Jonathan Hoof

Reply to Colony Rush in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

First off, I don't buy more than the first colony ship or two, as I like to keep my budget above 1-2k. Second, you have to tax your people to the hilt. I mean, have your worst colony at 41% or greater. Now for two important details that made life much easier for me. 1) Population growth is faster per-citizen for smaller populations 2) Tax increases proportional to the square root of the population The first point is crucial, what it means is that 10 billion peo

Reply to Planetary Invasion in Waves in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

IMO, if you're going to allow planets to take damage w/o capture, you should go all the way and allow planet damage w/o any troops at all. A half-way method like partial damage for an unsuccessful invasion would yield just as many complaints and people claiming it "dumb". Either you allow damage to a planet when you don't capture it or you don't. If you do, you should allow glassing of planets, IMO. Requiring troops in order to bomb the planet is kind of silly. Imagine the air force requiri

Reply to research and economic treaties in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Research treaties, if acquired at the right time, can really help your empire out. In the early game, get research treaties from as many empires as possible. They're usually in a big financial hole, and will part with these for peanuts. Later, when they're big empires, you get significant research boost. I've had games where I'd set my research slider to zero, because my research was only 30-40% of the total research (the rest coming from the other empires), and I really needed the money els

Reply to Rant about stupid AI in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Speaking of constructors, using the mining-ship principal (where the ship survives the upgrade, but takes "time" to do the upgrade) would make things less uneconomical. Currently, you could build a whole fleet of warships with the production points necessary to churn out a dozen constructors to make a single viable starbase. This makes them very uneconomical. The only starbases that are worthwhile (IMO), are economic starbases (near a cluster of high-production planets), mining starba

Reply to Planetary Invasion in Waves in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Damage to a planet on a failed invasion is not likely to happen. Stardock chose to not include planetary bombardment in the game (where you use ships to blast the planet from orbit, either before an invasion, or with no intent of invasion), with the exception of the spore ships. This prevents "scorched-earth" policies in war, where you focus not on capturing planets, but bombarding them to oblivion. Traditionally in games, it's easier to do this than stage invasions. It makes sense, the same

Reply to Rant about stupid AI in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

You've discovered that all AI's, even GalCiv2, have their limitations. A good commander tries to learn the weaknesses of his/her enemy and expoit it. You have done this in your situation. The AI, being simply a set of programmed instructions for the computer player, is unable to learn and adjust to your tactics in this case. It's possible the AI programmers for this game might come up with a new counter for your strategy, but even if they do, you'll likely find a new strategy the AI doesn't

Reply to After playing for a while, I just don't like the new spy system anymore in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I'd do the spy thing a little differently. Like others, I'd have an "intelligence" meter, which you pay into to get info on the enemy. How effective it is depends on how much you pay vs the size of the target, their tech level, and how much they're spending on "counterintelligence". A second part you pay into separately is "counterintelligence", where you're trying to spoof enemy intelligence. Both have inertia, so it takes a while (and money) to increase your effectiveness level. Both woul

Reply to How does the AI make balanced planets work? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

A couple notes. First off, never let your population get above 12b unless you've got many "happiness" bonuses (mining morale resources, race bonuses, tech that gives overall happiness boost, etc). The reason is that your tax only goes up by the square root of the population on a planet, but unhappiness goes up geometrically as the population gets bigger. Ten 12b planets can support a significantly higher tax level than 10 24b planets, often more than the 40% tax boost 24b yields over 12b. Bu

Reply to What is your research order in your games? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I usually ignore techs that give me a boost in production (research, military, or social) early on. You'll be short on money, and these techs will simply let you spend more money you don't have. Ion drives are a must if you like colony ships with two colony pods. So I usually go for ion drives first, followed by sensors. A few survey ships early on can make the difference financially if there are lots of anomolies around. Any tech that increases economy or population growth is good.

Reply to Colony Module + Troop Module in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

IMO, it depends on your stragegy. If you have lots of planets to grab, having the per-colony cost killing your budget could kill your planet-grabbing ability just as easily as waiting for more expensive ships to build. I've been experimenting with 2-colony-module ships for a little while, the theory being that 500-million-person colonies can pay more for themselves than 250-million person colonies, as well as grow faster. With the fact that tax is proportional to the square root of a

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Hi! Humans, no econ bonuses whatsoever Awwww, that will hurt! You found out that the latest DA patch gives even less money, and you're still neglecting that. (shakes head) (Class-1 planets) Their primary downside appears to be an absolute population limit, meaning they'll never pay for themselves. This bug was resolved at least three months ago. Now class-1-3 planets terraform

