Aaarh, Cap'n, but ye pack a mighty pile o' meanin' in a wee sentence there.

I've never seen any formal research about game preferences and age, and I'd be interested in reference links if anyone has some.

I suspect that this perception might say more about the forum than it does about GC2 overall. We have no idea about the ages of the vast majority of license holders who never post here, nor about folks who mostly lurk like I did for a long time.

Mind you, that's spontaneous pseudo-theorizing to avoid another fit of fanboi blather about this game being so excellent it can attract "real intellectual" types :NOTSURE:

ghostwes-

Sorry for the confusion...Apparently I have an old stardock account named "hicmndr" that I posted under. My current account name is chris.goodwin, with "hicmndr" as the character asking to join.

Looks like you approved my request today, so thanks for letting me join!

Ahhh! THAT brings back memories. The Atari 2600 and the Intellivision (Tron's Deadly Discs!!!) were two of my favourite favourite consoles.

To emphasise my feeling of oldness, I was on the plane just recently and noticed that all the songs that I liked were under the "classics" and "solid gold" channels.

Well managed a win on suicidal level.

For the extreme difficultyand nitpicking attention to detail you need its really not worth it . it stops being fun and starts becoming work so I did it , i'm glad , and thats the last time I will play at that level .

Next few games will be back to reasonalbe level.

But I am happy to have the silly thing under my belt so I don't have to wonder if I could.

( collapses in a heap of sawdust )

Wow, IDMopman, that's very impressive. Not many people in this forum can complete a military victory on suicidal. My only suicidal was a tech victory, which doesn't really count, since I hid in the corner the whole game.

I haven't seen many people post suicidal TotA games for some reason... maybe they're still learning the ins and outs.

Any pointers on how you did this? How was your custom race spec'd?

Just posted my 7th game in 30 days. I'm a bit Galciv2ed out now. Will go back to a bit of Space Rangers2 and Astral Masters - then give the Thalans a try

Hey GhostWes

First avoid war at all costs , pay tribute to avoid war and get sensors very quickly to churn out survey ships to pay for the tribute ( this only works on the largest map where there is a never ending supply of anomalies ).

Always vote for taxes on war , starbases in foreign territory and anything else that will weaken bots economy without hurting yours.

I select one good race , one evil race and two neutral races and then play the british continental system ( I keep the two opposing allignments at war ( not too hard ) and then get the neutrals to join in if one side is losing to badly to attack whoever is winning.

Diplomacy after sensors is your next priority so you can keep at peace and also play them off against each other.

Play ambulance chaser ( as the various sides are fighting keep a contructor module handy by every potential resource so when one side detroys the base you can claim it.

After about 16 years or so there is usually a 50% tax on war , a 25p or more tax on each starbase in an opponents system ( and of course you have not built any except economic in neutral areas across trade routes) and all of the computer economic advantages have been neutralized. Also since you have been at peace with everyone for so long you can then gather 20 contructor units nearby each opposing races planets and pick them off one by one by building an influence base ( having at this time gotten all the influence techs ) and turning them.

I get the lucky trait so I get the rangers ship discovery and other than a few defender units I build almost no military and develop no weapons or defenses to speak of so I do not wast time or points in tech in these feilds.

My race has the following

Luck , economics ( max ) , morale ( max ) , Loyalty ( max ) Diplomacy ( max ) and I take the diplomacy traight as my super.

I turn off tech trading , tech stealing , special events , no accession or influence wins. I keep alliance and tech win just to give the computer hope I am going for alliance ( this may be in my head ).

Your starting location must be near the middle ( so you can reach enough anomalies ) and you need at a minimum 4 bonus in manufacturing ( one triple and a double ) or better any others are a plus.

As I mentioned this only works on the largest map or you run out of anomolies too soon and cannot keep up with your expenses.

Thats all I can think of for now good luck.

Interesting. I'll have to give your strategy a go.

What tech tree are you using?

Goobi, how is Astral Masters? Any good?

I played Space Rangers 2 for a while, but found myself getting extremely frustrated by some aspects of it. The text quests seemed like a really interesting addition, but I couldn't figure out what they were asking most of the time... atrocious translation from Russian.

