Vorlin Varelse

Reply to Starbase Maint Idea Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Ellestar, how can building 1 unit instead of 5, moving one unit instead of 5, and adding to the starbase in one lump sum instead of 5 seperate times be less efficient? The only inefficiency comes from the last superconstructor you add when you don't need 5 modules, and I'll take that piddling little bit of inefficiency any day for an 80% reduction in constructor micromanagement. But if someone didn't like it, they could always build and assign and upgrade with 5 times more constructors then I'

Reply to Now I know the AI cheats in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Sometimes you do get burnt beyond any ability to recover from, but experience helps. Did the space sharks escape from the zoo? If so, don't accept a zoo next time. Fundamentalists are an evil-only event, you can avoid them by staying neutral or good aligned. A 3-way alliance is tougher, either start preparing right away to fight them or join them, but definitely don't take them for granted (I'm not saying you did, I'm saying you have to get proactive with them). Yeah, it can be frus

Reply to Starbase Maint Idea Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The idea of the 'super constructor' would help with the spam, being as it would cost a lot more than the current constructors. It would also reduce the horrible 'what module am I supposed to build next?' clicking whenever a constructor lands on a starbase. What to do with overflow from both social and military build queues is non-trivial, because there is so much of it. For social you can have a version of Capitalism on that converts production to money, but more money means higher sl

Reply to Suggestions for making Culture Bombs not such a cakewalk in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Military resources make -any- victory easier: the military way is obvious, the research way is easier because you need fewer defensive ships for the same military value so you have more to pump into research, the culture is easier because you can take key planets inside the clusters of the enemy AIs and go for peace (which they accept because of your military dominance) and then flip the entire cluster. If I get three or more influence resources, or three or more research, then I know

Reply to Should Stardock be serving crackers, or reducing my cheese intake? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I was concerned about this as well in another thread, that it's easy for a developer to get into a 'if players do X then we implement Y to counter X' sort of feedback situation that doesn't do anyone any good. I think any time something is being implemented the key question should be 'Does this make GalCiv a better game?' with 'better' not being equated with 'stopping cheese'. Ideally anything that stops cheese should also bring something else to the table, it should make the game feel better

Reply to Suggestions for making Culture Bombs not such a cakewalk in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I agree with the diplomacy part, I know that when -my- civ is being eaten up with someone's culture that I consider it an aggressive act, and that from my viewpoint our relationship is deteriorating (e.g. I'll start helping their enemies, and looking in general to gimp them). What I've found happens is that the human player (usually the AIs aren't nearly as good at this) can amass so much +influence stuff (wonders and especially resources) that the AI planets flip faster than you can sn

Reply to Save/Load Mechanism: Perhaps the Greatest Flaw of GalCiv in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I can't see how reloading a game could possibly cause a significant difference in scoring. A few points at the most, if even that. You'll see far more difference just from the effects of random events. Get a nice economic boom and have that double-research event happen and watch the game fly towards a tech victory. Get a 10 year recession and watch it crawl. Losing a couple of turns to a reload recalcing the games previous values is a drop in the bucket compared to what random events do.

Reply to Now I know the AI cheats in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Fleabitfox, there are no anomolies that give +hitpoints to your non-surveyor ships that I'm aware of. And there are few techs that do so, and two of those are at the very end of the research tree (and all the tech ones are just +10% if I remember right). I think it is much more likely that Popup Target hit the nail on the head: it wasn't a battle axe, it was a 1.02 battlehammer. In fact, looking over my notes I'm almost positive he's right. A 1.02 battlehammer had 90 hitpoints, 5 at

Reply to Starbase Maint Idea Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The problem with using constructors as maintenance caravans is the time when constructors are the most prolific (end game) is exactly the time when you need extra production the least (which is the whole reason they are so prolific). I'm fairly sure most of you do as I do and have a super-production planet set up to speed build wonders, by this stage of the game that normally only takes 2-5 turns depending on the wonder. So not much assistance is needed there. Could be useful for bringing new

Reply to Now I know the AI cheats in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

A 160 hp battle axe would be a 300% hp bonus, I know of no way to do this in a game that I can think of offhand, it would have to be one hell of a level to reach this bonus by ship level. The 7 attack would be a 250% attack bonus (which is doable, but normally late game only), but the 6 defense would only be a 20% bonus, which doesn't make sense in conjunction with the 7 attack (since almost everything that boosts attack also boosts defense). So it seems that something isn't ri

Reply to Starbase Maint Idea Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My second choice would be the Starbase Support Network idea (if my method was judged unworkable for whatever reason). But I just want to note a couple of issues with that, they aren't flaws so much as something that I think should be considered: varying planet abundance settings can produce a huge variation in settled planets per sector. It's not unusual in an abundant galaxy to have 2-5 systems per sector, and often one or more of those will have multiple settled planets. This might lead to

Nice Job By Bill Sheely in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Just saw the GalCiv homepage, where an event editor by Bill Sheely is mentioned. Looks like a great job, kudos to Bill for making such a nice modding tool. :D

