Vorlin Varelse

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

Currently research lab, research center, and neural net are the only +research buildings I build. I haven't had time to check it for sure, but I suspect that the others aren't worth the maintenance cost for the bonus they provide (i.e. you have to turn your slider down so much to cover their cost that you don't end up with enough gain to justify building them). But I haven't checked it so this is pure speculation. I also like to keep recessions in mind, you fill your planets up with g

Reply to Message from Frogboy on Main Page in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

For people who, for whatever reason, can't download the expansion I wouldn't be surprised if you could obtain a disk of it directly from Stardock for a minimal shipping/handling fee. That might work better for those who pay by the minute, but that would be up to the Stardock team to decide on. It might not even be that big a download, from reading the description of the pack it sounds like the bulk of it would be the cutscenes (as far as size goes). If so they could probably split the

Reply to Terrible slowdown during space combats in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I can tell you this too, with WinXP and 384 meg ram you are going to have quite a bit of virtual memory swapping if you are running a larger sized galaxy. On WinXP my peak commit after running GalCiv for a while in a gigantic galaxy is about 575 megs. I've also noticed some slowdowns in combat, usually involving the 'exploding ship' animation. I'm guessing a background thread is kicking in about then and grabbing significant CPU power. Possibly your thread and a background thread are both tr

Reply to Most Powerful ship is Surveyer in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

This can get even more dramatic if you have a significant number of military resources under your control (which I'm guessing from the stats in your post that you very well may have). I usually only have my original to work with but I probably should consider at some point building a second or even third, once the construction becomes more trivial. I usually play gigantic galaxies and the number of anomalies probably warrants more than one surveyor.

Reply to Message from Frogboy on Main Page in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Everything sounds really great, I'm looking forward to seeing it. But then, I never doubted it, as I own Entrepeneur and the support for that was really incredible as well. It was one of the reasons I preordered GalCiv, breaking my rule of never preordering any game ever again. :)

Reply to The Fundamentalists took *ALL* the Drengin and Yor planets! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

This event can be quite nasty, IMO it's nastier the later in the game it occurs. I had one about 3/4 of the way through the game once and they had -all- my tech, about 60000-70000 in gold, and they almost immediately allied with the Torians and the Altarians. Now that's just plain ugly: 3-way wars, insta-built dreadnaughts, fully developed planets with large populations and massive infrastructure, immunity to influence, etc.

Reply to Antimater Missiles in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Slitherin, a fleet of ships moves at the speed of the slowest member.

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

I've found the Torians to be an especial nuisance when it comes to mid-late game wonders, I've lost quite a few over the games I've played to them because I waited to long to go for them. Those triple alliances are rough, especially if an event or just normal gameplay starts a war up with one of the members.

Reply to capturing a planet with influence in 1.3 in Strategies Stardock Forums

Popup, I call those the 'Party Palace Of Terror'. And yeah, they are slow, definitely not for a fast win. :)

Reply to Anyone played a single sector challenge yet? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've played a 'one planet galciv' a couple of times, it's a fun way to spend some time and very different from most games. You can get some really interesting diplomacy, I've had races offer me dreadnaught tech for free, for instance. I didn't try for a win with either of mine, I just wanted to see how long I could last as a semi-isolationist (freighters, tech trading/selling, but no alliances, no military besides defense, no starbases except in home sectory). It's surprising how long you can

Reply to The Fundamentalists took *ALL* the Drengin and Yor planets! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think there might be a minimum number of planets converted when this event hits, it's definitely not a set percentage of your total planets. I've had it hit when myself, the Yor, and the Drengin were all evil: the Yor lost 50% of their worlds, the Drengin about 30%, I lost maybe 10% or less. The Yor were the smallest, the Drengin next biggest, and I was far larger than either. If there is a minimum number then that would explain why this event was so devastating in a smaller galaxy.

Reply to invading with multiple transports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The method that flips part of the planet's population to fight on your side is 'information warfare', and it's currently bugged, so that is sort of a 'use at your own risk' method until they get it fixed. CariElf knows about it, so I imagine the fix will be in soon. If you have a culture advantage I agree with LDi, it's a lot more manpower efficient to conquer the easiest world and then flip the rest. Invasions are just so costly that you want to minimize them as much as you can. You

Reply to how do you make it less likly for ai to resuch things? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Lower is less likely, higher more likely, the highest one I saw glancing at the file was dreadnaught at 60, the lowest I saw was 3 I think. Anything I saw less then 10 was something I noticed always being able to trade to the AI, so I'd say less than 10 is on the backburner, 10 is middlin', over 10 is priority. Another factor would probably be location on the tech tree. Even a low priority tech will be close to the AI if it has dreadnaught-tech type prerequisites. On the other hand,

