One part of the "AI" isn't really AI.  A lot of people think of the trade screen in the game as being "AI".  But it's not. It's basically just a dialog full of weighted values.

The real AI may, for instance, call up the trade screen. But the actual valuing of items in the trade screen (money, techs, ships, planets, etc.) isn't in my area (the AI) but is instead just a table of values to weight everything.

Which means, of course, that it's exploitable. 

Creating a negotiation screen like this is non-trivial. 

For instance, in GalCiv, you can research diplomacy techs and get the super ability Diplomacy which gives you a huge advantage in negotiations.  But at the same time, we can't let people trade say 100BC for 101BC or else they can really exploit the game.  And that's the kind of thing that is more difficult to keep from happening than one might think.

In Civilization 4, the solution was to pretty much make it so that you could only trade apples for apples (techs for techs for instance).  That way, players couldn't easily exploit the AI.

In GalCiv, we slog through with trying to let people trade ships, techs, money, treaties, war proposals, etc. for any combination of those things. 

But the downside is that some people will find exploits.  There is no practical solution other than to remind people that it is a single player game and if they want to cheese the computer opponents, that's really their busines. 

We also try to do updates to the trade screen "AI" so that it is better in negotiating.  But there are just so many variables to take into account. 

If you have a particular "stupid" trade screen behavior, post below and I'll take a look at it.

Windows Vista has some awesome looking icons.  Microsoft went way out of its way to try to give Windows Vista a truly polished look.  They did this by giving most icons a 256x256 icon.  Think about how large that really is. Each Windows Vista icon has an image of that resolution.

But as good as they are, what if you want to change them? How do you do it?  Windows Vista maintains the ability to change the icons of individual short-cuts and folders though in very inconsistent ways.

The best, easiest, and to my knowledge only way to change Windows Vista icons all at once is with Stardock IconPackager. With it, users can change individual icons or change all their icons at once by applying a "package" of icons to their Windows Vista system.  IconPackager even supports the new "live" folder previews.

Individual Icon Changing

IconPackager adds a context menu called "change icon" for most types of files that looks like this:

Changing individual icons with IconPackager installed

Once IconPackager is installed, this functionality is natively added to Windows Vista. It's totally seamless.

Any icon that doesn't have a 256x256 image gets a smaller version that doesn't look as good as it could

One issue on Windows Vista is how icons are displayed. Most icons are 32x32 pixels in size. Some programs have a higher resolution 48x48 version.  But on Windows Vista, unless there's a 256x256 version, the lower resolution version is displayed in it native size which can look strange (especially on your desktop). 

Users of Windows Vista will no doubt soon notice that as they install programs that add short-cuts to their desktops that many of those icons look smaller and strange compared to the default icons on the desktop.

IconPackager supports changing program icons as well.  To do it (once you have IconPackager installed) right-click on the icon you want to change and choose properties.

Program icons can be changed with IconPackager installed as well.

Packages of Icons

The entire set of Windows icons can be changed in a single click by using an icon package. There are thousands out there. Most do not yet support the 256x256 resolution of native Vista icons yet (Stardock is working on a way to up-convert on the fly if there's a sufficiently high resolution version available).  But all the icon packages that come with IconPackager include full Windows Vista support.

The IconPackager application

Changing your icons is a pretty straight forward process -- choose the icon package you want, load it, and hit apply. Within a few seconds, nearly all your icons will be changed.

More Screenshots

Getting IconPackager

IconPackager is a free download. You can get it at www.iconzone.com (or https://www.stardock.com/products/iconpackager).

Nokia has announced that its next-generation cell phones are going to have full support for Web 2.0. Web 2.0 opens the door to sophisticated web applications that have widget-like capability. Sounds great right?

Andrew Orlowski at The Register is skeptical about the move. In his view, turning cell phones into "multimedia computers" is the worst of both worlds -- the lack of security seen on the desktop combined with the impracticality of using a cell phone as a serious computing device.

