EtherMage

Reply to How many starbases are too many? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Actually, I could be wrong about this - I remember having heard it somewhere, but haven't tested it myself; in the "Trade?....What is the big deal?" thread, there is a post that seems to refute this from another player. I think an experiment might be useful, but I'm definitely not as sure of myself now as I was when I made that post. That was just what the info on the trade screen seemed to indicate to me. Any word from the devs on this point? -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Terror Stars in Strategies Stardock Forums

[quote]Then that stupid "So and so have found this thing and will take over the universe..." This always ruins my games...[/quote] Keep in mind that the race that gets this is usually losing. I find that at least 3/4ths of the time I can totally ignore this message because no matter what bonuses race X gets they can't possibly come back and win it. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to A Guide to Social Projects in Strategies Stardock Forums

I have to say that you left out a significant advantage to research buildings: they also each have a 10% influence bonus. If you're going the culture-bomb route, then the research lab and maybe even the research center are worth it because both effects you get are very useful - tech. bonus helps to get to all the (many, many) influence wonders/TG's first. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to How many starbases are too many? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]If you built constructed speed bonuses in every sector of the trade route, the net effect is 0 - no change in average income from the trade route (you take less turns to complete a cycle, but the ratio of turns spent in each income zone stays the same).[/quote] This is NOT the case. While each sector still has the freighter in it the same PROPORTION of the time, you've halved the total number of turns it takes to complete the cycle. Since the value of a trade route increases ea

Reply to Trade?....What is the big deal? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yeah, with enough starbases you can get several trade routes EACH bringing it upwards of 250bc or so a turn, even if they're only a sector or two long. Longer trade routes are harder to enhance to this degree because each starbase is effective for far less of the time, but they get much more valuable on their own...I've seen UNenhanced trade routes well above a hundred, and those don't have all those 5bc/turn starbase maintenance costs pulling down profits. -EtherMage ~S

Reply to Information Warfare bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I just wanted to say re: moral position...being good doesn't mean you have to fight evil. As long as you don't ALLY with anyone, you can be good friends with any alignment. Being evil means GOOD civs will hate you, but the reverse is not true. The evil civs only care about a) how big a stick you wield, and b) how many nice things you give them. Keep them scared enough and happy enough and they'll leave you alone at any alignment. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Colonising below 15 worlds in Strategies Stardock Forums

Def Zep: I *STRONGLY* disagree with you about colonizing planets of PQ below Earth's. As long as you colonize them with a significantly smaller population that is left on Earth, you can keep morale approximately the same across them, and thus not hobble Earth. -EtherMage ~SDC~ [Message Edited]

Reply to Galciv Observations in Strategies Stardock Forums

I have to disagree with a number of your points...in order of precedence: 1. Morale improvements...AAGH...they're HIDEOUSLY useful to me. I build e.net and a stadium and a harmony generator on every planet, which lets me have much higher populations at the same tax rate, which means more $$ and more productive capacity. It also keeps my population growing faster, so when I *need* to offload, say, 50 billion people into transports to mount a large-scale attack on a big opponent, I can

Reply to Gaaa! what are the hot keys! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Um, no, that's not all of them. For one, F8 (view sector influence numbers) is missing. Also, I think what he's asking for is a hotkey that presses the "Done" button on any of the hundreds of dialogs that GalCiv pops up all the time. If there is such a hotkey, I want to know what it is too! -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Do speed bonuses effect the mini freighters? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

They do stack, and mini-freighters are affected by them. They are NOT affected by any empire-wide speed bonus though. Keep in mind that if you make them go faster, you are effectively shortening your trade route, and thus making it slightly less valuable overall. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to All my eggs in one basket in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

On the other hand, say you had 2 class-24 planets each with 100IU base and 250% manufacturing bonuses (again, obtainable with the appropriate combination of standard buildings, wonders, and production starbases). Then each you can produce about 640 or so IU between them. If you had instead merely not augmented the second planet, say it only had a 100% bonus and you used the rest of the stuff on Earch to get up to 400$...then you'd only end up with 512 IU by last post's calculations. E

Reply to All my eggs in one basket in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Stacking all your economy or manufacturing bonuses in one place is a bad idea in general. The reason for this is that there are soft caps on both based on planet quality, and once those are hit it takes a lot of effort for a small amount more gain. That is, say you have a class 24 (post-enhancements) Earth, which has a base production capacity of 100IU. With its various wonders and regular buildings and the nearby starbases you have a manufacturing bonus of, say, 400 percent, which is

Reply to How many starbases are too many? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

No, not quite. a) Production Starbases: You can build these all day long, but you start seeing SERIOUS diminishing returns once you hit the 10xPQ/3xPQ caps for paid and free production, respectively. Basically, once you're doing (PQx13) total IU's of either type of production on a planet, don't expect more starbases to do much for you. Of course, this means that with that class 26 planet you found you can expect 300+ IU's before you've maxed out. b) Trade starbases: never max out.

