Windows Vista is Microsoft's long-awaited sequel to its most successful operating system of all time -- Windows XP.  Released 5 years ago, Windows XP is really a tough act to follow. It delivered on the promise of Windows NT based technology in a mainstream form.

Windows XP, in hindsight, was about 3 things:

1. Delivering a mainstream operating system that was based on the NT code-base instead of the ancient Windows 9x/DOS legacy. This enabled developers to create far more powerful applications because the OS was far more robust.
2. The bundling of a myriad of minor tools that we take for granted today such as Instant Messenger, Compressed Folders, Remote Desktop, Windows Movie Movie Maker, etc.
3. A friendlier environment than Windows 2000/98.

(a full list of features can be found Here). So what is the big deal about Windows Vista? Well here's my best guess at what the bullet items will be looking back:

1. More Secure.
2. New underlying architectures (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET part of the OS).
3. Cleaner user experience.
4. Desktop is a 3D surface allowing for applications on the desktop to use 3D acceleration to do visually interesting things.

The purpose of these blogs along with the site VistaBlogging.com is to provide a place for users to discuss their Windows Vista experience, suggestions, etc.

We have created a new site called http://www.VistaBlogging.com where articles on the subject of Vista (and forum posts) will automatically get syndicated.  You can use JoeUser.com or Wincustomize.com (create a free account) to create an article that is of the type Personal Computing->Windows Vista and upon faster moderation it will show up on VistaBlogging.com.

The 3rd bi-annual GUI Championships is about to start. The website is open and the events announced.

WindowBlinds skins, IconPackager themes, and wallpapers are the categories with over $12,000 in cash and prizes in the pipeline.

Visit www.guichamps.com to learn more..

Welcome to the third bi-annual GUI Championship contest.  The previous two times we were called the GUI Olympics but for trademark purposes we have renamed it to GUI Championships.  For the past 6 years, leading graphics designers from around the world have come to this specially created site to compete for thousands of dollars in cash and prizes and to show off their skills.  Many past winners have gone on to create user interface designs that have been used by such companies as Alienware, Warner Brothers, Nintendo, Microsoft, Blizzard, and countless others.

When the first contest began, it was put together by a handful of relatively new sites that were emerging as leaders of their particular niche.  Those sites included deviantART.com, Neowin.net, Betanews.com, WinCustomize.com, and Lockergnome.com.  Today, those sites have grown to receive millions of visitors per day and have become highly influential not just in a niche but for the entire technology industry in their own way.  Despite their success, they come together once again to help bring to you this inter-website contest.

This year's GUI Championship will have 3 categories that will provide a challenge to graphics designers of all kind. The first category is the WindowBlinds skinning competition. WindowBlinds is a program that can apply user interface designs created by anyone. It is flexible enough that users can move buttons, change border sizes, etc.  This gives designers the opportunity to present their own visions on how the desktop user interface might look like.  The second category is icon packages.  Icon designers will compete to put together their own alternative set of icons for Windows. Using the icon design tools of their choice and packaged together with IconPackager, designers can display how they think the OS icons could look. The last event is a bit more light hearted -- wallpapers. What makes a good wallpaper? Almost anyone can create one but it takes true skill to create an image that one would use as their background. 

A panel of 5 judges will then select the top, second, and third in areas of most original, most usable, and best overall.  Users of this site will be able to vote on skins themselves to help us narrow down the most promising entries.  The winners will receive a share of the over $12,000 in cash and prizes including Xbox 360s, software, and some special high end prizes that we will be announcing in the coming days.

Good luck to all and if you have any questions, please comment here.

Stardock is proud to announce the release of Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords v1.3.  The new update has hundreds of new tweaks, features, and other enhancements to the existing game based on player feedback.  We've updated the computer AI, we've made changes to game mechanics based on player requests, we've made some enhancements to the user interface and we improved some of the planet graphics.  But overall, what we have tried to do is go through the mountains of suggestions people have given us over the last few months and found ways to implement as many of them as possible.  Unlike 1.2 and 1.1, this new version isn't so much about a handful of major features but rather dozens and dozens of tiny changes that we think when combined help make the game even more fun for players.

Galactic Civilizations II is at most retail stores in North America and Europe so if you don't already have it, you should be able to get it locally.  You can also purchase it directly from GalCiv2.com via TotalGaming.net and download the entire game while your box is shipped to you.

We hope you find this new version to be as fun to play as we had making it.  We've had a good time going through and making some of these changes and finding how even the smallest tweaks to game balance can add new dimensions to game play. You can download the update either in the Downloads section here or from Stardock Central (which enables users to re-download the entire game no matter where purchased even years from now).

You can read all the new features here: Change log.

