Philocthetes

Reply to Debt Limit Should Be Relative to GDP in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

dour old German with absolutely no sense of humor I suspect one of the reasons TPTB at Stardock deemed you worthy of the Diplomat title is your facility for irony

Reply to It's M-O-R-A-L-E in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I was starting to build a ridiculously long reply to this thread because there are *so* many things of interest to a former civics teacher and working editor here. Then I finally got to Mumblefratz saying: My wife's an English teacher as well. I try to use proper diction, grammar and spelling as much as reasonably possible, but I know she could run rampant through

Reply to Debt Limit Should Be Relative to GDP in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

I think to truly be good at this, or any other game, you need to master *all* styles. If you only stay with the way you're comfortable with, it gets to be boring. Mumble, this line made me select it with the thought that I must give a public hat-tip to you after I caught up reading, and I then saw I was uknowingly joining a trend <img src="http:/

Reply to Expanding without expanding. in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There's always some aspect of the game that's incompatible with any particular choice [about timescales]. Maybe after the Evil Empire in Redmond has driven us all to spend even more unnecessary money on upgrades, we'll see games that are basically a well-integrated set of sub-games with internally consistent time schemes. I'd *love* a g

Reply to Borders! Why not !? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It's a little scary, but I think I actually agree with Evil S here. My deep Star Trek conditioning is probably why I've always thought the influcence areas in GCII seemed a little off somehow. But on the other hand, I don't recall anything in the Trek mishmash that seriously addressed the notion of cultural dominance overwhelming local governments, and that notion makes some real sense to me. While it is true that no sovereign nation on Earth has (yet?) applied to become a state in the

Reply to There's a penalty if you keep your treasury above 20,000 bc??? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Graft is where: 1) The politicians steal your money for their own personal use so it doesn't get into the treasury 2) People (or companies) bribe treasury officials to not tax them at the proper tax rate 3) People (or companies) simply don't pay their taxes First off, "graft" is a slang or jargon term, not a formal one, so meaning is fun

Reply to If I See Another Post Asking for MP, Tactical Combat, or Carriers, I WILL SCREAM!!! in Warfare GalCiv2 Forums

The game needs to be marinated a little more. Ah, but the rub's what should they use for the marinade? Seriously, though, we are supposed to carry on about carriers and MP in the official cage-thread(s?) for that natter. From what I can see elsewhere, Brad's very open to a tactical system of some sort for GCIII, whenever that happens, an

Reply to Rebalancing costs for Dark Avatar in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

adding unnecessary complexity to planetary management. It seems to me that the real rub here is UI design and not the underlying game models. To maximize the range of player types who might enjoy the game, more options are better, but a click-intensive UI is worse. For folks like me who prefer long, large games, Brad's announcement of new build c

Reply to Borders! Why not !? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

One more huzzah for the notion of players being able to tell an AI to lay off the influence bases (or the fleet buildup, for that matter). And I agree that it would be nice if they gave you the move your ships ultimatum, that they would at least give you a clue as to what ships they're refering to I'm sort of in the "but why not just have borders

Reply to Official Tactical Combat Discussion Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I do remember MOO2 breaking down when fleets got big enough--that was one of their expressions of the still-widespread end game weakness for the 4X genre. I hadn't thought of the chessboard as a good way to describe TBS tactical, but it makes sense to me. I also very much appreciate the fact that for most TBS fans, requiring full tactical control for every battle is a turnoff. If I'm remembering MOO(2? 1?) rightly, you could make some moves to do things like target the real problem shi

Reply to what weapons should have been in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

do all of your numbers jive The verb you're looking for is "jibe" S: (v) match, fit, correspond, check, jibe, gibe, tally, agree (be compatible, similar or consistent; coincide in their characteristics) "The two stories don't agree in many details"; "The handwriting checks with the signature on the check"; "The suspect's fingerprints don

Reply to What's the point of the income-sharing UP proposal? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've also ponied up some spare cash by voting yes on this when my economy was roaring and I dominated the UP--I got the subjective impression that it helped keep my popularity from sliding for a while.