JavaScript worms are a popular delivery mechanism for Malware on the PC, but as the J in AJAX, they've recently been adopted to take advantage of Web 2.0: causing havoc on MySpace, Yahoo! and, er... MySpace again.

Nokia says it will initially restrict the functionality of the JavaScript worms, before opening the floodgates. Ovum analyst Tony Cripps has glimpsed the horror that awaits us, but can't quite bring himself to step out of line, and say what's begging to be said:

"Scripting-based security exploits are commonplace on the desktop," he writes in a research note, "and we believe countermeasures need to be employed early to avoid such issues arising on mobile phones."

Needless to say, The Register has doubts whether the kind of security cell phone users expect from their mobile phones can be maintained.

Andrew Orlowski argues that Nokia should focus on their core strengths. Nokia was, after all, once THE cell phone maker of choice (remember "The Matrix"?).  But from making game machines to other digital gadgets, Nokia has expanded far beyond that and Andrew Orlowski believes the results have been less than ideal.

When one looks at the prime assets of the Nokia of five years ago, it's alarming to see how many have been discarded. At the turn of the decade, the Finnish giant boasted a formidable reputation for reliability, security and ease of use. Now it's thrown all three out of the window, with security being the last to go.

Do users want to run Google gadgets (and other Web 2.0 gadgets) on their mobile phones? Or would users prefer to see content that was designed explicitly for their cell phones? Can using an open platform such as "Web 2.0" (which is more of a marketing term than any specific technical concept) benefit cell phone users without diminishing security?

Read the whole article below at www.TheRegister.co.uk.

Using Google Images it's amazing what you can find on the net.

Here are some:

Cartoon version of Brad Wardell from PC Magazine

Photo picture of Brad Wardell from Detroit News

Another picture of Brad Wardell from the Detroit News

Brad Wardell at office

(I'm using my name in the captions to get these better indexed for the future)

Up north our cottage is nearly done. It should be totally done by the first of June.  We're pretty excited.  Here are some pictures of the latest progress:

Beach in front of cottage	Unifnished great room and fireplace	Upstairs cat walk
Wintery outside	A view from the dining room.	A view from the upstairs window

Apolyton.net, the civilization community site, has released their review of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar.  The review, written by Solver, is amongst the most detailed out there.

It includes a great deal of positive feedback as well as constructive criticism with the final score being a 9.2 out of 10.

Even if you already have the game, it's worth checking out to get another point of view on the game.

By now some of you have probably realize just how much power you have in the beta process. That this isn't some late stage marketing excercise. We (you guys and us) are helping make a game together.

So let's talk about battle mechanics in space.  How do we make them more fun? What do we have to work with that will be intuitive from a strategic point of view and enjoyable to make use of?

Let's start with ships (in no order):

ASSUMPTION #1: Swarming is bad, combined arms is good.

In my opinion, we need more ships in the game. I also think that the FLEET should be the key building block of your strategy. That is, the player who utilizes "combined arms" with their fleets should be able to do vastly better than the player who is just swarming.

ASSUMPTION #2: Fleets should work together as a single combined arms fighting force

In most RTSs I play, I select several units, hit Ctrl-# and the units are grouped. I then right-click wherever and they scatter.  If I hold down the right keys, I can get them to move as a single force.

I think in Sins, it should be the opposite. A fleet should move together as a single formation by default. I should be able to put together the right mixture of ships to counter my opponent's strategy and be able to right click on the other fleet and let them fight it out while I go work on another battle elsewhere if I want (sure, I *can* micro manage the battle but I shouldn't get much, if any, advantage to doing it IMO).

ASSUMPTION #3: The fleet mechanics should be logical and require no explaining

What I mean is that I shouldn't have to look at the manual or some strategy site to figure out how to put together a good fleet or counter to an enemy fleet. 

