Vorlin Varelse

Reply to WAR! huh, yeah, what's it good for? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Just keep an eye on the militarly power graph and never let anyone get a significant lead over you. Much easier in 1.03.54 because battlehammers are now just 3 maintenance (they used to be 6), you get a lot of boost for your buck with those. Note, however, that if you turtle you run the risk of one of the other AIs going hogwild all over the map. Then you are in trouble, it's very hard to match the military output of 80% of the galaxy when you only have 20% of it to work with. Turtli

Reply to Is PQ worth it in 1.03? in Strategies Stardock Forums

The exception is PQ 15 (unfortunately the most common one), 15 + 20% = 18, 15 + 25% = 18.75 rounded down to 18.

Reply to Questions about 5BC per turn starbase maintenance... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My previous strategy was to boom colonies out until a given planet only had 100 pop left (I ship 1/2 each colony ship), then switch that planet to constructors and go for a very early starbase strategy (not multiples per system, just singles, but -quick-). Worked very well before, not so good now, the 5 BC maintenance and the slower build of constructors means I'm going to have to push back my constructor push to a later time. How much later I'll have to find out by experimenting, but I did my

Reply to 1.03 BUG THREAD: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Some bugs in 1.03.54: 1. Autolaunching will put your ship directly south of your planet even if an enemy/neutral ship occupies the square. This is an autolaunch problem, if you manually de-orbit the ship it is correctly placed beside the enemy/neutral ships. 2. Sometimes trade information is missing. Specifically, when I was doing a peace deal with the Altarians in the ships/starbases list there wasn't anything, though he had about 5-6 starbases and of course lots of ships.

Reply to last few updates where always 85meg !?! ... normal or not ? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When I first got the game on CD and installed it, then updated to the 1.01 patch, I had that problem with SDC. The 1.02 patch must have put me in sync, because I had no problem with the 1.03, it correctly downloaded the minimum files needed. Hopefully the standalone 1.03 patch will re-sync you with SDC.

Reply to Universalists' Luck = LOTS of yellow stars? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

For the people trying to come to conclusions about something based on starting position, forget it: your starting position can vary so wildly that you can't draw any conclusion except that anything goes. I've had starts with no AI civ near me and 8 (yes, 8) resource sites around in inside my clusters, when I was done expanding I had 25% of the entire gigantic map inside my bounds before I ran out of yellows to colonize. On the other extreme, when I was rolling for my game last evening my 2nd

Reply to 1.03 BUG THREAD: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Some bugs in 1.03.54: 1. Transports in route to attack one of my planets continue the route even after a peace treaty if they are within one turn of the destination, thus getting in a 'free' attack and restarting the war. Especially bad if you paid a big tribute to end it. This seems to only be transports, I've never seen a combat ship exhibit this problem. 2. In the Stats screen for racial info if you use the mouse wheel while over the Misc window it won't scroll that wind

Reply to Universalists' Luck = LOTS of yellow stars? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I had a game the other day with huge numbers of yellow stars by me, and no AI civ anywhere near. I had chosen +2 sensors, obviously +2 sensors gives more yellow starts and places AI civs further away. *nods to self* When someone posts a set of numbers showing average number of yellow stars per sector in the 8 sectors around your starting location plus your starting sector, and the average PQ of the '15 or larger' planets around those stars, for both +50 luck and +0, and if those numbe

Reply to v1.03, +10 PQ Ability has been nerfed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Also, if you have one civ that is really busting you up, make darn sure you get every other civ possible to declare war on them. Bribe them however is needed. The more fronts your enemy is fighting on the fewer ships he can focus on you. If he wants to fight, let him fight everyone. :)

Reply to v1.03, +10 PQ Ability has been nerfed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The only way IMO to come from behind is to either win the research race (and that can be a real nail biter as turn by turn goes by and your civ gets nibbled away at piece by piece) or find some way to go on the offensive. Remember what Nathanial Bedford Forrest of Civil War fame said: get there first with the most men. If you can make a strong raid on the AI, take a few planets, then you can often get a decent peace agreement by offering them back (or all but one). Of course, you'll want to

Reply to playing with alignments... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

One thing you have to be aware of if you try this is that the comp races don't much care for a weakling regardless of alignment. Don't think of yourself as America and England, more like America and France: same basic beliefs, but not exactly best buddies. I guess what I'm trying to say is setting a game up this way probably won't result in 4 on 1 for long (though it might for a while).

Reply to 1.03 Better than1.02 ? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Brad, would it be possible to alter the starbase cost along these lines: on founding a starbase it costs you 1 BC maintenance, then +1 BC per module until it reaches 5 BCs (capped at 5)? As it is you get hit with the full maintenance cost at the time when the base does the least. It just seems wrong that a bare-bones refueling base costs in maintenance exactly as much as a starbase that's been upgraded with 25 or so modules.

