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Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, I've noticed this too. Sometimes the wrong defense is stronger than the right defense.

Reply to Possible to win without initial economic bonus? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I agree that economy, morale, and population growth are pretty much the best abilities to pick, especially on settings where you'll be able to colonize/conquer a lot of planets. Like estafazero said, everything depends on economy in the long run. Money is needed for military production, social production, research, espionage, purchasing, upgrading, fleet maintenance, colony maintenance, improvement maintenance, founding starbases, adding some modules to starbases, invasion tactics, and trading

Reply to How is Military Strength Calculated? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The military rating equals attack + defense + hp/10 summed over all ships that have 1 attack or more. So it's measuring quality and quantity, but doesn't say anything about the power of individual fleets. If you are ridiculously more powerful than your opponents, you should attack them instead of waiting for them to attack you. And increase the difficulty level in your next game.

Reply to Attacker Advantages are Exploitable! in Warfare GalCiv2 Forums

Yeah, I agree this is exploitable. I can use a huge ship with lots of attack to take out entire enemy fleets. It will survive even though the enemy fleets have more than enough fire power to kill my ship, because of this one hit point rule. And then it can keep doing this over and over because the one hp rule will always keep it alive. But I don't think this has anything to do with the relative value of attack and defense.

Reply to 1% Military / 99% Social / 0% Research (focus research) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I sort of remember getting a research boosting event at one point. I remember it's tendency to drain my finances. Did you see anything like that? Nah, I didn't have any event like that. I went and check the saves on several of my games and started some new games with bonuses to my civ's research ability. My best guess is that mining bases on research resources are giving bigger bonuses than listed on the Stats and Graphs screen. Maybe they're multiply

Reply to 1% Military / 99% Social / 0% Research (focus research) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Focusing on research seems to produce much more research in DA than it did in DL. I have a planet with 156 base manufacturing points and a 110% with a military production ability of 40%. At 100% military spending, this planet has 468 military production. When this planet focuses on research, it makes 350 military production and 339 research (I have 127% research ability). That's a much higher total output than without the focus! Is that supposed to be happening? Edit: Well, now I

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

OK, that test is easy to do. Start a Battle of the Gods scenario. Attack Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 14 blackhole eruptors, and one aereon defense to fill leftover space. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 3120. Total stats: 388 attack and 18 defense. (that's after I give it to the Altarians, it was only 353 attack, 12 defense for me) Defense Ship has 3 hyperwarp3s, 4 blackhole eruptors, and 21 aereon defenses. Huge hull, 299/300 space. Cost 4320. Total stats: 101 at

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

But people on these message boards often claim that even under the new DA rules balance is the key to victory. I strongly disagree, and I am trying to show the less experienced people why I disagree. The key is to commit (to either attack or defense) - no middle ground ever. Big agreement on this. A balanced ship is worse than an all-attack ship, and worse than a ship with "enough" defense. Low defense means that it has a low chance of blocking damage,

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Fleet A = high attack fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 7 x Photonic Torpedo II, 28 attack, 0 defense, cost = 465, maint. = 13 Fleet D = high defense fleet: medium hulls, 24 hp each, 4 x Photonic Torpedo II, 7 x PD Combo II, 16 attack, 21 defense, cost = 790, maint. = 23 I don't think that anyone has claimed that defense is useful in a situation like this. I've specifically said that defense is useful IF you can make a ship that has defense equa

Reply to Defence too powerful!! (perhaps) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Starstriker1, try your example again with a ship that has 50 defense. It will survive a round of combat with defense left over, at which point, the defense recharges to full. One ship with 50 defense is nearly invulnerable to a fleet with 80 attack. The 50 defense ship is expensive, but it can take on entire fleets by itself.

Reply to Having Trouble Using Espionage Effeciently in DA in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I don't really know what to do with spies either. They're expensive, and the AI is pretty quick to nullify any that you place on their worlds, they don't seem to be worth it. Since spies perfectly cancel each other out, there really isn't a way to win the spy war. My only strategy so far is to hire one spy but don't place him. Just use the spy button to look at any planet's facilities, but never actually place him where he'll be killed. Maybe if you can send a bunch of spies again

Reply to Understanding combat question in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think there's a bug involving non-optimal defenses: they don't degrade. I've had some unexpected results in my own games similar to Erithtotl's story. You're using missiles against armor, which means that each weapon must roll against sqrt(150)=12 defense. The defense is supposed to be reduced by each attack roll, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Or maybe it's subtracting the attack roll from 150, rather than from 12. As for defeating these pirates, if you can build a shi

Reply to Dark Avatar Campaign Help: Where's Dlthir? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

IIRC, it's near the center of the map, in a system with one other habitable planet.

