Stardock Forums
Have the Altarians chosen the "creative" racial ability? Doesn't that let you skip tech prerequisites?
Put 100% of your spending into military-colony ships for the opening phase of the game. When you turn on social and research depends on when you encounter the AI and when the 15+ planets are mostly taken. On gigantic, I may be producing nothing but colony ships for 20-30 turns. I don't reccommend leasing a colony ship unless you're in a hurry to grab a key system. Remember that you only need to claim one planet per star, and can fill in the rest later. Remember that it only takes 1
That's a bug then: If I can't destabilize/espionage a minor race, then the minor race shouldn't be allowed to destabilize/espionage me.
Even if you can't sell the obsolete ship to the AI, you can gift it to them. I think you get a small diplomatic boost. The AI will probably keep it and be stuck with the maintenance. It's amusing to see the AI to keep the scouts I gave it.
I noticed that I tend to propose more complicated trades than the AI proposes. If I have lots of cash, I'll buy the AIs resource starbases. The AI never offers to buy my starbases. I always try to extract every last BC out of a trade. The AI always trades tech-for-tech. It never will put in some extra BC to make it even. I'll sell the AI ships. I've never seen the AI offer to sell me ships. I'll trade multiple techs for multiple techs, or possibly some tra
Stardock Forums
If you submit and the metaverse is down, the game should automatically save the result for you and submit it later. The player should be given the option of submitting it or deleting it each time he restarts the game. Right now, I always save the game just before victory, in case the Metaverse is down. If there's a problem, I can reload later and get my score. This does mess up cultural victories, as the game lasts a few extra turns after loading.
I thought about this some more. I like this method: Score[i] = scores sorted in descending order rating = Sum(score[i]/i) (The sum array is 1-based rather than 0-based, so there is no division by zero.) This method never penalizes someone for submitting a bad score. It emphasizes your "best" games. If you try to beef up your rating by submitting lots of scores, there's a point of diminishing returns.
Regarding changing your tax rate immediately before the election: I always thought it was cheesy that you could win the election by dropping taxes immediately beforehand. (not that it never happens in the real world) I always thought that the election outcome should be based on your average morale since the prior election, not just on the last turn. There probably should be more weight given to recent months, rather than making it a straight average.
I'm not sure that 20% taxes is best on tiny. Your trade route income is partially dependent on the tax revenue on the system that's trading. You really should make sure you're at the 4xPQ taxes cap in your trading system. It's hard to know the tax rate that maximizes income. It depends on your social project, morale bonus, and economic bonus.
I always reccommend finishing a game before upgrading. Enough game parameters are tweaked to make an upgrade dangerous. The official advice is that it's safe to upgrade in the middle of a game. The game may not crash, but you may find yourself in a stronger or weaker position after the upgrade. I had another interesting Altarian experience in my second 1.04 game. They were at war with the Yor, and I was selling the Altarians ships because I wanted some of the Yor's resources and I w
You can avoid leasing altogther by funding at 100% and putting 100% of your spending into the thing you want in a hurry. It's only a few turns slower than leasing, and it doesn't wreck your economy. On Gigantic maps, funding military at 100% gives you much more for your starting $1000 than you get from leasing a few colony ships. Plus, with funding at 100%, you can go all the way to -500.
Stardock Forums
If you click on an old savegame and then save, your game is saved under the name "New Save Game" (or whatever you had typed in the box). This feature worked in old versions, and does not work in the latest version. You can overwrite the savegame if you type the name of the old savegame in the box. Just clicking on the old savegame no longer works. Presumably, this is a bug.
I found that when I stopped leasing in the opening, most of my economic problems went away. You get a much better return using your money to fund at 100%, than you do by leasing.
Did they fix the bug about being unable to overwrite a savegame? If you click on a savegame and then save, it saves under "New Save Game" rather than the savegame itself. This worked properly in 1.03. Typing the savegame manually in the box does overwrite the savegame.
Does the "upgrade to drengin.net" offer expire? Is there anything wrong with waiting until "The Political Machine" comes out to upgrade? Also remember there was the screenshot of "Elemental", which seems to be some sort of Master of Magic game. I haven't heard any estimated release date. My main concern about drengin.net is that I only have a 56k modem. I also haven't seen a FAQ about whether you're allowed to move your Drengin.net subscription if you buy a new PC. <B
There is an article in the encyclopedia the explains the production caps. It's called "Economics in GalCiv". I also think that "How Sector Influence Works" is a good read. Go to the encyclopedia link on the top of this page. The caps are not "hard". They are "soft". You can go beyond the cap; it just isn't worth any special effort. How do I decide how many +production starbases to build in a system? Remember how people want a per-planet governor slider? I use my starbase
I agree. Each upgrade has been a substantial improvement. I do miss some of my old tactics (+15 PQ, unlimited starbase free production, now trade goods), but the game is better without them. I had previously bought The Corporate Machine. I'm going to buy their next game, or upgrade to a drengin.net subscription.
Actually, I like the devaluing in trade goods. I think they've been changed from overvalued to fairly valued. Now, if you lease a trade good and immediately sell it to each AI, you get back your lease downpayment plus a little extra. Before, you were getting back way more than your lease downpayment. So, the developers either had to decrease the trade value of trade goods, or make the AIs also use this exploit. Before, it was a clearcut decision to rush-lease a trade good as
What forceinfinity is really saying is that you really need multiple ways to sort the rankings. "Current version only" "Tiny maps only" "Gigantic maps only" "Last 3 months only"
While we're on the subject of the metaverse, there really should be a feature to save scores for submission later. If your internet connection is down, or the stardock website is down, the savegame should be saved and submitted later. The user should be prompted if he wants to submit the score later.
It's O(n * log(n)). You need to sort the scores, which takes n*log(n) time. I miscalculated the complexity. I think I made a small mistake that made my version O(n^2) instead of O(n*log(n)). I still think that both give the same final answer. I can't see a counter-example. If you're really interested in complexity theory, here's a good starting point: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithm A good book is: Introduction to Algorithms, Second Editio
What combination of scores makes the systems different? One high score and a lot of low scores? I don't see the counter-example. You're saying that it might be necessary to drop scores in bunches, in order to find the maximum? That seems counter-intuitive. With the example given above: 5000, 2000, 2000. Inlcuding all 3 scores yields 9000/sqrt(3) = 5196. We try to drop the 2000, yielding 7000/sqrt(2) = 4950. We stop, and the player has the best rating of 51
I see - Ellestar's proposal is equivalent to what I wrote above. The computation time for either method is O(n^2). The idea of allowing users to flag their scores for inclusion is interesting. However, I think that the flags should be automatically placed so that the overall score is maximized. Under Frogboy's proposal, every user will have to get out a calculator to decide which scores to flag.
There's another wrinkle: The two planets can be orbiting the same star. Suppose you have a PQ 18 and PQ 40 planet orbiting the same star. You want to put population on the PQ 40 planet, but not the PQ 18 planet. Unfortunately, transports cannot be landed on a specific planet; the population is evenly(?) distributed among planets in the system. The solution is to build a colony ship in the system, put most of the population on it, and land it back on the PQ 40 planet! This is an undo
What was wrong with my suggestion? Why is it incorrect? Here's some metaverse math trivia: Suppose your overall score is r, with total games played n. So, the total score in all your games is r*sqrt(n). What score s do you need to get in your next game for your overall score to remain the same? You really need to do this calculation. Suppose your scores are 200, 1000, 2000 (in that order). The 200 score is dragging down your ranking. You don't want to delete it, because a