We plan to release 1.1 this week which means between tomorrow and Sunday.

Note to gamers: BETA means it's going to be buggy. I played a long game tonight and it was quite buggy. Hopefully we'll get them straightened out tomorrow. Most of the bugs revolve around the auto pilot line drawing so we may just take that out for the beta and keep working on it. It wasn't a hugely requested option anyway.

The New options:

People are going to like those. But realistically, I find the game lacking without tech trading. I've spent a week playing with it and without trading tech, you really lose something.  I rewrote how the AI trades tech so that it's pickier with each other but at least people have the option.  Don't get me wrong, it is a nice change of pace.

I actually MUCH more like the blind exploration feature. This is where you can't see the other players in the game with the influence mini-map option until you've explored the territory they're in.

The two new features here totally rock and I think if we added nothing else to 1.1, would be the most significant in terms of expanding the replayability. You now have the option to simply select N players and have it pick them out. The randomize intelligence lets you pick a overall difficulty and the game will randomize up the intelligence to fit that so that some civs are smarter than others.

But THIS BELOW will almost certainly be the most popular new feature:

Way m ore space to design your ships, rotateable parts, able to hide parts, it's just much better overall. You can even go back and rotate/resize after something's been placed.

This is the auto pilot line feature. It's pretty cool and very useful in large maps. It's a bit buggy right now though. I'm sure they'll get it fixed soon.

You can now tell what area of effect a starbase will have before you build it.

See how you only see their influence based on what you've explored. So you can't easily tell how vast someone's empire is. The fun factor of this is much higher than I thought it would be.

There's a ton of other features, we'll have a full log of it before we go up.

More review have come in!

The first one is from Gamer's Temple. I've long been a reader of Gamer's Temple. It's a great site.

From the review:

The game also boasts the best ship editor ever to appear in a strategy game. Of course you can select which engines, weapons, and systems go into each ship class, but beyond that you can see each component visibly and select where you want to attach it to the ship. There is even a whole collection of parts that are purely aesthetic so you can make your ships as cool, unique, or ugly as you’d like. The interface is very easy to use – just select a part and then drag it to the point that you wish to attach it to. You can adjust the size of each part, and even attach parts to parts. It’s really amazing how versatile the ship designer is and how many completely different designs you can develop.

BTW, wait till you see what you can do with v1.1's ship editor, it's even better! And it'll be easier to share your designs with others.  Read their whole review here.

The second review comes from LoadedInc. Our European publishing partner, Paradox, were the ones who wisely sent the game to Loaded Inc.

When it’s all said and done, Galactic Civilizations II strives to be an in-depth strategy game that creates a unique universe with an AI smart enough to compete. It not only meets that goal but surpasses it with ease.

LoadedInc, was a site I wasn't familiar with. But as I explored it, it's a pretty neat site that's well organized.  Check it out. Read the full review.

The next new review came from Game Vortex. You can read their full review here. This one was a pretty interesting read and while it gave a good score, there were some interesting points brought up. This is what they summed up:

Galactic Civilizations II: The Dread Lords is a great game, at least if you’re already into strategic gameplay. If your idea of fun is managing all the little facets of a civilization, this is the game for you. Even if you’re remotely interested in strategy games, Galactic Civilizations II: The Dread Lords is such an amazing experience that you’ll even force your way through the unfriendly interface and other issues. If action is more your thing, this isn’t the game you are looking for.

I can't really comment on whether the UI is good or not since I designed a good chunk of it.  I think a lot of it boils down to whether strategy games should be designed for the lowest common denominator. I think we clearly made our choice: No. And in some reviews, we've paid the price.  This month's PC Gamer gives us a positive review but talks about how inaccessible the game is to casual gamers. Even belaboring the point. 

I'd put it like this: The last few years have seen a dumbing down of strategy games to the point where if the mechanic can't be represented with a graphic and tooltip then it's "too complicated".  I'm willing to lose some sales in exchange for making a game that has some extra meat to it.  We can certainly improve the accessibility with a cleaner UI experience for sure and we continue to do so.  But I do think the casual game market has been more than served.

