#1 by Citizen David Schapira - 3/29/2003 2:50:24AM
yes, all bonuses stack, except for bonuses that only affect that Starbases sefense bonus (those modules of the Defense variety). Keep in mind that there are upper-level caps for military and social productionj for each planet class (these are VERY high, however). If you really want to supercharge your production, build up to three fully loaded production starbases in a sector.

#1 by Citizen RustyBlade - 4/1/2003 2:57:40PM
Just rename the BIK files you want to skip by renaming Intro.bik to say for instance Intro_Disabled.bik . That way it will be easy to put it back if you want. Brad mentioned in the readme that people with slower machines could delete the BIK files to get old computers to run smoother. But I would rather keep a copy of the original with it remamed.

#2 by Citizen Stevious - 4/1/2003 3:19:59PM
Besides the Intro.bik RustyBlade mentioned above, you can also rename sf_intro.bik and Colony_Leaving.bik to bypass the Strategy First movie and the other opening cutscene (colony ship being built).

#2 by Citizen David Schapira - 3/31/2003 3:18:15PM
Belua is the space shark. Pirates will appear at various timnes in the game and will attack freighers and starbases.

#7 by Diplomat Louis-guy reid - 3/29/2003 7:25:58AM
Here is a report of Brad's comments on intelligence

Intelligence

One of the things we did do during the release candidates is make the game much easier to win on the lower levels. We found that experienced strategy gamers would get creamed even when the AI was set to "fool".

But at the same time, at the medium to higher levels, the AI is much more intelligent than it was in the betas. In fact, the beta GalCiv AI was, well pretty crummy compared to the gold version in terms of intelligence (not saying the gold is "harder" to beat, but that the AI is more intelligent in how it behaves).

In the betas, each AI level simply increased the intelligence rating of the player by say 15 points. Here's the problem we had with that:

You'd play on "normal" and get a challenge and then you'd up it a level and get creamed. So a lot of the extra month of development was spend play testing and adding more difficulty levels.

So now each computer player can indvidually be set to the following difficulty levels:

[IntLevel0] 4 Fool
[IntLevel1] 14 Beginner
[IntLevel2] 36 Sub-Normal
[IntLevel3] 42 Normal
[IntLevel4] 50 Bright
[IntLevel5] 60 Intelligent
[IntLevel6] 65 Genius
[IntLevel7] 100 Incredible

With the corresponding intelligence being 4, 14, 36, 42, 50, 60, 65, 100.

We may tweak these or add more after released based on what you guys say.

So now, you have sub-normal, normal, bright, intelligent and genius quite close together. I have not personally won with all the AI's set to genius on a medium sized map or higher. And incredible is just, well the AI gets lots of extra stuff.

Speaking of extra stuff, how do the resources get handled?

The intelligence ratings do two things: 1) They determine how much money they get from colonies.

So in pColony->CalcTaxesCollected() at the end it gets:
ulTaxes = ulTaxes * (40 + ulIntelligence);

So at intelligence = 60 (intelligent) it's getting the same from a colony as you. At Genius it's getting a bit more. And at incredible, all bets are off.

The other way intelligence matters is that it determines whether the AI is going to
a) Do a thorough analysis on what players are doing
b) Which AI scripts are available to use, and
c) Determines whether the AI is going to do anything about it.

Example:
An AI with intelligence 60 will be able to check out its sensor areas and see if you are building up for an attack, fortifying starbases, trying to culturally dominate it, etc. It will then have to roll to see if it is going to do anything about it. I.e. "Do I recognize this as a threat or am I too dumb to see this?". If it rolls that it is going to recognize the threat then it has to roll whether it's goign to actually do anything about it. And if it is going to do something about it then it rolls to see if it will tell the human player about it (if it's a human player that is the threat).

IF the AI FAILS the roll, the human player gets a message from the AI letting it know it's on to what it's doing. Otherwise it quietly lowers relations and prepares for a war.

If you play on say Genius, and build up star bases and ships in a sector you're planning to attack you'll notice ships from other sectors quietly coming in to fortify. Fighters shadowing your transports. Etc.

But on lower intelligence levels, none of this happens. Which is one of the changes. So when you get the game, on Fool and Beginner you should be able to play the game without getting creamed now. This is different than it was in the beta when fool was = Int 15 and the next one up was 30.

by Avatar Frogboy - 3/5/2003 4:02:14PM

#1 by Citizen Cataleptic - 3/31/2003 11:04:54PM
Big ones are worth ten small ones.

#2 by Veteran mindlar - 4/1/2003 2:57:52 PM
The morale problem is something that has been around for quite a while. There are several ways to manage the problems that an empire will face not all of which involve sending your people into oblivion.

There are a few ways to effectively raise morale:
1) Lower taxes
2) Build social improvements that help morale
3) Only colonize good planets (i.e. 15+)
4) Research techs that boost morale.
5) Build/buy trade goods that boost morale.
6) Build/improve starbases on morale improvements.
7) Built colony ships/transports to remove population.
8) Spend money on propaganda.
9) Wait for the population to decline (morale 50)
4) Have a treasury balance below 0.

All things being equal, morale will tend to head towards 40-50 if left alone as that is the break even point for the population growth/morale curve.

As Horatio said, espionage can tell you who is destabilizing you. You will need to spend a fair amount of money over time, but it is generally worth it.

From: Brad Wardell (bwardell@getridofthispart.stardock.com)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic
Date: 2003-03-28 21:12:19 PST

"Rob Berryhill" wrote in message
news:MPG.18eec4e93f8385c79896fa@news.ev1.net...
> 2. After getting to Advanced level of espionage on another civ., do I
> have to keep spending to maintain it or can I cut espionage down to 0?

You can cut it way down, but espionage does tend to fade over time since
it's based on how much you spent versus their population.

Brad

#1 by Avatar Frogboy - 3/13/2003 2:55:34 PM
Without giving too much away, resources are essentially artifacts from the precursors. But that's back story that we don't really go into. In the game they are just anomalies that have specific properties.