George Simpson

Reply to Are mega-events guaranteed? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

There's also that precursor event that slowly makes a race more powerful. It happened to the humans after I (as the Alterians) had backed them into a corner. They had started a war with me, and it went pretty poorly for them once I stole their best missile tech. They then got the precursor event. I decided to make them my vassals rather than immediately exterminate them and called off the war. My major ally up to that point, the Torians, were starting an ascension victory so I realized I w

Reply to I am enjoying the new economy, growth rates (population etc) in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Well, you would if the MCC worked (malfunctioned beneficially?) anymore. From what I've been hearing it doesn't do much of anything in TA.

Reply to Economy vs Research in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Not necessarily, you still get more research on a per tile and per bc of maintenance basis if you have a high research bonus. Even if you're not outproducing the enemy in terms of pure beakers, if you can do it with half the labs they use it's still a concrete advantage.

Reply to Play with tech trading on or off? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

You have to be more careful with diplomacy, since it's a lot harder to buy friends. Trade and treaties help a lot, trade goods I generally horde for myself unless its with an ally I plan to cooperate with for the long term (ie he's stronger than me). I don't know how to beat the AI at economy, they always have a stronger start than I do. I usually manage to catch up once they start picking a fight with me though. Even with slightly inferior ships and production you can gain an edge on the AI

Reply to I am enjoying the new economy, growth rates (population etc) in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I've been finding that having empty tiles helps a LOT. If your spending slider is dropping below 80% with any regularity you might have just built too much infrastructure, something I've found is very easy to do if you're coming into TA from DA. Sometimes it's a good idea to let a few planets do nothing for a while.

Reply to Tourism income - is there a bug ? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Now that I think about it, the tourism event may have been a 4x boost. Stack that with the UP doubling the tourism, and the numbers your seeing start to make more sense. Also, tourism income scales with the number of people in the galaxy, so your tourism income goes up with [U]everybody's[/U] population. If there's been a lot of colonization and population growth in your game you can see some pretty big increases in a year.

Reply to Tourism income - is there a bug ? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

There certainly IS a tourism event that doubles the income. If you got that and the tourism doubling united planets vote without noticing it could produce a huge boost in tourism. I both happen to me in the same game, and I realized that I could run my empire at 100% production and a 0% tax rate. I literally could not go into debt, at least not without rush buying. This was back in Dark Avatar, so the maintenance wasn't as high.

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

You mean nitpicky? Sorry, couldn't resist. On a more constructive note, when somebody mentioned the ability to gift fleets I realized that should have made my list. It drives me nuts when I'm trying to fight a proxy war and I can't gift an army without breaking the entire thing down and then renaming each of 50 ships (I tend to play with swarms of tiny ships) so I can find them in the diplomacy screen.

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Oh wait, for my #5: fixing the video scaling. I play on a 16:10 wide-screen LCD which makes a lot of the videos look horrible.

Reply to Please slam my game in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

1. Fix that MCC if you haven't already, there's really no reason not to have addressed this by now. 2. The option to have the mouse wheel zoom center on the cursor would be amazing for larger galaxies. After playing supreme commander, you really don't want the screen to go anywhere else. 3. GCC news shouldn't mention events concerning you haven't made first contact with if the player has blind exploration on, at least for the first year or two of the game. 4. I don't

Reply to Treaty Penalty Question in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

The "we know what you're up to" is caused (I think) by a race suspecting that you are trying to conquer them. This seems to crop up if you park transports or influence starbases around their planets.

Reply to Finding out who's playing too soon in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

If you turn blind exploration on you can't see other civ's area of influence until you explore the area. This means that when you're playing against random opponents, you won't know who's out there or where they are until you actually find them. Well, that would be the case if GNN didn't spoil the surprise with its announcements about achievements and trade goods. I think it makes the early parts of the game more exciting to not know if you're the only race of your alignment until you go out

Reply to Finding out who's playing too soon in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Shoot, any way to delete duplicate posts?

Finding out who's playing too soon in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

It really annoys me when I somehow find out which races are playing before I make first contact with them because of a GNN announcement. (I think the trade income quarterly report lists all races in the game as well). I know this has been brought up in the past, but the addition of all these new unique galactic achievements some races can spit out almost instantly excaberates the situation. If you start a game with Thalans in it, for example, you'll know in the first couple of

Reply to Treaty Penalty Question in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

As I recall, you receive a diplomatic penalty if you declare war on a race you are providing w/ a research or economic treaty. It doesn't matter if you declare war on somebody who is providing you with a treaty (but you'll still lose the benefit of the treaty).

Reply to checking interest in weekly scheduled MP (newbie) game in Multiplayer Organizer Sins Forums

Do we have an official start date yet? You'll probably want to announce it a bit in advance since watch lists are disabled right now

Reply to We need a CHEATING AI. in Sins Multiplayer Sins Forums

You could make a 3 humans vs 4 CPUs game. Uneven teams would accomplish the "cheat" goal without altering game mechanics.

Reply to checking interest in weekly scheduled MP (newbie) game in Multiplayer Organizer Sins Forums

Always good to consult the wife before making galactic empire affecting decisions :)

Reply to Solution to All Planet Related Defense Issues in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I definitely like the idea of everybody having a tech to unlock a (very expensive) extra level of tactical slot upgrades. Defenses seem a little weak for their cost at the moment, but due to the way they support each other their value increases exponentially as you cram more of them into a system. Have to be careful with the balance though, should be expensive enough that you couldn't reasonably upgrade every planet you own without spending so much that you're sacrificing offensive capability.

Reply to Daily 5v5 Random Fun :) Scheduling in Multiplayer Organizer Sins Forums

Just watched that 5v5 Huge Random Fun Game (2/12/2008) Started 10:50 PM EST. I must say, that last fight was EPIC. I thought for sure that the game was in the bag until I saw how effective those two progenitors were at keeping MrFujiKicker's Kol alive.

Reply to Phase jump inhibitors in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

You're missing the point heflys. The issue is that, as it currently stands, the enemy may fly through the chokepoint and jump deeper into your empire where you do not have as many defensive structures and higher income planets even if you use phase jump inhibitors and a decent defending fleet. The PJI is, in theory, supposed to somehow mitigate this by making it more difficult for the enemy to pass through the chokepoint without engaging its defenders. This would make controlling the chokepoi

Reply to Suggestion - Future multiple player per Civ functionality in Sins Multiplayer Sins Forums

You can't dodge upkeep doing this. When you send credits, they're taxed by the receiving players upkeep. You know, two certainties in life: taxes and siege frigate spam.

Reply to checking interest in weekly scheduled MP (newbie) game in Multiplayer Organizer Sins Forums

Never used teamspeak before, but I wouldn't mind trying it out. I guess I'd have to find myself a headset, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Reply to Continuing replays? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

It would be very nice if you can keep the replays from breaking every update, esp. with the frequent updates you have with your games. That always drove me NUTS with supreme commander when I found an old post about an awesome replay and I couldn't watch it because of version incompatibilities.

Reply to Phase jump inhibitors in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

I definitely like that slow phase lane travel idea for the PJI, maybe 2x-3x the transit time per inhibitor. It just feels right, you can still get through if you really want to, and since the delay is in phase space the defender doesn't get a few minutes to just smash the offensive fleet for free. All it means is that a superior defensive fleet can actually do significant damage to the invading fleet by being able to keep up with them. While I certainly don't thing there should be an invincib