Reply to 1.03 BUG THREAD: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

PirateRob, that had me confused at first as well, but then I realized that what is happening is any autopilot ships you have are causing that double-turn issue.

Reply to 1.03 Better than1.02 ? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The new constructor cost combined with the 5 bc starbase maintenance is hurting me a lot. Which is sort of irritating since I was never one of the ones that stacked starbases anyway, now I have to pay the price for those that did in 3 different ways (higher cost contructors, 5 BCs per starbase (which early in the game is a -killer- on your economy), and 3X planet max production for free (which can be reached even by one fully upgraded starbase if you set your slider high)). This update

Reply to 1.03.54 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Decided to download the patch, answered my own question, still no +research on +research planet colonizing events.

Reply to 1.03.54 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Can someone check to see if the evil random event when colonizing a planet that gives you a +research bonus works now? In 1.02.049 it doesn't. The way to spot it is to click on the Details button of the planet screen, the planet description text in the middle will have any bonuses the planet has listed at the top. It's just depressing to see that +49% research bonus pop up and not get anything. :)

Reply to NOTICE: Metaverse Data - Cheaters beware. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, I checked through the Library yesterday and most of what I saw seemed quite balanced. I downloaded several events (all of Nephrinn's, the graphics for those are really well done) and all worked fine and the ones I've seen so far seemed balanced. The only thing that caught my eye was the terraforming tech addition mod. That one gives two terraforming projects late in the game, one that is +40% PQ and another that is +60% PQ. Brad, could you tell us if this mod is acceptable fo

Reply to 1.03 BUG THREAD: in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You can do anything in C, even when you don't want to. ;)

Reply to v1.03, +10 PQ Ability has been nerfed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Starpilot, the key to keeping the AIs off your back is your military strength of your race. You don't have to actually fight (I'm a builder like yourself), but you have to be strong enough that they don't come looking for you. Once I encounter alien civs I always keep the military graph up on the right hand side of the main display. When you see a civ moving past you, build more defense. There are two good defender ships near the base of the tech tree, the first is the Defender, th

Reply to Complaint - Lack of Game Variation = Boredom in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I don't find surviving until the dreadnaught stage a problem, I find surviving the appearance of the dreadnaughts themselves to be an issue. There is a particular AI algorithm that any race can get (I think, I know several can) that pushes for all all-out military build. If that race also occupies more planets than you do then when they hit dreadnaughts their military power jumps alarmingly. At that point they are either going to start conquering their neighbors (in which case they grow stron

Reply to Capital ships should be able to attack planets in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If bombardment units must be put in the game (and I'm still against it) then one way might be to have it so there is a minimum population that any given planet class can be bombed down to (the logic being that there are lots of places to hide on a planet, so you reach a point where space bombardment isn't effective anymore). Say 100 million pop per planet size, that would mean you could bombard a size 20 planet down to 2000 million before invading (which is a lot better than the 12000-15000 or

Reply to Complaint - Lack of Game Variation = Boredom in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I pulled one from the fire earlier today. Gigantic map, normal AIs, I start in the upper-right corner. Not a good start, but I don't like to cherry pick too much, so I went with it. I had one cluster in range, but nope, minor AI civ had all the habitable planets in it. Okay, I'm filling up my cluster and scouting, boom, a Drengin ship, check on the map for population and they are in that only cluster I have available. Then I meet the Torians, check my map, and they are in a prime spot: huge

Reply to v1.03, +10 PQ Ability has been nerfed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I don't believe the removal of +10 and +15 PQ had anything to do with metaverse scoring at all, they were removed (IMO) because the power they gave was vastly out of proportion to the ability points used to purchase them. I understand your feelings, Starpilot, but look at what you posted from another angle: +15 PQ is so powerful that it allowed you to win when in a losing situation. Any trait that lets you overpower all adversity is probably an overpowered trait. Also, not

Reply to Complaint - Lack of Game Variation = Boredom in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Okay, my bad, I think I was doing an 'apples and oranges' on you. I was thinking you meant lacked strategic variation whereas you meant something different. Sorry about that. The problem is that every truly new ability would have to have a whole section of AI code written for it. Just picture one thing, stargates, and you can imagine the weeks it would take to write the code for the computer to use them offensively, to defend against having them used on them, and to know what priorit

Reply to Drengin always toughest? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I did that on one game, gigantic galaxy with rare planets, me with +15 PQ. It was like playing in sandbox mode, the Yor and Torians had 2 planets the entire game, the Drengin had 3, the Altarians and Arceans did best with 5. In a gigantic galaxy. *boggle* I saw right off that it was a cakewalk so tried some new things to make it interesting, but yeah, that's definitely the nightmare mode for the AI: rare, tight clusters, and human player with +15 PQ.