My Frogboy blog is here btw:

http://frogboy.joeuser.com/

The Draginol one on JoeUser is partially designed to create controversy and get discussion going. The Frogboy one is more what I generally talk about on a day to day basis other than game stuff.

I think the Frogboy one is more interesting if less controversal.

One topic of spying-

Could there/will there be a feature indicating success of spying? Spying as it stands now is basically pumping $$ into a function and hoping each turn you're lucky enough to jump to the next espionage level. This perhaps is realistic, but you have no indicator if spending much more money would help much, nor how long it may take (roughly) to get to the next information level. Additionally, you don't know how effective your spying money is being put to, especially if you're throwing a lot of money into spying specifically to steal technology and you aren't getting any feedback on that.

Also, will there be both the general spying as it exists as well as the ability to purchase and use agents? Or will it be eclipsed by agents? It's not clear to me if you can still access this in the foreign relations area or not. I can see a place for both general and specific spying, but like I said earlier it'd be great to have more indicators and feedback so you know if it's "worth it" to throw your money toward this cost.

One question about the current level of things- is there any real disadvantage to cranking up espionage now until you reach the highest level on a race and then dropping to the lowest setting? You might not get any stolen tech, but at that point you'll have gotten as much information out of that civ as possible.

Brad- will there be a beta release of 1.4 just like in the past? I'm really in favor of economy improvements. That seems to be the biggest setback to making the game more fun and to allow more strategies than just expand, expand, expand population.

The Republican party is about one thing: greed. What can I get and how can I screw over everyone else to get it. But at the core the Republican agenda is greed.

And, of course, the Republicans accuse the Democrats of the same thing.

Amusing how it all works . . . and amusing how many people just go around pointing fingers at everybody instead of coming up with solutions.

The entire point of having a government is to take care of OUR needs.

And IMHO the entire point of the government is to maintain law and order, as well as to uphold human rights. Other than that, I think it should pretty much stay out of our lives.

Every American should benefit from our government policy, not just the wealthy elite.

Has anybody really stated that policy should only benefit the wealthy elite?

It just seems there is more than one way of thinking about what the government should and should not get involved in. Personally, I take the stance of a minimalist government, not the big huge one we currently have.

Unfortunately, Bush seems to have failed in that aspect about as bad as the Democrats usually do .

For a GalCiv III, it would be nice to expand the political factions further so that there was actaully internal competition in keeping your empire under your control.

Now how coool - and genuinely innovative - would that be?

Sid Meir had no problem putting his political ideas into his games, and neither should you. Politics should be WAY more important than it is in GalCiv.

For a GalCiv III, it would be nice to expand the political factions further so that there was actually internal competition in keeping your empire under your control.

Sounds good, I often thought that this was the least explored possibility of Gal Civ creating a more dynamic political system would be interesting. Especially with regards to making an empire work, I don’t think this has every been explored in any other space civ game that I have played.

On your espionage topic: Will minor races be able to use espionage as well?
Will there be types of espionage agents i.e. counter espionage and double agents, rogue agents?

Do you have any plans on developing minors any further for DA?

Yeah, who among us hasn't razed a city in a game of Civilization, or glassed a planet in a game of MoO? We generally carry out political policies that we wouldn't dream of endorsing in real life.

In games like these, the political themes are generally kept in the realm of hyperbole, so I don't think introducing such themes would really turn anyone off. I don't think we're talking about having options as subtle as Campaign Finance Reform or Estate Tax in GalCiv games.

Like others, things I'd like to see:

a) Make approval a little trickier to manage. Right now you can prevent low approval effects easily, with the tax slider. Add in a few more elements that are less easily controlled by the player.
Limit the rate at which the player can change tax rates. Perhaps only X% per turn. No more wild swings in the tax rate, which are unrealistic.
Have much harsher penalties for low approval. If an opposition party gains power, perhaps some of your colonies use their newfound influence in the Senate to secede from your empire.

This thread split into relevant to "the topic" posts and "political thread" posts.

We don't have a split topic option, unfortunately.

My main complaint with this post is how my own questions regarding non-political topics were ignored, but the political comments were immediately answered... regardless of the fact that they came after my questions /snarl