 

This new version of Galactic Civilizations II is dedicated to PC gamers everywhere who have ever bought a game, really liked it but after some months of play had put together a list of things they wish were tweaked or altered but knew would never be because the developer had long since stopped making new updates.

Galactic Civilizations II v1.3, like our other updates, is designed to add new features and make changes based on player feedback. While there are "bugs" fixed, many of them are ones we introduced during our own beta process.   Our goal was to do an update that went through and tweaked and changed those little things that would help make the game more enjoyable and give it new life.

Here's what is new over v1.2:

+ AI will play harder in campaign at lower levels (AI was designed to be somewhat nerfed on the early missions of the campaign to give players a gentle introduction.

+ Various improvements to the Terran Alliance and Arcean AIs.

+ Made some tweaks to show ships are designed such that even if they prefer to build ships with a particular weapon system, they will also bear in mind what types of weapons they have already researched (i.e. they may WANT to put beam weapons but if they only have Laser I but have Black Hole Generators for mass drivers it'll still build Black Hole Generators on their ships rather than just tossing a bunch of lasers on a ship simply because they prefer beam weapons at that point. It did this before but now it has a better algorithm)

+ CPU for AI algorithm option enables AI ships to be re-designed twice as often.

+ Terran Alliance based AI players will put early priority on factories as the first thing to build rather than star port.

+ AI players will not go to war for military reasons unless they have enough military forces to deal some immediate pain.

+ Colony lights on dark side significantly enhanced. Now based on population and uses a smart algorithm to fit the land masses. There's a ton of changes associated with this, it's probably overkill but it's been on our list for awhile to make the city lights on planets look better.

 + NEW! Diagonal Edge scrolling for those who prefer to use edge scrolling instead of using the left mouse button to grab the screen and move it.


 + fixed intelligences displaying incorrect value on Foreign Stats screen

 + fixed beta 1 bug where fleets would not have an icon in the stacked ships list

 +  fixed beta 1 crash in moon graphics code

 + fixed bug where freighters would in some cases revert to normal size after an ALT+TAB (very weird behavior)

 +  Updated AI so that it won't launch a transport with too few troops on it.

 +  changed behavior of fleet battles such that if fleet was in a battle and survived with one ship, the moves left for that ship would be not the expected number

 +  tweaked UI to support tech centering on selected technology when the tech tree was maximized and a new technology was completed

 +  listbox scrollbars support maximum entries.

 +  tweaked regional settings that was causing the messed up planet surfaces, missing components on ships, etc.

 +  improved keyboard entry for non English characters

  +  fixed beta 1 memory bug caused by loading save games (save games saved with 1.3 beta 1 cannot be fixed and you should delete them)

 +  the tech dialog that is brought up by right clicking on a tech in the trade screen or in the maximized tech tree viewer will now accurately list techs that become available when researching the selected tech. Also, the headers in this dialog will now only show up if they have something

 +  fixed random crash when starting/loading new game from within a game

 +  planet and ship list entries are no longer created as the planets and ships are restored from the save game

 + Made it so that if you played as one race and then started a new game as a new race, the previous race did not have the expected intelligence.

+ Changes in values to planetary improvements and starbase modules

+ Starting population now 8 billion on the home planet

+ Morale on home planet gets a 20% bonus

+ fixed first turn after load zero production behavior!

+ AI better at managing colonies

+ More difficulty levels: Dunce at the lower end, Godlike and Ultimate at the higher end.

+ AI intelligence levels above and below "Intelligent" adjusted in difficulty (so i.e. Normal will be tougher than it was because there's a new easier difficulty level and Incredible will be easier because there's two higher difficulty levels).

+ The overall difficulty levels have now bee tweaked to have a 1 to 1 relationshipo with the AI intelligence levels so "Challenging" means all AI intelligences set to "Bright" rather than a weighted overall value. Many higher level players would find that they set the difficultly level to Crippling only to find that 2 or 3 of the players would be set to "Fool" (and do very little) while the others played very well.

+ Difficulty setup screen tweaked to work better.

+ changed size of TriStrontium so that it's bigger than TriStrontium2; previously the definitions were identical.

+ fixed error in translation code for raceconfig (homeworld)

+ fixed error in translation code for UP issues.

+ fixed bug that reset the cheater's flag, allowing cheater games to be submitted normally.

+ fixed some exploits in raceconfigs for metaverse games

+ fixed missing image in Rename Ship dialog

+ fixed error in AbilitiesBonus.xml file that didn't show 20% bonus to Loyalty

+ reduced the Custom Race's default value of Loyalty to 15% so that it would not cause negative ability points

+ added code to clear the planet/shiplist between games so that it wouldn't keep old pointers (should prevent a memory leak and potential crashes due to bad pointers)

+ made it so that you can select a race by clicking on its icon on the Foreign Treaties screen

+ made it so that the seleted planet or ship in the planet/ship list is saved so that changing the sort variable or filters will still keep the selection.

