For people with 1.0X that are experience random CTDs, we think we know the cause.

We've now had two cases where we've worked with someone on this and in both cases it turned out they either had a very small page file (low virtual memory) or had turned off a page file entire.

During the autosave, a virtual copy of the game is created which temporarily increases how much memory the game uses.  For most people, that's meaningless.  But for people with little or not virtual memory, the result is a crash. 

Check your virtual memory settings.  You can do that by right-clicking on my computer, go to properties, click on the advanced tab, click on the performance settings, ciick on advanced, click on the change button in virtual memory.  Make sure your virtual memory is set to at least 2 Gigs.  The game won't use all that of course or anywhere near but we have found that those who run into this almost always have either no page file or very low memory.

Have you made some cool ships? Show others what you've managed to make!

Here's a robot shp that Synthetic Orange pointed me to:

Show off your designs here!

BTW, if you're having trouble hosting your pictures, the Library here allows for screenshots to be uploaded.

The Galactic Civilizations Experience: Quick Start Guide...

This guide is designed to give brand new players a quick introduction into how they can get going in the game without being crushed.

Journal Entry: Starting up the game…

Alright, I’ve got the box home. Now, if I can just get the top off, why do they make these things so that it’s nearly impossible to get the top cover of the box off without wrecking the box itself?  You know, the little plastic thingy at the top. I don't have a knife, so I'm using my fingernail here to get the thing off.  That's it, flame forum post on the way!

Okay, let’s fast forward a little…

First, let's start a new game.

I'd recommend going with a small galaxy at first.  Use all the defaults whatever they are because they've been set up for new players. 

For your first game, play as the humans, since, hopefully you're somewhat familiar with that species.

Now, for the abilities, I'd recommend putting your points into economics, morale, and research.  This way, it's easier to get money, your people are happier, and you get stuff faster.

Now for picking your opponents, pick just a few and put their intelligence very low for your first games.  That way they won't really do much other than drool and make snarky remarks.

With the humans, they’re good at diplomacy naturally. This is good because it’ll help keep me out of war a little easier. My first few games I don’t want to just get crushed. I think I’ll also play on a small galaxy so not to get overwhelmed right away.

So now I’ve started the game.

The first screen I get is one asking me to pick a technology to research. There’s 6 to choose from. Since I’ve kind of decided to be diplomatic, I’ll choose Universal Translator. It says it’ll take 7 weeks (turns) to research that. Okay, fine.

If you hold down the left mouse button on the main map and drag your mouse around, you can move the screen around. Very handy for getting around.

Your planets...

Now I’m brought up to Earth. Gosh, there’s only 5 billion people on Earth in this universe. Okay, I’m looking at this map of Earth with a big grid on it.:

I click on the yellow tile and it says I need soil enhancement to use it. Fine. So yellow must mean that the tile is useful but only in the future. That implies the green tiles are ready to go. So I click on one of them.

Now I see 5 different things I could build here. Factories, farms, a lab, an entertainment network, and a market center. Those correspond with the things at top. Factories give me more shields and hammers. The lab will give me more beakers. The entertainment network will improve my approval (which is at 90% already so no need for that right now). The farm will increase my foot by 5 mt/wk which means my population will be able to grow. But I don’t need a farm right now, Earth is doing fine with 15 mt/wk and I only have 5 billion population so I can go to 15 billion based on what I have.

So I click on Basic Factory and then press the Build button and it adds it to the build queue. I then click on Basic lab and do the same thing. Then I try double-clicking on a basic factory and I see that it adds it to the queue (ooh, faster, good!).

Now I click on some of the tiles that have something on them. The first thing I click on is a star port. It says it lets me build ships. Great. The other one is my civilization capital. It says it produces 24 manufacturing points. So I’m off to a good start.

Here's how things work on planets:

• Your population will not go higher than the food production. If your food production is 10 mt/wk then 10 billion people is where your population will cap off at.  Your tax income comes from people. The more you have, the more you get.  Population increases based on your population growth ability and your planetary approval. TIP: Don't just build farms for the sake of building farms.  Only build farms when you need to increase your population cap.
• Your influence (ip) determines how far from the planet your sphere of influence will go.  The higher it goes, the further it goes. And conversely, when it meets someone else's sphere of influence, they push against each other. You can increase your influence by building things like embassies which you get from Universal Translator.
• Your Approval is what % of the population thinks you're doing a good job. It is not as important as you might think.  At the start of the game, you're a dictator, so what do you care what the masses think?  Other forms of government are available that give you more money, and then you can worry about it.  Approval is affected by population (more people, the more demanding they are) and your tax rate.  You can increase your approval rate by building entertainment centers. 

I typically start by building a couple of factories.  A basic factory can product 8 manufacturing points if it's fully funded.  That is, if your spend-rate is 100% and all of that spending is put toward either military or social production (or a combination).  Each of those 8 points costs 1bc to produce.  You can get bonus production through your abilities which you are not charged for.  You can also build starbase factories which enhance your production rate but you are charged for that additional production.

