Philocthetes

Reply to Favorite and worse super ability in your opinion? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The strongest complaint I've seen so far is about the Super Adapter--others should not be able to simply research away your "Super" Ability. I've gotten perhaps too fond of the 1-turn factory part of Super Hive, but I'm guessing it will still make a worthwhile difference when we see the change to percentage bonus in the next public build. Overall, the Super Abilities are steadily growing in my affections b/c I'm starting to think they might help me out of my strategy rut. Keepi

Reply to Mumble made me do it in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

We *already have* socialized medicine (i.e. major amounts of public money are invested through public insurance, research funding, etc.); it's just the sloppiest, most half-assed job in the industrialized world. Still, I at least half-agree with both Mumble and FC, although I'm pretty sure we all have rather different ideas of what it means to "be rich." The article that FC linked was interesting, but I saw no criteria or data to help me evaluate the author's claim that "By far, the maj

Reply to But I really like cheese in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Butter is the fundamental popcorn condiment. Cheese and caramel are basically complicated butter, one leaning sweet and the other savory. That business aside, I wonder what FC and PA think about giving the GCII AI a bonus (playing over Tough diff level, AFAIK).

Reply to But I really like cheese in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

It's very subjective, yeah. I consider spamming a planet with markets cheese. I mean, you gotta have factories, farmland, so on . . . it just blows the believability factor away for me and I don't enjoy the game. Well, dammit, I only like popcorn about once every 1.15 years (when I *really* want some popcorn), but, dammit, dammit, this is *even m

Reply to Grammar nazis, do you really believe the map is the territory? in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

During my time ass a pencilpusher,,I quickly realised that most of the people in the top are just as interchangable as the men on the floor I'm pretty sure there's a typo-pun here that might be the most "valuable" thing in the thread so far. If PB did "time ass" on purpose, well, he/she/it deserves money from Hollywood <img src="http://images.st

Reply to Space Monsters (Would you like to see them back?) in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

They were a great way to make sure that high quality planets weren't populated very early on in the game, and the planets were a good reward for those who were able to defeat the critters. I'd totally forgotten the monsters-as-guards thing and I second Samsquanch's take here. Plus I really like seeing Bubbles as an icon for titled nobility

Mumble made me do it in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

In a reply in the remarkably long Grammar nazi thread I started, Mumblefratz said a number of things that made me think we needed to start spewing into a different bucket (and, yes, that's a Mr. Creosote reference). First, I must vent some frustrated teacher stuff and thank Mumble profusely for the family story about inflation (if you want a family story about hyperinflation, just ask--one of my grandmothers worked in Wiemar Germany before emigrating to St. Louis). Anyone interes

Espionage spending, I think you should check it often in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm unfortunately a bit random about when and how often I check my econ sliders. In my current Beta 2b(?) game, I just noticed that changes in your overall economy can mean big differences in what you pay for a given pace of spy production. I'm mid-game on a huge map, have had some heavy espionage conflict (spent many spies on both offense & defense), and had the slider set for one spy every 5 weeks, spending at 1158 BC. When I bothered to twiddle the slider, I was able to keep the one

Morale, PQ, and unused tiles in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I played a *long* time before I finally understood that a high PQ world gets a morale bonus just for being a sweet place to live. Lately, I started to wonder why I don't seem to get any morale benefit from leaving a tile or two undeveloped. I'm sure my own unexamined assumptions are pretty big factors here, but does anyone else think that the morale bonus for PQ should (at least for some alignments and/or gov't types) be affected by whether the planet has any "wilderness" left?

Reply to What is the refresh rate on this forum? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Fortnightly Now there's a fine word you don't see very often. Makes me want to start an off-topic thread on steampunk SF, not that I've read nearly enough... Re the OP, it's always seemed "random" to me, but I assumed there were factors beyond my ken. I'd guess Mumble's also onto something re the recent improvements. I'm really glad you

Reply to But I really like cheese in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

this is message board cheese if i ever saw it Axhead might not have meant it, but I now consider myself happily busted. I was mainly interested in "what the frak could I kick up if I griped about cheese griping?" And I got a real hoot of out the line Ax quoted, even though I'd keep fighting about it if this were a fight <img src="http://images.st

Reply to Grammar nazis, do you really believe the map is the territory? in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

At the risk of getting flamed, I would like to say that the proper terminology for the whole 14 hours of work thing is Wage Slavery What's the opposite of "flamed?" If I follow Evil rightly, he's just taken a good moment to put some details behind a bumper sticker near and dear to my heart: Work to Live, Don't Live to Work . On the