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Well I've been trying my latest strategy. Humans, no econ bonuses whatsoever, in a galaxy with a bazillion planets to colonize (the kind of map that I got crushed by the AI before). As soon as I was able, I started using double-colony ships to shuttle 0.5 billion people to my target planets. My taxes are whatever keeps my worst planet above 40% approval. No happiness buildings, max 1 farm. As of last night, I had about 20 planets (including 4-5 PQ1 planets) and am gearing up to start coloni

Reply to DA - producing money - a testbed results in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

FYI, the formula appears to be different in 1.6 DA. Using stock humans, no bonuses purchased (to eliminate race benefits), I got a value of 20, not 28.5. How I did this was to set taxes to 100%, and measured the income at 8.0 billion, 8.1 billion, 0.1 billion and 0.25 billion people (the four values you can get on the 1st turn, depending on what you do with your colony ship). At 100% taxes, your pop drops like a rock, so I was able to check 7.1 billion, and 6.6 billion easily. In each case,

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I'll check that thread. My formula was based on starting a game with stock humans (no picks), so I had no econ bonuses. I measured the income with taxes at 100%, for 8.0 billion, 8.1, 0.1, and a number of other values (you can lose population very quickly with 100% taxes, making for an easy tool to try different values). In all cases, "20" came out of the equations consistently. This is for version 1.6 of DA (it might have been different for 1.5 DA)

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Interesting. I didn't know about the AI crashing. I guess when you play with 6-9 AI's, the odds are there that at least a few of them are going to make it, and make it big. Incidentally, I did my math wrong. I just ran some experiments, and the DA 1.6 formula seems to be 20 * sqrt(pop) * taxrate * (1 + mods), where taxrate is 0 to 1.0, with 1.0 = 100%. That means the "break even" point for self-sufficiency on a new colony (assuming 49% tax rate) is 1.5 billion. Ouch. So you have a

Reply to Do you manually move population to low-pop worlds? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Supposedly your tax income is proportional to the square root of the population on a planet. If so, maximum income can be achieved by evenly distributing your people to as many planets as possible.

Reply to How can I thug the other civs? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Once I accepted a requeste for money from an unfriendly empire, and my relations improved to "warm". From what I can tell, whether you refuse or not will alter your current relations slightly.

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for that formula. Well now, that changes everything. If you get more taxes by distributing the population over planets, then you have to grab as many colonies as possible ASAP, and put people on them. According to your formula, at 59% tax rate, you need a population of only .35 billion to pay for the initial colony. A population of 1 billion will yield a profit of 8bc/turn for the planet. I suspect the profitability point for a planet is around .45 billion or so (as in you'd make mor

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Ok, I tried to match the AI in fast-buying techniques. Using exclusively leases, I was able to purchase as many ships, but I cannot (even with 75% economy boost and 20% happiness boost) get my income to match my lease per-turn burn-rate, meaning I'm slowly sinking into a financial abyss. Maybe using the shorter (but more bc/turn) leases might help, as they'll expire quicker, hopefully before my account plunges too far into negative territory. Simply put, my population doesn't grow quickly eno

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Interesting ... so you're suggest that if you tax the people to the hilt, you can overcome a 136bc/turn burnrate due to leases even at turn 10, using a stock race. Does the AI choose its abilities, like the human player can? I'll experiment with how much lease burden one can take in the early game w/o crossing the point of no return (the point at which your income, when tax is maxed out, is insufficient to keep you from crossing the -500bc barrier that shuts down your empire). Up to

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

There are several different aI routines in the game - so be careful generalizing what it does. Each race has their own individual aI algorythms and play balance. You're right of course. However, for the same race, I should be able to match what the AI does in the first dozen or two turns, or at least come close. Given what I've seen, that's not physically possible, at least w/o using leases that cripple your empire for turns 20-100 or so.

Reply to Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I did figure out how the AI can purchase all that stuff w/o blowing a 5,000 bc starting budget. If the AI bought that stuff on an installment plan, it could pull it off, at least initially. Using Terra Manufacturing, four scouts, two colonies, three factories, and a spaceport can be had for 4736, and 190/turn for 18 weeks. Using Mitrosoft, the same package can be had for 1675, and 136/turn for a long time. However, under either purchase scheme, the AI's economy should be utterly cr

Studying the AI to learn their strategies in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I'm fairly new to GalCiv2, and have been struggling to match the AI at "tough" setting in the early/mid phase of the game. Basically, the AI is always able to grab more colonies than I, and is able to keep the maintenance of all those colonies from crippling their economy. I'm currently playing 1.6 Dark Avatar. All this research was done with intelligence set to "intelligent", which turns on full AI, but no bonuses. So, in order to understand how the AI does this, I decided to do two