+ added code to let you right click on a tech to bring up the tech description dialog when the tech tree window is maximized

+ fixed error where fleets of ships could still attack freighters protected by galactic privateer

+ Reversed direction of the moon revolution (yes, Earth's moon now rotates around the Earth the right way)

+ added a check in the Direct 3D code for vertex and pixel shader versions

+ added code to make foreign policy window try to select a non-dead civ

+ made sure that the civ manager only has to parse the entry definitions once

+ made planet screens refresh after removing or adding troops

+ fixed numerous typos and spelling errors in various files

+ changed it so that the difficulty on the OpponentWnd slider changes all of the selected races' intelligences

+ changed it so that when you enable a race, it automatically sets its intelligence to be at the level of the difficulty

+ Fixed bug where lines on Treaties screen would point off-screen if you were a custom race playing against 10 enemies

+ D and T buttons will now toggle the details and rally point screens on/off instead of queuing up multiple instances of them

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed

+ When running in full screen mode (Release build), the mouse will be clipped to the game window to prevent accidentally clicking outside of the window.  You can still use ALT+TAB to activate other windows.

+ added function IsProtectedMiniFreighter to check for valid target

+ added code to clear selected rallypoint from minimap to prevent crashing when the rallypoint is deleted

+ added code to clear rallypoint destination when rallypoint is destroyed

+ Added a debug assert if the required technology for a ship type is not found

+ Fixed bug where ships on auto-explore that were put in a planet would immediately start auto-exploring once launched from the planet

+ Fixed a graphical bug where if you had 1 ship with moves and it attacked a planet with a fleet manager, the fleet would remain on top of the planet if the attacking ship was killed.

+ fixed memory leak caused by too many references to ship design listbox entries

+ fixed possible crash when saving std::strings in save game

+ cleaned up code in PropertyBucket class to make it more efficient.

+ Fixed a crash in the scene graph

+ Added ref counts to scene nodes in battle processes to prevent “random battle crashes”

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed  

+ AI will tend to try to "finish off" its enemies

+ Changed difficulty to be based on the AVERAGE AI intelligence rather than the highest AI intelligence

+ Torian AI significantly altered in what it builds on planets.

+ Torian AI will raise taxes as long as morale is high

+ Terran Alliance AI will lease less often (stunted early growth)

+ Drengin will build more scouts to expand faster

+ All AI will tend to mobilize for war now BEFORE going to war (i.e.  start to send ships near the border rather than declare war and have months of phoney war. We have ideas on making it even better in the future.).

+ Starbase modules give more boost earlier and less later as you add modules

+ Fixed weird issue where AI would turn off social production between projects and then the AI would see that it has no social production and would then pick the cheapest (rather than the most appropriate) improvement to build which (wait for it) would tend to be economic improvements.

+ Morale ability has more diminishing returns at the high end. It still is powerful but a 200% morale ability is not twice as good as a 100% morale ability.

+ Integrated concepts from other AI personalities into Terran Alliance personality

+ Fixed several crash bugs we added during the betas.

+ Fixed some typos

+ Fixed beta bug where new city lights took away clouds

+ Some additional text polishing

+ Changed some of the planetary improvement values and costs

+ Tweaked some of the values in starbase modules

+ made entry field selection show up

+ added tech report to trade screen

+ Tweaked text and dialog in teh campaign and in some scenarios

+ fixed save games not showing up in save game window if there were other files with the same extension.

+ Custom window sizes work now

+ fixed error where mod subfolders PlanetDescriptions and TerrainColorScheme didn't work

+ fixed error where Terrain query images + ship component thumbnails did not show up even if they were in the correct mod subfolder

+ Tweaked the minimap where it didn't draw all of the ZOC

+ fixed destination cursors not being visible after loading save game

+ added checks to make sure that dead civs are ignored in the UP

+ Added strings for moralists event

+ fixed typo in Singularity Driver IV's name

+ Removed redunant use of short civ name in battle messages in GNN

+ changed FindShipInSensorRange to use a predicate function

+ Sentry/Guard should work better now

+ Made it so that clicking on a ship will not cancel guard/sentry

+ changed it so that the ship list does not do a full update so often (should help move times)

+ added option to not prompt to pay cost of a module if you have enough money in your treasury

+ Changed missing turn button if a rallypoint is on an uninhabitable or uncolonized planet

+ fixed bug where there was a 1 turn delay before ships would calc a new path after swapping rallypoint destinations from the governor

+ fixed bug with trade screen where dialogs did not hide when switching civs

+ fixed government bonus strings so that they now show the bonuses as implemented.

