Thanks. :)  I'm relieved, but not excited, to be employed again....I'll be making less money than my previous job, but in this bad economic time, I opted for stability rather than dollars.  I'll be working for the State of Vermont, which wont be going out of business any time soon.

Sentient species taste better...

Hopefully, anyway.

yeah I heard about that. It's affected my dad's business over here in Austria, he's in trade.

But apparently roamer on the street is that america's in a bad way. what's happening over there?

I'm with you KP, state jobs are great. They don't pay that much, but you get pretty good job security (especially since they rewrote my job description so that I'm the "only one" doing that - can't be redundant if there's only one, right?) and the benefits are pretty good, too.

And dont forget a lot of holidays that most people dont get, like Columbus Day and MLK Day.

Well, all kinds of stuff....major banks and financial institutions failing, mortgage companies going broke from giving bad loans, unemployment skyrocketing, high gas prices which raises the price of anything that needs to be transported (which is virtually everything), etc, etc...  Other countries are having quite a bit of problems too as the recession becomes worldwide.  Commentators keep saying that this is the worst economic time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Sentient species taste better...

Personally i think it will get as worse.

And more ofthen than not what normally follows a depression. War.

Bad times ahead.

Yeap, don't underestimate job security in these days. And benefits make a big difference as well in the US.

It seems the Chinese economy is also being heavily affected (far less export). Same in Europe in many industries by the way.

We can't import from america so much anymore coz the prices are to high. so we are searching in different countries to find business partners who can sustain their business. we are mostly looking in the disadvantaged countries to sell to coz they can't afford all of their imports anymore, so business is rocky all over the world. Guess it goes to show how much this world has become dependant on america. I wouldn't be suprised to see the world unite under the american flag if earth ever decided to elect for 1 ruler of earth.

I wouldn't say good job security.  There was just an article about cutbacks in the workforce in the government.  They've been doing big cuts in the PA state gov and more are to come says the gov.

I get MLK and not much else beyond the standard ones. I did get 10 days over Christmas when the university was closed, though. My older brother is always bitching about that and the bit about me getting more than twice the vacation he does. I asked him if the time off was worth the 40% pay cut from doing the same job in the private sector and he shut up.

It depends on what you do. It's pretty easy to cut 4 people out of 20 that do basically the same thing. It's something else entirely to cut one of two people in a two person job (even though our job descriptions are written so that we aren't in the same job). We have cut back on the hours we give student workers, though.

More new warriors continue to join the Empire.  Welcome to Cerbykins, Cattlerustlinbob, Die Heiligste, Ablege, and pfung98!  

Well we're already involved in two wars here in the USA, so no great prediction there.

Defintely some good benefits with my new job.

A long ways in the future, I assume the world will gradually merge into one government.  A long long ways to go for that though...

I specifically asked about the sustainability of my job when I was interviewing, because that was one thing I was worried about, and it is a necesarry position.  So I feel pretty secure about it. 

Some of the best benefits I had was when I worked at General Dynamics, a defense contractor.  Unlimited sick days (I only used a handful, but it was nice to know it was available), and everyone got the week off between Xmas and New Years, paid.

Sentient species taste better...

Hey KP,  concrats and good luck with the new job. You are right, security is more important than dollars right now.

Does this mean less GalCiv time now? Perhaps now would bve a good time to surrender to the Genocracy...

I work in the IT department at a hospital here in Toronto. It's unlikely people will stop getting sick, checking in, or checking out. So I think I'm safe, but you never know. Canada itself is better off than most other countries, though. Something to do with the banks being heavily regulated. At least that's what they tell us. Still it's definately gloomy.   

Yes.  I work for Raytheon.  A very good steady job in the defense industry.  We don't have unlimited sick days, but we do get the plant shut down between the Holidays.  Not expected to work much more than 40 hrs a week, and with flexible hours, I can take off early most Fridays or take every other Friday off.

Finally did it!!!  Got a +200K score on an all abundant, medium map.   

Almost had it in 3yrs. I was sitting at 197K on Dec 22. Ended it on May 22 of year 4. Betcha I can do it in 3 with some luck. I didn't get a single economic event. One of those in year 2 would of helped a lot. 

Congrats Ferrel!  Quite an accomplishment!   An econ boom would definitely bump that up significantly higher too.

Also congrats to Snarkotamus for breaking the 300k mark for the first time today!

Sounds like a pretty good deal Ragnar.  My job at GD was pretty boring, but I'll take boring and stable any day.

Sentient species taste better...

Thats quite a game! Well done.

Wow, those are huge scores, impressive!

I think I really, really need to make a few drastic changes in my playstyle now that I took back my Altmeta Sol-Civ 1st place and top 10 spot in Gal-Civ :p

I can't remember the last time I scored over 20K and that was probably just a zero year win...

well done, truely a great acomplishment for anyone to achieve for the first time. Still I have yet to achieve it.

Dont know if you were around when we started doing Swindle games Noctilucus, but these are my best scores so far:

I have a write-up of the strategy, so let me know if you would like to have it and I'll send you a PM.

Sentient species taste better...

Hi KzintiPatriarch,

I was around when those swindles started but I have to admit I got lost in the huge discussions and explanations back then so I've yet got to try one for myself... Probably because they covered some more detailed tweaks to the strategy rather than the basic principles.

So that write-up of yours would be very, very much appreciated, thanks!

Thanks!!!

I got the Spin Control Center, Doomsday Generator, and Omega Defense System earlier in the game this time around. I put the SCC and DDG on one planet, and the ODS on an adjacent planet. Then I filled them both up ASAP. It made a real difference in the military score.

Doubles HP of ships in orbit?

HP is only worth 1/4th as much as attack/defense in the military rating formula, so unless you had really shitty ships it shouldn't have made much of a difference.

(Granted, we were told it was worth 1/10th as much, so it's actually worth 2.5x as much as we were told.)

And if you put all those things withing range of a Military Starbase array, the effects are multiplied.

Sentient species taste better...