Here is what is new in Galactic Civilizations II 1.4 over 1.31.

1.4 will be known as 1.4X on Stardock Central and in game.

+ Initial Colony buildings have less maintainence.

+ New colonies start out with a population cap of 6 instead of 5.

+ Farms provide less food.

+ Each citizen provides more tax income than previous.

+ Morale buildings have been increased in benefit but techs to get to them cost substantially more (ex: Virtual Reality Center now provides a 40% morale improvement vs. 25% in 1.31).

+ Stock market no longer gives morale bonus (wasn't supposed to in the first place)

+ Updated beam weapon model along with large hull models

+ Updated some of the planetary improvement icons to be prettier

+ Updated Achille's heel, Apocalypse, and Pathfinder missions in the campaign based on player feedback.

+ Tweaks to make money not too hard to get early on but not as easy to get ridiculous levels of money later on (though expert players will still be able to do this).

+ fixed bug where ships on auto-attack would try to attack ships they weren't at war with if the ship was in the way

+ fixed bug with auto attack where it was using the wrong function to check to see if a ship was hidden by the FOW.

+ fixed cheat key to force an AI player to surrender

+ added in code so that when using the CTRL+Z cheat to run the game in AI test mode, it will make the AI take over for the human player

+ fixed bug where ships that were being upgraded but were not selected tried to update the ShipContextWnd, resulting in a crash if the last ship to be selected was deleted

+ fixed a bug where a ship (under certain conditions) could fail to start moving even if it had a path calculated to its destination

+ added additional debug info for missing string in tradewnd, took precautions to avoid a crash

+ Tweaks to the AI code that handles planetary improvement so that they don't do stupid stuff by mistake

+ Fixed integer divide by zero crash (very rare but possible)

+ Fixed bug where if you upgrade a constructor and build a starbase while it is upgrading, the starbase will change into a ship when the upgrade is complete

+  If RAW file fails to load, a height field is generated randomly

+ Fixed crash in Quick Project Window (very rare case)

+ fixed a bug that could occur if you loaded a campaign save game and tried to continue after finishing that mission, instead of using the campaign screen.
 
+ added option to save ship design to disk.  If turned off, the ship design will not be saved to disk and will not show up the next time you start GalCiv2.  Ship designs will still remain in memory until the data is reloaded (from a save game, from starting a metaverse game after having played a normal game, etc).

+ Some minor memory leaks fixed.

1.4 will be available on Stardock Central on October 25, 2006 (as 1.4X). The stand alone version will be available on the 26th which is when the official announcement will occur.

Because there are asteroid fields that can be mined and provide resources to planets, we have had to relook at the planetary improvements.

Some of the changes have included:

• A new type of improvement: Power Plants. These magnify the production coming in by X%.
• Fertility clinics to increase population growth.
• Much higher population limits so that lots of money can be achieved.
• Morale is more affected by population than previously so reaching those limits will be tougher.
• Lower level farms produce relatively little food so that new users won't run into big morale problems. Instead, we'll add an additional farming tech to gradually increase farming on planets.
• We're adding a Food Distribution Center which will increase the % of total farm production.
• Morale buildings will become significantly more powerful at the higher level so that you can keep people happy AS LONG AS you have researched the techs (entertainment networks won't be enough to get some 20+ population).
• Vacation Capital Super Project will allow a single world to be a real fun place (i.e. high morale).
• A new building called the Planetary Revenue Service PRS (one per planet) will increase the number of citizens that are taxed (right now a planet with 12B population only actually taxes 6B of the citizens, The PRS would increase that to ~9B which is a significant increase in the # of citizens you can get to).
• Low-Level Factories won't produce as much as they currently do (making the asteroid fields more important).
• Lab Networks (buildings that increase by a % your research)

The overall idea is that at the low level, money is easy to come by when you're getting started. Then it will start to try up if you don't build up your planets properly to get more population, more economic activity, etc.

For casual players, the system should be fairly straight forward -- simpler -- than GalCiv II. But for expert players, the gameplay becomes very sophisticated as planets now require a lot more choices than previous in terms of strategy. A LOT MORE.

In Dark Avatar, the relationship between food production, asteroid fields, and star bases will be very crucial. It does make writing the AI much harder (I'm going to basically toss out the planet improvement code in GalCiv II which I didn't write in the first place and that person isn't with Stardock anymore so we've been patching the planet improvement AI choosing code since release, better to scrap it and write it new with the new strategies in mind).

