Philocthetes

Reply to The Plague Mega-Event in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I've just seen my first plague event & finished researching the cure. Has anyone noticed whether your diplo status declines if you keep the cure to yourself? It seems like at least the "good" AIs should be more motivated to hate you the longer they suffer the plague while watching your people recover and move on. p.s. I also wonder if the plague event could and should be tweaked to happen only well after the new-fangled colony rush is over. My current Huge map still has some p

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The show goes very well with marijuana. I'll take this as a strong vote of confidence that prohibition won't last much longer. Otherwise you've likely opened or amended your FBI file Entheogenic: The word entheogen is a modern term derived from

Reply to Manual update: Super Abilties in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Once I've played the game a few times, I know what to expect when I first encounter a race in a new game I appreciate this impulse and have felt pretty much the same about other games, but I suspect GCII is the best AI set I've played at length and in my experience the races are not all that predictable given how significant initial map condition

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

p.s. Offworld diaspora folks, I trust you've all caught this headline: NASA Plans Lunar Outpost

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

First, Wheel, the RIF hooligans made me laugh longer and louder than anything I've yet read on this forum. Now back to the word-pong: Broadband is for Big Brother. Gimme removable media for network-free devices. Budgets are important, but the vastly superior new BSG hardly seems to be suffering from budget problems despite being produced by a "niche" channel. Technology changes & the rise of offshore soundstages & filming locations (done a Douglas Fir count on a random SF show

Reply to Random crashes in Windows Vista RC2 in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Vista gold already?!? Aiiee, I thought we had until late January to get a decent XP box. Here's hoping Microsoft will let a few OEMs keep some XP Pro machines around for a while...

Reply to Game Chop in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I don't want to jinx my "lame old" vid card, but to my utter amazement (and purely by accident) the First Trade link movie played smoothly on my system, and I've *never* seen any in-game movies play without stuttering before. Makes me wish I had neat word for "anti-bug."

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Oz, I didn't say "just like." Believe me, I'm a hardcore advocate of reading. I was just rambling about what amounts to a hope--that the death of the broadcast paradigm might lead to steadily more thoughtful viewing by folks who pause and rewind to be sure they're getting the full picture and hearing the dialog correctly.

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

Thanks, all, for the edification on the community politics aspects of my question. Here's hoping for a one-word answer from Kryo to a different face of the question: do the devs benefit from every datapoint they can get in the Metaverse (larger samples=better stats analysis, if y'all are doing that sort of stuff)? Also interested in what the dev (or stats) savvy among the rabble might think.

Reply to Free energetics and volatiles galaxy-wide? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

NBD=no big deal.

Reply to Mining base map coloring bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

All the bases were Korath, but not all of them were colored as Korath. Alas, I'm not sure this will repro and am thinking I need to get off my high horse and scrounge up at least a minimum-spec vid card. I emailed the save anyway and will try to keep screenshots in mind to send in future.

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

OK, I'm a documented Stardock fan, but I just took a moment to try setting up a Metaverse character and ran into an immediate intellectual property-based roadblock. I have a serial number that worked enough somewhere in my past Stardock interactions that I recorded it in a "safe" place. When I finally tried using that serial number at the web site linked to the GCII Metaverse button, I got bounced, with and without hyphens. For the record, I'm at the end of an off-duty day and

Reply to Manual update: Super Abilties in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Randomizing special abilities would make the story parts of the game break. Super Hive humans? Super Diplomat Korath? Next, it's dogs and cats sleeping together (not that I haven't seen such more than once).

Reply to Developers we could use your opinion in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I've made no claim to sainthood that I know of. Now I'm starting to get the Martin Luther icon thing

Reply to Elegant solution to the speed problem. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I wish I didn't oversympathize with anyone who has their paycheck directly connected to tehir keyboard time. I'd love to see some lengthy Stardock responses to this wave of stargate talk--particularly a rank-ordered list of how much work some of the different suggestions might require.

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

There are a lot of people who seem concerned with just getting their post count high so they can think they're L337 I admit (declare? yes, delcare, at least parenthetically) that I was one of those kids who got picked last during gym class. That's part of my excuse/reason for disinterest in both multiplayer-with-strangers (MMO) and score posting.

Reply to Treaties in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Alright, it appears that no one else has yet had a strong balk at the one-way aspect of the treaties. In hopes that at least one dev-type appreciates my quibble, I humble suggest that the UI text be changed from "X treaty" to "X Aid Agreement." This would make the label of the active UI element more accurately reflect the effects of the choices on the Diplo-Trade page.

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

must...fight...urge...to...rant-question...why Kevin Anderson has been hired to hack out formula prose to help undermine Frank Herbert's profound contribution to SF But I'll happily say that this Metaverse empire/imperium talk is Greek to me and at once fascinating and horrifying. Is some form of popularity contest actually built into the Metaverse?

Reply to Mining base map coloring bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

p.s. I have a save as of this post if it might be useful.

Mining base map coloring bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

My graphics card is below spec, so I hesitate to post about a GUI issue, but here goes: I'm on 1A, on a Huge map, the Korath currently have 3 discontiguous influence areas that I can see on the minimap, and it appears that 2 of those three might be continguous. In the possibly-contiguous single zone, which includes the Korath homeworld, I see a both a cluster of undeveloped asteroids and an appropriately-colored group of asteroid fields that each show a mining base when select

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

In the DA Developers we could use your opinion thread, Mumblefratz said: Why anyone doesn't post to the metaverse is their own personal choice and none of my business. As a semi-professional student of communities who has to date scoffed the Metaverse, I'm beginning to wonder if "full participation" (top-range street cred) in the

Reply to Developers we could use your opinion in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It gets to be frustrating when you’re playing at the highest level and winning with difficulty, and people playing at tough or whatever make comments that effectively translate into “the game’s too easy, nerf the... Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Tough the last AI level before the difficulty factors shift from limits on AI ability to

Reply to Elegant solution to the speed problem. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The Wikipedia also has a Stars! writeup , much more info than underdog thing. I remember trying the shareware version and backing off b/c it was "too mechanical" for me. But reading the post above and looking at the UI cap at the Wiki made me think about why I always liked to watch the miniatures guys re-fight Waterloo even though I never wanted to play. Details matter. But for some of us, perhaps too many, so do the look and feel of the

Reply to Elegant solution to the speed problem. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

it's really unrealistic to think a thirty or less man crew could change every major component on a ship in the middle of space in three weeks or less. Where are those parts coming from anyway? Pshaw, given the broad-strokes modeling behind GCII this is at least as much a question of the flavor text as it is a matter of mechanics or "realism." Nan

Reply to Elegant solution to the speed problem. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

move a snail pace at the risk of being outdated if the planets are quite seperated in gigantic galaxies I hadn't even considered this, what with being a speed junkie and all. Darned good point that unfortunately lends a tad of support to Wheel's casual order to execute the gigantic maps entirely. Sheesh, Wheel, it's *Galactic* Civilizations II, e