs are at war. Then once the Arceans are powerful enough, they wreak havoc on the universe. This has happened in most of my games actually. So while I don't a

Reply to Morality problems? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Because being of good alignment yields benefits in other ways. By being good you can more easily work with the other good civs. Being evil doesn't impart this same benefit. You are effectively making a decision whether it's worth 20% planet quality to stay good or not. While your experience may differ, I find that the relatively small benefit of 24% system research bonus (or whatever) doesn't stack up to having two civs willing to go to war foryou..

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

This thread is so meandering I'm wondering whether it's worth posting, but here goes. I totally agree about dreads being too cheap. Regardless of whether in 'real life' (hehe) they would be easier to build, for gameplay reasons they shouldn't be. Unless the designers really did intend to make battleships obsolete within 30 turns of their introduction, dreads should be significantly increased in cost. I mean come on, dreads are FASTER to produce than battleships usually by a turn.

Reply to "Sector Owner" blue colour too hard to distinguish from black background. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I have a 17" LCD (NEC 1760V) and I agree. I can't see my blue background hardly at all. I usually figure that I'm the area that the others aren't..

Metaverse Score? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've submitted 3 or 4 games to Stardock now and I'd like to know what my overall score is. So far I can't find any record of myself. If you are not in the top 1000, how do you see your score? How can I find which name my scores are even being submitted as? Also.. is there any way to change my forum name? I didn't realize it would put my name on all my posts when I filled in the 'name' section.. Thanks

Reply to Research Question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Each planet adds it's own amount of research into the empire wide pool of 'research'. Adding a planetary research booster (center, lab, computers, etc.) increases the amount of research that planet adds to the pool by the given %.

Reply to Request for Suggestions:Military Strategic Options in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Alf, I like all of your ideas. Just those alone would make the military campaign much more engaging. I do realize that what we are asking for a a lot more complex than just adding the features. The AIs then have to be programmed to intelligently use these features. Are there any developers out there? Are changes like these feasible?

Reply to Request for Suggestions:Military Strategic Options in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Here are some more ideas: Supports ships that: slow enemy ships can cloak a fleet more than X squares from the closest normal sensor can un-cloak enemy cloaked ships in X squares ships to reduce enemy attack ships to increase the attack of all ships in a fleet ships to increase defense in all ships in a fleet ships that can do damage (artillery) far away from other ships Things like this would make fleets actually useful. These all don't have t

Reply to Request for Suggestions:Military Strategic Options in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Dearmad: I am playing on Bright. You can honestly say that the game wouldn't benefit from more ship differentiation? I'd like to see the capital ships slowed (or perhaps the other speeded up) to say 60% the speed of light strike ships. Defense ships that can be used past the early mid-game. Something to put some variety out there. Currently each generation of ship is so much more powerful than it predecessor that there is no reason to ever build the predecessor. The build times ar

Reply to Request for Suggestions:Military Strategic Options in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

bump. i'll bump this once.. maybe someone has an opinion..

Request for Suggestions:Military Strategic Options in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Am I the only one who is underwhelmed by military strategy in this game? Now before everyone goes off on this not being an RTS or tactical game, relax I'm not talking about that. The games that are often compared to Gal Civ has much more depth in their combat systems than does this game (civ3, etc.). Right now there are no choke points, no real reason to use anything but the 'best' ship, and having a war is more about who was able to build the most ships rather than using any kind of str

Reply to 1.02.039 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Just to clarify (in case someone who is working on SDC reads this), I was working with an admin on the chat server and tried everything he could think of before I un-installed. (clicked on all the stuff in tools, erased XML files, erased tmp data, etc.) So I'm relatively sure it's not me since he couldn't figure it out either..

Reply to 1.02.039 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Frogboy, I've had the same problem and I've seen other mention it. There appears to be a bug in SDC where it will refuse to see newer versions. I un-installed gal civ and then re-installed to fix the problem.

Reply to Bug Reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Sorry if this is already report (I don't have time to read 441 messages). Perhaps a new weekly bug thread? Anyway.. I have version 1.0.2.036 and some new bugs have definitely creeped in. I have two bug reports: The game has crashed twice on me (Win XP, AMD), unfortunately I can't reproduce it.. so this might not be too useful. Some wierdness is going on with my ships. The enemy is flying around with a battle transport that looks like mine and in my ship list I have

Reply to How to Grow efficiently ? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Maybe it's just my games, but these answers don't seem to account for the difference in AI pop growths vs mine. By turn 100 or so my race of puny humans generally has 1/2 as many people as the nearest AI. I do build soil enhancement, entertainment, news network, etc. I also keep taxes to a reasonable amount. My people just don't like sex. :( Is there some magic bullet to getting people to breed?

Late game economy tips? in Strategies Stardock Forums

I'm playing a game that I thought I was definitely going to win. Without firing a single shot I was leading in just about every category. Now, very late in the game with only two other competitors my economy has collapsed under it's own weight. On a medium map, of the 3000 bc I'm able to generate, about 1700 bc is being used for maintenance. I have double the population of the other two, more culture than them combined, 9 trade routes, and fully upgraded starbases in 8 sectors with dense tra

Reply to Suggestions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

So I've played for a number of hours now and generally love this game. Here are my suggestions: 1) The game badly needs a right-click interface to bring up details on techs/improvements/ships on the diplomacy and governor screens. This is one of those things that once I've got 50 hours under my belt, probably won't matter, but it sure would make the game more approachable early on. 2) Similiar to the above, since this game is basically civ 3 in space, let's go all the way.