Another area I'm really enjoying is the re-design of ship values. A LOT More thought and experience has gone into the new values for how much hulls cost. 

Basically: The bigger ships will cost a LOOOT more. But they will be a LOOOOT tougher. A capital ship should be a capital ship. It should be a big deal. We want to encourage players to make a choice between fleets of smallish ships OR capital ships and have both be valid paths.  It will be very difficult to research both gigantic ships AND ultimate logistics for instance. You may not be able to get to both in a typical game which means deciding to have large fleets of small ships or smaller fleets of very very tough capital ships. 

Logistics have changed as well. A huge hulled ship now uses 10 logistics points and costs 320 just for the hull. BUT, it now has 150 space (about double) and 84 HP. 

So you could picture a couple of Huge hulled ships (using 20 logistics) with 300 space and 168HP having cost 640 to build...coming up against 16 small ships (48 logistics) with 384 space 128HP and also having cost 640.

The fleet of fighters would pack more punch per round but the hull ships would be able to take a bigger beating. There's so many factors to take into account (the time to research the corresponding techs, the "wastage" on building fighters -- i.e. can't build more than 1 fighter per turn, the "wastage" of a shot from a capital ship on a fighter -- a shot that does 20 damage on a ship with only 8 hitpoints isn't going to make it any deader).

The net result is that it just FEELS a lot better. Those capital ships are a big deal. There shouldn't be tons of them out there. One can imagine the best results being mixed fleets -- a couple of fighters and frigates to picket for the capital ships.

The other value I spent a lot of time on today was spies. We're going to have to put in an espionage branch because we want players to be able to put increasing amounts of money into spying.

By now, one thing you may have noticed is that money is going to be much more under control. At least, that's the intention. That it won't be nearly as hard to have lots of money to do things with but there will be a lot more choices on what to spend money on.  But at the same time, we want there to be a real gulf between new players and expert players. A lot more variance in strategic options than previous.

Where before you might just throw tons of farms on a planet or tons of factories, now there are other things to consider -- asteroids? Do you build a food distribution center? Should you build a Quantum Power Plant? And if so, should you re-direct the asteroid mining to that planet instead of the closer one?

Much of the final balancing will be in the hands of beta testers starting next month.

One of the things that probably won't get much mention in the "marketing" of Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (the upcoming expansion pack to GalCiv II) is that we've gone back and updated the graphics throughout the game to be at a new level. But it's more than just eye candy, it's better performance.  What used to require several textures to be done is now being done with a single texture -- reducing memory while increasing the quality (this ship uses about 1/4th the memory that the constructor in GalCiv II uses despite looking a lot better).

The Star bases are an even better example:

Bear in mind, this is very zoomed in at high resolution with anti-aliasing OFF.

Picture all this rotating gently with the lighting changes as it faces a star (the screenshots really don't do justice to how they look animated).  But you can compare the graphics here to what's in the game today (i.e. load up 1.3 or whatever and compare).

Which makes things all the more interesting when we start looking at the specifications of different ships.

Or when we create templates designs to use for future games.

Another little touch is that clouds move independently of the planet's surface so as you see planets rotate, you can see the weather on the planets cycle around (though a screenshot won't really show much new on that since it's in the animation). 

Now, I'm sure there's a good business reason to go back and re-do the graphics for an expansion pack so feel free to, um, let us know what it is so that we can be sure to tout it!

The Christmas season is starting to approach and with that in mind we've lowered the price of Galactic Civilizations II Collector's Edition to $39.95.  But be warned, we're running out of them. We have less than 5,000 of them left and that won't last very long. After that, only the standard edition is left.  The Collector's Edition comes with a technology tree poster, some extra ship parts, a nicer box, and more (along with a nicer box). And it has the same price as the regular version.

If you're shopping for a Christmas gift for a friend or relative that likes strategy games, pick up a copy of Galactic Civilizations II: Collector's Edition while supplies last. The top rated turn based strategy game of 2006 is available directly or at a store near you (Walmart also carries the Collector's Edition while supplies last).

Al Franken has apparently claimed that Republicans are the party of authoritarians and the Democrats now are the party of liberals and conservatives. Unbelieveable.

While the Republicans have been quite lackluster while in power these past 6 years, they've hardly been authoritarian. One could make the case that Bush himself acts a bit imperial, but no more imperial than many other Presidents have (a lot less than say FDR or LBJ -- any Democrats want to make the case that Bush has behaved more imperially than they did?).

People who are exceptionally into politics start to become a lot like people who are really into a MMO. Seriously. They start to lose perspective. This seems to happen, to varying degrees, to anyone regardless of their policital persuassion.