What we've tried to do is create a strategy game that is accessible to new players but does require they have some interest in strategy games. My 9 year old son figured out the game on his own and beat the campaign (and yes, he lost the first Dread Lord mission but took the alternative path and did fine).  But the game isn't purely a beer and pretzels type game -- for good and for ill.  I highly recommend reading the Game Vortex's review though because it does bring up many good points on that topic.

A decade ago (roughly), PC strategy games were having their golden age. Master of Orion, Civilization, Master of Magic, Stars, VGA Planets, etc.  And these games required the player to think.

I think the recent increase in popularity for PC strategy games, gamers have said loud and clear: "Enough. No more dumbed down games." 

I think that's one of the reasons why multiplayer has gotten so popular -- because the base games are so simplistic that they can't hold a player's attention very long so it's only in multplayer that they really have any lifespan.  

The next review we found is from a site called eToyChest.org.  They gave us a 97/100 which was really exciting. As the AI coder for the game, I particularly appreciated this part:

One of the biggest accomplishments of the first GalCiv game was its phenomenal A.I.. It was original, reactive and believable as an artificial opponent. In GalCiv 2, Stardock has raised the bar even higher. Featuring a multi-threaded A.I., GalCiv 2 offers an entirely customizable level of challenge. When set to the level of ‘Fool’, the A.I. will not only slow down and go a lot easier on the player, it will also make some really poor decisions and silly mistakes. At the ‘Intelligent’ level, however, it will be a tough nut to crack and will even give the impression that some behind-the-scenes cheating is going on. According to the developer, the success of the A.I. even prompted the game designer to debug the code at one point because he felt it was somehow cheating, only to discover that it was manipulating planetary taxation and morale-boosting planetary improvements in a completely legal—and economically devastating—manner. Coupled with the wide variety of races and paths to victory, the A.I. in GalCiv 2 probably represents the most complete and extensive challenge in the strategy game business.

The fact the reviewer was able to see that the AI plays differently at different difficulty levels is just so cool. I read many user reviews on various sites, both positive and negative and it really drive me nuts when I see someone say "The AI in this game is overrated, I played at normal and the AI did dumb things." When in fact, yes, it does, I had to write code specifically to make it do "dumb things". It's not just economic penalties. 

Of course, getting a 97 means that, like many you reading this, needing to check what other games got. From what I could tell, 97's the highest they've ever given a game so that was particularly cool.  They've got a lot of reviews for games I hadn't played or heard of.  That's one of the things I've noticed about many of these less traveled sites -- they have quite a variety of games and I think most gamers end up missing out on some of the little treasures out there. But I digress...

So that's all for now.  I'll bring you more soon. There's some interesting blog site reviews I want to do a round-up of. The CGW and CGM reviews are still to arrive.  We're really glad people like the game! 

More to come!

This is full test-game #2 using the v1.1 computer AI.  A lot of changes have been made that will affect game play. The purpose of this journal entry is to determine what works and doesn't work and what areas still need to be improved.

You WILL see bugs in this as it's our internal beta.

Things that have been changed in the computer AI and game:

• I am making use of the "No Tech Trade" option to see how well the new computer AIs deal with that.
• The computer AI is much more sophisticated than previously about researching technologies. But that sophistication comes possible "bugs".
• The computer AI is much more sophisticated on ship design with regards to deciding whether to put speed or range on its ships.
• The computer AI is much better at building up its planets.
• Because social production is funneled to military projects rather than wasted, the AI has to cope with that new reality.
• Logistics have been changed such that the advantage of larger ships is lessened.
• The AI now knows how to upgrade its ships
• The AI focuses more on fewer but better ships.
• The AI will build defenders that have no weapons to act as an obstacle to early game "rushes"
• The AI has been updated to deal with the new economic system (cleaner, more straight forward).
• The AI builds starbases much more intelligently. MUCH MUCH.
• The AI (in theory) will go after resource starbases (we'll see).
• The AI will patrol their planets rather than having their fleets be all in one spot.

So here's my game setup.  A large galaxy, uncommon everything. Playing against the Drengin, Humans, Torians, and Altarians.

The galaxy was set up like this.  I was playing again as the Dominion.  The Dominion with the Stardock logo was in a very good starting position.  The Terrans were in the middle.  How the galaxy would proceed would be interesting.

All computer players set to intelligent (tough) which means they're playing at the same level as I am.  I will take advantage of my knowledge of the AI and immediately raise my taxes so I can outspend them right away.

