Super diplo, diplomatic translator structure, and a number of diplo techs all help to reduce the cost. The Bazaar might help, too. But I don't know how well this works in 1.5x DA. Hydro
Shifting aliances and last minute saves make for a great game! Have you considered writing up your Epic as an AAR? Hydro
1900 ships! Swarms! Must have had lots of planets to build and support that many. Hydro
Economic policies - actually, the budget surplus was largely due to the huge tax increase by the Democratic congress that was signed by Bush Sr. Of course, this was one of the main reason Bush Sr wasn't re-elected: Read My Lips... Another reason for the economic prosperity of the 1990s was the opposing parties in Congress and the White House: the Republican Congress nerfed many of the loopy ideas of the White House and vise versa. Checks and balances ruled. When the Republicans ran the
Reasons for taking out minor races: 1) Prevent another race from getting them. Eventually they'll all get consumed, so why not be the one to get them first? 2) They generally have above-average planets. This is more important in small galaxies or in galaxies with rare planets. Real estate matters. 3) Good influence bump 4) Will only slightly impact your relations with others (you will get tagged with 'tendencey to conquer others') 5) Generally an easy kill since you have much
Sounds like it's shaping up as a classic Good vs Evil conflict. Some map shots would help, so I hope you can post some soon! How does your relative research, military, etc stand wrt the other races? Also, were the Torians weak wrt the Korath? You don't need much to provoke them, but if the Torians spent too long to develop a military they would be easy victims. What are your objectives? The name of your race sounds a tad ominous... Keep us posted (if you'll f
The role of a president or any leader is to make hard decisions. Those decisions are based on the information available at the time, and because the decisions are hard means there are consequences – good and bad. Each decision is based on information that makes it through the filter of advisors, which the leader chooses. It is quite clear now that Bush and Blair chose their advisors…poorly. As we have seen, the Neoconservative’s advisor’s ideological view of the world is seriously flawed. I call
The use of spies depends on where you are in the game and the AI’s financial position. If they are weak then I see very few spies. Generally I only seem them in mid game and later. In my last few games I get bucketloads of spies, and am spending 13% of my economy to get rid of them (!!!). In my current game (Painful, custom Breeder – documented as an AAR) I am barely able to keep ahead, and the only races left in the game are Krynn, Altarians, and Drath (all of whom are ‘close, but spy
I just checked, and here is how Tourism income works. Total tourism: 1bc for each 100B population of the galaxy. This total is divided between the races based on influence. This means that early in the game this will be minor, but later it may be more, and much more in galaxies with abundant planets. As for capitals, the increased influence only is present on the races first capital or any minor races' first planet. If you check, you'll see a pretty high IP for capitals wrt ot
Quite true, and an important lesson. I only play at Painful too, but all the AIs react strongly to your military power. I try hard to have at least a military rating of 100%. Nothing is worse than to get dragged into a war very early in the game since then you lose control. Having a military gives you options, which is always a good thing. Hydro
I set my autosave to 2 turns due to game crashes. Every time I tried to Alt Tab out the game crashed, and sometimes the game just...stopped, requiring a hard boot of my PC. When I upgraded from 512MB to 1.5GB RAM and increased my SWAP file to 4GB all my problems went away. I can Alt Tab out, and when I go back in there is only a small delay. Performance improved significantly with the new RAM. I guess I'm lucky that the increased RAM seems to have solved the problem. It looks
Ships move. Starbases don't. Plus, you have to defend starbases, which ties down your fleets. In the early game a SB with an attack of 10 and ~40HPs can hold its own, but by late early game or mid game they die like stuck pigs. Building a worthwhile SB takes a LOT of constructors. Plus, you can upgrade ships and they can defend planets or take the war to an enemy. You get the point. That's why it is generally better to build ships, with the possible exception of strategically placed ec
My understanding is that tourism income is a function of galaxy population and your percentage of influence in the galaxy. Building influence starbases would, therefore, increase your slice of the influence pie. Whether it is economically worthwhile depends on how much tourism income you’re getting. For instance, building a few influence bases in empty/unclaimed territory on a large or bigger map isn’t going to get you much more of a percentage of the influence pie. But, the population of the ga
I played Terrans on Painful before the last few patches and found planet buying a cheap way to cinch the game very early, with or without Diplo Trans or all the diplo techs. As the last phases of the colony rush continues as the AI builds space ports at new planets the colony ships have very little populations. You can buy these low population colonies for a song. Heck, for an economic and/or research treaty the Krynn basically gave me 2/3 of his empire. I documented this in an AAR a while ago.
