Barleyman

Reply to Tactical combat. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Oh yes, tactical combat all the way. Or at least seriously improved auto combat with general orders. SotS2 tactical combat is wonderful but it would take ginormous amounts of time combined with the micromanager-y strategic side of Galciv. SotS2 tactical AI still isn't that great after years of tweaking. Making a really good realtime AI without constricting movement to hexes or the like is "challenging". Making really good tactical AI in general is darn hard.

Reply to The perils of multiplayer in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I don't give a fig about GC multiplayer. Now get back on the workbench and give me decent tactical combat engine, dammit!

Reply to How to beat AI, the guide in Strategy Sins Forums

I did get the 4 AI achievement last night using similar strategy as outlined here. (maelstrom, 4x hard AI). TEC seems to be uniquely suitable to deal with multi AI opponents as their tendency to gang on you is mitigated by bigger cash income that lets you to sic pirates on AI guys most of the time with ease and even start a bidding war. Some exceptions were that I do not take Akkan as the colony frigate can jump in anyway while the Kol is finishing up last of the defenders. Kol is much

Reply to Nvidia GeForce 7800 GS OC 256MB in Technical Sins Forums

Too bad the 171.x drivers only support 9600GT and on anything else your mileage will wary + require a hacked install file.

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

Too hasty. That was just a fluke - After reboot SoaSE intro movie still kills the display driver even with ffdshow disabled. I spent some additional time trying anything I could think of such as getting latest nvidia driver (169.44) but result was the same every time - Have to perform hard reset and reboot. I'll just keep the intro movie disabled and that's that. Not like the animated stardock/ironclad logo is vital. You can always get the RAD video tools and watch the intro m

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

Guys, I may have a solution here. No, not to the bloody obnoxious stardock spam filter (have to submit support replies on web or they get killed) but on the full-screen mode kaput - I have had actually problems with BINK player before and then it helped when I nuked codec packs from my system. Now I have not installed any packs and even went on a cleaning rampage recently killing NERO and other malware packs. Still crash if intro movie is enabled, thought. <br/

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

I got email from the totalgaming.net support which suggested to install the AMD cpu driver. Nice, but I already had it installed. totalgaming.net spam filter has gone completely loco, thought. I can't send even plaintext email to them now with no links, no nothing.

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

I only removed the "intromovies" bit myself. I think introcinematic refers to the in-game stuff that works OK. In any case you can view the darn things in windowed mode so you see them once. Bink has caused lots of grief with lots of games. I wish the developers would use DivX for example..

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

[quote]but can't send my dxdiag dump file because their spam filter nukes it!Try zipping it.[/quote] I'm going to be difficult and RAR it.

Reply to Full screen mode crashes in Technical Sins Forums

Indeed there is. Actually in the settings file, that ironclad puts into a difficult place. Check the tech FAQ post for directions where it is and how to disable intro movies. https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=410&aid=174432 I have actually the same problem. Raised a ticket with stardock (IWL-534036), but can't send my dxdiag dump file because their spam filter nukes it! Very likely the problem is with the BINK player they use to show the intro with c

Reply to Fixes for Pathfinding + Metaverse Error 12 in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Test 3? Either they sneaked a new beta patch on us without mentioning it or the link is broken. [link="http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/da_1_8f_test2.zip"]test2 still works so maybe you check that out[/link].. Me? I'm going to stick with my 1.8d and like it!

Reply to Downloaded Version 1.80d - Still can't load old saved games. Should I bother to start another game? in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Oh geez. Well, just one interesting huge game chopped when things were getting rough late mid-game. Hopefully GC2 + DA is playable again now! Cari said the ship code is "complicated" .. How about balancing those species-specific tech trees? You'll be tweaking that for next two years.. At least there's no multiplayer!

Reply to 1.8(c) corrupted saved games (crashing on reload) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

To be fair, this bug appeared with very latest patch for DA. However, you're correct, this is not-being-able-to-play kind of bug, not some minor tweak to this or that tech. I actually got reply to my bug report from Cari that it's fixed.. Yay but only for TA. Bummer. 1.8 patches actually broke major things left and right. You get the impression they were done 3am aafter a hard day of coding for TA betas.. If I follow the plot, first ship upgrades were broken (bad) then they f

Reply to 1.8(c) corrupted saved games (crashing on reload) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

At least TA beta got fixes for all this..