First thing I'm going to do is build a faster colony ship:

Using the new ship design features, I rotate some of my  new parts around in interesting ways. In the options menu, I can control how much I can rotate things (i.e. free form all the way up to 90 degree intervals).

I then send my ships out. One of the new features in 1.1 is that I can see the destinations of selected ships as animated lines:

Meanwhile, population growth being one of the things that's been changed in 1.1 requires me to worry more about my approval rating. Population doesn't grow nearly as fast anymore so the goal now is to make sure you keep them happy to make them repopulate faster and don't colonize too fast or else you'll end up with a crippled economy. So colony rushing will have to be considered carefully. I tried the standard colony rush last night and ruined myself because it took me too long to repopulate my planets and by then the AI had had plenty of time to build up and do bad things to me.

I was also sending out constructors around to look for things.  Now on Constructors you can see what area they will affect when they become starbases.

It's the economy, human!

By the start of 2227, the Altarians and myself have expanded our borders considerably.  It's a dead-heat in terms of economics though the humans amazingly have a slight edge.  They have a particular edge in research which is very worrisome.

It was time to adjust my spending to be more research oriented:

The updated domestic policy screen displays how many resources I'm getting from bonuses. What's nice about bonus production is that I only pay for half.  So here I'm getting 11bc worth of bonus production that I'm paying for but there's another 11bc that's off the books.

Let's look at Haven for instance:

I'm doing 46 units of research. 

Let's look at my summary screen:

There's a bug next to one of the Xeno labs. 1.1 will now display how much extra production you get from a special tile. So my research capacity is really 38 + 21 = 59.

My spend rate is 100%.  That is, I'm putting all my people to work. And 60% of my work force (from the previous domestic policy screenshot) are doing research.  So 60% of 59 is 35 research.  But I'm doing 46 research.  So how did that happen? Why am I doing 46 research even though I'm only using 60% of my research capacity?

Well that's where my research ability comes in -- I picked that at the start.  The Dominion gets a 30% Research Ability.

So that base 35 research then gets multiplied by 1.3.  That takes me to 45 research.  10 bonus research. 5 of that is free and the other 5 I have to pay for. 

But I'm doing 46. Where's that last one coming from?

On details I can see that my starbase is add +3 (and that's not clear enough so changing it to say Production/Research) as Starbases in 1.1 do both research and production bonuses.

If this confuses you, don't worry about it. First, we're going to try to add some tool tips that will actually explain what I just explained when you mouse over that number in the colony management screen. And secondly, it's just to let you know that the numbers now cleanly make sense. Those abilities you get at the beginning for social, military, and research production are taken into account at face value.

It's the military's time to shine

Using the new rotational features (the 3 dials) I rotated the wings so that they're arced up.  The 3 little buttons next to the space display are not hooked up yet but will let you toggle what components are displayed.

The Terran Alliance would be the first target. I wasn't about to let them just sit there and research doom weapons while I messed around.

The real question is, are the Terrans inviting quick defeat? They're way too defenseless compared to others. I'm the brown civilization (The Dominion) and if I have a bigger military then that's sad because I just have a few fire hawks.

Let's take a look at the source code:

The Terran Alliance AI module (pet peeve: When someone says "The AI in this game suxors" or whatever it means they've not played the game very much in all likelyhood. There is no single AI in the game. Each civilization has its own AI module which has its own C++ code. The Terran Alliance code here looks very different from the Drengin's. It's not just a bunch of different values.).

Anywho... The ulMyMilitaryRating = 48 means that its Military Quotient is only 48. 100 is average.  It's basically worthless at anything less than 75 (think of a real IQ test, 100 is normal, anything less than 75 is "special".  The Terran Alliance is basically drooling).  So I'm going to tweak this so that they don't let themselves become such an obvious target.

The Terrans are staying out of war thanks to their high diplomacy which gives them +1 right now in relations and they're getting +3 from their trade (I know that because I looked in the debugger because I wanted to know why they aren't being squashed -- bug or by design?).  They're also pretty far away from other civilizations and it's only 2228.

Dominion Options

For the past year, my civilization's been experience an economic boom. So has everyone else.  And so I have tons of money. But then again, so does everyone else.  I'm using this money to build up my infrastructure as fast as I can.

