keithLamothe

Reply to AI surrenders seem out of whack in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The prioritization of colonization techs, which are expensive, and on the colonization race in general does have a pretty big impact on the AI performance. Interestingly, it seems that the AI plays very similar to how I would like to play: devote 100% of everything to colonization until the board is filled, and then worry about stuff like military. As a result I'm usually able to cap off my colonization phase with a quick rush and take-over of one of my neighbors and establish clear

Reply to AI surrenders seem out of whack in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think I've played a single DA game with "Allow Surrenders" on. This is why.

Reply to Neutrality Bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I typically only use conquest as a follow-up to the colony rush to absorb a neighbor or two and establish dominance before gearing up for a real victory plan, but I can see why evil's weapon techs could unbalance the military situation long enough to essentially ensure victory.

Reply to Neutrality Bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The combination of +20% morale and the auto-terraform makes choosing neutral a no-brainer to me every time. I may be mistaken in the choice, of course.

Reply to Neutrality Bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think the earlier implementation was that Neutral gave you all terraformable tiles regardless of your tech, but it was since changed so that you have to get the appropriate tech to get the tiles. It's still a massive bonus in my view, but no longer makes it unnecessary to research the tech.

Reply to Doesn't Earth just look beautiful in DA with High-Res texturing? :) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I would prefer 1 download, and certainly not 1 per planet (ouch). If necessary for size you could split it into, say, one mod for homeworld-related stuff and one for everything else. Your work looks impressive, though I am no computer graphics expert. I have to admit I probably wouldn't see much of it since I play zoomed out to icon level, but it would be very nice when I am close enough to see it, and a nice touch if I wrote an AAR with pictures.

Reply to Super Hive strategies in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Super Breeder? Girlfriend? I think a ring and a ceremony may have been forgotten at some point along the way... In any case, I get the impression that the "release" build of DA may be available to pre-ordering-type-people (including us beta testers) a bit earlier than the stated release date. I think that was mentioned in the journals somewhere.

Reply to Winning DA on Max Difficulty (long) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Many very interesting points. I don't have time for a large reply right now, but your way of playing is dramatically different than mine. I always play with tech-trading off and typically have less than 5 trips to the "negotiation screen" the entire game in a Gigantic/Abundant galaxy. Your trade/diplomacy based strategy sounds like it will be interesting to try some time, and will probably be more effective than my super hive strategies after they nerf super hive (which I agree with from a bal

Reply to AI misreading my military abilities in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Attempting a complex calculation taking into account ship speed, military starbase placement, etc would probably be fairly expensive in terms of design and programming hours. Particularly if the fog of war is covering most of the target's empire and fleet and the calculation can't deal with military starbases and ship speeds that are unknown to the calculating AI. Note that I said target instead of "player" since this computation would presumably need to be used in AI v. AI comparisons as well

Reply to Super Hive strategies in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

By the way, I just noticed in one of the dev journals that they're probably going to make super hive reduce manufacturing improvements to 1/4th cost instead of 1 turn to build no matter what. Accordingly, most of my strategies based on that ability will be worthless I rather did expect them to nerf it, though...

Super Hive strategy in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Edit: deleted. I tried posting, the forum stopped responding, and when it started responding again (30 minutes or so later) I tried posting again. Resulted in duplicate posts.

Reply to Winning DA on Max Difficulty (long) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm doing the same thing as you with the Basic Factories & zero maintenance. We probably should start a dedicated Super Hive strategy thread. I started one, so as to not excessively hijack this thread. I'm tending to agree w

Super Hive strategies in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

In response to a post in the "Winning DA on Max Difficulty" thread, since we were headed off-topic: I'm doing the same thing as you with the Basic Factories & zero maintenance. We probably should start a dedicated Super Hive strategy thread. Yep. You have a good point about the two big strikes against +PQ with Super Hive: mega expensive i