Players typically start out with 5000 bc.  My suggestion is to use that money to quick build things.  For instance, select a factory, press the buy button and you will be given a number of purchase options.  I tend to pick only the first two unless I'm desperate since I don't like paying interest.  This way, you can really get your civilization going early on.

I notice in the top right the starport says its idle. So I click on the Build Ship button.

This is what I see:

Pretty empty. I’m not doing anything. Well, since the goal of the game is to expand my goodness out into the universe, I need to build a colony ship. So I do. The little number in () means how many weeks it’s going to take. It says 17 which isn’t good. Good thing I’m building those factories. Scout only takes 8 weeks in this example.

I click end up selecting the colony ship and hitting "back to planet".

I see up at the top little button thingies right by the number that shows how much production is going on in each category. I click on the one by military and the military box lights up and now instead of only having 6 shields it has 10. But social and research both lost some of their symbols. This is how I can focus production on a planet. But I only gained a few shields but lost six production points total from the other two categories so this isn’t the best way to do it at this point. I will see what I can do with my economy.
 

Looking at planets..

Now I’m on the main screen and I see earth’s solar system.

Looking at earth here I see a “10” by it. That’s what class it is. So I know that a class 10 planet must be pretty decent. Higher numbers are better and lower numbers are worse. The 10 means how many tiles I can use on the planet by default.

Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury are class 0. That means they simply can’t be used by us. Mars is class 4. Not exactly a vacation destination but it’s useable.

I also have two ships. One is a colony ship ready to go. The other is called the Terran Alliance flagship. It says it’s of class “Survey Ship”. That means it can explore anomalies. That’s a fancy way of saying space junk collector.

When I click on my ships, I see that the mini map in the corner has various levels of lit up space. That represents how far from Earth that ship can go. If I want to be able to travel further, I need to either improve my life support systems through research, build a starbase somewhere which extends my range or colonize a planet that will add range around that planet.

On the mini-map to the right are some little buttons. One of them looks like 3 intersecting circles. If I click on that the map lights up:

That represents the influence borders of different civilizations. It also gives away their position. In Galactic Civilizations II, I know where the aliens live. So if I want to expand, I should probably go where they don’t live. So looking around, I see some stars that are outside that influence area. I send my colony ships there.

At this point there’s nothing more I can do on the map. So let’s take a look at that bottom bar. Remember how my planet is going to take a bunch of weeks to build that colony ship? That’s a lot of turns. So let’s go to the domestic policy screen.
 

Domestic Policy

Here I have my Tax Rate and my Industrial Capacity sliders. My taxes are at 33%. If I make that higher, I get more money but my people get unhappy which slows down their rate of growth which hurts me in the long run and would hurt me if I weren’t a dictatorship (i.e. later on I’ll research other forms of government).

The industrial capacity slider, by contrast, is only at 50%. That means my factories and labs are only working at half-speed. Since I’m currently making 11bc per week, I decide to increase my industrial capacity rate to use all of it (100%).

So now my factories are working a full power. Those beakers and shields and hammers cost 1BC each to turn from their raw component into something that’s useable so my net income drops. But now when I look at Earth, it’s only going to take 8 weeks to build that ship. Good, but not good enough.

So let’s move the military rate to the right and change my relative priority more to military. Now it’s only going to take 4 weeks to build the colony ship. Better.

Money vs. Production

Your tax rate and your industrial capacity slider have nothing in common. They are unrelated.  Your spending % determines what % of your industrial/research capacity you are going to use.  Every shield, hammer, and beaker you product on your planet costs 1BC to produce.  So you do need to have taxes to fund that. However, it doesn't matter whether you are spending more than you make because they aren't related to one another.

It takes 1bc to create 1 point of research or 1 point of industrial production. That's it.  We only have the two sliders on this screen out of convenience.

Time passes...

So I've been building colony ships, building things on Earth, and colonizing the galaxy.  I've started meeting some of the aliens.

I've also started running into these:

Basically, these are moral dilemmas.  They were inspired years ago when I was in high school and I kept hearing about how horrible the United States had been to the native population.  I remember, as I sat in a class room that was almost certainly once inhabited by the natives who had settled here some 3,000 or so years ago the hypocrisy of the whole thing. Were they suggesting giving it back? No.  It's easy to condemn after the fact.  So in the game, you run into those situations too.  You land on a planet and it's already inhabited. Whatcha going to do?  Do the kind thing and take huge penalties to production? Or make them slaves? Or something in-between?  Your choice will affect your ethical alignment.

• Good civilizations tend to team up together.

• Neutral civilizations tend to have nobody that really likes them but no one really hating them either

• Evil civilizations get advantages on a planet by planet basis but are at risk of getting ganged up on.

Researching

The research tree is big.  Very big.  If you use the left-mouse button (hold it down) on the tree and drag it, you can move the tech tree around.

Moving on up...

At this point, I’ve colonized most of the planets I’m going to colonize so I’m going to switch over to researching faster. So I pull up the domestic policy manager and move the military production slider down and increase the research slider.