Reply to Twilight of the Arnor Beta 1a Change Log in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] + FIXED: Invisible ship bug + FIXED: Bug where upgrading ship designs resulted in blank hulls + FIXED: Bug where thumbnail would not update on Quick Build list if you selected nothing then selected a ship + FIXED: Bug from 1.7/1.8 that caused crash when loading a save game (this fix will work for old save games) <!-- Ju-Anch

Reply to 1.8(c) corrupted saved games (crashing on reload) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Hrngh. Ticket UHI-548405??

Reply to 1.8(c) corrupted saved games (crashing on reload) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Another me too post here. Game started with 1.80c, try to load, goes kaboom. mailed smartexception to stardock.. Here's the debug.err, stops at loading ships as with previous poster. Same crash occurs if I try to load autosave or previousautosave.. Debug Message: Version v1.80c Dark Avatar last updated on: Fri Oct 26 13:09:15 2007 Debug Message: Checking DX Version. Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.********* System Info Time: 10/28/2007

Reply to Ship design go bye bye (1.8) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

On more playing, nope, that did not fix it. Sorry. New or upgraded designs seem to end up randomly to templates even when you don't want them to, may or may not show up in the shipyard screen and so on.. When I tried to save over an old design to replace it, the old version stayed in shipyard and the new one appeared as a template!

Reply to Ship design go bye bye (1.8) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think it's an installation problem. I got some kind of error message when applying the 1.80a patch directly on top of 1.7 beta 3 (or maybe beta 4) and while hitting "retry" let the patch install, I had the problem you describe here. Also the upgraded ship design was missing all jewelry before you closed the shipyard screen. .. I uninstalled DA and reinstalled. Now it works. Existing savegames do NOT regain the missing designs but new designs/upgrades you make work OK.

1.7 beta bug - Mini-soldiers in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Pretty straightforward bug I found. Mini-soldiers do not in fact destroy planetary improvements. Maybe this applies to ALL force multiplier tactics. But at least I get consistently 100% intact planets when using mini soldiers. Alternate explanation would be that on PQ8 planet you have 8 improvement and you 10% of that is 0.8 which may be rounded down to 0..

Reply to Dreadlord special combat rules? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Please note that game on the suidical difficulty level is VERY different. Your experience with below-painfull will not help much there, you need a completelly new bag of tricks. Actually I play on painful usually. Not interested in suicidal, I don't like playing against opponent who has huge production bonus, you're reduced pretty much completely exploiting AI behavior instead of relying on "reasonable" tactics. That goes fo

Reply to Dreadlord special combat rules? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

They key to getting around the tie rule that the dreads make such massive use of is to figure out some way to get one ship to survive. Big ships with lots of defense is one approach. Hordes of tiny ships is another. It's easier to get more HP than the DL's have, at least on a reasonable difficulty (painful or below). You don't actually have to cram the dreadnough full of guns (which makes it super expensive), you need just enough to get a kill wit

Reply to Dreadlord special combat rules? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Big fleets of tiny ships should still work against the dreadlords. They can still only take out one ship with each gun, so a fleet of 11 can finish off a dreadlord that has 10 guns. That seems cheaper than using defenses to survive the attack. If you concentrate that much effort on logistics you're really going to be hurting on other tech areas!

Reply to Dreadlord special combat rules? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It may be possible that authors wanted to prevent this type of combat. It may make huge ships invaluable. It is possible it does not make a real sense, but it improves gameplay. I would imagine it's just something they didn't think of. The problem really only exists with dreadlords. Otherwise you're more or less supposed to have ships in similar ballpark or if you don't you can blame yourself.. Simple

Reply to Dreadlord special combat rules? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Sigh, Iztok and Kyro both make good points. I've pointed this out before elsewhere, but hopefully this will help you. In DA, there is a rock paper scissors to fleet design to take out any enemy. Except dreadlords, who can realistically only be taken out by a ship which has bigger max HP. Those 300+ attack values make ketchupapago out of anyone in 1 turn so the solution is to have so much firepower that both parties ki