+ updated ship designs that wasn't using correct ranges

+ Re-did UI so that where clicking on the minimap couldn't accidently click on the find or turn buttons

+ Updated calculation of alliance victory status string

+ tweaked locale code so that it doesn't change so much, which should fix some performance issues and some crashes.  Have verification that display and entry of German characters is working, but would like confirmation from other languages also.

+ Changed auto-attack behavior; When a ship is set on auto-attack, it will attempt to find a nearby ship belonging to a civ it is at war with. If it can't find a ship that is not hidden by fow, it will cancel auto-attack to avoid causing the missing turn button bug.  To avoid slowdown, it does not attempt to pick the 'best' target, it just picks the first valid target it finds. 

+ added additional debug messages to activation code

+ Updated screen on OpponentWnd where the civ name was not using the displayname field.

+ made rallypoint wnd sort rallypoint names alphabetically

+ Terran Alliance should now start with the correct intelligence

+ Addressed playability issue where the last non-custom race you played would be loaded when going to customize the custom race (You may get this the first time before you load the correct custom race config or clear the LastRace string under CustomRace in the Prefs.ini file)

+ Changed Ctrl+B where hitting CTRL+N when playing a Custom Race started a new game using the default Custom Race config

+ Fixed bug where planet quality and number of tiles did not match after choosing Neutral alignment

+ Updated Invasion behavior to avoid invading a planet with a planetary bonus multiple times would cause more tiles to become available every invasion

+ Added tool tip on planet screen

+ Fixed bug where info icons would appear jumbled together at the top of the screen if there were too many.  Now, new icons will fall as soon as the existing icons have been cleared.

+ Improved the graphics management system for better compatibility

+ Dead Civs no longer show up with voting power. We realize not counting dead people in voting makes game less realistic... JK.

+ Fixed "Specialized Ships" stat on Foreign Stats/Military page to show correct number of ships

+ Tweaked where starport icons on planets on main map were not updated after using the Civ Manager Governor to change what starports were building

+ Changed behavior where first turn after loading a saved game would show a dip in the manufacturing history graph

+ Updated Combat viewer to change where ship icons in combat viewer did not show the correct amount of damage if the civ had HP bonuses

+ Fixed an API that made the AI like you more than they should

+ Syncronized relations code that caused the AI and Human player relations to be out of sync

+ Hooked planet data to economic engine. Where planet data wasn't refreshing after changing spending sliders

+ Updated UI structs where intelligences were reset without updating difficulty level if you went back to a previous screen

+ Made decomission of planetary improvements never take more than 1 turn.

+ added code to make sure that decomission 'improvements' can't be built on empty or non-functional tiles

+ Our system now suppports tab keysin entry fields

+ added dialog to warn if you're using an invalid race config when playing a metaverse game

+ fixed bug where starting a new game after having started/loaded a game and left the ship list open causes a crash or empty game screen

+ added code to delete shipcfgs from My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\ships (or metaverse\ships) folder that do not have an xml file.  This will help keep the folder clean and cut down on save game sizes (and time to save/load)

+ rallypoints will no longer show up in the stacked ship context area, since they now show up in the context area in the bottom left corner of the main screen interface

+ Fixed bug where sometimes, after an alt-tab, freighter ships would not appear to be the correct size.

+ Fixed bug where planet quality penalties were applied in the case of an invasion that ended in a draw

+ fixed crash on foreign report if no race has any ships

+ fixed bug that didn't read in modded conversations or flavor text

+ fixed bug where last custom race wasn't loaded

+ Tweaked it so that tooltips will now show up for the lower row of ships in the Ships in Orbit

+ fixed it so that if you select a ship in the Ships In Orbit area, it will deselect the previous one, even if it's in another row.

+ SizeMods now use only the base capacity of the hull, not the max capacity (the capacity after miniturization is applied)

+ Made changes to font manager to fix the slow-down on foreign language systems.

+ Added option to disable city lights on the dark side of planets

+ fleet upgrade overlays always update properly

+ Tweaked ship weapons/defenses

+ Tweaked more planetary improvements

+ Changed the way planetary invasions penalties work when a draw (extremely rare)

Hope you like! Here are some new screenshots...

 

  

 

 

 

Introduction

For thousands of years the Drengin Empire and the Torian Confederation have battled over this corner of the galaxy. This small parsec, measuring a mere 4 by 4 sectors,  has been home to the Drengin and Torians along with several other galactic players for some time now.  But on the Planet Aeon, a new power was emerging.  The Galactic Coalition was looking to make their own mark in the galaxy.  Led by Gil Sanders, The Galactic Coalition had ambitions far beyond their capital world. The year is 2225 and this is their story.

And so it begins...