Reply to General Forum in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Ah, an off-off topic thread at last. Bring on the dancing horses!

Reply to Official Tactical Combat Discussion Thread in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

At risk of sounding disloyal, I'd like to see a constructive response to the MOO2 tactical combat system (including the Auto function, which is basically what GCII has now). I admit there's a basic problem there if GCIII retains the Logistics framework of GCII--MOO2 fleets could be very big, maybe unlimited, I can't remember. IMO, the carriers/fighters thing can come down to special effects (how a particular capital ship weapon is described and illustrated). But I really hope any future

Reply to DOOMED in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I'll admit some curiousity as to why Lord Pinko has not talked about the game much (at all?). But as someone who spent *years* ignoring *all* forums because of this kind of nonsense, I wish I had a good, short explanation (other than the fact that I'm on some unplanned downtime) for why I've suddenly started reading and posting in some of these "problem" threads. Perhaps it's fascination with how some folks are able to weave together so many disconnected bits of logic with flaming nonse

Reply to America: Freedom to Facism in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Quixen, I'd say that both you and ShuShu are correct, at least to the extent that "politics" and "religion" are both very big words that attempt to capture or define one's world view. They are about how things work and what we should do based on how we think about those "facts."

Reply to America: Freedom to Facism in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

we understand more about evolution than we do about gravity Cauldyth, I'm one of those awful pseudo-scientists who spent a long time studying government (and got tons of grief from peers for telling them none of us were scientists). But I think that if I'm reading you rightly, this almost-casual aside beutifully illustrates your point.

Reply to Empire building going mental in GalCiv3 in Game Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

In another thread, someone pining for death stars suggested making them an option, like Tech Trading. I like that idea b/c starting a death star project (they used to take *tons* of constructors in GCI) could be a fun way to stir things up in a too-stable galaxy, but for some players they take the fun out of a military victory.

Reply to There's a penalty if you keep your treasury above 20,000 bc??? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not sure if it was Mumble who I first saw mention the 20k limit, but I started a thread a while back b/c I thought I'd found a too-many-econ-bases bug (I think I had *ten*). The By Design explanation makes perfect sense to me, but so does asking Is there a reason things like this don't get balanced for galaxy size ? I can imagine th

Reply to America: Freedom to Facism in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I think I have a good bit more sympathy for the folks who early on begged for this thread to die. Howver, it is the first thread with some flame-nonsense in it that I've kept reading (I normally bow out at the first sign of name-calling). Somewhere in his last set of posts, Mumble asked what the state of the chat might have to do with the OP's intent. While I agree that there was almost no methodical discussion of the most accurate term to describe the current state of the US govt

Reply to Beta Test starts Nov 16 in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

scrambling to make that date I've been around dev folks and I very much like the idea that they're too busy working on good code to bother telling more than three people when they expect to finish

Reply to What's the sensor range of a planet? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I do agree that it would be nice if your sensor range applied to planets as well as ships I agree also--it seems that planets should be sensor-equal to ships *at least* when they have a starbase! My core response to this problem (the seeing AI actions part) is to be sure to get Eyes of the Universe, but I supplement with pickets to some

Reply to Beta Test starts Nov 16 in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

why do we have to figure that out through gamespot? Interesting business question for Brad et al. Unless I'm missing something, the only news there to a regular reader here is the date. Seems like the kind of thing we usually see linked on the Galciv2 home page, where the SR2 teaser is now.

Reply to Automatic Ship Movement in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Pressing TAB takes you to the next active ship, more or less. To set a scout to autoexplore, press W, and to set a surveyor (flagship) to target anomlies, press A. There's a keyboard page at WWW Link that's a bit more up to date than the manual.

Reply to Extra Trade Routes??? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Has anyone ever seen a dev explain *why* the limit is what it is? Am I missing some UI context where displaying over 12 would break thing? The list on the Econ screen is scrollable, the routes map seems able to tolerate an open # of lines, and the Diplo screen just shows yes-no, not how many trade routes.