The forum is not dead for me either, but it is a bit slow. I am always behind the times. Seems I wait four years after a game hits the streets to play it, but once I dive in, I am unable to quit. One of my top 5 favorites of all time is Reach for the Stars, which I played on the Apple IIgs (1989?). Picking up to Gal Civ back in Sep., 2009, was an easy choice, and I have done almost no other gaming since. At first, even on the easiest levels, I survived less than half the time. Lots of superb info and links on the forum here helped pull it all together. Today, I just made the first page on Metaverse, as #25. Like Dragonshrike, I was immediately awarded a medal for being in the top 25 and also for being a former #3 player! I'll never play long enough to actually go that far. In all of my games now, I never fight. Just start out as high as possible in trade and diplomacy, try to keep everyone happy, hope they don't take one of my 3-5 planets early on, take in tons of $$$ in trade, use the money to buy up all player starbases with resources, which means a huge amount of influence is spread, then turn several starbases into death-star cultural bombs. If one of them moved into a sector won't flip a planet, two will. Quickest 60K level win took 3 hours, average game time is now about 4-5 hours. Dragonshrike, congrats on being so high up the ladder.