Matthew Downie

Reply to taking down enemy planets in Strategies Stardock Forums

Or, if you have cash and multiple transports and want to conserve troops, land one or two with Core Detonation and finish them off with conventional warfare. ~SDC~

Reply to Managing population in Strategies Stardock Forums

The optimum population level could be seen as the number of people a planet can take before its morale falls under 100%. This amount is not constant or easy to predict- it depends on Planet Quality, morale bonuses, and tax rate. To put this in context, a decent newly colonised planet with a low population level will start with 100 morale, giving it a doubled population growth rate. After a while the population level will rise to the point where morale falls below 100, and then morale will ke

Reply to GalCiv vs MOO2 (for GalCiv 2) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I managed to recover from my last lost-election game by loading a save, replaying the last thirty minutes, and simply asking the guy who was going to win to declare war on the Silicoids. Hadn't tried this before - it didn't seem polite. I wouldn't recommend MOO1 to everyone - it's too abstract for all but the most hardcore strategy gamers. Most people can relate far more to building a Space Academy, a Fusion Power Plant or a Great Pyramid than they can to building 0.8 factories. ~S

Reply to GalCiv vs MOO2 (for GalCiv 2) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

How do you check the race selection? Not looking for the hardest possible game. In my last game, I played a large galaxy, hard difficulty, as the humans, and was on good relations with everyone, was involved in an interesting war, and they all got together and voted Klackon. Not sure how many more times I'm going to put up with this... ~SDC~

Reply to No More Cash For Tech? in Strategies Stardock Forums

I once managed to avoid that happening only by giving the Alexians some culture bonus starbases. ~SDC~

Reply to GalCiv vs MOO2 (for GalCiv 2) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Moving on isn't a bad idea... Do we really need to play these games 60 times over to get our money's worth? Cheese is a fine line. I'm still trying to decide what I think is fair. Given that at Maso level, the AI has several hugely unfair advantages, the only way I can beat it is by taking advantage of its stupidity in one respect or another - its misplaced values for trading certain items, or its weak battle tactics. For example, it's generally considered unfair to conquer a minor world by

Reply to Bug Reports for Gal Civ 1.20 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If the AI has a PQ bonus (which they will at Masochistic difficulty), then PQ will change as they change side. The AI may also decide to destroy the improvements on a planet that it thinks will flip, like soil enhancement, which will lower PQ further. ~SDC~

Reply to No More Cash For Tech? in Strategies Stardock Forums

They've always been stingy with cash at Maso level, but I've still always foung it useful to have good diplomacy because it gives you better deals when buying techs, bribing them into wars, or just giving them gifts. ~SDC~

Reply to Random event that ruined my game........ in Strategies Stardock Forums

They really don't like getting influence points these days. ~SDC~

Reply to Colonizing PQ 13 and 14 planets in Strategies Stardock Forums

Not sure if PQ directly boosts influence. Population level does, and that's closely related to PQ. And I think if your star isn't yellow, you get influence penalties. ~SDC~

Reply to Bug Reports for Gal Civ 1.20 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Matthew Downie:If the anomaly disappears when you reload it, I don't know that the save game would be of any use.[/quote] No, it was more useful than that. I have a game save where I can load it and the anomaly is there, and I can consistently save it again a couple of turns later and then reload it to make the anomaly disappear. ~SDC~

Reply to Balance and the Demise of fun in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]And does no one care that winning by culture has been eliminated essentially?[/quote] I can still conquer every planet by culture or destroy them all with terror stars, even at Maso difficulty - it's just that there's some challenge to it now. The basic techniques I use are to try to control all galactic trade by bribing AIs to fight their trading partners, and to protect and then exploit the new minors that appear. If that fails, I can set spending to zero for a while, save up for en

Reply to Players without empires, this is your only warning in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Why not just announce that you're the emperor of the Independent Players Empire, add up all the scores of the nonaligned players, and claim that as your empire score? ~SDC~

Reply to Gifting / trading of planets in Strategies Stardock Forums

Sometimes the AI 'strips' a planet that is about to flip, eg destroys all the improvements, which gives you a planet with a morale of 1. These planets make the best gifts as you have nothing to lose on them and they are already in a flippable location. ~SDC~

