Gerakken

Reply to Why are Pure Evil Players Showing Up With Pure Good Smileys? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, there is a problem for sure. In compiling my latest empire report on the Euros (to be posted in short order), I had to manually correct for a lot of "pure good" alignments that are in reality evil. Most of the discrepencies I was running into were happening with players who were barely straddling the line between neutral and chaotic evil, but I have read about at least one pure evil getting the pure good smilies lately. Interesting, very interesting indeed.

Reply to Becoming pure evil or pure good in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Still takes a while to get to Pure Evil... When I played a game to test it out in a small abundant galaxy, I only got one event in an evening's play.[/quote] Extreme alignment needs long games, at least in the unmodified game. So, one can go for a big map and/or play with the aliens longer than usual to get the random non-colonization events to bump the alignment. A big downfall to cranking strategies so popular in today's Metaverse is brevity: short and quick, with rare planets

Reply to Trying for evil but not in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I guess this is two examples of the blue face really hiding evil people. Forget alignment tricks to make the games come out non-evil to maintain a blue face, nothing like going down the evil career path and getting a good disguise so the wolf can ambush the sheep. Even if it is a bug. But like an evil guy would care how he got the disguise. If the suit fits, eat sheep! :)

Reply to Why Master of Magic is Cool. Might want to get a drink and cancel any appointments. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Us older gamers do have a use sometimes: it is to tell the youngin's what they missed back when. Much like I threw away much time in my younger life on Civ 1, MOM was another game that just had the right stuff.

Reply to re poll: Would you pre-order on-line a Master of Magic 2? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]I think this is mostly because these people aren't familiar with the rep you guys have.[/quote] Precisely. Stardock has a generally great rep among those who have tried their products, but does not have the market penetration of the big boys. So most people never heard of them. To convince one of my friends, I had to buy him a copy of Galciv because he was like "Stardock? Who are these guys? Two bit small time operators tend to make crappy games and can't compete with th

Reply to Metaverse Scoring Audit in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Put the stopwatch down, your hands up, and back away slowly! That is Gerakken's opinion about score mongers. No fun equals no game in my book. So each of my games is an adventure, not a score fest. Sure, we are a competitive lot and want to do well when compared to others, but sometime a few go a bit overboard. It is sad when it happens, especially in a public manner like our recent incident, but are we going to pick up the pieces and go on. As for HOW we go on, that i

Reply to Killing giant worms = Evil?! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]The Earthworms can go up to 40% and the Life Force Artifact to 50%.[/quote] Thanks. I only knew it was pretty high, but not how high, exactly. [quote]It's not that many. Yet.[/quote] Just give us time. If there is one thing we are better at as a species than killing each other, it is reproducing. It is said that roaches will survive a global nuclear war. I contend that people will be one of the survivors of any predicted nuclear holocaust or whatever the megadis

Reply to Killing giant worms = Evil?! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

On the bonus amount comments: I have not played any 1.5 AP games yet (just some later build 1.49 AP Betas), but the worm bonus and the life force drainer event bonuses were still pretty high in some cases. Like at 37%. It is a highly variable bonus for the evil pick. But the penalty for taking one of those real nice bonuses was as much as twenty alignment points. Bah! My minions will just run a Galactic Charity drive later, maybe sponsor an orphanage for Torians, later on. No,

Reply to re poll: Would you pre-order on-line a Master of Magic 2? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Do people trust Stardock enough to turn out a good game enough to pre-order?[/quote] This man's answer is heck yes! If this project is a go, the hardest part for us will be the wait. It should all be fine if Atari sits back, takes their cut, and not meddle in things. Stardock I trust, Atari I do not. So take your time, do it right, and if the after release support is as good as we are used to, then it should all be good. Build this, I agree, and they will come.

Reply to Holy Precursor Corvettes, Batman! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The corvette event is fun no matter who gets it, in my opinion. The human can either become the supreme commerce raider and kamikaze commander of all he surveys (as in sending the corvettes all around the map to slay enemy mini-freighters and any ships one feels are worth throwing wimpy corvettes at until it dies), or, as mentioned by other devious minds, giving them away to make them someone else's problem so the alien can play kamikaze commander. I do like it better when it is a later

Reply to Killing giant worms = Evil?! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Just remove the event [/quote] Yeah, yeah, avoid the problem, why don't we? No way! Worms must be dealt with. :) I can always give a little free pirate advice: we say kill the worms now (and any time they show up), take the PQ bonus, and try to sort out the morality later. Who knows, maybe one will have the opportunity to be kind and generous in other events later. Then again, maybe not. Short games mean fewer events and less chance to reverse the evil trend that a wor

Reply to Metaverse Scoring Audit in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Uh huh. There is somethings I got to say about this. Renegade says he started a game with a powerful political party mod and then changed it around toward the end to avoid an anomolous flag. Beyond cheese. Way beyond. What you start the game with in regards to picks or mods stays in the entire game. If the mod would lead to a bad score, do not use it! Saying "the Masoverse made me do it" is no more a valid defense than saying "the Devil made me do it" in my opinion. OK, I got that off my chest.<