On the left, you have people frothing at the mouth about the Patriot act (which Democrats almost unanymously voted for incidentally), Guantanomo, wiretapping of foreign calls of suspected terrorists, etc.

On the right you have demonization of Nancy Pelosi, the assumption that upon having a slim majority that Democrats will pull us right out of Iraq, the UN, etc.

To those people I say: Take a deep breath. Re-adjust your perspective and ask how the government is interfering with your life or the life of anyone you know (or even take an extra degree of seperation).  Not theoretical interference but tangible, real world, intrusion.

Here are a few that come to mind and who is responsible for it:

1. As a home owner, I cannot build on my property wherever I want. There are zones on land that I own that I am not permitted to build on because of environment regulations that, if you saw the land in question (there may have been a swamp there a hundred years ago) it's ridiculous. I'm not saying I would build on that, but the government is definitely intruding on me in a very tangible way. (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
2. As a parent, I cannot just send my child to whatever public school I want. If my local school sucks, I can't just choose to send them somewhere else that has room for the child. (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
3. Even though I am in perfect health and can easily provide health care for my family, 2.9% of my income is forcibly taken from me no matter how much I earn.  (Authoritarian source: Democrats)
4. Similarly, 12.4% of my income is taken away for a forced retirement plan that I would be able to handle far better myself and so could most other people. (Authoritarian source: Democrats)
5. As an employer, OSHA can tell me how my office should be furnished -- from chairs to lighting. (Authoritarian source: Democrats)
6. As a student, I cannot be certain that I will be accepted at a major public university based on merit if my skin color is not favored by the government (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
7. If you have conservative views and speak at a major university, you can be expected to be assaulted verbally (or violently) by left-wing protesters. There are 0 documented incidents for the reverse -- Michael Moore, and other left wingers have never been physically assaulted or shouted down at a major university they've spoken at.
8. As an employer, I cannot hire or fire people as I please. Any form of discrimination (real or imagined) is strictly forbidden (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
9. When I go to the mall on a cold rainy day with my infant daughter, I have to park further back from the store because the store was required by the government to provide several handicap parking spaces (usually unused). (Authoritarian source: Democrats)
10. When I build an office, I am forced to build bathrooms of an extra large capacity in order to fit potentially handicap people even if my business is not a retail business (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
11. When I ride a motorcycle, I am required to wear a helmet in Michigan. (Authoritarian source: Democrats).
12. When I drive a car, I am required to wear a seat belt. (Authoritarian source: Democrats).

I could go on.  Now, you can read this list and say "Well these laws are good for us" or that they're good things. That's totally irrelevant.  Authoritarianism doesn't mean "evil horrible" control by the government, it just means government that dictates the "proper" way for people to live their lives.

I have seen a lot of angst about the potential abuse of the Patriot Act or military tribunals, but the things I listed aren't abstract. They are real, practical day to day ways in which our government forces us to behave in a certain way that one might argue is none of their damn business.  Sure, you can say Republicans would outlaw abortion if they could. Fine. But they are coming from the point of view that abortion is the murder of a child.

There are certainly examples of right-wing authoritarianism (the government telling us that what we can do to our own bodies in our own home. who can and can't get married to name two).

But in terms of things that affect you on a day to day basis, it's pretty overwhelming which party is the power of authoritarians. You may agree with those laws in the same way that one might agree with the laws of a benign dictator. But that doesn't make the dictator not a dictator.

We have put up the 1.4 release candidate on Stardock Central. There may be some issues with starting a campaign but we thought we'd give users a crack at trying it out before the official release this next week.

Note that no gameplay changes will be made, we just want to make sure it's compatible as there was a lot of code put into 1.4 to help with foreign language versions of the game that may have side effects that we haven't considered.

Pathetic Whining Mode: Activated

So as the week comes to an end I've had a lot of people contact me saying "Hey, you're famous, Rush Limbaugh talked about you on the air today". And when he didn't mention me by name, he quoted my article or referred to me as an "unknown blogger" or "rank amateur" or "some nobody" whatever.

I can't say it was a fun experience.  While at work, I'll regularly listen to talk radio which includes Rush Limbaugh on occasion. It's definitely not fun to have someone totally mischaracterize ones position and then demonize you. And then repeatedly say "Some nobody" or "Some amateur" over and over. Wounded pride aside (I mean, I am worth 8 figures, have a top 100 podcast, run a website that is more popular than Rush Limbaugh's, have been on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, PBS, in Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, wrote the most popular political game of all time, etc.) at being characterized as a "nobody", the hard part is just sitting back and having to take the "high road". I can't reach 30 million people a day like Rush so I pretty much just have to "take it".

