Richard Heaton

Late game minor race exploit. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I have used this a little before, but I have just discovered that there is NO limit on it. In the late game, go to war with a minor race, then make peace with them. Overpower them by enough that you can demand their entire treasury of 1000 to 2000, every turn for the next fifty turns. They can go as far into debt as neccessary to pay you, and you can superfuel your empire on it. The last game, I put the fundamentalists at -56,403 before I was through with them. -Drake ~SDC

Reply to Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

BTW, I am dying to see what effect my joining of the empire has on the galactic map after the daily update. Before I joined we were at 447705.9 and controlled 11% of the galaxy. Oh, the suspense! :SURPRISED: -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Wow. If I had known that this thread was going on here, I wouldn't have posted my other thread on scoring systems. Anyway, I am the newest member of the empire, and hello to all. Personally I think that your score should be based on the number of turns it took you to win, compared to the (1) size of the galaxy (2) victory type and (3) difficulty. Use metaverse data to average out the victory types so none of them has an advantage over the others for sure. Probably do the same thing

Reply to Advanced help request: masochistic huge galaxy. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, given that everybody who could be bothered to give me advice is already a member.. I'm in. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Idea for new scoring system in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I should add that in order to perform that hypothetical outscoring of the masochistic player under my scoring system while playing at a lower difficulty level oneself, one would have to do REALLY well, since obviously the averages for that lower difficulty level will be higher. So the player who can barely beat the game on masochistic would get about the same score playing at crippling, because he would totally thrash the computer at that level. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Idea for new scoring system in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Oops. Obviously difficulty should play in, yes. Missed that. I would lean toward averaging it toward 1 also. The idea is that WHATEVER your settings, your score is computed relative to average scores at those settings, with 1000 being average performance and the score going up or down from there depending on how you did compared to others. In that case you could outscore a masochistic game on a lower difficulty level, at least in theory. I can see where you would want to weight it

Idea for new scoring system in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I have been thinking a lot about the scoring system in GalCiv, and it occurs to me that there is a system which is both simpler and better measures skill. I would have scoring work according to: SCORE = [ VICTORY * (SIZE / TURNS)] * BASE, where SCORE is the score for the game, SIZE is dependant upon the size of the galaxy for that game, VICTORY is dependant upon victory type, TURNS is dependant upon the number of turns it took to win, and BASE is a constant like 1000 or someth

Advanced help request: masochistic huge galaxy. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Hey all. I have been playing for a long time now and I am pretty good at the game. I have been playing large galaxies with all the computers set to bright (difficulty crippling) for a long time now, and I am able to win pretty consistently. I need help with two things. First, I would like to move up to huge and gigantic galaxies. I tried a gigantic galaxy once with the computers set to either bright or intelligent (I forget) and found that it requires some new thinking. How in the

Reply to Win by alliance with all five races! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Challenging, I think. Whatever it is when they're all set to Intelligent. Standard race settings... which means I was simultaneously allied with the angelic Altarians and demonic Drengin, and everybody in between. Maybe it's not as hard to do that as I thought, but it's the first time I have done it, and I thought it was cool. -Drake ~SDC~

Win by alliance with all five races! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Today I had my most amusing win ever. I allied with all five races for a political victory. Here's the saved game, for anybody who cares: http://www.restorethepledge.com/rapacity/GalCiv/unite.rar -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Combat transport - the best defense? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

My experience has been that they always pop if they are attacked, though they may pop the enemy ship as well. Time and time again I have watched the enemy ship and my combat transport die simultaneously, which cannot happen with normal ships.. so I think they're treated like defensive anti-matter missiles in that regard. I would much rather have a real ship and use the combat transport for what it's for. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Confusion about a UP vote in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Speaking of destabilization. Is there anything you can do about it short of turning the offender's empire into so much space dust? -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Good or EVIL!? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]I will usually take the worm killing pqchoice as well as the life force pq choice and kill the bugs at war. But other than that, I take the good or neutral choices. And I usually come out evil.[/quote] If you're going to come out evil anyway, doesn't it make sense to go all the way? Or is there a gradient of treatment that you get? I always assumed that it was boolean. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Fog of war in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Both good ideas, and they don't sound very hard to code. I would love to see them in the expansion pack. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Another Political Bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Certain other things also get undone when you save and reload. Influence mapping seems to be one of them. Try this. Get a game to where you have just entered the 12 month countdown to cultural victory. Save and reload. All of a sudden you are at like 78% cultural victory. Now I don't remember for sure on this last point, but I seem to recall that even given a few turns for the sectors to get reflooded with your culture, you still end up short. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to challenging level--early strategy in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