The Terrans clearly had some ideas on what their strategy was. Look at that, 4 economic starbases in their home sector.  All producing extra production for Earth and Mars and all heavily defended. The Terrans (And other AI) had gotten much better about building starbases.

So my strategy is to build up a military starbase and take out the Terrans quickly.

My high influence has impressed the Drengin.  Military isn't the only way to win after all.

Once I remove the pesky humans, I will use my vast culture to take the rest of the galaxy. Whoahaha!

I've been building up as well incidentally.

My two star bases are parked right next to each other. Oh, how is that? Because under 1.1 the humans and the AI live in harmony under the same rules -- 4 starbases (of your race) per sector placed where ever you want.

The Vigilant class ships have come on-line.  They will spearhead my Terran assault.  Stupid Earth humans.

It was about time for them to die now.  The key to a good surprise attack is..well surprise. This sort of thing only works on maps where a side only has a couple of planets tied together. People who "Beat" the AI tend to play on maps where each side maybe has 1 or 2 planets.  It makes it a lot easier to do a sneak attack like this.

I almost feel sorry for the Earth humans.  They like me. 

It's also time to take the path to the darkside.

And so I prepare for attack...

And yet they're oblivious.  Time to look at the code again..

Using new APIs since 1.0X, I can now look at ships relative distance away in terms of striking distance, galaxy size, and how far away they are from their homes relative to me.

Time to put in some changes...

(reload)

Better. But too late for this game.

Let the dogs of war run!

Higher logistics values in 1.1 means bigger fighter battles! W00t! The Terrans have no chance. Not even one ship lost.

My one medium ship towers over the others.

Meanwhile, the Altarians are not amused by my influencer bases. Sure, maybe, maybe I'm doing something deliberately, but no court could prove that right? Isn't it cute though? The Altarians are building their own influencer starbases to try to counter mine.

With the Terrans crushed, there's no much left to do except...

Accept their surrender.

With that, it's now time to culturally dominate the galaxy.

The United Planets has put a major damper on me though...

My cultural domination strategy involves putting a lot of modules on starbases.  I may have to leave the United Planets.

The Torians and the isolated Altarian world would be the first victims of my cultural conquest.  To effectively do this without going nuts, I put some rally points for my constructors to go to as they're built:

The economic boom continues into year 4.  Fantastic.

Culture of Dominion

The economic boom that's lasted 4 years has finally come to an end.  Now I'm in deficit spending. But with 20,500bc in the treasury, I can go quite awhile with my deficit spending.

The key for an influence victory is going down the cultural domination path on the tech tree.  The technology tree of Galactic Civilizations II isn't supposed to be like the traditional technology tree. It's more of a technology toolbox. It's supposed to be "big" because there's a lot of options, a lot of paths to take.

Part of the victory strategy here also involves trade. I need trade to keep them happy with me even as I assimilate them into my culture. The aliens are perfectly aware of what's happening. They are very sensitive to cultural conquest strategies (they're very easy to spot). However, they are also designed to play as a civilization and not as a strategy gamer -- like in the real world, you can culturally assimilate a culture if you are making the population happy and wealthy enough through trade.  Something to think about next time you're having that McDonalds hamburger while drinking a Code, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt of some pop culture icon/product/company as you walk with your Nike shoes.

Seriously though, this is one of those "single player" advantages I'd say. In a multiplayer game, this sort of thing would never work because a human player would immediately go to war and you could simply never have a cultural domination path that involves these starbases unless you had immense military power to back it up.

Like I said, the AI isn't stupid, it knows what I'm doing. It's a question of whether I'm going to have enough money in trade to bribe them from doing something. The higher the difficulty, the more $$$ I have to have.  The Torians monitor my progress carefully.

One of the big changes in 1.1 for Influence strategies is that you no longer have to all the way up the line with the piddly influence modules. If you get Cultural Domination, you can start with the big modules right away now which makes it a lot cheaper to do this strategy and a lot less tedious.

Too easy? We'll probably be tweaking these values. But with 4 modules I got 180% cultural bonus.

But like I said, the other civs are sensitive to this.

The Altarian War

This would be more of a challenge than the Terrans were. But I have the advantage, I have both my planets and the Terran's 3 planets.  Our militaries are pretty similar.

