CraigHB

Reply to Am I really playing in a medium universe? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I recently finished a huge/abundant game, there were 350 habitable planets. That's still too many. Took me way too long to go through them. One of the problems I find with playing a lot of planets, the user interface is not optimized at all for that kind of repetetive thing. I get really tired of clicking on tiles and projects. Maybe I'll try a huge map with less stars/planets next time. Right now I'm playing a large/abundant g

Reply to AI on Suicidal on Managing Colonies properly in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I was seeing the same kind of things on occasion with the AI. If you're talking about Twilight of the Arnor and you're not playing Metaverse, try this mod I posted; https://forums.galciv2.com/371660 It changes a bunch of stuff, but as a side effect, it makes the AI perform better. They don't fail to research weapons or fail to build populations.

Reply to Am I really playing in a medium universe? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

You actually get around 500 habitable planets with a gigantic/abundant map. In Twilight, the larger immense map produces the same number of planets as the gigantic map. Older versions of Dark Avatar could yield higher numbers. There was an early release of Dark Avatar where the numbers could approach 1000. This was reduced in subsequent updates due to memory limitations and game crashes. Although there were lots of objections posted here when the nu

Reply to Check out my Mod in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

You should see some major differences in the tech trees right away. The mod probably is not loading. Verify the mod path is correct in prefs.ini located in the My Document\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor directory. Also verify that "Use Mods" is checked in the game options menu. Verify the contents of the Marklar directory. The paths must be correct or the modded trees won't load. Reference the README.txt file in the zip archive

Check out my Mod in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I posted a Twilight mod I did for my own use. It's pretty extensive and makes the game quite a bit different. The biggest change I made was to rework all the tech trees. There's tons of other changes as well. Look at the INFO.txt file in the zip archive for more information. Also look at the README.txt file. Here's the link; http://webpages.charter.net/chblock/Marklar.zip </p

Reply to Observations from my first Metaverse game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

You're welcome. I play the Terran tech tree a lot in TA so I usually have the Re-education Center and SCC. I only played a handful of Meteverse games in TA, but yea, it depends on what tech tree you're playing with. To grab mining resources, I bribe the other races to go to war with eachother. They usually go after the mining resources right away so they open up pretty quick. I pretty much forget what race has what in each tech tree since I play

Reply to Galactic Civ2 Gold Edition Will Not Complete Install in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yea, hehe, I always wait until I have all my chores done before sitting down to a GC2 game. Otherwise, I'd never get anything done :)

Reply to Observations from my first Metaverse game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Any game you run long enough can end end due to planets flipping your way, even without the MCC. If you can build a re-education center, you can give the planet it's on to one of the races and run the game out until you're ready to finish it. I don't play Metaverse anymore, but when I did, that's how I'd keep the games going. Long leases are good early game to get projects, achievments, and trade goods you would otherwise not be able to afford.&nbs

Reply to Twilight: Outstanding issues in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The weapons branches need to be long and expensive. Otherwise there wouldn't be much point in building labs and upgrading research mining resources. The game designers decided to make a lot of small steps. I suppose, there could have been fewer more expensive steps. Or, the difference between one weapon and the next could have been greater. In any case, the objective wouldn't change and you would probably still skip using a numb

Reply to Where can I mod out certain Mega Events? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Put the game in cheat mode and use Ctrl-Y to run through the mega-events. That way, you can look at each one and decide on them as a whole. To put the game in cheat mode, simply add the word cheat to the end of the command line in the shortcut properties. Hope that helps.

Reply to Where can I mod out certain Mega Events? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I can't remember the last time I got a precursor ranger in the game. Never seem to get that one. I'm not a big fan of mega-events either so I just play with them disabled from the game setup.

Reply to Just Bought Ultimate Edition in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I have found trade to be my biggest source of income early in the game. Compared to tourism I usually get much more by trade early on, unless the random event happened where your tourism income is increased by some factor.[/quote] In my case, I rely on cash anomolies. I build a lot of surveyors that do double duty as scouts first thing. By the time I can get around to building freighters, I usually have enough planets making money that the incom

Reply to Just Bought Ultimate Edition in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]It is pretty lame that the pop growth is so non-linear...This means I MUST to micromanage my taxes every turn to keep my taxes as high as possible (until my planets reach the pop cap), while still keeping colonies at max growth - if one colong is off by 1%, then they miss out on a 75% pop growth bonus - lame.[/quote] Agree, it should have more steps. Keep in mind that the bonus applies to planets on an individual basis. So you could have overall approval&

