Why is this forum so friendly?

Perhaps the other game companies should try a good TBS game, and provide great support. Throw in a free expansion pack and I am sure all the posters will be quite nice (and happy).

Nothing much for us to gripe about considering the solid game, the numerous updates and the support we have been getting.

I agree with others that one of the main factors is probably the age (about 30yrs) of the average Galciver.

I've read that in meetings, people quickly cue to and are affected by the mood of the most expressive member. Here, the most active and vocal members of this forum set the tone and newcomers catch on pretty quickly. Well, that's my opinion at least.

~SDC~

tandis beware - the last time a thread like this was posted, it coincided with a huge blue about 'cheese'

i can only remember one troll coming in here, im trying to remember what name it went by.

tbs gamers are probably older on average. tends to reduce the leet h@x0rz. plus with no multi there are no "the game is not balanced!". the game itself is competently made. thus reducing the "game sucks" "no it doesn't" wars. the company also tries to help people directly.

it's like with revolution: when there's no reason for dissent (no massive bugs/difficulties) or there exists an outlet for it (free speech/lack of locked deleted threads), crap doesn't happen often.

some boards are like the suburbs, whereas other boards are like grafitti laced ghettos.

IIRC, we only had 3 exiles since April. Aerain and vasueden for vulgarities and trviper for asking for a serial.

~SDC~

you actually remembered those names? i was having trouble trying to remember just one name.
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I agree with rusell. TBS players are usually game players who's been playing games for years and older. Older players with lot's of experience don't say much about this game sucks or no it's not. We are busy with our lives try to suppoer our families squeezing tiny bit of time to enjoy gamming. Teenagers with lots of time probably say things like this game sucks and try to get some thread out of it. Plus GC is a well made game. Only few of the games out of hundreds that I played in the past could match with the quality of this game.

No offense to multi-player people, but I actually think the lack of MP here keeps away some of the 1337 h4X0Rz, since they want a game where they can use cheap tricks to dominate an opponent and quit if things go bad. I guess using cheese against an AI just doesn't give them the same fix

The other thing is that the devs actually read the threads here and post, and they don't have a fascist staff of mods going around and deleting "off-topic" threads, or using things like warning points. And what they have posted has seemed more honest than what you'd read on other forums - no spreading hype or making promises they can't keep, just "we're thinking of doing idea X, what do you guys think?"

In addition, the Empire structure is very important. It is a type of co-operative multiplayer environment without all the competitive crap alluded to by Quack in his comment. It encourages people of like mind to band together for mutual support and encouragement, and I think several long term players have commented that they continue to return for the people, perhaps more than the game. Web communities are always a fascinating social experiment; who would have predicted the flow of fictional story writing around the empire themes? We have been able to grow a more rounded, supportive environment than most; although I think you have to acknowledge places like Apolyton have been going successfully for many years (not run by the game producer, though). It's not only here, either - many empires have developed their own web sites. Again, an interesting social aspect is that some empires have simply gone 'off-site' (Euros) and dont seem to participate here at all, or in a very limited way.

sorry didn't quite catch that empire's name....

I have trouble remembering my name.
So, aparently does Stardock.
This is a test to see if I exist. (:(

I agree with all mentioned. The average age of the gamer, the wonderful support, the kick-butt game dynamics, the empires, all add to a very rich web community that expresses itself very well. If I may, i relate our community to America in the 1700s where most citizens were quite active in politics and their community (at least this is what i've read). Because of this great community I and others have done alot of extra work, building mods, docs, etc. I've never done this for a game before (make a strategy guide), and i may not likely do it again, but GC is very unique. Also the community support (Ralegh, namely) was instrumental.

I like it here and come back when I can. As for why it is good, a lot of reasons have been mentioned. I personally believe it is because we rely on community policing first and admin intervention last. We are all moderators of the forum in a way. There is an occasional personality conflict between a couple of users and a rare outright trollish type intentionally causing major trouble, but the matter gets settled soon enough.

This forum is so friendly because "Sugar daddy" is here!!! LOL LOL LOL

if you go to blizzard.net, you always see people trying to scam other peoples password. i was in the diablo2 chat, and there was a group of people saying that blizzard.net put in a safety feature where if you type in your password on the chat, it would automatically replace it with ****'s. of course, this feature doesnt exist, and a some people actually believed these guys and decided to test it out, they typed in their password, and obviously it didnt get changed to "*****". these guys would then take the password, login under the duped guys login, and steal all of the goodies that their diablo2 characters had.

of course, i didnt fall for it
i just tried to annoy these guys by giving them fake passwords to my login -no way was i going to loose my goodies.

I don't know. I would have to disagree that the reason this site is so friendly is because of a good game and TBS players. I say this because the Europa Universalis forum is very friendly too. EU2 compared to GC is a pretty unstable, unbalanced game which has a multiplayer adversarial component and is real-time.

I think the main thing is the age of the players and the support(since most teenagers would not have a burning desire to play a political simulation spanning late medival to modern Europe). A programmer for EU2 provides pretty decent updates, some are fixes and others are new features or "tweaks". I think the major thing a company can do to have a great friendly forum is to provide good support. That way people suggest, not whine, which can really create a negative forum (as other people stated, "this gam sux/rox").

~SDC~

Hairy - that just reminded me of a scam I saw on another game forum. The mods were vicious at deleting threads, but people knew the threads would get deleted and often saved a copy of the HTML. Other people who missed the discussion would ask for a copy.

The catch was, those HTML files had the user's username and password written there in plain text. :notsure:

I agree that it seems that the age bracket of those involved here are higher than those of some other game forums. While I am sure there are some youngsters involved in playing GC (and more power to them!), I think there are on average older gamers playing the strategy titles that don't have the "shoot-em-up" or "hack-and-slash" aspects that seem to draw the pre-teen crowd. I too frequent the EU2 and Hearts of Iron boards and am pleased by the support and participation. I strayed back to the blizzard forums after the beta patch for D2 and was horrified by what I found! I thought I was in an elementary school playground brawl! I appreciate everyone here and their maturity and participation level. Kudos to you all!

TheQuack >>>> thats kinda smart, i can see lots of people getting scammed that way.

does anyone know if anyone here got scammed? i havent seen or heard of it ever since i started using this forum.

I got scammed

Galciv has stolen many hours from my life


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many hours!! LOL
many days would be much better
yep these forums are cool and so are the forums of cdgroup too..
i haven't seen any better anywhere else