Terran , I use the trade tech bonuses for extra cash as early as manageble.

I would play the Terrans but I use them as my "good" race as they are usually reliable about not attacking another good race. I also get the Drengin as the bad guys ( I really hate spore ships , too hard to make sure one side does not get too much too fast ) and the two neutrals are Arcea and Korx.

Oh and I upgrade my miner to an extra colony ship first round ( costs about 130 ) to get a second starter planet right away.

Oh and politically federalist? well whicher one it is that gives you a 20 econ bonus

Ghostwes said:



Astral Masters is simplified version of Magic: The Gathering, with a much smaller card pool. Due to the smaller number of cards and presumably easier to program set of functions, the AI tends to be quite good - but the options for creativity are smaller. Basically, you play in a 'league' against other computer players. You start with X points and you 'buy' cards with those points. As you win games, you get more points and also 'free' cards that you can use without points.

I think it's a good time waster - often play it when I'm on plane and train trips. I probably wouldn't set aside a chunk of time to sit down and play it as I do with Galciv 2 though. Hope that's useful information.

Regarding Space Rangers 2, I do liking it. I see it as a bit like the old game 'Elite', but with much fancier graphics, a 'mini-shoot em up' game and a bit of Zork. I think I managed to work out most of the text... we're very used to bad English here

Kselis congratulations on getting into the year zero club and wow! you have any hints for those of us whoa re still trying to finish in under 20 years?  :CONGRAT: 

Wow, that's impressive. I really want to know how you all are doing these games...

Check out my Kzinti Empire thread, reply 800, where I posted a detailed strategy for ZYWs. Enjoy!

Sentient species taste better...

Just read through that, thanks KP. Wish the strategy didn't involve ARC, though -- has anyone done it without modifying files?

Thank you for sharing this information with us but I agree with ghostwes I dont like modifying files so I guess I will keep trying to perfect my own stategy.

You could certainly do it using Planetary Invasion, or using Korath. At first I did it without ARC, but to be optimal, it is important. So give it a try and see what you can do.

Sentient species taste better...

Thanks. So far my best zero year score is 56350 much less than the top scores 80K+.
But it made with ToA v1.91.

Some trick which I'm using are ({'m using all labs gigantic world suicidal):
- design Colony ship with 500 colonist and upgrade both Colony and Miner at turn 1
- research Impulse Drive starting moving both upgraded Colony shops in proper direction
- after Impulse Drive is done research Space weapon and then whole Planetary invasion branch
- when Planetary invasion is done upgrade Colony ships into Special Transport 500 troops, particle beam and enough basic support to reach target enemy worlds (range is a main problem on gigantic)

With 500 troops and whole Planetary invasion branch researched it is quite possible to conquer target worlds with few save/load

Cool strategy, just curiou s why you would go with gigantic.

Maybe I'll give it a whirl.

I guess the idea is that by the time you get there the AI won't have more than a couple of planets and you will taking 2 of them just to start.

Is it necessary to NOT win too fast in order to build up a score? Personally I'd try it just to have it done and not worry about score.

Gigantic to max score.



Exactly

It looks that the faster you win the better your score. On gigantic suicidal I have following results:

43 turns - 44800
36 turns - 48300
32 turns - 51800
25 turns - 52850
22 turns - 56350

Can't see Edit button. Exactly refers to last quote in previous post

One more question, am I correct in assuming tht if you upgrade a colony ship to a transport that you keep the people/soldiers that were already on board?

thanks

Yes, You are correct. This is why I use not original colony ship, but colony ship with 500 colonists at the start.

KseAlis has it right. The faster you win, the better your score. Also, the scores are higher the bigger the map is because there is a scaling mechanism for tech production & consequently the tech score ends up being higher. I didnt expect this when I tried ZYWs on a larger map (I was just looking for better bonus tiles), but it was a happy accident.

You can see from my best scores with each map size, that there is a strong correlation.

tiny - 40600
small - 44800
medium - 51800
large - 62500
huge - 70000
gigantic - 78750

Sentient species taste better...