The Galactic Coalition was quick to expand their sphere of influence. By June of 2225, they had colonized 6 planets. Aeon was still the most populous planet with a population of 4.5 billion citizens but they had also founded the planet of Martzia III, a class 12 planet that showed real promise.

Meanwhile, the Drengin Empire had expanded to 5 worlds while the Torian Confederation had taken 5 themselves.  The Drengin Empire had a total population of 9.2 billion people while the Torian Confederation had a population of 11.2 billion. By contrast, the Galactic Coalition had a population of 10.3 billion.  The population differences could probably be explained somewhat by the differences in morale. The leading civilization, the Drengin Empire, had a morale of 72%.  This could probably be explained by their tax rate of 52%. The Galactic Coalition had a tax rate of 59% which resulted in an approval rating average of 68%.

By the end of 2225, only 2 planets were left to be colonized.  The most powerful civilization in the parsec, the Drengin Empire, now had 8 worlds. Their military might was 0.  The Galactic Coalition was at peace. They looked towards a bright future.

Darkness Rising

The war that eventually enveloped the galaxy in fire started when the Drengin Empire declared war on the Torian Confederation in May of 2226. The Drengin Empire had 1.4X the military might of the Torians and had built 10 of their new "M1-HeavyFighter" which they called the Kortak'Ra.  The fighter was equipped with 2 Laser-II canons for an attack rating of 2 with a defense rating of 0.  The Torian Confederation had only 8 ships with attack power. The battle was on.

It was in early 2227 when the Galactic Coalition joined the war.  The Drengin Empire had been slowly grinding down the Torian Confederation.  The Torian high point was when they had 7 worlds. Now they only had 5 worlds while the Drengin Empire had 12 worlds now. 

The Galactic Coalition's most numerous military platform was the F-2 Thunder heavy fighter. Armed with the Vulacani Ltd. Railgun Mark IV, the ship packed the punch rating of 8 while its total defense was rated at 0.  The Galactic Coalition had assembled a fleet of 4 ships and sent them into battle (screenshot).

(Screenshot of the F-2 with specs).

Obliteration

By the end of 2227, the parsec was in flames. The Galactic Coalition was the leading civilization now overall. Its military was ranked #1 and its technology rating was #1 and its science rating was #1. It was at war with the Drengin Empire who had a military rating of 90 (the ratings are like IQ's, 100 is normal, above is good, below is bad).  The Galactic Coalition had a military rating of 150. The Drengin Empire was losing its war to the Galactic Coalition. Where the Drengin Empire once had a military might that was 1.12X that of the Galactic Coalition, it now had one that was only 0.56X of the Galactic Coalition.

The Galactic Coalition had successfully invaded Kwilas II which had been owned by the Drengin Empire in May of 2227. The situation for the Drengin Empire was starting to look grim.

The Drengin had designed the M2-Frigate which they called the "Vel'Ka" which was equipped with deadly plasma weapons and had Titanium armor for an attack rating of 12 and a defense rating of 4. (screenshot of the M2-Frigate with specs).

The Galactic Coalition countered this was the construction of a new and more powerful heavy fighter called the F-10 Death Hawk. Equipped with Heberling Singularity Drivers Mark III,  each of the 15 constructed F-10 Death Hawks had an attack rating of 10 and a defense rating of 0.  The Drengin Empire only had 3 of the M2-Frigate ships.

The Drengin Empire made peace with the Torian Confederation in November of 2227. The Galactic Coalition continued to steamroll over the Drengin Empire throughout the year until the Drengin Empire surrendered (screenshot) their forces to the Galactic Coalition. The war, was over.

End Game

The Galactic Coalition and the Torian Confederation enjoyed trade to the amount of 45bc per week. This trade combined with the military might of the Galactic Coalition and a general agreement on moral philosophy (The Galactic Coalition was a morally Neutral/Good civilization and the Torain Federation was a morally Neutral/Good civilization) led to them having close relations. 

In 2229, the Torian Confederation accepted an offer of Alliance with the Galactic Coalition creating a united parsec.

Conclusions

Gil Sanders who led the Industrialists on Aeon had much to celebrate. The parsec was now united under a political alliance. Their military was ranked #1, their economy was ranked #1, their research was ranked #1, and their approval was ranked #2. It was good times for the Galactic Coalition.  The F-10 Death Hawk had served the galaxy was and Fleet101, which consisted mostly of F-10 Death Hawks had helped make the galaxy safe for those who were Neutral/Good.

In the end, the Galactic Coalition was recorded in history as a civilization that generated a total of 11,101 points. Their opponents were Challenging and with a total population of 31.3 billion the Galactic Coalition was now a force in the galaxy to be reckoned with.

Over the past few days we've been cleaning up things in preparation for the 1.3 release.

