Vorlin Varelse

Reply to Metaverse scores in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Your scores look good to me, based on the size map you are playing. With the current system map size is king when it comes to your scoring potential.

Reply to Does having all the victory conditions on dilute the AI in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think what you are seeing isn't a result of the victory conditions (because currently the AI can only win by totally overwhelming the human player) but a result of what the AI chooses for racial attributes at game creation. Sometimes you'll see AI's choose very high influence values which makes them tend to expand naturally through assimilation (like players do when they go a similar route). This is greatly enhanced if such an AI also has influence resources available to it.

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You don't see as much specialization in GalCiv as in some other 4X games, but it is still useful in some areas. I especially like a specialized production planet for speed-building wonders, it's also good to have your one-of-a-kind bonus tech/economy structures on your largest population world. Morale and max population are directly related, and population is directly tied to your planets research/industry/military production and its economy. So whenever a planet starts dropping below

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The shipyard and such bonus bug should be fixed now, that was what was meant in the history text about ships remembering what world made them. A ship's bonus is tied into the world that made it, before it forgot this on a reload and thus forgot the bonus, it should remember now. The bonuses can make a huge difference in your military power (shipyard + advanced + foundry = 50% more) and that is good even if you are a defensive player, because it means you can keep the AIs at bay with fa

Reply to Deleting Metaverse scores? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If you are playing with the most recent patch then 1600 is probably going to be a good score. The latest patch really lowered scoring dramatically from where it was, so it will take awhile to get used to. My last game I would have expected to get between 5000-7000 and got 1400 instead.

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I don't think the shipyards and other +ship bonuses add to hps, I think they just add to attack/defense. In that case the important issue is breakpoints (i.e. when going up a % results in +1 to ship attack and/or defense). This is why sometimes you'll see big jumps in your military power while doing research, if you have 60 starfighters out there and you go from 3 attack to 4 because of 1D Phasing or something then your military power will skyrocket. If you don't see any other +attack

Reply to 1.03A.057 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

This thing of 'the high scores were from artificially dragging out the game' is inaccurate for the most part as far as I can tell from my own games. The two games I did try to milk became unstable so I stopped doing that, my scores are relatively high because I play on a gigantic galaxy and like to assimilate the entire population before hitting final frontier. So it's not like all the top 25 players were sitting around hitting next turn for hours and hours to 'beat the system'. In fact, if y

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I gave too short an answer above about the +5% ships for the medical center, let me answer better: Advanced quality + shipyard + foundry = +50% ship bonus for 4 maintenance total. Medical center gives 5% morale/research/ships for 2 maintenance. You can see the cost/benefit ratio sucks for the medical center. It's just a drag on your economy, taking money that you could use to fund an efficient structure like one of the ones in my list given above.

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

No, it doesn't, 5% is 5%, and not worth it at that cost. Their maintenance is a cancer eating away at your otherwise much healthier economy. If you start thinking that these piddling bonuses are worth it then you'll way overbuild your planets and end up with far less -real- power where it counts: your military, social, and research sliders. Here is my core set of builds that go on every planet I have, in pretty much the order I build them: Soil Enrichment Habitat Improvement

Reply to Drengin are just absurd! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I play evil alignment, and I go for infrastructure over fighting, and for me 9 of 10 games at normal or above are dominated by me on one end and the ever-present Torian-Altarian alliance on the other. The Drengin, Arceans, and Yor are just bit players unless they get a fantastic starting location.

Reply to Why all the social projects if you cant even use them? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Some social projects are for special circumstances, like if a planet is under influence attack and needs to boost its resistance. But I agree that some social projects need help, I never build them, as the bonuses they provide are far too small for the maintenance they require. Some I find out of line: Galactic research center, 400 cost and 5 maintenance for 10% star influence and 45% research. But the huge maintenance cost forces you to reduce spending overall significantly thus gre

Reply to Espionage: High and Advanced Levels Worthless? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's good to have espionage at the level where you can see the AI stats, it can help you make decisions about what tactics will work on who, and who has control of what resources. This level is reached fairly quickly, I believe it's the 2nd level of espionage reached (around 300 or so BCs invested).

Reply to 1.03A.057 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Crichton, high scores are always about game mechanics, now the high scores will be ruled by those who finish the game as quickly as possible. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Possibly this style suits you better, possibly not, it definitely screws me because I -like- building up big fully developed civs. I don't like playing a game with the express purpose of finishing it as fast as possible, as if it is some unpleasant task that needs to be gotten out of the way.