February 2232 As predicted, the turns just float by. I was spending 85% or so of my budget on research, and by September of 2231 I’d finished all the colonization techs. As those planets came fully on line I noted that my income balance had dipped significantly. This is likely due to all the planets that were now at full throttle, which is good. Then I proceeded down the economics and government techs, the next research tech, picked up planetary bombardment to ensure I kept a good groun
I'd be interested in now the AI-AI tech trades work, too. I might be a little less irritated if I knew how the rules worked. It's hard to say who offered what in the debug.err file, although it is clear who got what. Some of the trades defy logic, where diplomatically challenged races get a tech you couldn't pry out of the cold, dead hands of the AI. Hydro
Or turn off tech trading. That will level the playing field and give you a different game. To see how you can use DA tech trading to your advantage see Wyndstar's Altarian AAR. He used it to generate obscene amounts of cash. There are also a number of other provocative ideas and strategies in this AAR, too. Hydro
I just checked my game, and my trade is as follows: • Weekly trade income: 1647bc • Number of trade routes: 7 • Source of my trade routes: all originate at my capital system (capital or side planet) • Destination of my trade routes: 3 to Altarian capital, 2 to Krynn capital, and 2 to two different Drath worlds • All my trade routes go through 3 economic starbases, which have trade bonuses that range from 20% to 30% each. Getting these extra bonuses is key, so having one
I’ve just finished the first of a 3 book series that reminded me strongly of GalCiv2’s universe: Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. In this book Humanity is in competition with innumerable alien races for very scarce habitable planets. The protagonist describes it as tens of billions of humans against trillions of aliens. Relations between the races are generally…unpleasant, and the book describes this situation from a ground-pounder’s point of view. It isn’t a ‘Isn’t War Great’ book full
The March 10, 2007 edition of The Economist listed the top city economies. Tokyo came out on top, followed very closely by New York. The Economist made the observation that the economic output of NY or Tokyo was the same as all of Canada! I was also interested to find that Chicago (where I live) had just been nudged out of 4th place by London, but that Chicago still had a larger economy than Paris. Even then, Chicago was 1/3 the economic output of NY or Tokyo. To me this shows what we
March 2231 All I have to say is the galaxy is freakin’ huge. It takes forever to get anywhere, and although this game is essentially wrapped up it is close to torture to keep shoving my ships around. It takes 25 bloody turns to get across 2/3 of the galaxy, and that is just too painful. But perhaps I should be thankful. After all, I could have gotten a random gigantic galaxy with abundant stars and abundant habitable planets. Now, wouldn’t that have been fun? There would have
First, in DA the AI does colonize PQ1 worlds. It doesn’t do so frequently, but it does. Also, as a neutral with 2 or 3 terraforming techs a PQ1 planet can instantly be a PQ16 to 19 (!!!). Granted, this is later in the game, but it is a nice way to influence bomb the AI. Normally a low PQ (or any) planet in AI territory will flip or be near revolt due to enemy influence. With enough cash you can colonize the planet, have it go to PQ15+ instantly with a good intrinsic influence, buy a fe
I see plenty of single transports with no escorts, but by mid game the are grouped depending on logistics ability. Note that if a race has a poor logistics ability it may not be able to group two transports and/or an escort together. Hydro
As for trade, my experience is that the worth of trade routes depends on map size. A larger galaxy size, of course, increases the distance and therefore the value of the trade route. In my current Super Breeder AAR (gigantic map) my trade income is 1600bc/week due to a special even that doubled trade income, which is very nice. But even at the normal 800bc/turn that is quite a haul for the investment of only 8 or 9 trade routes. Some of that is due to alien’s trade routes with me, but not that m
Excellent take, and a unique angle – kind of a GalCiv2 retrospective! And perhaps an explanation of how humanity developed star drives before anyone else? It’s not clear why the Huth ended, but then a single worker on a planet probably wouldn’t know this. The voice states what he (it?) knows. I also love the monologue with the stilted language. It sounds like a scattershot diary, although it has no real sense of time other than being sequential. I might quibble with you on a f
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