feralminded

Reply to Can good Drengin make slave pits? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Actually we call our slaves Livestock.

Reply to Why Stardock and the GalCiv series have earned my trust and patronage in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yeah the rest of the companies out there just tend to continue to push product and push product and effectively require you to pay their rent. The difference here is that the content we get is in fact quite radical in nature, well tested, and complete. I mean the new expansion is basically giving us a whole new game to play, not many companies expand their games THAT much and for what amounts to very low cost. Ultimately we the consumers win in this situation and we really can't complain at t

Reply to Why Stardock and the GalCiv series have earned my trust and patronage in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

As critical as I have been of some of the core features of this game, the bottom line is this is indeed an extremely high quality game and the company and its core values are dead on where they need to be to produce the best possible games. I will probably buy everything this company makes from now until they change their policy or I check out. It's just so incredibly rare you find a company like this with both the ideals AND the products to prove them out.

Reply to Help with all labs/all factories/(all stock markets?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

It depends on the map size I think. I can NEVER trade for planets on tiny maps ... I tried to trade everything I owned including my planets and I couldn't even get a little crappy outpost colony from my enemy on suicidal tiny.

Reply to All Labs, Suicidal, need advice. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Good stuff guys, thanks for the replies. I should make note I won by military conquest, not tech victory (I was trying to get decent points ... but on tiny I guess it's useless). Interesting build there Iztok ... does +social production help focus? I was under the impression it did not, which is why I never actually researched the base factory upgrade (+10 social) and wasn't particularly enamored with planetary improvements (since I assumed the +social and +military didn't do me any good). I

Reply to All Labs, Suicidal, need advice. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I have never been able to trade for a planet in Maso+ difficulty. I am not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but it's simply never ever happened to me. It's also EXTREMELY expensive to get anything larger than a small ship. They just don't want to cough them up. I don't know if that's a factor of the map size or difficulty level or both. The map settings won't change because I hate gigantic maps, I may play a small or medium map though at some point, but much bigger and the game

Reply to Which production buildings? Which science buildings? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I noticed a strange thing regarding their output. I have some level-3 mines in the game that add 18 MPs to a nearby planet, but I can't see ANY BOOST to planets's manufacturing output. I'm playing all-labs, so by my research there should be 4 MPs transferred with the focus. This is correct, and its why I use my initial miner as either a constructor or freighter.

All Labs, Suicidal, need advice. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Ok so I just got my first suicidal victory. I've been hyper-specializing in the all labs strategy (although now that I tagged suicidal I have started to work on an all factory strat). Anyhow I *barely* squeezed it out. I was using the same strategy that I had worked on all the way up to suicidal and it felt VERY strong on Masochistic, and even on Obscene only needed slight modification. On suicidal, I REALLY had to improvise badly to make it. I am curious of any advanced insight. I'm sure

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Almada? The dreadlord planet? It's usually like a 40ish isn't it?

Reply to Population Growth in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

75-99% you get a +25% growth bonus. 41-74% you have standard growth. 21-40% you have no growth. Under 21% you lose 10% a turn. These are all from memory but I think they're close if not correct. And remember global approval isn't what's used for growth, it's the individual planet's approval that matters.

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think I have that in a saved game, so I'll keep my eyes open for it and try and save a game next time it comes up. For now I'll just let it slide as hearsay because I'm sure my brain can make things up and it's possible 10 turns slipped by. That still doesn't excuse the lies about upgrade time through. It's just weird and does not happen consistently. What I do have saved though is the variable upgrade costs for the same upgrade ... which I have no real explanation for either.

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Upgrading is REALLY wierd. First of all I think the time estimation is often times a lie ... also there HAS to be some carryover on social production, at least when upgrading. I play with auto-upgrader and I've seen an entire planet upgrade maybe 10 buildings in 2-3 turns when I got a new tech. Of course the time estimation was something like 5 weeks per, but in less than 5 weeks ALL were upgraded. Also wierd things happen when buying an upgrade. For instance it costs more to upgrade a lab

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well the WHY is pretty simple. Under the current system population doesn't add a negative to morale for the planet, instead it reduces the base morale . So if morale buildings didn't reduce with the base morale, 4 VRC's would guarantee 100% morale on any planet of any size. That's the why, but it's where the devs went fundamentally wrong. The better solution, or rather the more scalable solution, is to just have population subtract some fundamental amount of morale, similar to

