I average about 4 years. I play challenging--time seems independent of galaxy size for me. You can actually do some investigation yourself on this question by looking at the Metaverse scores. By clicking on a player, you get to see their individual games, and this includes the time to finish.
Out_of_Ideas: I run a dual-core CPU and have no problem running the game and getting the right animations. I'm afraid I can't give any advise on what to look for though. I would say to update video drivers, but if the game works on one core, I suspect video drivers are not the culprit (but try anyway, you never know!)
Here are some more big-picture ideas (all of the previous posts are also good): 1) In the early game I focus on building my empire and economy. So I research the ship speed improvements (faster colonies for that colony rush and resource grab), some of the diplomatic line so that I get better governments (with their production and economy bonuses) and trade capability, and start laying the groundwork for eventual military (range improvements, miniturization, sensors) 2) My clue
To pump out colony ships fast, I build 4 factories on my home world (buy the first, and let the others build). Then I can pump out colony ships every 2-3 turns while keeping a balanced military/production/research program. While the remaining factories are building, buy partially completed colony ships every 3 turns to start your colony rush.
Regarding (4)... I recently played a gigantic map with "tight clusters". I found that while I had culturally overwhelmed my opponents by winning the colony rush, because there were vast areas where there were no stars, no one had influence coverage and so even with all of the influence bonus techs I peaked out at about 62% influence...leaving me short of an influence victory. I would have had to seed the star-free areas with starbases in order to win a cultural victory. I finally gave u
The slow colonization may unbalance the game in this way--whoever is first to obtain the extended colonization techs has a huge (and possibly unbeatable) advantage. However, this seems like an idea that can be modded in. Some possible alternatives to slow down or deemphasize the colony rush: 1) make colony modules hugely expensive 2) limit number of colonists to 100m or even less--this will slow down the new colony contribution to the tax base while keeping expenses as
I imagine it is very hard to program an AI to wage an effective war. First, the AI has to answer these questions: 1) What is my objective for this war? 2) What general strategy will I follow to meet this objective? 3) How do I implement the details of this strategy (building ships, fleet areas of concentrations, etc.) But these answers need to be able to change and adapt based on what the AI's enemy is doing and what their strategy is. So what balance is required fo
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...I have noticed that sometimes these destinations stay even after the ship has reached the destination and has gone on to do other stuff (and it is not a rally point that I set up).
It is most likely the options selections that Linthar mentioned. One of the options is "show full battles only if fleet vs fleet combat". This means if either side in a battle is a single ship, full battles are not shown.
A couple of thoughts... 1) I agree that the AI can be improved at the level of positioning for fleet combat. 2) In the situation you cited, the AI may be preferentially defending their home planets against an invasion "raid" (transports just outside of their sensor range that would take advantage of invading an undefended world. Probably not the best strategy since it leaves enemy ships to be diced up individually by your fleet, but it is a strategy. Further, by keeping ships i
It has been reported in other threads that the "lost turn" for production/research on loading saved games feature/bug (depending on your viewpoint) is to be fixed in 1.3.
You can only design ships "in game". There is no "off-line" ship design capability, although it would be nice to have that IMO. When I'm in the middle of a game, I find it a bit disrupting to spend 15-20 min designing a new ship. In a perfect world, I would like to have the ability to open a "ship design" window outside of the game and go to town designing my ship along with specifying the prerequisite techs (particularly miniturization level, which is a bit tricky otherwise I would s
No I don't think so. The starbase will simply provide enhancements. You can view the Mil starbase as sort of a forward operating/logistics base that gives fleets its enhancements, but won't itself get into the fight unless it is attacked directly.
The starbase offenses and defenses will only operate when the starbase itself is attacked. For military starbases, there are starbase modules that you can build to enhance the offense/defense/speed/repair of your fleets within the sphere of operation of that starbase (the light colored area when the starbase is clicked on). In this case these enhancements will affect fleets engaged in battle If the battle happens within the sphere of operation of multiple military starbases
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The developers killed a good franchise game when they released HOMM5. Slow and boring.
It is odd that most other people posting have not experienced your problems or the bugs that you report (notably without debug.err so there is no opportunity to even try to help you out). Try reinstalling the game. Try Stardock support. I suspect that you have not gone far enough in terms of troubleshooting your machine, and so are flaming the game itself without cause.
You should also look at your tax rate-- For the first 20 or so turns I keep taxes to zero to get the 100% morale population bonus that gives me max population growth. This improves the overall tax base (base tax income is based on population) and gives me people to man my colony ships. After that, I increase taxes to lower my deficit spending while keeping morale between 70-80% (again keeping up the population growth). Build an entertainment center on higher population plan
There are pros and cons to the idea. Ultimately, by mid to late game your economy should be making loads of money so buying a manuf plant doesn't put a dent into your wallet. It also adds some strategic considerations as to when the best time is to research the faculty upgrades.
This idea has potential... It creates a continuum between lovey-dovey peace and all out war for extermination of the race. It adds more realism in terms of "experience" to the warfighters. I'm sure it would be a bear to program, and to try to get an AI up and running with good strategies. A nice challenge for Stardock!
If the game is so outdated and pathetic as you think, then why do the reviewers (gamespot, etc) give GalCiv2 such high marks??? Hint: if everyone on this thread plus the game reviewers disagree with your premise that this game sucks, just perhaps consider that you may be wrong, and the mass of humanity is right. Perhaps you should try your hand at designing, programming, and publishing a world-class game. Then we can become your critics.
#2 certainly IS a personal preference. I for one would not want to hear unintelligible gibberish when in the diplomatic screen--it rapidly will become tiresome. I'd rather hear the funky music. Besides, once you have the universal translator, everything would come out in your own language negating any benefit whatsoever of hearing alien gibberish. And that is MY preference. I have a few other preferences regarding your unhelpful post, but since this is a family-oriented forum, I will
If you don't like the game, xtrak, don't play it. And from your entirely negative post, it seems that you don't like it. End of story.
I like the idea of changing the difficulty level mid-game as an added option. One way it could be added as part of the story line is for GNN to report for example that the Torian race has a new, more aggressive/efficient leader. The Torians would then operate under a more intelligent AI setting then they were previously. The opposite can happen and a lengthy civil war within a race can result in a dumber AI. AI alliances would also be good to gang up on the live player if the live pla
Never seen it myself. Recognize that PQ4 planets are capped at 2.6 Bil, PQ5 planets are capped at 4.3 Bil. That is their max potential. But the OPs problem is unusual--the max capacitiy of a PQ10 planet is around 26 Bil. So it shouldn't stall at 17 Bil with enough farms and morale. ...Unless it is the dredded lost production bug.
Early in the game--research level 30rp/turn. Harvest the research resource adds 5% to your research--so you are now up to a whopping 31rp/turn (rounding down). So no, initially you won't see much of an effect. But later in the game--base research level 200rp/turn. Research resource built up to 25%, now you are up to 250rp/turn. Now you are getting somewhere.