Matthew Downie

Reply to Colonising below 15 worlds in Strategies Stardock Forums

I find PQ13 planets perfectly adequate (if not playing on Maso) if I can't find anything better. The only real disadvantage is that they don't bring in much tax revenue, but this is offset by (a) the ability to enhance it to PQ15 fairly easily, (b) the fact that I usually get all the money I want from tech trading (c) the extra productivity you get from any planet, even a mediocre one, which increases the amount of research you can do and the number of ships you can build (as long as you can aff

Peace trading in Strategies Stardock Forums

I made some weird peace deals in a recent game. Firstly, I was trying to culture-bomb the Torians. I built a culture palace base in his system. He demanded I give the starbase to him. I refused, and he declared war. I then offered him peace if he'd give me some money. He agreed at once - my miltary was a lot bigger. I repeated this several times. Later in the game, my allies attacked a minor race - the Carinoids, I think - and I was forced to join in. Again, I tried to offer peace immediatel

Reply to Keeping Tax Rate at 20%??? in Strategies Stardock Forums

I found that by shoving most of my population into combat transports, I could keep morale above 90%, even with taxes of 46% or so. Since the tax income of planets isn't much affected by population level (as long as you still have a couple of billion), my income was probably higher when I had less people. ~SDC~

Reply to The ultimate in trade in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I agree that selling techs is very useful. AIs should do it more so you don't get so much of a chance. Also, I've noticed that if you have five techs you want to sell to someone, and you sell them all in one go, you don't get as much money as if you sold them one at a time. I assume this is a delibarate feature, but I can't see what it's for. All it does it make the tech trading more fiddly for players who have spotted this effect. ~SDC~

Reply to Terror stars: what is the quickest tech path? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Maybe you don't need to know about planetary destruction because the scientists who invented the Terror Stars wisely made them destroy stars, not planets, so as not to infringe upon the Star Wars copyright. ~SDC~

Reply to The bad, bad Leroy Brown of survey ships... in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes, that's the whole point. It turns from being a harmless explorer into something pretty tough. But it takes a long time to get that powerful, and sooner or later someone will develop a battleship or dreadnaught that can take it down, and it's not like you can produce an army of powerful survey ships. ~SDC~

Streamlining tech trades in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

As far as I can tell, the way to get the best deal when selling techs for money is to ask for a lot and slowly reduce the price until he accepts. And when you want to buy one, you have to start at a low price and work your way up. Is this correct? Do you get some sort of diplomatic bonus for giving them more than you need to? It seems to be vital to play this way in a high-difficulty game, but pretty tedious (especially when the interface for making an offer is fairly slow). Since all the al

Reply to Terror stars: what is the quickest tech path? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Is there a bug in the Terror Star tech tree? I notice that you don't have to research Planetary Destruction, and the description for that says, "Terror Stars, baby! We're getting closer." It's always odd to read that when I already have Terror Stars. ~SDC~

Reply to Finally in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The real cost of a computer game isn't 50 bucks, it's the 50 hours of your life you'll spend playing it. So make sure you only play the best. ~SDC~

Reply to What invasion tactics do you use? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Maybe it's just the tax payers you have to kill... I remember in the early games I played, when I captured worlds, they'd be grossly overpopulated when I got them, from my invasion force combined with the original people, but now the planets seem to end up with only a small population. Was this a code change? Or is it that I'm now playing on harder difficulties and they always have such high morale that everyone fights to the death? In GalCiv2, I think that you should be able to have capture

Reply to What invasion tactics do you use? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Why should using Terror Stars affect your morality? In a standard invasion, you're supposed to wipe out every man, woman and child on the planet anyway, plus billions of your own troops, so it's just as genocidal either way. ~SDC~

Reply to Colonization Recommendations? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I sometimes colonize worlds with PQ12. If one's in the same sector as another, better planet that I've already got, and I want to boost the star system's maximum population (to make it easier to load up transports, or increase trade income), then I think it's worthwhile. Also, if there are no decent worlds left, then I sometimes colonize low PQ worlds purely to create "special" events, so that I can improve my alignment in the direction of good. (It seems pretty difficult to reach good o

Reply to If you are experiencing crashes after updating to 1.04a.062 Read This! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I started experiencing the governor screen crash a few versions back, so I stopped playing and hoped that the next update would fix it. Instead, I found I was unable to even download the new update. Today, I uninstalled and reinstalled GalCiv, updated to 1.05.071, then installed the BonusPak. Then I tried running the game and it crashed almost immediately. The debug.err file ends like this: Debug Message: Initialize Game Options. Debug Message: Create setup screens.<

Reply to Trade Goods - what happened!?!?!? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think part of the reason people are getting so angry is that there's nothing more annoying than being six hours into a game before you realize that you're going to lose because the tactics that used to work don't work any more... There are many possible ways to fix a problem like players always winning by lease-rushing trade goods. One way is to make the AIs be less willing to buy them. This is unsatisfying because it makes them seem really illogical. I offer someone a great deal if th