+ AI will play harder in campaign at lower levels (AI was designed to be somewhat nerfed on the early missions of the campaign to give players a gentle introduction.

+ Various improvements to the Terran Alliance and Arcean AIs.

+ Made some tweaks to show ships are designed such that even if they prefer to build ships with a particular weapon system, they will also bear in mind what types of weapons they have already researched (i.e. they may WANT to put beam weapons but if they only have Laser I but have Black Hole Generators for mass drivers it'll still build Black Hole Generators on their ships rather than just tossing a bunch of lasers on a ship simply because they prefer beam weapons at that point. It did this before but now it has a better algorithm)

+ CPU for AI algorithm option enables AI ships to be re-designed twice as often.

+ Terran Alliance based AI players will put early priority on factories as the first thing to build rather than star port.

+ AI players will not go to war for military reasons unless they have enough military forces to deal some immediate pain.

+ Lots of little AI tweaks

+ Changes in values to planetary improvements and starbase modules

+ Starting population now 8 billion on the home planet

+ Morale on home planet gets a 20% bonus

+ AI will tend to try to "finish off" its enemies

+ Changed difficulty to be based on the AVERAGE AI intelligence rather than the highest AI intelligence

+ Torian AI significantly altered in what it builds on planets.

+ Torian AI will raise taxes as long as morale is high

+ Terran Alliance AI will lease less often (stunted early growth)

+ Drengin will build more scouts to expand faster

+ All AI will tend to mobilize for war now BEFORE going to war (i.e.  start to send ships near the border rather than declare war and have months of phoney war. We have ideas on making it even better in the future.).

+ Starbase modules give more boost earlier and less later as you add modules

+ Fixed weird issue where AI would turn off social production between projects and then the AI would see that it has no social production and would then pick the cheapest (rather than the most appropriate) improvement to build which (wait for it) would tend to be economic improvements.

+ Morale ability has more diminishing returns at the high end. It still is powerful but a 200% morale ability is not twice as good as a 100% morale ability.

+ Integrated concepts from other AI personalities into Terran Alliance personality

+ Fixed several crash bugs we added during the betas.

+ Fixed some typos

+ Fixed beta bug where new city lights took away clouds

+ Some additional text polishing

A lot of this boils down to fixing bugs we've added during the betas, polishing areas, and in my case balancing things to go with some of the changes we've made.  I also spent some time on the AI that I hope people will notice.

I still have some major complaints with the AI.  the funny thing about writing "smart AI" is that you often run into three different issues: a) Knowing the strategy Convert the strategy into code and c) Making sure that the strategy actually works.

It's item C that is the most frustrating at times. You'll see the AI do something incredibly stupid that you have code in there explicitly to keep it from doing that.  Case in point, I had a mega fleet that I created (cheat codes) and the AI just bounced endless weaker fleets off of it. I have code that is SUPPOSED to make a reasonable guess whether it can win or at least soften up a given target. If it's hopeless, it should back off.  Yet I saw the Arceans waste half their military banging into this invincible fleet.  Another one that kills me is that the AI is SUPPOSED to mobilize for war.  When their relations with someone start to go down, they're supposed to start moving ships and fleets near the border so that when they go to war, they're organized.  Instead, I'll see the AI declare war and nothing happen for many game turns. Naturally, any time I go to debug it, THEN it works.  Which is how many of these problems go - they sometimes do work as designed but often won't work at all.

One complaint that I addressed last night was the nerfing of the AI in campaigns.  The AI is really dumb in the first several missions of the campaign.  But it ended up being TOO dumb.  At higher difficulty levels, it shoudl start to get smarter.  Subtlety is often hard to code in.

The amount of time it takes to debug tactical based military moves is what really causes the most pain. But it's something that is the most rewarding but takes the longest to test.  The AI in GalCiv 1 was horrible at actually fighting wars. You ended up with a death train.  This time around, the AI is much better, focusing its military. But I still see it do things like leave an undefended planet (one it just wiped out the defenses for) before the transport arrives.  Another I saw but couldn't figure out how it happened was Arcean over-construction of freighters even though the code explicitly says IF # of TradeRoutes is >= NumberAllowed then don't build any freighters.

You might be surprised how often changing a number makes something like starbase building go from not building any starbases to building hundreds evne though the changes would imply only a slight change.  Such is the nature of AI development.