Reply to Boogie's Moding Class #2: Random Events in Mods Stardock Forums

First post on this thread in 147 days... Are you still waiting for an answer to your question, LavaLampMaster? This is not the answer. This is a summary of the findings I posted on the Prancing Pony empires thread. from BoogieBac [quote]*Edit - Hawaii caught me on this one...MoralityWeight is 1 - 5 where 1 == a major moral event and 5 == a non-important event. Numbers can be over 5, but, as it increases, the likelyhood if it having an impact on your morality standings decreases.[/qu

Reply to GC 1.2 Alliance Gripe in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]How about a period of enforced peace, as part of the negotiation for a peace treaty? [/quote] I think something of this sort is definitely needed for GalCiv2. Human players abuse the honour system a lot more than the AIs. An AI will give you all its money and tech for peace when it's on the verge of destruction, and then you can just conquer it anyway, with no penalties, not even a reputation for dishonour. ~SDC~

Reply to Luck in Strategies Stardock Forums

Sector PQ events usually happen in someone else's sector. ~SDC~

Reply to newbie in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Don't just adjust your military spending slider to 100% and you should be a able to produce one every 2nd or 3rd turn.[/quote] A bit more punctuation might have made this clearer. I think this was meant to say: [quote]Don't! Just adjust your military spending slider to 100% and you should be a able to produce one every 2nd or 3rd turn.[/quote] ~SDC~

Reply to GalCiv vs MOO2 (for GalCiv 2) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My MOO2 games usually ended before I even got to Stellar Convertor. I'd take Orion with a weapon like Plasma Cannons (or a fleet with nothing but Gyro Destabilizers could be very effective, at least before the patch), and then I'd have a significant technological lead. With the free super-powered battleship, I could teleport up to any starbase, Death Ray it to kill off the marines, capture it, and then neutronium bomb the planet's defences into oblivion. ~SDC~

Reply to Luck in Strategies Stardock Forums

Luck seems to increase the events like free rangers, but there's a lot of randomness so it's hard to measure. Creativity is suppose to just improve your chances of getting a 25% research advance when your survey ship investigates an Unknown anomaly - quite useful in the larger sized galaxies. ~SDC~

Reply to questions from A to Z in Strategies Stardock Forums

[quote]Military isn't important right now, so I knock the military down to about 10%, and let the others rise to 45% each. In order to maintain the same income level, I find I have to drop my overall government spending down to as low as 45% or so...) [/quote] That tends to happen when you have a massive research bonus. A big research bonus allows you to spend far more per turn when research is high as you can when military/social is high. The only things you can do is cut research spen

Reply to GalCiv vs MOO2 (for GalCiv 2) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've recently started playing MOO1 via DosBox - I was a big MOO2 addict. There's a lot I like about MOO1, but my last three games (at high difficulty) have all ended abruptly, long before any decisive battles could take place and usually before I'd even made contact with all the other races. In every case, the humans were elected rulers of the galaxy - (fortunately, in two of these cases, I was playing as the humans). Why do all these aliens vote to lose? As long as games are going to end like t

Reply to The minors are one the move again!!!! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The minors have been beating me to DT a lot recently. It's not much of a problem. I just trade to get it off them. I don't think the majors buy trade goods off minors very often. ~SDC~

Reply to Balance and the Demise of fun in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's zero for the first, 200 for the second, 400 for the third, and so on. Less with logistics technology. It hasn't caused me any real problems - my playing style only needed some minor adjustment. Specifically, I focus more on grabbing large amounts of money whenever the opportunity arises. The only changes I really want in GalCiv are: AIs who are less gullible and who know how to use transport ships A few more shortcuts - eg a simple action like building a terror star should be po

Reply to Good/ evil difference in Strategies Stardock Forums

It was always implied that good AIs would be nice to you if you were good, but being evil didn't help your relations with other evil races much. After all, if being evil was as useful diplomatically as being good, what do you gain for suffering all the penalties for goodness? ~SDC~