Twirlip

Reply to GalCiv 1.11 Stuff in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Do Terror Stars count as starbases for the 3-parsec rule?

Reply to OT: Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I own a copy of the first one. It's fairly complex and non-linear --- players need to be non-flexible, as there aren't really "killer strats" that dominate the game. And even decked-out powerful units can be countered. One can also spend much time tinkering with equipment choices. Downside mostly is the ugly and in some cases awkward interface. My understanding is that the sequel should improve on this dramatically. You haven't gone TRULY crazy until you've got an utterly impractical but inc

Reply to Die Humans! . . . ? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Old. It showed up in one of the Brad's "gameplay examples", if memory serves.

Reply to Neural Networks and GalCiv in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

They're just function fitters, and not infrequently require substantial care choosing inputs, outputs, and structure.

Reply to Newbie economic question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Money is not divided evenly between colonies. A colony with more production-enhancing buildings will spend more money, partly because of maintenance (which will occur even if you set spend rate to 0%) and partly because most of that increased production is not free. Some of that increased production is free, though -- at least from buildings and starbases. So not only can you spend more money, but it may also be more efficient (/may/; a lousy low-PQ world may spend might on additional

Reply to Logistics and Super Fleets in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Evil Steve -- MOO2 did have a command points system, which was used to provide a soft limit on the total ships (regardless of whether or not they were in fleets; oh, and bigger ships again cost more). T'was a soft limit because you could go over, but it cost you credits.

Reply to Logistics and Super Fleets in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If one wanted somewhat more flexibility than identical limits in each fleet, perhaps one could introduce C3 variants of each ship. Logistics / Command technology paired with, for instance, Battleship technology would allow a substantially more expensive but no-more-formidable-than-usual C3 Battleship. C3 ships might have a base command rating of, say, 1 given the earliest logistics tech; then, pair this with a facility ("Starship Academy") that locally boosts this ability (e.g. ten-fold). The

Reply to Logistics and Super Fleets in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Interesting. Coming up with a fair set of logistics costs probably wouldn't be easy, but it'd be an interesting approach. What happens if you have one or more fleets at the limit, and then you lose something which causes your limit to go down? Automatic instantaneous fleet shattering? A penalty until the fleet's broken up by the player?

Reply to I'm bored ! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Cotal -- Cursed gold detection scrolls also work to detect traps, if memory serves -- and that helps, since the portals are teleporter traps. Of course, on the plane of fire, most of 'em are fire traps, not the teleporter... at least the Amulet won't be sending you down a few levels anytime soon. Yes, the amulet needs to be sacrificed on the Astral Plane, which is after all four elemental planes. Pick the correct altar (if memory serves, while the locations of the altars are

Reply to I'm bored ! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Ultimately, it'd be good if it were somehow variable, so that research strategies (including those of AIs) would be forced to vary more. At the extreme, one could do something like SMAC's "blind research" option, where one picks general areas on which to focus, but otherwise lacks fine control. A possibly simpler option would be to randomly tweak tech costs, possibly on a per-race basis. Preserving balance would be tricky, but it might be more interesting if the variance were large en

Reply to I'm bored ! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Arturus Magi -- Could be. I never had an Atari (although I had friends who did), and thus never got into Adventure. In Nethack, on the final maze level you need to wander around until you step on the vibrating square, then use the candelabrum, bell and book to create a staircase down. If memory serves, there is no method in the game to find that square except stumbling onto it.

Reply to Are there any other games like this? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Depends on how close one means, I'd think. Space Empires IV, for instance, is another space-conquest game, but it differs in a number of important areas. Some include -- Instead of sectors, we have systems featuring zero to three stars, and up to... something like 16 planets or sizeable asteroids. Movement within a system is unconstrained; movement between must be done via warp points. These warp points provide natural choke-points until people gain the rather-expensive warp

Reply to I'm bored ! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Cotal -- I'm inclined to believe that the Nethack endgame is only fun for masochists. The Elemental Plane of Fire, for instance, is just obscene -- you have to detect all the traps, then run into each one until you find the teleporter. It's almost as fun as looking for the Vibrating Square! Joy! Somewhere along the line, the Dev Team confused "length of game" with "gameplay". I greatly prefer Angband, which -- while there's still some tedium, mostly when you're looking for

Reply to good / evil mod imbalances in default mods in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

couslee -- Hm, the colonization events are all planet-specific, I think. I don't have a list, 'tho. You can tell this because the bonuses are reflected only on the colony info screen, not from the empire-wide ability screen. So, if pirates help you build better ships, it's only for that world. And so forth. On the other hand, the random event questions can yield empire-wide benefits or penalties. For instance, the "do we crack down on financial corruption, tolerate it, or

Reply to good / evil mod imbalances in default mods in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

couslee -- You do know that most of the colonization event bonuses only apply to that planet, right? Think about it. Is the diplomatic penalty worth a bonus that only applies on one of, say, scores of worlds?

Reply to The batlling is bogus-- prove me wrong! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Was it ever confirmed that the random die rolls were linear, instead of, say, gaussian?

Reply to good / evil mod imbalances in default mods in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Good has very strong long-term benefits that, especially in huge maps, are extremely valuable compared to single-planet bonuses.

Reply to Too many late game events? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Going against your current alignment should probably cause some unhappiness, at least if you've been at that alignment for some time. Anlashok -- I'd be more tempted to go the other way around, actually. For one thing, it's quite easy to turn evil, because taking advantage of the +PQ events cause very, very large hits to morality. For another, going good makes it easier to preserve diplomatic relations with the non-evil others, who appear to be far more likely to survive into the endg

Reply to 1 influence point? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Bizarre. What are your diplomatic stats like? One influence point shouldn't be worth anywhere near THAT much...

Reply to Ship Creation Question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

citahellion -- Everything. As far as I can tell, tech alignment requirements are only checked when listing it as a research possibility, and in no way preclude receiving it from other means or of using it.

Reply to Ship Creation Question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

...until a new minor arrives with all your tech, and then trades it away or loses it when it gets squashed by a nearby AI major.

Reply to Things you would like to see in a Galactic Civilization expansion set in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Regarding propaganda automation, a simple slider from 0-100 whose semantics were "spend on propaganda to bring morale up to at least this amount or as high as you can if you can't reach that threshold on this planet" would save some time, although there'd need to be a per-colony checkbox for "don't automate this propaganda slider" (defaults to "go ahead and automate") for those times when one really wants a 100% morale or so on a certain world, or when one's supposed to be unhappy for whatever r

Reply to Am I missing something??? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

KitWarrior -- Are you sure that you weren't instead triggering the "terror star stacked with ships gets the ships' speed" bug?

Reply to Universal Conquest in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You might want to take it to comp.games.development.design.

Reply to What is an Overlord? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Simple -- huge map, low difficulty (e.g. set everybody on normal), refrain from significant offensives (military or cultural). Don't ally with everybody else, either. The risks would be that the AIs surrender to you too early or get dwarfed by your culture, so just avoid clobbering them as much as you can. You can find all the ship stats in your Data directory, in the .ship files. They're pretty readable.