Stromko

Reply to Race customization menu is bugged in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

With a good trade stratagem or enough 'good' moral choices, I don't think the Yor starting out as evil particularly balances out anything. It could be reversed, and meanwhile the Iconian Refuge could easily push themselves into evil by making a few 'evil' choices. Also it really depends on the galaxy, the Yor would not be alone in their evilness if the Korx and Drengin are in the neighborhood.. just so long as the Yor manage to have an equal or greater military and set up proper tr

Reply to I want an aircraft carrier!!!!! in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Tiny hulls are quite useless right now, so while I guess people are entirely sick of seeing these 'carrier' threads pop up right now, making tiny hulls actually useful would be one benefit I could see. For me personally, any hull that can't mount at least two engines in addition to sufficient firepower is worthless, and the low hitpoints further close off any desire to use tiny hulls. I'm still not sure how useful carrier would make them however. Even without engines or life suppo

Reply to The Range Situation in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Play on a huge universe with sparse planets then? Only problem is, huge is as huge as it gets, so there'd be a lot less colonies and a lot less going on in general.

Reply to Space Monsters / Pirates in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It'd be kinda neat if they made their fleets out of ships that were decommissioned or made obsolete within the last year or more. It'd mean they're rarely ever overly powerful, but more than a nuisence.

Reply to Futuristic City Builder in Game Ideas Stardock Forums

Non-futuristic or even medieval settings can be easier to identify with because you know what everything does. Spears, bows, horsemen with swords, it's all kinda obvious what everything does. Same goes with farm plots, cottages, granaries, mills. I'm often bored by futuristic games because I don't feel an intuitive understanding of what everything does; then again I enjoyed the heck out of Dawn of War (I would not recommend it though), but that's a gritty setting where factories and ta

Reply to Dominions 3 goes gold! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

GalCiv II is a very very strong singleplayer game, with no real multiplayer to speak of. Dominions is not worth playing singleplayer, therefore it's pretty much just a multiplayer game. That's the argument for there not being a big crossover between the fanbases. Dominions 3 looks like a pretty good game from a trio of schoolteachers working on it in their spare time, but 55$ sets an extremely high expectation. That's pretty much maximum price for a standard-package (not collector) PC g

Reply to carriers in Warfare GalCiv2 Forums

There's a limit on how cheap you can make a ship, even a tiny hull once you pack on the latest technologies will cost at least 1/10th to 1/6th as much as a huge ship. Taking into account logistics limits and their very low hitpoints, inability to mount heavy defenses, and severe limitations on how much Offense each ship can pump out even if they're nothing but guns.. I don't think it would be game-breaking, but depending on the makeup of the enemy force it might be useless.

Reply to Dominions 3 goes gold! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I know that it isn't trying to be a graphical powerhouse, but the =art= in D3 doesn't look like something I can stare at for hours on end. It's fuzzy with obvious pixelation and there's apparently no animation. The special effects in the screenshots actually look pretty good, which makes the art they're next to look even fuglier in comparison. Master of Magic has better graphics, never cost 55$, and while the interface is somewhat behind the curve (it's at least 10-15 years old) it's st

Reply to WoW should become WoS in MMORPG GalCiv2 Forums

I'd rather play World of Warhammer 40K. Starcraft is such a diluted version of the WH40K mythos. Blizzard doesn't really have anything to fall back on to make an MMORPG with unless they write up a lot of new stuff.. probably with the WH40K sourcebooks right next to them while they're 'inventing'. With World of Warcraft, they had a very broad body of content to draw from, even now there's stuff mentioned in the RTS series that they haven't turned into an expansion yet. There was only one

Reply to The Premium in Society Stardock Forums

It sounds like it Shadow, you may or may not get a free month at Premium level when you purchase the retail version. But it sounds like you could cancel or opt not to start a premium subscription(whatever fits the situation), and play online with better graphics but not the 'premium online benefits' whatever those may be. I could be wrong but that's my 'read' on Frogboy's post. Considering what StarDock has done with GalCiv, I would not be surprised if you'd still get graphical or oth

Reply to Sword of the Stars in Game Discussion Stardock Forums

"and was it just me or is it impossible for a tanker to refuel a craft in mid-flight path?" -- From what I heard on the forums, this is only a problem for the human empire. It still doesn't make any sense to me though, I don't understand why humans ship crews would be unable to figure out how to refuel and keep moving. Sword of the Stars seems to be developed with the concept that micromanagement is good for gameplay, which I wholeheartedly disagree with. If there is only one correct

Reply to AA anyone? Auto Assault that is ? in MMORPG Stardock Forums

I think what went wrong with AutoAssault is it went a little too far in catering to soloplay. Actually, what went wrong is it didn't cater to group play whatsoever, if anything you'd level up slower having to team up with even one person. The PvP would've technically awarded you for grouping, but by time I got into AA the population had already dropped off enough I couldn't even expect to fight anyone if I joined a tournament. And/or, I think AutoAssault is proof that what all the 'in

Reply to Supreme Commander in Real-Time Stardock Forums

The next title I'm really looking forward to, in a few month's time(hopefully), is NeverWinter Nights 2. I'm looking forward to a more party-based NWN is the main reason. The uncontrollable henchmen in that title felt quite limiting to me. You couldn't expect a computer-controlled wizard to memorize the same spells you would let alone cast them at the right times, and you couldn't expect a fighter to be in the right place at the right time to protect you if you played something fragi