So great, I helped inspire a new term for the political lexicon: Cut and Run conservative. Nice. How insulting. The most obnoxious thing he did was imply that I was doing this to "have influence" and "power" which is so incorrect that it makes me think he's projecting his own motivations.

The thing is, one of my favorite things to do when coding -- listen to talk radio which means Rush from noon to 3, is something I dread. I'll probably never look at Rush the same way. I wouldn't call myself a fan, but I enjoyed his show.  It would be like Bill O'Reilly or Chris Mathews trashing me on their shows without me being able to defend myself on equal terms. Think how you'd react. You'd never look at those shows the same way.

If blogging were my job, I'd be the first to say "hey, this is what the big leagues are, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen." But it's not. It's a blog. Rush and his ditto-heads (along with catass bloggers who confuse blogging with a life) confuse the two. Rush treats blogs as if they're quasi-columns. It's his basic misunderstanding of the nature of blogging (aka "Web logging"). We're just people posting our opinions as a hobby.  I had one ass complain that I spelled a word wrong on one of my blogs. 

For 99.9% of bloggers, blogging is the digital equivalent of hanging out in a pub and shooting the shit. 

I don't object to Rush or someone else linking to one of my blogs as part of their PROFESSIONAL performance on their show. But it would be nice if he, since he's being PAID to do his show, would have spent say the 5 minutes to look at what I write before completely misrepresenting what I wrote (i.e. Did I say I wasn't going to vote? No. I have the nerve to think that Republicans themselves are at fault for their problems, not the drive by media and not the Democrats and if they do lose that the world won't end).

Anyway, it's been a long week. Lots of work got done. Windows Vista is about to be released to manufacturing and we have been working hard to get Microsoft to get some last minute bug fixes in. Working on getting Multiplicity into more call centers (some 911 call centers use it). Trying to decide whether to push it towards MMO gamers as well. Lots of action on the GUI Championships. And of course the game stuff has been very busy this week.

I can't wait for the elections to be over.  If the Republicans are able to maintain control of congress (which I hope they do) Rush and his semi-sentient ditto heads will claim "Aha, we were able to thwart those no good cut and run conservatives" and other strawman arguments -- as if we're somehow out to get them.  If they lose, then we'll get the blame. 

Pathetic Whining Mode: DE-activated

Helen Valois has an excellent article about what "Cut and Run Conservatism" is.

Now that Rush Limbaugh has chosen to demonize conservatives acting as conservatives instead as as Republican sheep, he may discover that outside his ditto-head bubble that there are many out there unimpressed with his rhetoric.

Valois writes:

And just what is a "cut-and-run conservative"? From what I can tell, this label applies to anyone who holds the (to Rush) illogical opinion that Republicans ought to behave like Republicans, and that if they don't, there isn't much use in voting them into office again. There are evidently — gasp! — voters who want their elected representatives to represent them, and who refuse to declare the mere holding of an office on the part of someone whose use of that office is despicable a "victory" in and of itself. Even among those who chuckle at the EIB Network's clever parodies, there are apparently some people who don't consider the ideological suicide currently being committed by American culture to be a laughing matter after all. And despite being made the butt of that network's jokes myself, I am proud to declare myself one of them.

I vote for politicians who represent my views. In a representative democracy such as ours, that is the way I'd prefer to see things function. It would be interesting if Rush consideres conservatives who go to the poll but vote for a write-in candidate or a conservative third party candidate as being "cut and run" conservatives.

I also think Rush's choice to reuse the "cut and run" slogan to demonize conservatives is ultimately going to weaken the more serious issue of politicians and citizens that actually do want to "cut and run" from Iraq.

Luckily for Rush, he's on the wrong side of history. Just as the "Buy American or else" nonsense was going on in the 80s -- demanding we buy American cars no matter how crummy they were -- failed and we ended up with better cars, he should be thankful that principled conservatives will help, in the long run, to keep the party from disolving into the next Whig party.

Rush may be a great broadcaster, but he's no historian.

Read Valois's excellent article bottom of this blog.

Update: David Bernstein of Volokh Conspiracy is one too! (and gasp, also sees 1992 as a GOOD example)

The Governor..