Reply to Poor AI - am SO dissapointed!!!!! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

All strategy games are easy on the fair level if you know what you're doing. Play Masochistic or higher, the AI looks a lot smarter when it actually has enough resources to compete.

Reply to Focus is Goofy in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

People can abuse this mechanic by basically neglecting to build research infrastructure and relying on their machinists to unlock the secrets of black-hole physics. The really odd thing is you don't lose all that much by using focus in this way. Is it bad that strategies like these are possible? They are powerful, but I don't use them because they're very inflexible; you'll never be able to research quickly if you only have factories.

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not convinced that defense is underpowered in DA. I've used it well in all three of my suicidal wins so far. It's not better than weapons, it's just useful in different situations. Defense is expensive to build, but it is cheap to research. If you use just a little it's worse than weapons, but if you use a lot it makes a ship invincible. It's bad on small ships, but good on big ships. It isn't helpful in fleets, but it will allow a ship to win battles alone. This is my curre

Reply to Starting In GalCiv II (Dread Lords) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Well, it's not supposed to be hard to build your civilization. The difficulty is in building your civ faster than your opponent's, and then destroying theirs. Try a game on "tough" difficulty, which is the fair level where neither you or the AI get any penalties or bonuses. You can probably try a larger map against a few more opponents, too.

Reply to Mission 3 in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

"Conquer everyone who doesn't agree with our conquest in this sector" This can just mean "Conquer everyone," which is what I did. I think it's just an alliance victory, all major races must be allied with you or dead.

Reply to InFAQ #2 – Do Spaceborne Citizens Pay Taxes? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Population in space pays no taxes. You can see your population and economy graphs dip when ship people off. The advantage to filling your colony ships is that the population on the new colony will grow quicker. Population growth depends on current population, morale, and pop growth ability. Growth rate is directly proportional to population up to about 2.5 billion people, and capped above that. Then there is a percentage bonus based on morale: 25% if morale is above 75%, 100% bon

Reply to The reasoning behind nerfing defense? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

You haven't mentioned one change that made defense much stronger. In DA, the defense of an entire ship rolls against the attack of each weapon separately. So if your ship has multiple defense modules, its defense roll will be much higher than a single weapon's attack roll and it won't take any damage unless you get a really unlucky roll. Then the defenses are depleted. You can use this to your advantage. If you can make a ship with enough defenses to survive a whole round of combat with de

Reply to Defense - Devs please read! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The effect of defense is very nonlinear. Putting some defense on your ships is bad, like in your example in the first post, Wyndstar. But putting a lot of defense on a ship is very good. If you can build a ship such that its defense is greater than 1/2 the enemy fleet's attack, it is close to invincible. This ship will survive to the end of a round of combat and still have defense points left over, so it almost never takes damage. I just ended a suicidal game by building large-hul

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

If you are alert and watch your neighbours then a surprise attack would be alot less a surprise and even you can flip the table by attacking before they do. That was exactly my point. The only counter to a surprise attack is to surprise attack them faster or better. It's a best strategy, and it forces you to play one specific way if you want to do well. You could teach the AI to do it and that would make the game harder, but I don't think it would mak

Reply to DA Planet Quality Strategy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

population max is calculated on a planet's base quality. so those base-PQ-1's are still going to have very low population caps. It actually only caps population growth. If you bring in people on a transport, they won't die.

Reply to Do we need the "One-Hitpoint Rule"? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

A single ship with 1 hitpoint will not survive an encounter against another fleet (unless youre the arceans using your powerful first strike ability). In the first post, Entropy Avatar described a situation where a 1hp ship won many battles in a row, and super warrior wouldn't have made any difference. I vote for mutual destruction.

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

These are my tricks for beating Suicidal. Wyndstar already covered a few of them. I think most of it doesn't involve exploiting the AI, it's more about taking advantage of the game mechanics, and would work just fine against a smart human player. How to crush Suicidal 1) Before the game starts, put your ability points into population growth, morale, and economy. In GC2, money does everything and generating more money will make your civ stronger in all areas. Tax income i