First of all, if you've only colonized 4 planets after 30 turns, you need to get your expansion strategy straight. You WILL lose the game colonizing that slowly unless the computers are set to be pretty dumb. You'll hear different strategies but my preference is to set 100 mil / 0 soc / 0 res and 100 spend, with a tax level that puts my approval rate in the mid 90s. That way you can crank out a colony ship in 2 turns from Earth. Use the Freedom to Innovate to colonize a world as quickly as p

Reply to AI Relations question in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Yes. If one computer, major or minor, has a tech you can pretty much assume that all the others will get it from him very quickly. There is nothing more frustrating than having dreadnaught technology before the computers even have battletech technology... then having a minor race pop up and getting it automatically since you have it, then trading it to all the computers the next turn. Sometimes it takes a turn or two, so if you can stomp them fast you can put a halt to it on occasion. But at

Reply to What's the best way to defend a starbase? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I also prefer Gerakken's approach. The only defensive ship I like to build is the battle axe in the early game to prevent having people declare war on me (or to repell their futile attacks if they absolutely insist upon doing so). In the late game I would rather have attack oriented ships so I can use them for my own assaults. When they're not commited to taking over planets, they can park near starbases and preemptively strike any incoming craft. Works every time. -Drake

Reply to Paying extortion, is it ever worth it? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I have noticed that if you have substantially superior diplomacy (sp. diplomatic translators), you can often get a hostile AI to go up a level of relations by giving them one or two scouts. I am not sure why they value them so much, but they do, and it costs you nothing to give them to them because they have no firepower. I'm not cheesy enough to build scouts just for this purpose, but I will give away ones that I have gotten from anomalies on the map and so on. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to Tired the AI is cheating threads in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Frogboy- Re your comment about waypoints in the expansion pack I had a couple ideas that I thought were cool. First, of course, we could use rally points. It would be great if they were ship specific, so you could set a "combat transport" rally point and a "sensor drone" rally point separately if you wanted. But the idea I had which I thought would be even cooler was if you could plan your starbase upgrades. Right now you can open the screen and see what modules are installe

Reply to 1.04 AI cheats on tech tree, gets free techs from nowhere (bug?) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]But the tone of many of these posts on this particular issue, for instance, has been essentially saying that I lied about the AI[/quote] I think everyone is in agreement that this issue is a product of a mistake on the part of either the developers or the players. I hope it has been clear from my posts that your veracity and honor are not in question. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to T h e - C a r i E l f - f a n c l u b in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

You're not fooling us. You only do that because if you played a chaotic evil character then the ranger, fighter, and mage would start making all kinds of demands that you hand over 168 gold and turn undead technology and then kick your butt when you didn't comply. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to T h e - C a r i E l f - f a n c l u b in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Dude. Cleary you are missing the point. Here, let me try communicating in your language: :) ;p :notsure: >:( :CONGRAT: :HOT: ;) . :) :SURPRISED: ;p :p ;) >:( :( :d :HOT: :) ;) >:( :) :CONGRAT: (:( :D :SURPRISED: >:( :sniff!: , :SURPRISED: LOL :) :CONGRAT: (:( ;) :) :D :notsure: :CONGRAT: :SURPRISED: :HOT: . -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to 1.04 AI cheats on tech tree, gets free techs from nowhere (bug?) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Well, I have posted two such games. I am not sure how much redundancy you want. -Drake ~SDC~

Reply to T h e - C a r i E l f - f a n c l u b in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

She does too read my posts! She even told me she was going to look into something I brought up! Can YOU say the same? I bet she has never payed that kind of personal attention to you, you feckless rube. You might as well give it up now, man. Me and CariElf are meant to be. -Drake ~SDC~