S1Genocide feels that Dark Avatar is more like a mod than an expansion:

Dark Avatar is looking more like a Mod then an expansion pack. No Multiplayer No Tactical Combat No Planetary Bombardment No New Governments No New political Partys No Terror Stars Only one new race and your removing (Killing them off) 1 or 2? Why should we get this expansion again? The only things good in it are Planetary Enviroments & Spying. You guys really need to get on the ball and add some better things to the expansion. I told you guys I wanted a Civ3 PTW type Expansion. This is a Mod not an expansion. And as it is right now I'm not buying it. What the Expansion should have been: Multiplayer Tactical Combat 4 New Evil Governments 4 New Evil political Partys (At Least) 4 New Races while keeping all of the originals. Terror Stars Planetary Enviroments New Spy System New Civ3 type diplomacy options. (what would you trade for....)

We all have our opinions of what an expansion is but I think Dark Avatar is pretty far from a mod.  A mod is something a third party could create. 

Let me give my own biased two cents on how this:

Most expansion packs simply add more content.  Civ IV's expansion added new maps, scenarios, units, and races.

Our expansion does the same thing -- new races, maps, scenarios, and units (ship pieces).

But we are also changing the game play in a pretty radical way that I think will make the game a LOT more fun.  For example -- Planet environments.  This changes the game in pretty significant ways.  First off, the entire colonization phase never truly ends because you can't colonize half the worlds right away. You have to research expensive techs that are unrelated to get to them.

Secondly, the asteroid fields create terrain and opportunities for exploitation that simply aren't in the game presently.

Thirdly, the custom opponents is something that I think users will really like. Now you can put together your own races to play against, decide what they're like and play them. From a longevity point of view, this is a big deal.

Fourth, the Espionage units are a BIIIG deal. These units add an entirely new option for players to try to win the game. The ability to spend money to cripple your opponents gives players a new tool.  Right now, you basically can conquer them with ships or buy their love or try to influence them. In Dark Avatar, your agents can nulify infrastructure, cripple economies, destroy morale. You can bring someone down from within.

The new diplomatic treaties give players more options to build relations with particular players and try to create more alliances within the game.

The AARs (after action reports) people seem to love and now anyone can partiicipate to a degree with the Epic generator creating unique stories of their games.

So I can't see how anyone could argue this is like a "mod".  I'd argue that Dark Avatar is an expansion + half-sequel rolled into one.

Our last poll asked people how they liked the update system we use with Galactic Civilizations II.  Our position on CD copy protection is pretty well known as this point -- we don't use it.

We just don't want people to have to keep a CD in the drive to use the game. Once it's installed on their home computers, players should not have to worry where any physical medium is.

On the other hand, to get the free updates, players do have to type in their serial #. This allows us to have much more expansive product updates because we can change all the files in the game if we want without significant fear that someone is going to combine it with a demo or even be able to play the game purely on the updates (if one looks at 1.0 to 1.3, nearly every major game file has been changed).

The serial # then talks to our server which knows which serial #s have been issued and creates an account for the user. The user can then not only download updates but re-download the entire game. So even if you lose your serial # AND the CD years from now, you can still come on and re-download the entire game with the account it created (when you use Stardock Central, your Stardock.net account knows all the products you've purchased so you don't have to type in serial #s again).

In the poll, 83% of users like the system. 17% of users did not.  Some users don't like having to type in a serial #. Others don't like having to use the Internet to register the product to get updates. That's understandable, there's trade-offs with any system. 

The next poll is a follow-up to the previous multiplayer poll.  Stardock does, however, plan to create an expansion pack sometime mid next year to GalCiv II that includes multiplayer depending on how well Dark Avatar sells (pricing would be about the same as Dark Avatar and it would have lots of other features as well to make sure it appeals to a wide spectrum).

For testing the release candidates of GalCiv II 1.3 I've been playing all kinds of different sizes and scenarios.  In the process, I've been making tweaks and enhancements to the computer AI, uncovering mild logic bugs in my code and adding new abilities to try to keep the AI evolving as players evolve.  If you play at the lower intelligence levels, you won't see much difference but at the higher levels, players will likely see a significant change in the computer players with the final 1.3.

1.3 has a lot more re-balancing in it than previous versions.  Over the last several months, based on player feedback, we've made adjustments to how the game plays to improve the player experience.  But this has made some fundamental alterations of how the mechanics work that are sometimes subtle.  For instance, with 1.1, we made it so that you could only have 4 starbases in a sector. This change hasn't been really reflected in how we balance the starbase modules.  In 1.3, rather than starbase modules becoming increasingly more powerful (to encourage fewer but more powerful starbases) we now have a system where we know players won't build more than X starbases per sector so we could re-evaluate the numbers for the starbase modules in a way that we think will make the game more fun (it's certainly made it more enjoyable for me).  For example, building a starbase factory assist module no longer pumps out a piddly 2% improvement. Instead it does 5%.  But at the same time, the higher end factories aren't nearly as powerful.  But the important thing is that early game you can start to get an early boost.