Reply to The Metaverse Shop in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Gerakken's very own Seeker Omniscope. It looks a lot like what one puts over his eyes during an eye exam: a large metal frame straps onto the head with two holes to see through. The holes have an array of lenses that the handy dials on the side can select to view objects or beings normally, magnified, infrared, x-ray, and even alternate laser wavelength light sources for viewing latent footprints and fingerprints! Literally see right throught the suspect if need be! Kind of low tech for the late

Reply to That was weird in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]But hey this is the best event in hole game... [/quote] Why some like Swiss cheese: holes big enough to drive terror stars through. No one should be able to milk anyone for that kind of cash, especially as easily as the Dragonal can be exploited. Ouch!

Reply to Remeber...? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

True, a lot of empires do stick together and one not in a particular empire can feel a little left out in one of their threads, or at least not feeling like you fit in there. So everybody got a double-eded sword: the empiring types were not flooding the main board with messages, but they were now bunched together in a separate place and getting a bit cliquish at times. Luckily for me, at least, the Spymaster has business that spans several empires and feels quite free to crash their thr

Reply to GalCiv Haiku in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Galciv consumes time, But is not life full of time? Time meant to enjoy. [Message Edited]

Reply to Question on the influence overlay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Spin Control is mainly a defensive cultural resistance improvement. I think you meant Hyper Distribution Center (+33% civilization influence wonder). [/quote] Yes, my mistake. I was thinking ahead to the cultural resistance part of the post. Thanks, Downie.

Reply to Question on the influence overlay in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'll take an influence resource fully loaded over six party palaces any day of the week. :) If it's a culture war you want, I am your man. I am a pretty dedicated culture bomber, probably the most notorious culture bomber on the board that will claim the wins so often in such a low scoring manner. (The inhabitants of the Masoverse tend to disdain low value wins.) Sector ownership takes three to four turns after a reload to ramp up, as Magnummaniac said. It will take a while to build up

Reply to G.R.O.S.S. communication thread. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

What the heck, 15 days? It's so dead over here the others might get the mistaken notion that we struck our colors and surrendered! No surrender here, matey. A drink to my pirate fellows. Cheers! :CONGRAT:

Reply to Cheaters in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]just those nasty Drengin and evil Yor.[/quote] Gerakken's rules of Yor: Try to flip them first before blowing them to heck. It is easier to reprogram them than to rebuild them. (It is common knowledge that all the Spymaster's assistants are reprogrammed and/or rebuilt Yor.) I do have to admit that incredible difficulty Yor can have quite an attitude. Sometimes I like that anti-matter missile deterrent a bit too much and do get tempted.

Reply to Metaverse Scoring bug fixed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The game count bug seems to be fixed, at least for me. 30 out of 30 just like it should be. In other news, about people losing points due to the block thing. Ouch. But I, on the other hand, just gained 17K from an 18K because of the gaping hole in my blocks. (6 weeks since last submission.) Of course, if I can submit another game in a week or so I would see nowhere near this kind of return, but the combination of aging and rapid fire submissions are obviously killing some people in the

Reply to Want to Roam the Meta? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

This ought to be interesting alright. My emperor has kicked out a couple of zero scorers back in the day and Bluesteel did run a temporary bout of demotions from senator to normal overlord for lack of activity in the second to last incarnation of ANZAC, but no empire that I can recall has ever booted a score-laden member for being too dormant. Not being evil enough, sure (the Evil Empire, of course), but not for lack of activity. I got nothing against it, though. It might do the Diplomats good.

Reply to Impossible!!! Play 3 huge on Masochistic in 2 days??? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought this was a game played for fun.[/quote] Amen to that! I take my time and immerse myself into the game, really taking time to look at the map, move the most vital ships manually, and overly dote and micromanage the planets a bit too much maybe. Sure, it takes me 8 to 12 hours over several days to play a game, and sometimes I have to adjust for a radically changed diplomatic situation on a reload on a later day and may need to spend e

Reply to Metaverse Scoring bug fixed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, fixing the count would be real nice as I stated in CM's old post relating to this, but I have mixed feelings on the score cap. It does prevent people playing maso from trying to milk the system for all it is worth so we don't have players trying to wring every drop out of the game when they know once they reach 60,000 they cannot go for 70K, 80K, or whatever the non-capped limit would be. Afterall, one 60K is as good as another. Now we just have non-maso players trying to milk the system f

Reply to Difficulty Levels Revealed in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Oi! I got at least one person in the peanut gallery judging from that last message. Just be careful with those flying tomatoes. :) My Yor droid reform is proceeding only marginally well. I managed to get those two slackers to stop scrounging around for upgrade parts long enough for a Top 100 report. It is hard to disable a Yor's self-upgrade instincts. Anyone familiar with Yor ways will tell you. Yor need strong discipline! Well, on with the report: Top 50 Players Cakewalk