This means we have to work with things that are obvious on screen when it comes to ships.  So what can differentiate different ships:

1. How fast they move.  A battleship might pack a powerful punch but move and turn very slowly for instance.
2. Rate of fire.  Some ships might shoot lots of wimpy but constant shots. Others might shoot less often but more devastating shots.
3. Range. Some ships might have long range shot capability while others can only shoot short-range.
4. Accuracy. How often the ship hits its target can be based on the accuracy of the ship.

Based on thes 4 simple game mechanics, one can imagine how one could put together various kinds of ships that counter someone else's fleet.

For example, you could have a Targeting Frigate which improves the accuracy of ships in a given fleet (as long as it's relatively close).  You could have a ECM Frigate which decreases the accuracy of ships in a given fleet.  Ships that have a long range may be more depenedent on accuracy than shorter range (for obvious reasons). 

Another example, a fleet that is heavy with big slow but powerful ships might be more vulnerable to an attack by a fleet of more nimble ships and fighters.  But that fleet might be countered by putting in a few anti-fighter frigates in with the fleet.

What I'm referring to here isn't rock-paper-scissors per se since one doesn't completely counter the other. It's reduction or maginfication of effectiveness that we're talking about. 

IMO, the true tactical skill in the game is the person who relies on combined arms.  The guy who just cranks out tons of heavy frigates and tosses them at their enemy should get mowed down by the player with a more thoughtful strategy.

The key thing though is that I really think that the strategies in this game should be straight-forward and intuitive.  In one of my favorite recent games, Company of Heroes, the replayability comes from having so many strategic options. And the game only has a handful of units. 

What's your view?

Every so often some journalist somewhere feels the need to do one of those "Why the United States should be more like <country X>" articles. This year it was US News & World Report. Entitled, "What the US can learn from the rest of the world" the article implies we're in decline or, at best falling behind with the rest of the world. 

In my experience, most countries with democratically elected governments that have reasonably free markets end up with the environment that its citizens want. I would no more tell a Canadian what's best for them than I would tell a Frenchman.  One assumes that they have their reasons for the choices they've made. 

So with that in mind, I'm going to take apart Susan Headden's interesting but useless article "How they do it better".  It's interesting in that we should always be aware of what other countries are up to. Humans tend to be myopic. Articles like this tend to be a refreshing look at what humans elsewhere are trying.  But is there really much to learn from the examples Ms. Headden gives? Let's find out.

We have the biggest GDP, the finest universities, the highest ownership of color TVs, and the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners.

So how come the Danes are the happiest people in the world? Living in the dark, no less.

Define happiness. I assume she refers to the Leicester study on the subject. Denmark, incidentally has the second highest suicide rate in Europe -- far above the United States.  If Denmark is such a happy place, why are so many people trying to leave by any means necessary?

 Schoolchildren in New Zealand are cleaning our clocks in math and science. Teachers are better paid and more respected in Japan.

Ok. This is interesting. The US always scores low on these tests.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that our incredibly unionized public schools have no competition whereas I believe New Zealand parents can send their children to any school they choose (like much of Europe). I agree we do have something to learn from that.  And yet when school vouchers come up, US News, Newsweek and Time seem to be either silent or hostile on the idea in editorial.  Teachers are paid very well here but then again, the best teachers are paid about the same as poor teachers. Whenever you demand a system that caters to the lowest common denominator, you get what you ask for.

Our highways are choked with traffic, but we can't manage to build a train that goes more than 150 mph.

Why would we build a 150mph train? Our population density isn't anywhere near what it would take to justify such a train.  That is why our highways are choked with traffic. Because it's not practical to build a high speed train system thousands of miles apart.  Moreover, most Americans live in suburbs which is a stark contrast to Europeans and the Japanese who are very urbanized.  How exactly would the average American use a 150mph train? Where would these train stations be?  Like I said, it's about population density.  I'd love to be able to commute by train. But I wouldn't bet that most American middle class citizens would be willing to give up their 100x100 lot and their 2,500 square foot house and relocate to a densely populated urban area to justify it.