Reply to Starbase Maint Idea Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I liked a previous idea I floated, that each starbase costs 1 BC maintenance, and each module added after that costs 1 BC more, with a maxium maintenance of 5 BC (or whatever seems appropriate). This would be more realistic IMO because the maintenance cost would be directly related to the size of the starbase. This would also keep those undeveloped starbases from costing the maximum maintenance cost as if they were fully developed. It would probably be even more beneficial for the AI, which i

Reply to How do I control population growth? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yeah, you can get into trouble if you view morale in GalCiv like it is in other games. What Andre said is right, because what happens is anytime your morale is above 50%-54% or so your population will grow and your morale will decrease some. This will continue until you bottom out around 50%-54%. So having morale in that area is perfectly natural for a population-stabilized planet. Note that this means that the real effect of +morale tech/buildings/traits is to raise the max populati

Reply to Good AI's Researching Evil Techs in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Unless creativity received an undocumented boost somewhere in the last couple of patches you can pretty much rule it out in these cases. I've played an entire game with it and gotten one tech, so the odds of an AI getting several -and- having them be wrongly aligned is just too slim to be worth serious consideration. I thought the last patch worked on this issue, are you using the latest patch?

Reply to Bug or Feature? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The nice thing about economic bonuses is that you can put the results wherever you want. They work under any situation at any time, which is a flexibility that's hard to beat.

Reply to Dealing with RECESSION in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

To clarify, the 'below 40% always resulted in a loss of revenue' I should have written 'below 40% always resulted in less revenue'. It didn't put you in the red. :)

Reply to Dealing with RECESSION in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Tax rates above 50% will reduce your maximum potential revenue by restricting population growth. I've tested this with tax rates from 60% down to 25% and 50% is the sweet spot for maximum revenue. But, there is more to strength then just revenue. Lowering the tax rate below 50% gives you more population, which means more resistance to invasion, better ability to invade with transports, better production/research for that planet, etc. Taking that into account I've found that 40% is the best t

Reply to Save/Load Mechanism: Perhaps the Greatest Flaw of GalCiv in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Political state information should be practical to save (I would think) from game session to game session. But I can't say that definitively because I don't know the code routines involved (i.e. I don't know how much of the diplomatic part of the game is also dynamically calculated). As noted above, I don't reload much so some of this stuff I can't comment on well because I've never seen it. If the AI's radically switch political stance (war->peace, peace->extortion, etc.) during a reload the

Reply to Gigantic Maps : Are Trade Starbases Worth It? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You could also have each starbase module add a flat +1% to trade (like a mini-version of the techs that add +10%), regardless of starbase location. So +3% for a maxxed out starbase. This would be extremely simple, though whether it would be balanced (you'd definitely have a bigger bonus in bigger galaxies) or desirable is something I'll let everyone else think about. ;) I do know that I currently don't build these modules at all unless I happen to have a setup that obviously benefits

Reply to Gameplay question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The Drengin tend to dominate on any AI setting below Normal because, as mentioned by Mike, they have a very simple approach so the gimping that the computer AIs get at lower difficulty levels doesn't hurt them much. In my experience, from Normal to Intelligent the Altarians and Torians are by far the most dominant, as they have a strong tendency to ally with each other and this gives them an edge in any war with the other non-allied AIs. Past Intelligent I can't say who (if anyone) tends to do

Reply to How does "expenses" differ from "maintenance"? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The difference is coming from your slider bar settings for Military Production, Social Production, and Research and how they relate to your Spending slider located above them. What you are doing is effectively deficit spending: pumping money into these areas to get more-than-expected returns at a cost to your net gains. The maintenance cost is a fixed factor (relative to your infrastructure, of course), but the remaining expenses can change dramatically depending on how you have your sliders

Reply to I think I've found my level of play in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

MGagne, my guess is that you are an infrastructure person like myself. I'll often see the pattern you describe, the reason for it is that all the AIs tend to beeline for dreadnaught tech, at which point they switch most all their planets to producing dreadnaughts. When these start rolling out their military power graph spikes very high very quickly. If you've been spending your time on infrastructure tech (trade, tech for infrastructure buildings like transporters and such, government improve

Reply to Save/Load Mechanism: Perhaps the Greatest Flaw of GalCiv in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It takes about 3 turns for cultural influence to be recalced correctly, it takes about 12 turns after that to win if you have dominating culture, so I can't see how this issue prevents a culture win 'unless you have hours to play'. Before I turned off the culture win I won several times this way, once directly off a reload as described above. As for all the things mentioned above being a design flaw, I disagree: they are a design tradeoff. In order to have as much AI tracking and dat

Reply to Dealing with RECESSION in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Where you evil in that game? Maybe it was an 'evil recession' event, since it hit the Drengin as well? I've heard that negative balances can hurt your overall morale, that might be what got your people so upset. I'm a compulsive net gain watcher, I rarely go two turns without checking my finances, once past the early expansion phase of the game I never go into the red if I can help it (for one thing it can screw you if you need to insta-purchase something). What I do during a