Agreed. The current system can be (and often is) a huge timewaster, with too much fiddling around to find the break point. In fact it's far and away my biggest single interface gripe.
After opening foreign policy/report/speak to, when I click on money/influence I get a CTD. Exception report emailed as well.
I also prefer a no-weapons start. To me it makes sense that it would be easier to send out unarmed ships before developing militarily viable ones.
I'd also favour an expanded ground combat system. I agree that battles taking longer than a week would be preferable, both from a strategic and aesthetic points-of-view. I like the idea of being able to fight a delaying action, or sucking an enemy into a meatgrinder, and an epic global battle that takes years is just kind of cool. However I wouldn't mind if it was essentially automated system where the player plugs in a few broad strategic options, along the
GalCiv2 Forums
Another from me. To be fair to the developers, writing software is a tricky process, and estimating time to do things is hard. It's even harder when you factor in feature creep (which seems normal for every software project I've ever seen). Dates slip, always have, probably always will. Actually I'm impressed enough with progress I've finally decided
Ship design.
ixed tree for the AI.
I'm sorry they exiled him. I never got a chance to flame his sorry ignorant pirating arse.
Stardock Forums
I've only had one game where the Yor were a threat. They started in an isolated corner and were able to leverage this to become the dominant military and economic power. Ironically this isolation worked against them in the end and meant they had a hellish time prosecuting wars. The Drengin were the number two power, but got chewed up between the Yor, Altarians and me. But getting back to the Drengin - I'd agree they tend to dominate at the lower settings.
I like Micheal's "vague-data" approach as well. I wonder to what extent people's game preferences correspond to their work/course of study. Are engineers and programmers more likely to prefer highly calculable games, while historians and psychologists tend to prefer a more intuitive model?
CapitalShip/Warspite - fancy seeing you here. :) Yes, TWE is a wargame construction kit, and CapitalShip built an excellend mod that shiped with the game, the Global War mod. CapitalShip took a game designed to simulate small unit tactics and turned it into more of an operational level wargame. Clever stuff. It's not really an apple to oranges comparison, because both games have different design concepts. TWE was meant to be modded, with editing tools built in. The basic campai
Another vote for global autolaunch. I had three ships sitting around for a few years. OK, perhaps that's what I get for playing into the wee hours of the night, but please, have pity and make life easy for us addicts.
"At the moment when I invade, I have no real idea what I am doing and just send hordes of ships until I win." I'm in the same situation. I have thousands of minions in my army of storm troopers - surely some of them are capable of giving me an "estimate of success" calculation.
My solution for using AMMs is to field a screen of heavy ships a hex or two ahead. This lets the AMMs survive until they are in striking range. Of course the AI won't use this tactic, which means they are much more lethal in the hands of a human.
Stardock Forums
I can’t say what’s happened in your games, but I can write with a fair bit of authority on mine. :) In my last game the Drengin were in the number one position, having taken over the Torians and the minor races. I can’t recall what happened to the Altarians, but they might have been Drengin fodder as well. The second and third strongest powers, the Arceans and the Yor had formed a very tight alliance against the Drengin. And lastly, dying in fourth place, was me. All three of t
I've never seen an episode of Star Trek where cloaking worked for long, why should it be any different in Gal Civ? ;)
I stumbled onto a base 27 PQ planet in my third game, virtually right next to Earth. Lovely little boost that proved to be.
I think people have misread Toaddog's posts. Maybe it's just me - he can clarify. What I'm getting is that his concern with the change wasn't that it made the game easier or harder, it was that a certain type of game experience was not longer possible. Correct? In any case the fix has been posted in "Restoring +15% PQ Bonus... if that's your thang'", so it's kind of a moot point now.
Stardock Forums
The high PQ option is fun when I'm in mind candy mood - I don't want to work to hard, I just want to snuff aliens. This is a reasonable solution for those times when I just have to exterminate other life forms. Point taken that it would be bad form to post a win to the metaverse that was based on this mod.
I decided I couldn't wait and went for the download option. Yes, I am one of the fortunate broadband users. My old 56k would probably still be choking on it. :p
I felt Night's Dawn dragged for the first half or so. Then it got a bit interesting... then a quite a bit more interesting... and then it went berserk (in a good way). Hamilton has a tendency to cram a bit too much detail in - I always felt he was showing off how "deep" his universe was - but once the story really kicked in I couldn't put it down. Novel concepts, great characters, exciting plot. Hard combination to beat.
Stardock Forums
I also favour a morale bonus approach. My logic is if people aren't working they have leisure time, which makes being there an attractive option, attracting more people, etc. Perhaps limit it to the square root of the unused production to limit its effect. Besides it "simulates" the marginal diminishing returns and all that - even permanent holidays start to get dull after a while. Not spending the money is a good second choice.