Reply to Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If GalCiv wasn't mod-able I'd say just use a lookup table that had a value for any ship vs. any other ship, take the values vs. the number of ships for both sides and see how they compare. But because it is a mod-able game you'll need some sort of att/def/hp algo that can do something similar. And I'm not saying that it has to be precise, but it does have to do things like figure out that 4 starfighters don't equal 1 dreadnaught. And I do think that defense should definitely be rate

Reply to Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Code Monkey, there is no cheese involved in this at all, it's a tactic that is forced by a bad AI algorithm, not something designed to exploit such. If I wanted to exploit this and then strut around like a king then I wouldn't be posting about it here. I'd use it, take the wins, and hide how I was doing it. As I've mentioned in several places, if you actually do build a true defending force you are more likely to be invaded because the AI doesn't value it even close to as much as a force that

Reply to Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The most important decisions the computer makes involves military calculations, it has to be able to do these with some degree of accuracy or the entire concept of 'good AI' goes right out the window. Right now the computer can't figure out that 5 dreadnaughts are vastly more powerful than 20 starfighters, and that's IMO a major problem. My military power ranking should not be 33% higher than the nearest computer AI when all I have is starfighters and they have dreadnaughts and rangers (2-3 of

Reply to Some Of The New Ship Values in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Ideally, to bring a sort of 'real life' balance in it, I'd like to see defense be much stronger than offense, say about a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 ratio for races fighting with about an equal position in the tech tree. Not only is this more realistic it's also (IMO) more interesting, as it can take an incredible commitment to take even a small goal. But... Computer AIs do very poorly as a rule in games where defense is more powerful than offense. Because AIs aren't adaptive it's not hard to

Reply to Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Re anti-matter missiles I agree, that's why I qualfied my 'paper tiger' statement with the 'unless it's fairly late in the game' qualifier. But against humans they wouldn't work, they are short range and have no defense, a ranger fleet (or for that matter, a starfighter fleet) would kill an entire planet's worth of missiles with them never getting a chance to fire a shot. The computer though, isn't nearly as effective at dealing with them. If a human caught you going all a-m missiles

Reply to Is there any way to get a culture or tech win without a strong military? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You can currently bluff the AI with a military that it thinks is competitive with it when in fact it's not. At first use starfighters, later switch to anti-matter missiles. The attack values per maintenance cost of these two units allows you to build lots of them which keeps the AI off your back, and they are so cheap to maintain that they have little effect on your economy (both have maintenance costs of 1). The disadvantage to this is that you are a paper tiger, if you go this rou

Reply to capturing a planet with influence in 1.3 in Strategies Stardock Forums

There are two minor races you can pick up, the Alexians (whether on purpose or not) do not have the influence resistance that the other minor civs have, so you can flip them just like anyone else. The Independent League you can pick up if you have the lead influence in a sector and they lose control of a planet with bad morale. The chance for flipping starts at a differential of about 200 from what I've seen (I've gotten first warnings before for my planets at around this value). Obvi

Reply to This talk of AI is really beginning to get on my nerves in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

AI civs can achieve critical mass much like a human one can. Normally it depends from what I've seen on the way the galaxy is set up. If everyone is split into their own similar-sized cluster, and noone has any major expansion options, it's not unusual to see a game go the whole way with noone gaining much of an edge over anyone else. On the other hand, any civ that starts in a position with easy uncontested expansion options will quickly develop so much momentum that only the human

Reply to Suggestion Re: Rebalancing the military game. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The real missile killers are fast units, so starfighters, corvettes, and rangers do an excellent job, but since missiles move at speed 0 any unit that is speed 1 or higher (or even your speed 0's if you have gravity accellerators) will do the job.

Reply to Unfair Scoring Change in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My post was neither panicky nor abusive, and I've certainly given credit to the Stardock team in numerous postings in several different forums. I've defended the game against criticism I thought were unjust, and have recommended this game as one of the best 4X games I've ever played. I did state my views, and I stand by them, that the patching lately has been focused more around reacting to what players are doing than adding things to the game. I am not 'loathe to change', but I'm ver

Reply to Suggestion Re: Rebalancing the military game. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Anti-matter missiles will act as a tank in any square they are in if that square is attacked, so there is no way to protect them that I know of: use them if enemies are around or lose them. Stacking defensive ships with them doesn't work.

Reply to Performance Issue (Here's what I noticed) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm thinking that the game might suffer from internal memory fragmentation as a given gaming session lasts longer and longer. I've had gigantic maps get pretty sluggish after several hours of continuous play, then I save, exit the game, restart, and they were crisp again even though WinXP reported pretty much the same amount of overall memory being used. I've had that '100 corvettes' event freeze up my computer for up to 30-40 seconds, that's a 2.4 gig P4 with 512 meg rambus memory, se