Reply to Winning DA on Max Difficulty (long) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Super Hive does certainly make things a lot easier. I go with a custom super-hiver with +20% planet quality, +30 econ, +20 morale. I've thought of using custom Thalans but I would have to choose between the PQ bonus (which uses all their flexible points) or some combination of morale and econ bonus, and I haven't managed to get myself to do that. The +33 to both types of production is really nice, though, and +10 miniturization sure doesn't hurt. Briefly, how I use super-hive: -

Reply to Winning DA on Max Difficulty (long) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Take care that one of the AI empires doesn't win a tech victory; other than that it sounds like you can win this one. Congrats. Two questions: 1) how big is the galaxy? 2) what super ability is your race using? (more generally, what's your race config)

Reply to Peacetime Destruction - bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

"But I think I was able to attack the original offender without repercussions." Now *that* is interesting. Player-initiated combat not resulting in war? Do you have a save of this?

Reply to What would you miss (or not miss) if you could only play DL? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Another thing for which I'm profoundly thankful is the "old" tab on the planetary improvement selection section of the planet screen. Previously it was simply impossible to build or revert to the older versions. It'd be a real pain to do on a wide scale, but being able to do it in specific instances is a massive improvement.

Reply to UI - Governors - Upgrade Planetary Improvement Type in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

If you click on the 'Details' button at the bottom of the planet screen, one of the buttons on the side is 'Governor'. Click on that and you will have two options: 'Auto Upgrade Improvements as they become available' and 'Automatically Terraform as technology becomes available'. Thank you for reminding me of that, I had forgotten. And I can achiev

Reply to Peacetime Destruction - bug? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Hmm, never ran into that one, but it'd be good if that didn't happen. Do you have a save game that can reproduce the behavior?

UI - Governors - Upgrade Planetary Improvement Type in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Well, one of the Devs just made the mistake of encouraging input, so I figured I'd fire off another one. I searched to see if there was something similar, but nothing particularly detailed and it was in another forum. Desired features: 1) ability to have my improvements not auto-upgrade when a new improvement becomes available that obsoletes the existing improvement. This is unessential since I can just mod all the obsolete tags out, but it would be nice to keep them since it shu

Reply to What would you miss (or not miss) if you could only play DL? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Oh, mega events. Those are very nice. Some of them are game-wreckers, but that's what my practice of pressing "Ctrl+S" before pressing "Enter" is for. And the changes to the combat system, I rather like the targetting-by-weapon instead of by-ship rules. I'd prefer if weapons and defenses had a minimum and maximum roll (instead of just a maximum), but it tends to work out ok.

Reply to What would you miss (or not miss) if you could only play DL? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

1) Super Hive (is that getting nerfed, or am I going to be able to play my all-factories strategy in the final?) 2) Tech-requiring planetary environments. That drastically alters the colonization race. I'd almost certainly do better without them, but I prefer it with them. 3) Enemy AI customization 4) Lots I'm sure I don't really notice since I only played the DL demo a bit before getting DL and DA at the same time and haven't played DL since.

Reply to Espionage spending, I think you should check it often in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, that makes sense particularly with his original post. He dropped espionage spending from 1158 to 956 and quite naturally saw a net income increase of 202. If his net income had been +50 (which it was), that's a +400% increase. If his net income had been +1000, it would have only been a +20% increase.

Reply to Espionage spending, I think you should check it often in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

It would have to be gross income, I believe. Basing it off net would make a non-0% slider setting result in negative spending on espionage if your net was negative (or, at least, you couldn't spend a dime on espionage if you had a negative net).

Reply to Agent Training gripe in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the fix to reduce unnecessary micro-management; I very much appreciate those (and I've got a list if you get bored ) The fact that one agent/week is intentional doesn't surprise me. Are the devs also happy with the amounts necessary to train agents? They get very, very steep over time, by the time I'm at the 20 mark (iirc) getting 1 agent/turn requires my spending an amount comparable