Reply to Please create a patch to allow the Terraforming of Class-0 Planets. in Colonies GalCiv2 Forums

The question isn't whether anyone could survive on a class zero planet, it's if the planet would be hospitable enough and colonizable enough that within a reasonable timeframe you can have a burgeoning colony that actually provides benefit to your empire. The system in place now where each race tends to start with one class 4 planet in its solar system, assumes a planet like Mars. Just barely out of the habitable range, we can imagine the melting of icecaps or greenhouse factories or j

Reply to Is it possible to have 1 of ea kind of ship generated at the start of ea game play? in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I could see this being interesting for a kind of 'Midway Campaign' scenario. Say you start with your usual building capacities, so you can make transports and small/heavy fighter-sized things, but you begin with a couple cruisers and one battleship. These can be massively important weapons at the start of the game, but if you lose them, or if you manage to kill one of the enemy 'capitol ships', then that is a highly decisive loss or gain. Or you could just make all hull types available

Reply to Military Starbases - Do Bonuses Stack? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

If your fleet would've been killed by their fleet anyway, then it's useful that they'll need to spend three movement points to kill your ships separately. Say they have a stack of nasty ships and some transports, all with two MPs. You have three fighters and a few freighters on your planet; if your logistics limits your fleets to 3, then it'd take them 2 MPs to kill all your ships. But otherwise, it'd take 6(so on turn 3 of the attack they'd be able to move their transports in). Persona

Reply to Transports with Guns in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Perhaps you're thinking of the hull type, and not of actually mounting Transport pods on a combat ship. You usually don't get those back, it's a total waste, you carry less troops and you can't mount enough weapons for a one-hit kill. They'd be a favored target because of weapons and (likely) having no defenses so they'd be obliterated in any kind of battle. Regular troop-hauling transports are the last targets that get attacked in a fleet because they aren't a threat and it's assumed

Reply to So - what exactly is the way you're supposed to approach this game? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I usually do engage in a lot of military activity but I usually build no more than one or two marketplaces per planet. My primary focus is production, my economy mainly exists to support it rather than buying it outright, so lots of marketplaces just strikes me as weird unless it's an Economic Capitol; and even then you want a few farms and entertainment centers to build up a large population. Marketplaces multiply population to determine revenue, but high morale keeps population growing q

Reply to Full of Bugs: Waste of time in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The first reply probably hit the crux of the problem. Assuming his install isn't corrupted what probably happened is one of the AI got set to maximum difficulty. So not only is it playing as smart as possible but also getting huge bonuses from nowhere.

Reply to Heroes of Might & Magic V: The game with an ultracheating A.I! in Turn-Based Stardock Forums

Nival releasing a game with major elements unfinished? Noooo! I can't belieeeve it! *sarcasm, in case that isn't obvious* (see Silent Storm: Sentinels for why I hate their guts; it wasn't their only bugridden cashcow but the only one I'm ashamed to admit I own) They had to try a little harder than their usual because gamers have lost trust in the HoMM franchise and they wouldn't have gotten the sales they were hoping for. But making an AI that can understand when it can't afford

Reply to Neutral Territories in Society Stardock Forums

I'm very certain that neutral territories will be the majority at the start of the game. Like you said the 3-territory safehold would guarantee this.. not sure if you won't immediately bump into your neighbors on one side, but it'd be bad design if you couldn't expand at all.

Reply to I don't have what it takes anymore in Real-Time Stardock Forums

What if in an RTS game you had a special resource that was used to build any kind of attack unit, but not for buildings, defenses, or workers? Let's call it Munitions, and let's say you start with a defensive unit of some kind; maybe it takes time to deploy but once it's in place has a significant advantage against any first-rung enemies that get close. But you have no Munitions resource until you start capturing resource points and let it build up. It kind of depend

Reply to Penalties, the opposite in Society Stardock Forums

As far as time expenditure 'imbalances' are concerned, I think the only solution is a 'natural' one. Citizens are only born so fast, wood is only chopped and collected so quickly, yes the ability to make more real-time decisions can and SHOULD matter but it will not be the end-all be-all difference. The reward that makes each bit of a less active player's time more valuable, is that they'll have more people, resources, and (I think) buildings that have been produced in their abs

Reply to World of Warcraft has lost it's Soul in WoW Stardock Forums

World of Warcraft didn't change, you just got sick of doing the same thing every day, like any other MMORPG it becomes an obligation and at that point most sane people quit. Okay so maybe some things changed, maybe they added battlegrounds, but that's not the real point IMO. I knew that at high level WoW turned into just another group-required grindquest, I didn't buy the thing. Played in beta, it started to get a little old but I still liked it; hearing about login queues and the hig

Reply to Set a goal for a "research governor" in Research GalCiv2 Forums

The tech tree is pretty straight-forward, what you get at the intermediate levels is pretty much what you get at the advanced levels, just bigger, stronger, more expensive. The only critical decision is splitting up your research so your empire is competitive in the short-term. I'm not sure if the tech tree even has multiple pre-requisites, if you want dreadnaughts all you'd need is Xeno Engineering, Basic Logistics, then choose Advanced Hulls and when it's done don't choose a new thi