Staying with local Michigan politics further, Jennifer Granholm has somehow managed to keep a 7%+ lead.  The reason this is shocking is that Michigan's economy is the worst in the nation. We're the only state that has kept losing jobs for the past four years.

I actually like Grandholm -- as a person. I think she carries herself well.  But I don't thnk she has the faintest idea on economics and business.

Here is the thing a lot of people ignore at the state level: Businesses create jobs. BUSINESSES. Not the government. I know people like to rail against "THE CORPORATIONS" but if you have a job, it's probably with a corporation right? Grandholm's policies have always struck me as somewhat anti-corporation. She wants to help the "little guy" but the best way to help the little guy is to help create an environment where companies want to be located in Michigan.

And Michigan totally sucks for business.  The only reason I'm here is because my wife doesn't want to move and now the company is too large to move it somewhere else.

What's wrong with Michigan?

• Single Business Taxes
• Asset taxes
• The roads are terrible and embarassing
• The largest city is basically a wasteland (Detroit)
• Unions rule the industrial segments
• Income taxes AND high sales tax
• The state AND local groups collect property taxes

You can read more about the tax situation here. One note on that page, it talks about how Michigan's income tax is relatively low compared to other states that have it. Sure. But other states don't usaully have both an income tax AND a sales tax -- and ours is higher than normal on that account.

Another thing about tis is that ironically, Michigan gets less back from the federal government than we pay in (especially compared to other states) which given the state of our roads, is another reason why it's baffling that Debbie Stabenow has such a lead for the senate race.

Governor Granholm is from Canada. So maybe to her, Michigan's climate is outright balmy. But compared to the other 49 states, Michigan's climate isn't that great. And that's the thing, we pay high taxes, get less back, and the weather isn't that great.  The governor can't control the weather but she can control the business climate here to a greater extent.

To be fair to the Governor, the Michigan constitution requires a balanced budget. This takes away a lot of flexibility for the government during weak economic times.

So where does Michigan's tax money go to?

• The prison system is 18% of the general fund.
• Colleges get 22% of the general fund.
• ..and 29% goes to community health (medicaid, mental health, programs for the aging) -- welfare programs.
• Another 13% goes to "family indepence agency" which is essentially another welfare program.
• And the rest goes to paying for the government itself.

So nearly half of the STATE's revenue goes to "services" to help other people (welfare programs). I am not totally adverse to some of these things, but when times are tough, the BEST thing the state government can do is create an environment for JOBS.

Granhold has been very resistant to cutting or eliminating taxes that would make the state more competitive becauase she doesn't want to cut the welfare programs. What she fails to understand is that if you get more jobs, you will get more tax revenue in the long run. 

What she should be doing is cutting significantly the money spent on the welfare programs in order to eliminate things like asset taxes (Taxes on equipment), double-taxation on property, and the single business tax.

Amazingly (as someone paying SBT) Granholm claims to have gotten rid of it in a recent debate.  That was news to me.

She did cut the single business tax.  But this tax should simply be eliminated. The SBT essentially is a tax in which employers cannot deduct the cost of their employees when calculating taxes. Let me repeat that: EMPLOYERS CANNOT DEDUCT THE COST OF EMPLOYEES when calculating taxes. I mean, who comes up with such a brain dead concept? It's been in Michigan for decades and the last governor was in the process of eliminating it entirely when Granholm came in and reversed the policy in the name of balancing the budget (as opposed to say cutting some of the spending).

Despite Michigan's rotten economy, Granholm still has a lead.  Michigan's economy has no affect on a technology company like ours. 

The 40 or so Michigan jobs we provide are no thanks to Granholm. In fact, if Granholm has been elected 4 years sooner, there'd be no company at all.  In the mid 1990s, we had to transition from OS/2 to Windows. As a technology company, we had a hard time securing credit lines. But the state had a program for small businesses that allowed them to borrow money from banks and the state would garauntee the loan. One of the first things Granholm did when elected was eliminate the program -- because (shockingly) many companies actually do go out of business and default on such loans.  But so what? The money spent there still went to create Michigan jobs that were taxed, that's a lot better than just handing out money to individuals who aren't producing anything in the form of welfare.

Granholm, while a nice person and I think is truly trying to do what she thinks is right, has no business being governor of a state -- any state. Her understanding of market economics is just too weak based on her actions.

If Devos does end up losing, I'll be sure to ask any of my friends or neighbors whose job just got eliminated (Ford just announced cutting 39,000 jobs a couple of weeks ago -- mostly from Michigan), who they voted for. If they say Granholm, it would certainly affect my sympathy level.  You get the government you want.