Vorlin Varelse

Reply to The Gal Civ formula (and why it needs to be addressed) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The original poster basically came to the conclusion that this is a 4X game, which isn't that stunning of a revelation. ;) Ellestar, the last thing I want is bizarre random AI personalities/decisions. I had my fill of that in SMAC, where Miriam would declare an undying Vendetta against me when she had 1/1000th of my strength. I'll take the GalCiv AI hands down over that silliness. I believe Brad added in some different AI decision paths in 1.04, but since I don't have access

Reply to Defense *far* too strong in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Twirlip, planetary defense structures boost your defense against troop invasion, they have no effect on ship-to-ship fighting. I was curious about this one time so checked it, and CariElf confirmed this. Which makes sense, because if they did boost ship defense then if you stacked those with starbase boosts as well you'd have an insane bonus. But I do think the maintenance costs of the planetary defenses are set way too high. I never build them because of that.

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The only time I use the transport trick is when I take over an AI planet that is just so grossly overpopulated that there's no hope of me fixing the morale issue before it defects on me (i.e. rush-buying a stadium and teleporters isn't going to cut it). In that case I bite the bullet and space a bunch of people. :)

Reply to This is the first 4x AI I have seen that can come from behind. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Brad's stated a couple of times that he designed the AI to have long term goals, that is what you are seeing there I imagine. What happened is that the AI's goal came into fruition and thus it started kicking into gear. I agree with what you said, it's nice to play an AI that is doing something other than constantly reacting to the human opponent. The AI's act on their own, they have goals and intentions, they don't always work out but then, neither do mine. :)

Reply to Defense *far* too strong in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The orbiting bonus, the '1/2 defense added to attack on strike back' bonus, combined with greater hitpoints means you were very much outmatched. Never get into a battle where you have to send ship after ship against a defender if you can help it, because he is leveling up on those failed attacks and thus getting harder and harder to defeat. Like most games you have to get a feel for how strong defense is vs. offense at any given stage of the game. For GalCiv it's something like this:

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The computer has a set value for the various techs, and this value is sometimes counter-intuitive. One thing that you can say with a good deal of confidence is that the comp won't trade any ship-type tech (or ship-type prerequisite tech) for anything resembling a reasonable value. Which makes sense, because otherwise you could go for a pure infra build, then trade to the comp for his ship tech, and have the best of both worlds: your super-infra planets now producing dreadnaughts. As

Reply to economic bonuses still do not pay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Modemboy's tests have nothing to do with population, he specifically stated he didn't run the game, just created one and grabbed the stats. All his numbers are from base population. The +economy bonus is clearly based strongly on the population portion of your economy, my test showed that conclusively.

Reply to How I scored 23k step by step in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've noticed that instability as well, for me it tended to kick in around 6 trillion or so. That's why I never got into pushing the game much, I like to push systems just to see what happens but the constant crashing was just too annoying. :notsure:

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

1.03A remembers, so that's not a problem anymore.

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You can't keep morale up, this is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of GalCiv for newer players. You don't build +morale buildings to improve morale, you build them to increase your max population. Any morale above 54% or so will allow a planet to grow, planet population growth causes a drop in morale, eventually all your planets will stabilize at around 54% morale. This is perfectly normal and no problems will happen because of it. So don't think of +morale buildings as morale im

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You can avoid a culture win if you want by keeping a war going, no culture win if there is an ongoing war.

Reply to economic bonuses still do not pay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The economic model is based on more than population, the +economic bonus is based on population, that seems to pretty much sum it up. I just can't see much controversy here. *shrug*

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

As a side note, remember that since the military power graph prior to version 1.04 is calced based on offensive power, that you aren't limited to just building ships to increase power, you can increase your military power with tech as well. For instance, 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D phasing techs alone total out to a whopping +40% offense and defensive bonus, and a correspondingly large increase in your military ratings. Toss in a military resource or two and you can jump up even higher. Never let the