Reply to Grammar nazis, do you really believe the map is the territory? in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

what precisely would a "global proletariat" look like? I can't at all say "precisely," but as a baby Marx-Engels student I'd say at the very least we'd need to have a world economic system that enabled labor to move as freely as capital does now. That seems a necessary prerequisite for the notion that folks who work for a living would

Reply to My Thoughts on Custom Opponents in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Does anyone know if when you are setting up a game, and select 'Randomize Opponents' whether you can specify whether it is randomizing from the standard races, or randomizing from the standard+custom races I built a custom race in my last game, used Random for my current game, and my custom race was one of my opponents. I didn't see any way to ex

Reply to Spore Technology Bug in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

No, no, spores are vegetable matter, not insects! Don't forget the fungi! Now *that* would be a really alien AI species...smart 'shrooms. That could work with Super Hive. If I'm not mistaken, the largest known organism in the world right now is a single fungi system woven around the roots of a large patch (2,000+ acres?) of Oregon forest. That sp

But I really like cheese in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

If this were the old days and I'd learned my UNIX better, I would have done some grep stuff to back up my impression that the word "cheese" has been flying hot and heavy around here lately. Melted cheese burns, and painfully subjective language blurs otherwise good game chats (I know, I've done it plenty myself). So I'm putting out a call for all you cheese-callers to defend yourselves. Why use that weak slang when you could say something specific? Or, why add the nasty tone when you've

Reply to Does the Metaverse need people who don't care about scores? in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

The "AI cheating" thing might turn out to be my biggest block against stepping up from Tough. I've never had to work so hard to beat a game AI, but I kind of worry about whether my affection might fade once I start letting the AI handicap me. I got almost sour on MoO2 at the end, once I'd played enough max-diff games to have a good idea just how much that AI was pulling ships out of stinky nether dimensions.

Reply to Newb Question: Building Structures & Approval in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

this will immediately reduce your population to the new planetary max and improve morale as well. I have a sloppy impression that taking down a farm does not get that quick a morale boost--maybe the code accounts for people being unhappy about watching all those kinfolk starve to death...

Reply to How to direct certain type of ships to rally point? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I agree w/ Kryo--assigning rally points by class would be a great addition to the UI. It would certainly help w/ constructor micromanagement for us larger map folks.

Reply to Does the Metaverse need people who don't care about scores? in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

Too bad the AI in Civ4 sucks compared to GalCiv2. Some stuff around here's almost tempted me to try Civ4, but I can too easily believe this is too true, and when you put it together with the well-known resource hog problems that game has, well, thanks for the memories, Sid...

Reply to Imperial Reserves in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

I played CotN some (liked it a lot for the short while it stayed fresh for me). I think what you're asking is to have a commodity layer added to the currency system in the GCII economy. I doubt we might see anything like that until GCIII, but I like the idea for a several reasons, not least b/c it has potential to support a *truly* alien culture that has no use for money. If the Thalans are truly a Super Hive species, why would they have any use for money? Every member of the

Reply to My Thoughts on the Espionage System in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm sure the devs are busy beyond reason, but I think the spy system talk from the beta testers might gain a lot if we had a bit of Stardock input, especially if anyone can lay out some broad parameters about what cannot change before RTM and what might be able to change.

Reply to Grammar nazis, do you really believe the map is the territory? in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Not to encourage an endlessly digressive thread, but... If we do not achieve a minimum amount of "material success", whether it be earned, given, or dare I say, stolen, relying on the spiritual or emotional components is pointless Marx & Engels would doubtless agree here--one of the reasons I threw out their names, aside from a tendency

Reply to PC games are dead? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I've pretty much always been a deck game spectator--haven't bought anything since my sister and I saved our allowances for most of a year to buy that Atari thing that took cartridges and barely outclassed Pong. IIRC the only things I've been talked into playing a bit have involved a fishing-pole controller, a gun-shaped controller, and Worms. Decks are a neat way to see what real games might look like in a while, but that that crowd tends to call a strategy game seems like a barely ade

Reply to Stripping OEM WinXP Bloatware in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I've not been able to force myself to read the agreement details, but it does seem like there's some OEM stuff that means you get a "bargain" rate for the OS at the expense of losing your right to installation media for the standalone OS. I had a long fight once with IBM (yes, I actually bought a Win9X box from them, alas) that was based on a complaing much like the OP here. Anyone know if there's an XP version of an old shareware app called RegClean? I vaguely recall that helping in th