Our eating habits? Please. Just compare our average portion with a meal in Japan, and you'll understand why our adult obesity rate is 32 percent, compared with only 3.6 percent for the Japanese. The French, likewise, are slim and well fed-and they offer world-class dinner conversation to boot. Their secret: They don't want to know what you did yesterday; they want to engage you in a lively discussion of ideas.

Right...Yes, those slobbenly Americans and their knuckle dragging ways.  The gun-toting, pickup driving, McDonalds eating suburbanite isn't nearly as charming, sophisticated, and "lively" as those Europeans -- or at least the Europeans that Ms. Headden visits anyway.  I don't even know where to begin. How about this -- the typical French or Japanese household now has, at best, 3 people in it. Adult male. Adult female. And one child. Maybe. And I suspect that they do indeed, on average, come home and discuss interesting things more often than the typical American household with an adult male. Adult female and 2 to 3 children in it all jammed to the max going to soccer and dance and whatever else.  And I'm sure the obesity rate has nothing to do with the fact that our restaurants give huge portions, fast food is everywhere, and food is cheap here.

But our shortcomings are bigger than dining and discourse. Remarkably, the United States is nowhere to be found on the Economist's global index of lowest infant mortality. At the other end, our average life expectancy, at 77.9, puts us 40th in the world- after Costa Rica and Cuba.

Could it be that the United States, with a huge population of illegal immigration and very large ethnic minority population that tends to be at a significantly lower standard of living than say the average person living in Brussels might affect infant mortality and life expectancy? Tell me Ms. Headden, do you know anyone personally who has had a child die as an infant? I know I haven't. Infant mortality rates in modern countries are like the Olympics -- they're getting so close to perfect that even one in a 100,000 can affect the statistics.  So the inner city child that dies of fetal alcohol syndrome or the illegal immigrant who skips pre-natal care and tries to have the baby at home and has a complication can really affect those statistics.  The same is true of life expectancy where we have significant chunks of the population that have very low life expectancy.  But in the United States, it's not politically correct to point out that the life expectancy of African Americans is 70 years (while whites live nearly 80).  Since they're 12% of the population, the affect on our average is significant.  So what exactly can be really learned from say Belgium or France or Japan on that issue?

As for our treatment of the planet, we're down at No. 28 on the global index of environmental performance, a value based on six measurements of environmental health. Meanwhile, Denmark manages to get 20 percent of its energy from the wind. And in Singapore, tossing a candy wrapper on the sidewalk will set you back a thousand bucks.

Okay, I'm game. Let's be like Denmark, a tiny, urbanized peninsula country that gets 20% of its energy on wind.  Please, explain how you envision the United States building enough wind farms to get 20% of its energy from wind. Denmark, a country that is nearly all coastline (it's technically a peninsula but it's practically an island) has the luxury of having most of its inhabitants living on the coast and huge wind farms that literally surround the country. Would you suggest we abandon the rest of the United States and live in say Florida so that we can do the same? Even then, we'd be at a disadvantage.  How do you picture wind farms working in say Austin Texas? How much of our natural land area would you be willing to cut down or reserve for wind farms?  Remember ANWR? Liberals hate ANWR even though it involves only touching a couple hundred acres.  Would you support millions of acres being reserved for wind farms so that we too could be like Denmark? 

And as for Singapore, so the streets are clean. And if you do anything wrong, you can be caned or heavily fined. Are you seriously suggesting you'd support this in the United States?  Ever been to a major inner city in the United States? Full of litter. Let's fine them $1000 for doing it and see how that would fly.

On a grimmer index, America has more people in prison-2,135,900-than any other country in the world. And the highest rate of gun-related homicides of all industrialized nations. If we followed Europe's example of treating drug addicts rather than jailing them, would the numbers go down? It's a complex and controversial question. But Holland's experience shows that treatment of drug abuse is at least vastly cheaper than the alternative.