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Prior to release 1.04 (which you can't currently get unless you subscribe to drengin.net) the computer only values the attack part of a ship's stats. So it's very hard to counter a dreadnaught push with defensive ships per se, you have to use offensive ships for defense (and use enough so you never get attacked, because they don't defend well). The lowly starfighter is great for this, dirt cheap and 1 BC maintanence. 59% tax rate is too high, 50% is the highest I consider workable, an

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The reason the Arceans are so spread out in mine is that the Yor surrendered to them instead of me to spite me (and yes, that is how it was phrased in the game :)). And one Arcean planet (that was a Yor planet) is way out there because of the infinite range bug. The Yor were losing to two other civs anyway, so I thought maybe I'd vulture in on the deal by attacking them then going for a quick peace and maybe a planet or one of their starbases, but didn't work out that way. I like runn

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

As soon as I meet any other AI I switch my graph on the right-hand side of the screen to Military. AIs are aggressive to you based on your military strength compared to theirs. I don't like fighting early on (I'm a builder) so I try to keep my military power ranking equal to or a little higher than the closest AI (I prefer higher, gives me some buffer in case they go on a building spree). As long as you are equal to them (more or less) the AIs won't bother you as a rule. As far as th

Reply to economic bonuses still do not pay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think you are confusing 'not working' with 'not working the way you think it should'. The bonuses quite clearly work, they just don't apply to the numbers you think they ought to. This is much different from the bug that used to be with the military/social production bonuses (which never worked at any time under any situation that I could find). To quote from that thread: "Interesting to note though that the +50% economy plus +20% military beats +40% military (12% faster), and also

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Okay, got it posted on the Apol thread with a link. I figure with cultural victories you'll just have to be a little more flexible, load the save game and play it till the victory condition pops up, changing as little as possible (i.e. no starting new builds, no buying anything, etc.). Since you can't have a cultural win when at war there should be no ongoing military action so that shouldn't be an issue at any rate. I just loaded my save and checked it, took about 2 turns or

Reply to economic bonuses still do not pay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I posted hard proof of it working, and why start a second thread? Now anyone who wants to follow this topic has to read both.

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm not sure how to provide a link to the save, can't recall that anything like that showed after I submitted it. How do I get that info?

OT: Matrix Reloaded (No Spoilers Please) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Just got back from it, loved it. Was a little scared going in, so many times sequels end up less then the original and the original in this case set the bar pretty high. But they pulled it off just fine, it takes the entire concept to the next level both philosophically and with some incredible action scenes. One thing that bothered me about a sequel, Neo is basically hacking the system through a 'back door' (coding the Matrix through the very connection that allows humans to be in it

Reply to Will AI *ever* deal a system? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The history of 4x games where bases could be traded is a history of people abusing such trades to the great detriment of the AI. Stardock has done a sensible compromise IMO, no system trading under normal situations, trading under situations where the computer is desperate. If they allowed trading under normal situations they'd spend the next 12 months constantly patching loopholes that people would find that would allow them to exploit the AI. To give an example of how something like

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I prefer not to lease any more than I have to, normally I'll only lease 1 or 2 times a game (but keep in mind that I play in Intelligent or less). I'm not saying this is ideal, it's just that I don't like anything that drags on my economy, especially early in the game. Also keep in mind that if you lease for a constructor to build a starbase you'll not only have the lease payment but in a few turns the 5 BC starbase maintenance as well. I'll lease diplo translators (because the AIs re

Reply to Help: early game starbase problem. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My standard start is spending at 100%, military at 60%, and research and social at 20%. Crank out colony ships from each planet, each planet ships 50% of its pop with each colony ship, when planet pop reaches less than 150K then I switch that planet to constructors. At this setting I generally crank one out in about 16 turns or so. I've never had any problems getting my share of resources this way and as a rule I never buy colony ships or constructors. Another good tip is to have you

Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Finished my game, uploaded it to the link provided with no problems. Cultural win, sent in the save one turn before the win, hopefully it will load-nextturn-end properly. Crappy metaverse score (190 or so I think, and no, I didn't submit it as per instructions :)), but who cares? It was fun to play. :) BTW, for anyone reading this who isn't sure about giving it a try, go for it. The maps will be of varying difficulty from month to month, but I can say that at least for -this- month