The Altarians were removing my cultural influence the really old fashioned way.

Quality vs. Quantity. Except...except...the Altarians were the ones with the quality now. Oh that's right, people on the forums complained that the AI wasn't good enough. So they now focus on making better quality ships. Nasty. Tough. Evil. Ships.

Wish I was running at higher resolution for this, everything seems so tiny at 1024x768.

As Joseph Stalin said, quantity has a quality of its own.  Those 3 Altarian fighters might be great. But I've got 9 of mine and that's enough to end that conversation.

It's a tough war though. Lots of battles, lots of damage to both sides. The AI being better at targeting starbases and such is more effective than I'd like. I really rely on starbases like most other experienced players.

My big concern is protecting my morale resource mining starbase:

3 Altarian fleets have cleared out my defenses and are heading to it. It's providing a 20% bonus to my morale which lets me keep a very high tax rate.

Unfortunately, I lose it and my morale jumps way down.  What's ironic is that the Altarians have, in my opinion, the weakest of the AI modules. They've done decently here but I can see some of their weaknesses coming up that I'm correcting as I play.  The main one being that the Altarians don't worry about logistics very much which is hampering their style.

And so what I couldn't get by influence I take by force.

Not escaping notice is a Drengin scout ship that is monitoring things and keeping an eye out to see if those resources that were..liberated in battle are still ripe for constructors.

They also have built a little starbase out there. Some people on the forums have said "Why do they do that? That's stupid?" Because the AI doesn't cheat, it has to build starbases just like the player to extend its range. It wants those galactic resources, therefore it needs to plant a starbase at the edge of its range to make it so that it can get constructors to those resources.  If there are any AI developers reading this, they can tell you that it's non-trivial to write something that plans several moves ahead -- formulates a strategy. Especially in a game where the turn button goes by in less than a second. There's no "please wait" dialog.  But yea, that's why you see starbases on their own. The AI is trying to expand its range.

But the Drengin now have other problems.

And the Altarians want peace..

No.

Well, okay, since I've finished cleaning the area of your starbases, but it's gonna cost you.

I'm doing pretty good at this point. I'm definitely going to win and the AI has learned a lot of new tricks and I've added a bunch of new ones from this game.  If the Altarians had had better logistics, they would have been a real force to reckon with.  If the Terrans had not let themselves be so obviously vulnerable and then blind to my attack, they would have done a lot better too.

And there's a lot of other ideas that I can add in the future as time permits.

Cultural Inevitability.

The Drengin surprisingly have defeated the Torians. Well, that's not really that surprising, the Drengin have the best AI module right now in this cirumcstance. But still very surprising that they made up the difference.

But my culture has spread far and wide at this point. And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

The Drengin have the military power to put up a fight. And if the Drengin and the Altarians teamed up, they could probably defeat me. But they won't and I'll tell you why: The Dominion is evil. The Drengin are evil.  The Altarians are good.

This is where playing against the computer can be more fun.  The Drengin don't care if I win culturally.  The Altarians care a lot. In the report screen the Drengin don't have my influence as a negative. The Altarians do.

I do design a couple of new ships. I'm somewhat disappointed with the Drengin designs though.

Something I'll have to work on tonight is make the Drengin and other players focus more on what technologies they need rather than scatter shot it.  The other issue is they haven't focused enough on logistics. Logistics matter.  If you can't build large fleets whether they be fighters or large ships, you're going to have problems.  You can get away with lower logistics if you have big hulls since bigger ships will take out a lot of smaller ships, but the AI is not aggressive enough in this area.

I have a pretty lethal fighter now too. The F-20 Sky Shark:

I used the new ship designer tools to turn around those wings. They look pretty cool I think. My large ship, the Orion, is also quite lethal.

My fighter uses 2 logistics points and does 10 attack and has 6 hit points.  My capital ship uses 6 logistics and has 30 attack, 6 defense and 28hp.  Even though it has 3 times the logistics cost, it does 3 times the attack, has defense, and over 4 times as many hit points. 

The Altarians have been completely consumed by my culture and the galaxy is just about mine.

Influence victory!

So what happened? How did I win? Where did the AI go wrong?