This gets back into that politically incorrect discussion. The elephant that is in the room. That is, if we even observe that there are statistically significant differences in prison populations and gun-related homicide rates based on ethnicity in the United States we can expect to be called racists.  We're not allowed to even talk about race here -- we're that gun shy.  Sure, the Japanese can publicly slur Koreans and the Germans will openly slur Turks.  But in the US, we aren't even allowed to quietly and meekly say "But..but...if you take Ethnic Europeans living in the United States and compare them with Europeans in Europe, the rates are basically identical.." So what really is to learn here? In Michigan, 12% of the population is African American. But 60% of the Michigan prison population is African American. In our nation's capital, it's 97%! I don't think looking at Holland is the solution.

In the following pages, we offer 30 lessons we can learn from other countries. The list is admittedly unscientific and decidedly incomplete. We're not even saying that all of these practices would work here; if Americans wanted free day care and government-funded maternity leave, after all, they'd have to pay Norway-size taxes. What follow are simply practices that intrigued us: the Germans retraining prostitutes to care for the elderly, the Brazilian buses that are so clean and efficient that even the rich people ride them, and the Japanese toilets that deodorize the room and put the seat down when you're done.
 

Perhaps for starters we American recognize that it isn't "free" and it's not "government funded". It's paid for by other Americans and we have a cultural attitude that people should take care of their own.  It's personal responsibility that has made the United States the success it is. The US isn't perfect by any means.  I have my own long laundry list of complaints.  In many ways, I think the United States sucks. It just happens to suck less than other countries.  I like living in a country in which the government doesn't limit my potential or my opportunities in order to support "fairness". I like living in a country that has nearly every type of environment in it.  I can be in a tropical paradise one day and on the frozen tundra the next without leaving the country (and it is this vastness and diversity that makes these statistical comparison to other country games so obnoxious).  But most of all, I like that in the United States we are still free to succeed or fail on our own terms.

Until the Great Depression, minimum wage laws were consistently struck down by the Supreme Court.  Using the 14th amendment as their basis, the supreme court's position was that the government did not have the power to regulate contracts between employer and employee.

The Great Depression caused them to take a fresh look at this and the result were state minimum wage laws.

Over time, the federal government itself got into the act and now we have national minimum wage laws and state ones as well.

The constutionality of these is murky.  I personally don't agree with minimum wage laws.  I don't think the government has any business telling me how much I should be paid or how much I should pay someone else.  But I do think that it is within the power of the states to pass such laws by their duly elected representatives.

On the other hand, I don't see how the federal government has the authority to establish national minimum wage laws. That seems to me to be blatantly unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court "found" this sweeping power in the Constiution in the clause on the federal government having the power to regulate interstate commerce.  But that's really a cop-op in my opinion.

The problem with minimum wage laws is that they're arbitrary and pointless feel-good measures. In today's global economy, minimum wage laws might as well be called outsourcing laws or automation laws.  If you're making minimum wage, that means that the value of your talent and skills is so low that you need the government to step in and artifically inflate it. 

I remember some years ago having a debate on Usenet about minimum wage laws around the time they had last raised it and I said "I predict that in 10 years, you'll see a lot of these jobs being automated or sent overseas. So if you find yourself checking yourself out at the grocery store in a self service line, remember this."  Of course, back in the early 90s, I got flamed and patronized on the reasons why grocery store check out lines couldn't be automated (impossible to stop shop lifting was the basic argument). 

But sure enough, we have seem automation and outsourcing take their toll and the very same people who argue for minimum wage laws are the ones who complain about the results -- as if there is no connection between the two.

That said, I do believe states have the right to enact minimum wage laws. I don't see anything in the constitution that says (or implies) that the government can't do it.  I just think it's a bad idea.

For the holiday weekend, as you can imagine, our IT team is on vacation so they're not real keen on me throwing up betas onto Stardock Central.

So I've uploaded the files to the link below in a ZIP file for those who want to try it out.

You will need to unzip the files to your \galciv2\darkavatar directory replacing gc2darkavatar.exe and lib3d.dll.

Requires that you already have GalCiv II:DA 1.5X installed.