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

Anomalyst, don't abandon the game, change every planet to anti-matter missile production and crank them out as fast as possible. This will greatly increase your military rating and give you a chance to sue for peace. Then you can go for Excals/tech victory yourself (they are both along the exact same path). If you can crank enough a-matter missiles out fast enough you might be able to intimidate the AI into parting with some of that tech when it goes for peace.

Reply to Great come-back win in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think one of the biggest reasons you can come back from bad situations in GalCiv is that the AIs don't attack the player irrationally like in many 4X games. So often there is some angle you can play that will let you buy enough time to get back on your feet. For example, in many 4X games past a certain point the AIs will never make peace with you, regardless of your relative power. But in GalCiv you can get a peace treaty by having a military advantage. One way to get that advantag

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

Some numbers to go with the changes: 1. Dreadnaughts cost 500 to build, 18 to maintain. 2. Battlehammers down to 40 hitpoints. 3. Battleship up to 12 maintenance. 4. Overlord costs 1800 to build. 5. Starfighters costs 50 and have 10 hitpoints and 3 attack Didn't get a chance to check the rangers or phoenix. Note: now that starfighters have 3 attack (vs. 2 before) the AI's military power graph will spike quite a bit higher early

Reply to 'The Terraformer' in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Anything less than 15 is usually a waste of time and money to colonize unless you have a strategic reason for doing so. The +PQ bonuses aren't so you can have more crappy planets, it's so you can have less. Planets don't really start kicking in until they hit 18 or higher. It's a case of severely diminishing returns to colonize anything less than 15 unless, as said above, there are strategic reasons for doing so (need to extend your fuel range, using the planet as a base for culture flipping,

Reply to Metaverse scores in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've had a couple of games in the 6-9 trillion range, but all of them became increasingly unstable around then as well, so at this point I don't really milk games anymore that way. Here's the basic method I was using: stop your tech tree short of the 2 +10 PQ techs, culturally flip all but a corner of the galaxy, then do The Terraformer, then the 2 +10 PQ techs, put your sliders to 100% social and build up all the relevant infrastructure, then let 'er ride for awhile. I did do

Reply to What's the point of cloaking? (Phoenix/Ranger) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Perhaps I read the context wrong, but I thought that cloaking just made the ship undetectable until at a shorter range. I.E., if you have a range 6 detection cloaked ships wouldn't be seen until they were within a range of 3.

Reply to Tech Victory Poll in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Jason, the AI can't get a culture victory per se (they can eliminate you by flipping all your planets, but not by cultural domination in the 90% sense), and they can't get an alliance victory, so your point isn't valid. And as noted other places, a tech win does not give you a scoring bonus, it's just a game-ending condition. So there is no reason why it should still be a game ending condition when it's reached regardless of whether you reached it first or not.

Reply to Tech Victory Poll in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

And I still say the proponents of this issue aren't thinking it through to what the game will really be like if it ever gets implemented. I posted about 6 points regarding this in the other thread, let me add elaborate on one here: if tech victory for the AI is implemented then any game played on a larger sized map will then become a tech race for -everyone-. Why? Because it's faster to get to Final Frontier than it is to conquer the galaxy, or culture flip all of it. And if this

Reply to Tech Victory Poll in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

LordTheRon, I rarely go for a tech victory, the metaverse is misleading. My main victory method is to tech up, culture flip the galaxy, then hit the Final Frontier to cap it off when all the galaxy except for about 1% is mine. So almost all my games are actually cultural conquest, they just don't end with that actual victory condition because I have it turned off (kept ending my games before I was ready). I've also never won a military victory, the one that shows that way was also a c

Reply to ARG!!! I think I just tripped over the anti-cheating code without cheating. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've noticed that on gigantic maps when there are already lots of ships about that the random event that gives 100 corvettes can -really- take awhile to process. So anytime you get a freeze be patient before ctrl-alt-deleting it, it might just be processing that event.

Reply to Civilization Creation - disadvantages! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The problem with negative picks is that they can allow you to leverage too much power into the 'main' attributes. I mean, who cares if they have -creativity? And if I'm not planning on a ground invasion game I can load up on -soldier and -courage. Toss in some -hitpoints too, then dump all those bonus attributes on the 'power' picks and turn into a holy terror. The reason variety works so well on the attribute list now is that it's not efficient to dump all your ability points into m

Reply to Population woes. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes, 200 million per planet is the most it will grow in a turn, even at 100% morale and +50% or more bonus to population growth. And how I got that figured was by watching the my planets before and after I hit 'next turn'. ;)