1. The Terran Alliance was too weak for too long. It allowed me to make a surgical attack that wiped them out.
2. The Terran Alliance was oblivious to my build up until it was too late.
3. The Altarians, who could have done something, were not researching logistics technologies enough
4. The Altarians also didn't improve their ship sizes.
5. The Drengin, might have been able to do something but got a bad start and by the time they got a better start, they were too far behind.
6. The Drengin squandred research points on scatter gun researching.

These 6 items I've implemented.  I've also adjusted the logistics costs on ships so that large is 6, huge is 8. Logistics techs have gone up as well so we'll see bigger fleets all around.

When it comes to battles, size matters.  To balance that, Galactic Civilizations II introduces the logistics concept.

The logistics concept was designed to prevent the age-old strategy game issue where each side just builds a single mongo fleet/army/whatever and wipes out everything in its path.  The number of ships you can put into a fleet is hence limited by your logistics ability which you can research to improve.  How many logistics a ship uses is based on hull size.

In Galactic Civilizations II v1.0 that was:

Tiny: 2 points of logistics
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 5
Huge: 6

It was done this way to keep it simple for players.  But here's the problem -- ship sizes.  A tiny hulled ship has 16 space.  A large hull has 55 space.  That's over 3X as much space but the large only uses up 2.5X in logistics. Advantage: Large hulled ships.  There are other factors involved too such as hit points and cost -- which are well balanced. But logistics are out of whack in our view.

So in v1.1, it's going to be this:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 4
Large: 7
Huge: 9

The various logistics techs will be pumped up too.  The fact is, we want people to be able to build swarms of ships as a viable strategy. We also want people to be able to fixate on building huge capital ships as well.  Now, the current system isn't horribly imbalanced by any means, the guy researching the larger hulls isn't able to put in time researching some mongo weapons.

If you go strictly by a spreadsheet, you can see plenty of imbalances depending on how you want to look at it and how nit-picky you want to be.

But I want to stress - the guy who's building huge ships had to go and research (or trade some equally valuable) technology to those huge hulls. They also had to put together the manufacturing capacity to create them and make the sacrifice of putting their marbles into a single ship rather than a bunch.  In addition, there are various "round off" things that they have to deal with as well and many components, particularly defenses, take size into account when determining how much size they use.

Update: 

After play testing during the evening and taking more into account things like starbase bonuses and the cost of getting those large hulled ships I made a minor tweak:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 4
Cargo: 5
Large: 6
Huge: 8

The Cargo hulls didn't need to come down because the new logistics abilities increase your logistics quite a bit. Before you would have 12 logistics after researching enhanced logistics. Now you'd have 15. You could hence fit 3 transports into a fleet at that stage versus 2 previously.

We've got a ton of new features, tweaks, and enhancements in store for v1.1.  For casual players, the AI plays easier on lower levels.  For expert strategists, the AI has gotten a significant overhaul in tactics across the board.

We've made a ton of tweaks both large and small based on player feedback.  Little things like the selected ship showing the auto pilot path it's on to bigger changes like no tech trading options, fleet managers, tons of "glitch fixes", an enhanced ship design option, and much more.

The Beta will be on Stardock Central so you'll need to grab that if you haven't already from the Downloads section. 

I think people will be surprised at how significant some of the improvements are, especially for how short of a time the game has been out.  We'll have a full development log put together soon. It's going to be long - longer than originally planned.

The beta won't be the full feature set we mentioned previously as we added other things along the way (streamlined economic engine, no social wastage, bunch of other things).  Stay tuned!

What's Stardock's secret for being able to develop and publish its own games? The answer: Object Desktop, the world's most popular, award-winning desktop enhancement suite. And the flag-ship program of that suite is called WindowBlinds.

A new version of it went up today. Odds are, you already have a piece of WindowBlinds on your computer in some form or other. ATI uses it for skinning their Catalyst Control Center. nVidia includes a lite version with many of their cards. Blizzard used it to create the WoW Desktop. The Xbox 360 desktop uses it as well. And if you go to the hospital for an X-ray, if they're using a recent GE Medical X-ray machine, odds are it's using it as well.

WindowBlinds works by changing your Windows GUI system-wise -- title bars, borders, push buttons, Start bar, radio buttons, everything. Version 5 introduced the ability to make use of ATI and nVidia's DirectX acceleration so that in most cases, WindowBlinds is actually making Windows run faster even as it makes it look cooler.