What you're going to see is not going to be a complete game because it's being played on a Gigantic galaxy.  Instead, the goal is to watch how well the computer players play and see if they're doing things more intelligently now.

So what does "Allow AI to use CPU-Intensive algorithms" do?  Basically it allows the AI to design new ships more often and allows it to do some predictive branch analysis on what will happen in future turns. Does it make a huge difference in difficulty? Hard to say. It will mean more in Dark Avatar when I start to put in a lot more AI work. But I think it probably does make a mild difference. It doesn't affect Metaverse scores either way (so if you're really into maxing your score, you don't need to use it).

Here's an area that I did make a change today. It wasn't a bug fix per se but it might as well be one given how unintuitive the behavior was. The difficulty level was based on the intelligence level of smartest player.  So you could play a "suicidal" game where 1 player was really smart and the rest were set to completely brain dead. Then, once in, just set the galaxy so that the really smart one was in an isolated pocket while you fed on the easy players, then mop up.  One wonders how many "suicidal" games were done that way.  No more.  Now it's based on the average of the intelligences.

In this test game, I'm going to see how the Drengin, the Terran Alliance, the Altarians and the Torains do.  These are the 4 main AI personalities. The other players have derivative AIs (i.e. subclasses) of these 4. It's also why it drives me nuts when someone says "The AI did X" since it usually tells me nothing since there's literally 4 independent  (and even the others have their own code)  AIs in the game.  They ain't going to do the same thing. When I wrote them, I intentionally wrote them with very different algorithms. They may do similar things but not because the code's the same. 

It's a large galaxy after all...

Tight clusters, very large galaxy. I'm going to be cheating the whole game using the debugger so I can see everything they're doing at all times.

Opening Moves

The Drengin cranked out a factory and started a second one along with a scout and then started on a constructor since there's nothing good nearby (the constructor could be used to extend the range for the Drengin).

The Torians built a lab. Not what I would do but..

The Altarians have power built. On turn 3, they've got 2 factories and a research lab.  I'm looking into why they have 0 social spending right now.

The humans fast-buit a factory and then started on a second factory. They fast-built a scout and are now building a constructor.

As for me...

I fast-build a factory and a lab and start on a factory while building a constructor and a colony ship.

Watching the AI blindly send out scouts to see if it can find planets to colonize.

Turn 25

By turn 25, the AI has done a pretty good job on its home planets. Playing at "tough".

The Terran Alliance

The Torians

The Altarians

The Drengin

and for comparison -- me:

Their choices, other than the Drengin who built an Embassy, are similar to mine. I'm making a tad bit more money than they are but the Altarians are doing the best overall.

Me vs. Top players.  The Torians building that manufacturing planet really helped things as you can see.

End of first year

At the end of the first year each side is on its own unique strategy. Let's start with the Torians.

A pretty boring home planet but pretty effective. They could be making more money if they moved their taxes further up.

The Altarians have the right idea. This is probably the best home world right now overall. The Altarians don't get a second starting planet but they're doing well with the class 12 they get.

The Drengin are doing pretty well too. The embassy was an odd thing but still pretty impressive. They could stand to raise taxes further.

I have mixed feelings about the Terran Alliance.  They have their taxes up and are making some good money but they're clearly out of money. They could also stand to focus more on colonizing or else they'll lose some real opportunities.

 

And for comparison. I think it's safe to say that in terms of home planets, I'm doing the best. I have the highest income of any of them right now. Of course, I also made some different set up choices to have better morale.  The challenge is always translating "duh" strategies into a fast algorithm that doesn't do "stupid" things in other circumstances.

I'm doing pretty well overall.

End of Year 2

By the end of the second year, I'm doing pretty well. (gray line).

The Terran Alliance AI is clearly the weakest at this piont. It had the best starting position and is still blowing it.  So I'm looking into that.

Now I'm going to sit back awhile and see how the players handle themselves. Warfare should be particularly interesting because a good portion of my weekend went into making the AI more effective at waging war at higher levels. So in theory, they should be better at effectively wiping each other out.

Much later

By 2231, the Drengin are long gone.

The Terran Alliance have a small niche and the Altarains have their own corner of the galaxy. They all have friendly relations with each other at this point though the Torians could easily crush the humans.

Doing some analysis on what the AI has done..

While the Torians are dominating, I'm disappointed in a couple of the things they did.  First, while they are making a lot of money, they could be making a lot more. Their tax rate is lower than it could be. And they have a planet that they're not doing anything on. Why is that? (turns out they were just between turns).

Moreover, no starbases. I shouldn't say no starbases but very few. Resources are maxed out but there are very few economic starbases around. That's silly. With such a powerful military, the Torians should be shoring up their production.

I am generally satisfied with the AI's handling of their planets, however. While they may make a few different decisions, the overall results are pretty good.