Reply to Just Bought Ultimate Edition in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

There are a couple areas in the game like the ship builder where things are indicated in terms of their base level without bonuses applied. Another area like that is the detailed information screen for starbases. I agree it could be considered a bug, but I think it's more of an oversight. The game does have a few other warts like that, but you get used to them and then work around them. As far as ship speed, there's a 1 or 2 parsec bonus across the board at

Reply to Observations from my first Metaverse game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The economic bonus the MCC provides in DA is intense, but as far as I know, it does not provide an influence bonus as indicated in the building's description. It was corrected to work as intended in TA and I might go so far as to say it's even more powerful that way. I believe it has remained uncorrected in DA because everyone got used to it working the way it does there. Either that or Stardock didn't see a need to fix

Reply to Advice on new Laptop needed, thank you in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I bought an Acer Aspire laptop a while ago with a Radeon dedicated memory graphics processor. It has an Intel Core Duo and 1G of memory. It was under $1000 US and I think it was a real bargain. It plays games nicely and I'm very happy with that aspect of it, however, there are some things to watch out for with laptops like this. My main complaint with the particular laptop I bought is the finish on the screen. For some reason, makers are using gl

Reply to Monday Morning Speedtest.net in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/640575359.png[/IMG] That speedtest.net is giving me higher readings than the other tests I've used. I'm getting around 15/2M on dslreports.com and through my provider's speed test.

Reply to New Player says hi in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Welcome, been playing off and on since the first release. Still enjoy it. I think this has to be the most replayable game I've ever purchased, one of my all time favorites. You didn't say what version you're playing, but with all the expansions, the depth of the game is almost endless. Get familiar with all the options in the game setup. There's a lot of them and you can really change the character of the games with those. Again, adds more depth to i

Reply to The Worst (In Game) Luck in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've gotten slammed too many times by those mega-events. I finally decided they're not all that fun. I suppose if you're looking for a challenge, they're good for that. Anyway, I play with them disabled. I still get the regular events and I like those for the most part. In any case, I don't think I've seen more than two mega-events in single game. I think you may take the cake on that one.

Reply to All techs research cost doubled ? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

In the games I play, by the time I get to the end of one of the weapons branches, I'm usually approaching 20k capacity in research spending (looking at domestic stats including bonus research and with spending and research sliders at 100%). Even when inflation is maxed as far as I've seen, I can usually get an extremely expensive tech like Doom Ray in a turn or two. I'm not even building labs on every planet, so as far as I can tell, inflation is

Reply to All techs research cost doubled ? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

If you run the tech rate on fast or very fast in the game setup, it will mitigate the effects of tech inflation. With very fast tech, I can pretty much finish all the research I want to do before a game ends in a large universe with a hundred or so planets in my possesion. As far as the AI, most of them build more research buildings than a human player would so they usually keep up, at least at the higher difficulty levels I usually play. However, if some

Reply to So Twilight is broken... and there seems no real interest in fixing it in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I like TA a lot more than DL or DA because it has some really nice features. I agree with some of the comments made about the AI here. I've been using a mod I did that reworks all the tech trees to make them more "DA like". It does take a lot of the uniqueness out of the trees, but it makes the races behave more like they do in DA. I still haven't done a couple of the races. When I get them done, I'll post the mod.

Reply to Observations from my first Metaverse game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Don't worry about the other races being too easy. It sounds like you have lots of growing room with your current difficulty. You should try a game at sucidal just to see how insanely fast the races move out. The game is very hard to beat on the highest difficulty and the AI *will* kick your butt if you're not managing every resource to the nth degree. Approval should only be an issue in the early game. Once you have a few mora

Reply to Drath Tech Trading in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Like most things in the game, tech trading between the races is randomized. Some times, you'll see a lot of trading between one race or another and other times you won't see as much. I'd say you just happened to encounter a time when there wasn't much tech trading going on with the Drath. In another game, you'll probably see more. It's all luck of the draw really.

Reply to Upgrading Difficulty Level. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I always have negative income for a while in the beginning. Can't afford to buy spies early on. As soon as I have positive income, I put money into espionage. Military rating has the most effect on score. Get it going early and work it throughout the game. MV games are pretty much all about that. Overall population is also a good scoring point. Run higher populations on higher PQ planets that have room fo