Here are some screenshots:

It's home page is www.windowblinds.net. Have fun!

Stardock has released WindowBlinds 5.01.  WindowBlinds is a program that enables users to completely change the look and feel of Microsoft Windows.  With it, users can apply "skins" that change the existing Windows graphical user interface (GUI) across the entire system.  Title bars, push buttons, radio buttons, the Start bar, and nearly every other part of the Windows interface is changed.

WindowBlinds is one of the most popular desktop customization utilities of all time, used by millions of people.  It's also used by companies such as Microsoft, nVidia, ATI, Nintendo, Blizzard, and many others to create their own custom desktops. The recent Xbox 360 Desktop uses WindowBlinds for instance. Companies also license WindowBlinds based technology in the form of DirectSkin to make their own applications skinnable.  For example, the ATI Catalyst Control Center uses WindowBlinds for its skinning.

WindowBlinds has skinning features not thought possible on Windows XP or before.  For instance, WindowBlinds can support alpha blending in skins (glass effects and other visual enhancements in title bars and controls) as well as animation, shadows, sound effects, and more.

WindowBlinds 5.01 improves performance on X64 based systems, adds support for wallpaper management, taskbar blurring, IE 7 support, and various tweaks, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.

It can be downloaded at www.windowblinds.net.  WindowBlinds can be registered on its own for $19.95 or as part of Stardock's award-winning suite of desktop utilities Object Desktop (www.objectdesktop.com).

Screenshots:

As many know, nowadays it's hard to get a PC game at retail. For fun, we're having a Galactic Civilizations II T-shirt contest.  If you see Galactic Civilizations II at a retail store, take a picture of it, tell us where you saw it and put it up in this post. We'll be picking the best pictures this Friday to send out free Galactic Civilizations II T-shirts to.

In testing the computer AI's updates for v1.1, I'm also making use of some of the new features in v1.1.

I'm playing on a large galaxy.  In this game, I'm playing as the Dominion.

Back Story

The Dominion was a commercially backed colonization effort from the year 2178.  Over 10 million humans from across the globe took part in it and headed out into the galaxy.  Over time, humans and aliens migrated to the new colony called Haven.

The year now is 2225 and the quadrant Haven is located in now shares space with the Terran Alliance, Drengin Empire, Torian Confederation and Arcean Empire.

No technology trading is allowed amongst civilizations. Only the Drengin and Altarians are equipped with the updated AI.

Running in a window in case anyone wonders why there's a title bar:

The quadrant's control was something like this at the start of 2227:

The Dominion had a vast area of territory under its control -- the light brown (me). The Terran Alliance (blue) had the "north" and the Drengin had the red middle.  The Arceans (yellow) and Torians (green) were on the east side.  It would remain to be seen how things would progress.

AI Evaluation

Our spies have been reporting back to us on how well the Drengin, Terrans, Arceans, and Torians are managing their worlds. The Drengin have an updated social manager engine so in theory, it should do better than the others.

The Drengin have used their own planet very well.  Two factories, one on a mineral rich area ensures that they are maximizing their planet. One might quibble over whether they should have bothered to build more farms or not. Their advanced marketing center combined with high taxes with native morale bonus has given them a very high amount of income for this planet when combined with the economic capital. Our grade: A-

The Terrans have really focused on research for their planet. Their native morale is lower than the Drengin's resulting in a lower income due to lower taxes. It's a bit weak on production. Our grade: B+

Arcea is still using the 1.0X based social manager.  No huge errors but one might argue whether Diplomatic translators were worth having on their home world.  Their lower morale ability means that they can't keep their taxes as high as they might want. However, at 70% approval, one might argue why they don't push their taxes up in order to be more competitive economically.   Our grade: B.

Toria is also using the 1.0X engine but did a decent, but not great job at its planet. It's in the same boat as I am overall in that it doesn't have a great natural morale ability or big economic ability like the others picked.  Three economic boosters  helped their planet some but I think they'd been better off with another factory. Our Grade: B

So what's MY home planet situation look like?

So this is what my home planet looks like at this time.

The biggest difference, however, between the two groups of 1.0X AIs and 1.1 AIs is in what techs they have.  The Drengin and Terrans have a lot of miniaturization technologies which they now value far more.  The Torians and Arceans, meanwhile, don't even have basic miniaturization.