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I agree with Istok here, a nice and easy "fix" for the current tax revenue system is to have a linear AND an exponential decay portion of the tax equation. For DA the wiki has the following formula for tax. 24 * sqrt(population_in_billions) * tax_rate * (1 + (sum from buildings on planet)) * (1 + (sum from racial bonuses/maluses) ) Let's assume no racial bonuses (for simplicity), and no financial buildings for the initial curve. 24 * sqrt (population)

Reply to Complaint: Silliness in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Man I feel bad for anyone who doesn't chuckle at some of this stuff ... I mean I have on many occasions had roommates come in to read some of this stuff because it's just awesome. My favorite so far is "This is it. We're done. If you can find a better beam weapon protection system, you buy it, because this really is it. If you get shot, it's not our fault. It's because you didn't install the system correctly. I mean, this is really quite impressive. The angels sing when you enable thi

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I don't consider "the flip" to really be an exploit ... I mean tearing down and rebuilding everything is definitely not the most efficient use of money and if you have that kind of revenue in the first place you're doing something special anyhow. Quite honestly the "all research/production" approach isn't an exploit either, it's just the result of the economic model the game is built on. Ultimately morale is hosed because population was hosed which hosed farms. They're uniquely tied

Reply to Trying my best not to hate "civilization" games... in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Its ok man. Not everyone has to enjoy every game. These games are very much about patience and long term strategy. It is very much a chess match from the first round, so if you hate chess it's no wonder you hate this game.

Reply to How radical should expansion packs get? in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I think there's plenty of money in expansions. If blizzard has taught us anything it's that players are VERY willing to pay to play new content for old games. Not just in WoW, but look at the success they enjoyed with Brood Wars. They could easily have made another sequel to starcraft and people would have paid full price for it. I say take it all the way until work can begin on galciv3 ... assuming it's profitable for you guys. I guess you really have to base your judgement on wh

Reply to Help with all labs/all factories/(all stock markets?) in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Yesterday I *barely* eeked out my first obscene win and I could write a book on just how much of a learning curve it's been just getting to this point. And that win was with extremely favorable conditions and likely a lot of luck. The bottomline is the advanced strategies are extremely powerful in that they will enable an advanced player to take advantage of favorable strategic conditions, but what separates an advanced player from a beginner is accurately identifying and capitalizing on those

Reply to Economy Explaination please in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well I believe Mumble is the champion of the economy strategy and it relies on being able to get a critical mass of tax earning which will allow you to insta-buy anything you want. This of course is heavily limited to only the hugest and most dense of maps. The industrial and research strats are appropriate for any size map (I believe). This is not to imply they are better, just different. Anyhow I am neither champion nor expert of either, to be perfectly honest I only have a margina

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I think this is a very complicated issue in that much of the fundamental economy rests on this and if the overall economy shifts significantly you really could upset some careful balances. I'm sure everyone knows that already though . Anyhow its quite simple, morale buildings are currently too weak and global bonuses too strong. Anyone can hit 100% global morale quite easily even without Krynn a

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I concur ... it would be nice to see races that didn't need to build monetary buildings ... and instead subsisted off of something else. That said I know Brad and the crew are likely trying to avoid the terrifying nuances of overcomplicating finances. As much as I would like to see the ability to trade bulk goods with other nations instead of just money, the bottom line is building and AI that could figure out what items to trade to other AI's for maximum profit would be pretty tough. Same go

Reply to The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

And this is why you guys are such an awesome company, because you give a damn. I really like the ideas and the one thing I forgot to touch on was how "hinky" it felt with the whole military/social split ... because in many ways it kind of was a bit false (social just became military most of the time). Regardless I concur, making something should cost a fixed amount and better factories make it cheaper/faster ... that's the right way to approach it intuitively (even though mathematically just m

The Flawed GalCiv2 Economy in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I feel a burning need to prefix this by saying I am a huge fan. I love the company, love the game. The game doesn't have to change one lick and I'll continue to play and support this company. This game is amazing and the philosophy of the developers and interaction level they continue to provide is incredible (being a developer I have a special respect for the level of support they provide). NEVER give that up. That said there's some obvious glaring issues with the "behind the scenes" worki