"any algorithm which will give a balanced starting positon will also give a predictable starting position." You may be correct on that. It is just your theory, though. Or can you prove it in all cases? I was thinking about Alpha Centauri and maybe the Civ series. Also there's a game named Chess that doesn't seem to suffer any lack of re-playability. :)
I'll look for that. But in any event, I think starting position is too important in this game. A balanced game would allow the player just as much chance to win or lose EVERY GAME. As it is, a great or above-average starting position can really make your game easy (or vice-versa). In a balanced game there would be no do-overs (ctrl-n or whatever). Does everyone disagree with this?
The upcoming Senate election could be announced one or two months ahead of time. As it is, the player learns it's election time and then can do nothing to improve his party's chances. If the player could lower taxes for a few months or do something else to improve morale, it might seem more realistic.
You wrote: "The balance problem stems from the difficulty of assaulting planets in the early stages of the game." I agree that, "Undefended colonies in the late game was never an issue here." And I do so because they do not relate to long range colony ships in the early game. Maybe in the in-between game..., or the game that is (supposedly) unbalanced. Thanks a lot, my friend. Hasta manana. ~SDC~
I guess I see the losers in the landgrab as going on the offensive. (Naturally, the winners would be the defenders.) The point re: unavailablility of transports to rush in the very early game needs no repetition. But how would undefended colonies be unbalancing later on? I really wanted peace, really. I had two bogies, both the strongest in the game. But something about the screens made it impossible to get "green." I tried trade goods and tech, but no go. (:( If you're sayin
Thank you, Za H. What's the game-balancing issue if I colonize a planet only to not defend it? Why couldn't I colonize as much as I want? I won one simple game with culture, but today I was at war the whole time. I just could not "trick" them into peace. :) I hope to be able to play a big map and win without conquering... Of course, in the very early game, there are no transports and no one is really able to "rush." They have their own yellows to get, no? Appreciate the info o
I yearn for the good ol' days of Alpha Centauri. Man, oh, man, just making "Planetfall" and not knowing if Chairman Yang or Lady Deidre would be your nearest neighbor! I'd say Alpha Centauri has more gameplay variability in the early going. I'd also say the GalCiv AI is gonna kick your butt. GalCiv is much more of a wargame, especially later on. :) ~SDC~
Sorry if there was confusion. :D My point was that RANGE + 1 seemed broken. It says parsec in the game, but I don't know if that is one square or what. Today I had a much bigger, richer experience, but that's another story. I don't have any trouble understanding the concept of randomness. The thing was that after trading away sensors and trading ability for RANGE + 1, I still couldn't reach with colony ships the stars my survey ships could see. That was not fun. I r
Today I played a medium map, loose clusters, and colonized 14 planets. This is before taking over anyone else's. Tonight I played the same game, but went CTRL-N since there were only 3 or 4 yellows within range. On the re-do I traded sensors and trade for RANGE +1 parsec. You can see where I'm going with this. I colonized about 4 planets and found two nice yellows but I could not reach them! If this is a game feature I'm not too impressed, since I bought the colony ships with leases and now ther
Stardock Forums
That's a good point. Maybe the Metaverse could keep track of other things besides Total Score, like highest one-game score. If someone could set that record, staying on top seems right to me. Someone else could be on top of the Total Score rankings. :D
Stardock Forums
I wonder why that formula is used. It disproportionately rewards the "early adopters" over players who either do not play as often or who will not begin playing until some time in the future. They will face a pretty high cliff to challenge for the lead in Metaverse scoring, just because they didn't start playing in March 2003. Other than that, it's okay, I'm not saying an arithmetic average is better, or the formula being used is just wacko, or anything like that. For example, Player 1
Hey, what's up with that? It's been since yesterday that we had a new game to play. ;) ~SDC~
Stardock Forums
I'm age 51. I calculated the mean age for the first 100 posters on this thread. Then I saw it had 2 more pages... To make a long story short the arithmetic average of the 1st 100 (74 unique) is 30.6. I could get the standard deviation and other statistics, but now I'm going to do something more fun, like my tax return. Oh, yeah, I could also scrub the toilets. Have a nice day or night, as the case may be. :) ~SDC~
If Warp 10 = 1,000,000,000c, or 1 Billion Light Years (LY) per Year, Warp 9.9975 = 10 exp 8.9975 = 994,260,074 LY per Year. This is quite a bit (almost a million times) faster than 100,000 Light Years in 100 years. For a ship to "travel 1 light year in 2 hours," it would be moving at an average speed of 12 LY per 24 hour day, or 4,383 (12 x 365.25) LY per Year. This would be Warp 4.64177, since 10 ^ 3.64177 = 4,383. The rest of your problem about Warp 2.2 for 4 months and Warp
I think Military, Social, and Research should add up to 100%. If you put them all at approximately 33%, what happens then? ~SDC~
Yes, thank you. Just like re-installing the game, this discussion thing just needed to be re-initialized. ~SDC~
Yep, same thing here.
I found it. "1.02.40 April 7, 2003 New Features: + Trade screen will update on the fly when you're using the money slider on trade deals." Fast and furious, now. LOL
How about 1.02.040?
Is the BonusPak 1.0.004 also new?
Thanks Frogboy, you da man! :) Is the BonusPak 1.0.004 also new, as it appears to be? Also the other stuff dated 04/07/2003.
"And no..the bonus pack..is well a bonus you download it seperately. Either from this site or Stardock" Thank you very much. AFTER I reinstalled GalCiv it was smooth sailing to install the Stardock Central program and the Update and BonusPak. It's pretty nice to play a slightly better game just about every day. :) Oh, and feadhel, way to go! I see you're up there with a high score on the Metaverse. I got my first win last night. Can anyone confirm you need to be registered in
This is an important question to me. I can bring a bunch of attackers, defenders, and transports in a fleet. I can then select them one by one to attack and the well-defined rules apply. But what if I click on the whole fleet to attack? I'd like it if the battleaxes could absorb some of the counter-attack without being the first in the stack to attack, but I just don't know. It seems like it's one-by-one, but which ones go first? Is there an optimum strategy? Inquiring minds want to know. LOL
You sure did, my friend. Thanks.
Is the BonusPak included in version 1.01a.034? Where is the propaganda button or slider? How does stacked combat work? For example, if I have star fighters and battleaxes and transports, will the star fighters attack and die before the defensive battleaxes come to bat? Thank you in advance. :) ~SDC~