Another research weakness I've noticed is with life support. The 1.0X AI doesn't tend to value it very much. Hence, on large maps, wars become less likely and give the human leader a big advantage in being able to isolate players.

The various civilizations tend not to go to war with anyone they don't have in range unless they've been...paid off to do it.

..Time
    Passes...

I have used my distance from the major powers to stay neutral in their wars.  I've also been able to watch and modify their behaviors based on what they should be doing.

Now we're in December 2233.  Almost 9 years have passed since the beginning.  The Torians are gone.

The Drengin seem to be on the rise having defeated them. But not so fast. The Terran Alliance have been building up the whole time.

So why my civilization, the Dominion, watches on, the Terrans and Drengin have an all out war. It's a great way to see divergent strategies take shape.

The Terrans have built no less than 6 starbases that cover earth. Moreover, these aren't the crappy little starbase spam of 1.0X that you sometimes saw.  They're maxed.

By contrast...

The Drengin Empire has no starbases around their home world. Instead, they've been focusing on building up a huge military machine which took out the Torians with impressive lethality.

The Drengin are using the Nano Ripper to create very nasty ships. I think I agree with others who feel that the Nano-Ripper is overpowered.  I also think Good Races need to get a new power. I was thinking a 50% bonus to their ship defenses.

The Terran Alliance isn't using the full 1.1 AI either.  They can't upgrade their ships yet.  The difference is quite apparent.

But they are making use of the improved ship design system.  They have a new type of Battleship:

14 moves!

So the question is, can the Terran Alliance's strategy of peaceful coexistence, weaker military but strong technology defeat the Drengin's further improved AI and ship upgrading?

That's what we were about to find out.

..and the answer...

The Terran Alliance crushes the Drengin Empire completely.

Twilight of the Drengin Empire

The Drengin Empire is nearly destroyed. The Terran Alliance, despite their weaker AI, is about to utterly destroy the Drengin.  This is an important thing to evaluate because it can mean one of three things:

1) The Drengin have a poor strategy

2) The Drengin just had some bad luck

3) There is a basic game mechanic that is non-optimal

I know #2 isn't true.

#3 the jury is still out.  The Drengin tend to build more, smaller ships. The Terrans tend to build more capital ships.

I've thought about making logistics go like this:

Tiny: 2
Small: 3
Medium: 5
Large: 6
Huge: 8

Anyone have any opinions on that? Basically two small vs. a large seems iffy as is. And right now a small is still worth 3 and a large is only 5. If I have a logistics of 15, I could have 5 small fighters vs. 2 capital ships. That seems more fair than 5 small fighters vs. 3 capital ships.

I think the real answer is this graph:

The Terrans simply were vastly more advanced than the Drengin were.  With the no-tech trade option on, the Drengin can't extort techs out of weaker civilizations like they'd normally do.

Let's look at the Drengin home world now:

Research Academies and Enhanced Factories.

Now for Earth:

Research Academies and Manufacturing Centers. The Terrans have better manufacturing capability.

Both reasonably designed.  I think basically the Drengin and others need to put more emphasis on technology research.

The Humans..are coming for us...

The Terran Alliance decided it was time to wipe me out. They also have an alliance with the Arceans so things are getting painful.

I do have a pretty good ship though against them.

It's a BIG ship. 

And now for the test.  4 of them vs. the Terran Armada.

Not enough.  My logistics is just too low to fight 6 ships of that level.

The Terrans dismantle my network of starbases around Haven.

Oh but I do love scaling.  My large sized ships against fighters.

And so the end comes..

Check this out :

The Terran Alliance destroyed 163 ships while only losing 38.  That's a 4 to 1 kill ratio. That's amazing.

Ironically, on the forums you hear people complaining that the AI always out techs them. I usually find myself out teching the AI but I'm more experienced.  I think we'll have to put in some effort into having it so that at lower levels the AI techs a bit slower but at higher levels it techs much faster because clearly the Drengin got smoked despite having all the advantages. It just doesn't research as well.

Next game: All AIs upgraded fully to 1.1 with tweaks from this game.  Stay tuned...

I took my son to Best Buy to get Galactic Civilizations II.  I wonder how many of his friends believe his dad makes computer games? Probably not many. LOL.