Brian Mueller

Reply to 2 + starbases per sector useful? in Strategies Stardock Forums

[quote]You should NOT build +trade and +speed starbases in the same sector. You put your +speed in the sectors where you DON'T have a trade starbase, so the mini-freighter spends most of its time in the sector with the +trade starbase. If you calculate it right, you can get your mini-freighter to spend almost all its time in the same sector. [/quote] I actually found this to be entirely incorrect. I built a 2 sector trade route the other day, with speed+ and trade+ bases in the sam

Reply to I feel dirty (or mass cash cheese) in Strategies Stardock Forums

I think the extinction of a race should either a) pass the debt onto the race taking over or b) wipe out all debt in or out (this wouldn't be "abuse", the same tactic could easily be used by a government on earth today, and no doubt has been used at least at some time in the past.

Reply to GalCiv Expanded Universe Live Chat on September 16th! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I would like to end this argument here and now, and let this thread get back to something - productive. I obviously got the impression that all updates would be free, I was obviously mistaken. This is possibly why other companies don't post responses to anything other than technical support in their forums :) Lawyers love these small slips. So, to sum up. 1) I am satisfied with the game and I believe that support and updates have been way above the norm. 2)

Reply to GalCiv Expanded Universe Live Chat on September 16th! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Brad's comment is #5, this comes after #2 which states that expansions will be free. I would assume that Brad had read all comments posted before his. Brad's statement lead me to believe that all previous posts were true statements, otherwise I would have expected him to refute any items he disagreed with. Further, I believe that it is likely (but not a certainty) that Brad kept up on this thread since he posted a response. Since he didn't speak up later and strike down any claim I believe th

Reply to I feel dirty (or mass cash cheese) in Strategies Stardock Forums

Another possible fix would be to update the AI to understand this tactic rather than not having them buy tech. The AI could recognize that the human has given them free cash and then for the next say 20 turns to throw out a number the AI would buy techs only at a much reduced cost (the actual number of turns could be based on the spend rate of the AI race and the amount of cash given) . This would pretty well kill it for all of the difficulty levels without having to adjust the normal tech sel

Reply to GalCiv Expanded Universe Live Chat on September 16th! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

To give a fine example of a game with excellent support, updates, etc. Warcraft III - true, the expansion wasn't free, but they never acted like it would be. To point out where I got the idea of free upgrades, support, etc. The exact statement that I read regarding this I cannot find now - but it was to the effect that the game itself would have continual development, tweaks, addons, patches, etc for a period of one year. I point to old threads such as the following http://w

I feel dirty (or mass cash cheese) in Strategies Stardock Forums

I was in a game tonight, and mid game I was outpacing the AI in tech by a wide margin. I wanted to sell some tech because I was only running at about 30% capacity but all of the AIs were broke. Well, it occured to me that I could take the 35,000bc I had in the bank and give it to all the AIs and then the next turn, sell them all of my techs for all of their cash, over 50+ months. It worked beautifully. I had the three remaining AIs paying me about 7000bc per turn each, with payment periods r

Reply to GalCiv Expanded Universe Live Chat on September 16th! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]What is $20? If $20 is hurting your pockets I SUGGEST you learn how to balance your budget. Stardock has produced a game that has paid for itself A BILLION time over. I am willing to more then $20 for the expansion. -Antonio[/quote] Hey, $20 wouldn't hurt me, but the fact is that I purchased a game under the expressed impression that updates, upgrades and patches would be free for one year. Also, based on experience from other software which offers free updates for a sp

Reply to 2 + starbases per sector useful? in Strategies Stardock Forums

I have one question about trade+ and speed+ starbases. If you have a trade route and some speed+ when it moves, one turn may equal say, 5 turns on the trade route because of the speed+, do you only get income related to one turn? I've never actually sat down and tried to figure it out admittedly. I'm too lazy :P

Reply to trade goods / wonders strategies in Strategies Stardock Forums

Hey my strategy is to simply buy them outright as soon as they become available. All of them :) By this I mean I don't use mitrosoft and pay over time, I just lay out 7000bc up front and go way in the red for a few turns. Why not! After diplomatic translators you can get a lot more money out of the minors - you'll be out of debt in a year or less. Then buy aphro, do the same thing, eventually you will end up with all of the trade goods, you will be trading with minors and majors, yo

Reply to terror stars and trade in Strategies Stardock Forums

IMO, building terror stars and managing their movement back and forth along a trade route just adds one more level of complexity and micromanagement to the game. Not to mention that you are burning 5000bc to convert to a terror star plus wasting all of the constructors needed to build the modules. Personally I create a 1-2 sector trade route between myself and a minor (Alexians usually) and I build a bunch of trade+ bases in the sector one away from the minor. In this case it's not been unusu

Reply to Crash To Desktop (CTD) in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Um, in response to the first post here. I'm a computer tech - and not one of these guys with a college degree and a bunch of certs who thinks they know what they are doing - a real one with lots of experience :) 1) If you are crashing with a REBOOT then it is NOT galciv that is the problem. There is a problem elsewhere that may be magnified by something galciv is doing (i.e. a specific call to a windows API or dll) but in reality the dll or windows is messed up. It may not do it in

Reply to Highest PQ Possible in Strategies Stardock Forums

Hmm, cheese or not, good way to make those sub 15 pq planets into powerhouses. Could be very useful in mid to late game to do this on some planets within the AI areas to help with influence. I'll have to see.

1v1 tech race strategy in Strategies Stardock Forums

In a recent game I was down to me and one other race. I knew I was not going to win culturally or militarily which left tech. However, the other race was also ahead of me technologically (they were researching beyond human and I was 2-3 tech's behind them. What was holding me back was a large military I had kept to get the evils off my back. Now that they were gone I had a lot of excess spending. So what I did was sell all of my ships except 3-4 rangers to the one remaining race for 1500bc

Reply to Starbases: Minors in Strategies Stardock Forums

Hmm.. I'm the kinda person who looks for a minor within my own influence horizontal or vertical from a good production planet and trade a boatload with them. My problem has always been that either A) A major will come take the planet (and I don't feel like getting into a huge battle just to protect the minor, esp at maso level) B) The minor will flip culturally (that just plain sucks, there goes all my trade) So, I tried this - I built a took about 15 constructors

Reply to Two Players, One machine. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I think what we are really looking for is the Battle.net (Blizzard) way of doing things for warcraft III, starcraft, et al. You have one copy of the game, one serial number, and you can setup an unlimited number of accounts, each seperate from each other, each accumulating different scores and yet they can all belong to the same clan, etc. I think that for Stardock to leave this feature out is a serious lack of foresight and it should be corrected immediately. Games are as it is licen