Reply to Hex Editing in Mods Stardock Forums

AngelPhoenix: shouldn't be hard to figure out for yourself. Start a game, play a bit, and note your cash supply. Then pull up the savegame and try searching for a location with that value in hex...if you're careful you can spot where the money value is stored. Of course, savegames might have checksums to fix as well, so it might not be that simple. There also exist tools to edit values in-memory for any program. I know of a free tool for this called Cheat Engine available here: http

Reply to Starbases? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Every repair tech speeds the procees up. Your Repair "bonus", as long as it's >0, determines how fast your ships repair. I'm not sure if a repair module on the starbase will speed the starbase's repair itself - it will speed up the repairs of damaged ships in the same sector as it though. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Screenshots of GC:EU Xpack in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Not quite. You forget, when you're at war with a race, none of their ships are listed in the diplomacy window. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Locked in? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Is anyone else finding themselves largely locked in to a specific successful strategy? I find myself over and over following these basic steps no matter what kind of game I start out intending to play: 1. Using speed and possibly range picks, expand out as quickly as possible while doing absolutely no research or social production. Get more planets than anyone else by at least a factor of 10:7 or so. 2. When habitable planets are exhausted, switch all construction to constructors.

Reply to Sector ownership and influence driving me crazy in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

BTW, I almost always fall way behind on influence early in the game because I spread my population out further and thus keep it from growing as fast initially. Once the rush is over and I settle into my high-morale, low-tax growth spurt, my lack of influence quickly evaporates. So don't rush to build influence buildings the instant you see you're falling behind: there are other ways to gain influence, primary among them being building up your population. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to What determines morale of a newly colonized world? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The main 2 factors for a newly colonized world are: a) Planet Quality b) initial colonizing population A high-PQ planet can stand more people to start with than a low-PQ planet. Of course, all the global modifiers (morale/PQ/etc. bonuses) will affect this, and your tax rate will determine just how good a planet you need to have to house a trillion people adequately without morale buildings. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Sector ownership and influence driving me crazy in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Don't worry about influence that much early on, it only starts to really matter once sectors end up owned by empires other the owner of the systems in those sectors. At that point there's a risk of rebellion to the influential empire. Re: getting boxed in...there's a lot of strategy involved in the early land-grab. Try taking speed picks and following the other advice in the strats forum and see if you can't beat the AI to the punch. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Increasing frequency of moral events? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Is there any pick or something that will increase the frequency of the "moral choice" events? What determines how often they show up? I'd like to be able to get up to 90+ goodness so I can build those nifty Trade Centers, but most games I simply don't get enough events to get that far up the morality spectrum. -EtherMage ~SDC~ [Message Edited]

Reply to *** SPOILERS *** GC:EU Expansion Pack Changes For Modders *** SPOILERS *** in Mods Stardock Forums

I'm pretty sure "Freeform Gas" anomalies have always been wildcards. Or at least, since I started playing circa 1.04. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to 1.09[b].001 Bug Report Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Oh, one other thing. There was an event where the Yor had a rebellion and a new empire was supposedly formed from the rebellious planets...but the Yor only had one planet, their capital, and they kept it! The named minor mentioned in the event never came into being... -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Question about re installing and Beta 1.09 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If you install it via SDC it'll automatically download just enough to take you from whatever version you're at to the newest one, no worries. -EtherMage ~SDC~

Reply to Terror Stars in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

And who says we spend all our time on GalCiv? I submit my scores regularly and am currently ranked 28th, yet I only submit a game a day at most...and lately it's been less. Certainly the majority of my free time does not go into GalCiv, however much I enjoy the game. And yet, I've been relatively successful on the Metaverse...wow! It's not like an MMORPG, where the main "skill" metric is how many hours a day you spend in the game. :P Granted, I'll never be first or even prob