But let's look at a few important technologies:

• Trade. You need trade to build freighters. When you build a freighter, you can send it to an alien world and it will create a trade route which gives you money. The number of trade routes you have is dependent on your trade route ability.  Typically, trade will give you roughly 3 trade routes.  You can research Advanced trade and beyond to get more trade routes.

• Planetary Invasion. You need this technology in order to invade planets.

• Weapons. You don't get to just blow things up right away. You have to research weapons technologies first to do that.

• Alliances. You need to research alliances. The other player  must have the technology as well. Then, if you have "close" relations or better, you can ally.

Starbases

You can pretty much build a starbase anywhere. However, in 1.0X and earlier, you have to have them be at least 3 tiles apart on the map (this is going to eventually be changed to X number per sector -- probably 4 which is what the AI is stuck with).

There are 4 types of starbases:

• Military Starbases. These can pump up the attack and defense of your ships within their zone of control.

• Economic starbases. These can pump up your trade route money for freighters that pass through their zone of control as well as pump up the production on planets in their zone of control.

• Influence starbases. These pump up your background influence in their zone of control.

• Resource starbases. These can only be built on a galactic resource. With additional constructors, you can keep increasing the benefit you get from them.

As you build up starbases by sending more constructors to them, the graphics change and they get increasingly powerful.  Don't forget to equip them with weapons and defenses so that they can defend themselves from attack.

Rally Points

If you're playing on a large galaxy, rally points are very important because otherwise, it can be a pain in the butt to manage your civilization.

To create a rally point, just press the rally point button and then place the rally point anywhere on the map.

Then you can name it however you want.  If you click your ship and press the T button it will allow you to send it to one of your rally points (or if you click on the command button on the ship and choose "Go To" on that screen).

You can also tell your planets to automatically send ships to a rally point:

Governors

If you click the little button that looks like it has 2 line graphs on it you are taken to the Civilization Manager.  One of the most useful ways to automate things is with governors.  The governors allow you to give orders globally and have them carried out.  So for instance, you could have all your ships that are going to rally point X to change to rally point Y (or stop going to one at all). You can tell all your planets that are building ship A to build ship B.  It's a great way to keep from getting bogged down.

Trading things

On the foreign policy dialog you can initiate discussions with other players. Just select the one you want and press the Speak to button.

The column on the LEFT is what you have.  The Column on the right is what they have.  You can trade anything for anything if you name the right price.  Because of this flexibility, there is no "What will you give me for X?" type functionality that other strategy games usually have since there's an infinite number of possibilities.  Instead, we color-code the offer text. If it's red, they won't take it.  If it's green, they will.  The dialog updates as you add items.

General Tips

There are a lot of different strategies that you can take from here...

• You can take the standard "conquer them all" approach and just build up your military and try to conquer them.  See your user manual on how combat works.

• You can become the ultimate behind the current power broker and become incredibly rich and win by paying different civilizations to war each other into oblivion and buy up their planets and ships as you need them until you win through overwhelming dominance.

• You could become the ultimate influencer. Built up your influence on your planets, make sure you get the influence resources, and then build influencer starbases which expand the borders of your influence until everyone defects to your side.

• You could go for the master politician route in which you get everyone to like you through a variety of means and then ally with them.

• You could take the roll of conqueror in which there are many different strategies for that. For example, you could focus on building fleets of small ships or just a few capital ships. You could go with relatively cheap ships supported by powerful starbases. You could poor money into research to make sure you have incredibly powerful ships. Or you could poor money into manufacturing and make sure you have lots of mediocre ships. There are many different paths to military conquest available.

• You could also become a technological titan and research “Technology Victory”. It’s expensive but if you can fortify your corner of the galaxy you might just be able to hold them off long enough.

The general idea is to make sure you can play the game over and over and over again without running out of ways to play.

Also make sure you visit Galactic Civilizations II’s website (www.galciv2.com) to obtain downloads. The game’s computer AI is designed to be heavily enhanced over time based on player strategies. The computer players should feel like real human beings in most respects (except minus the disconnects and abuse).

Most of all – have fun!
 

Oh we're all unique in how we behave on-line right? Or are we?

The Flame Warrior site is incredibly insightful and has been around a long time.  You would be surprised at how well many of us fit into one of these on-line personas.

For example, here on JoeUser or other Stardock sites I'm probably this:

The Admin

But on other forums, this is me:

Tireless Rebutter

Looking at many of the regulars we have all kinds of people here ranging from:

• Cry baby
• Deacon
• Whisper
• Evil Clown
• Idealogue
• Issue
• Jerk (these tend to get banned)
• Rebel Leader
• Rebel without a clue
• Philosopher

Of course, most people aren't flame warriors at all.  They're casual users.  Others are a mixture of the various types.  And still others are lurkers. 

You can check it out for yourself, which one do you think fits you best?

Have fun!

Video options: Make the units look like plastic

Having fun with the new video settings.  You can turn of textures and such and it will speed up the game on lower end systems but it also gives the game a pretty strange but neat look.  In this screenshot, I kept the textures on for planets and stars but took them off for pretty much everything else.  Looks kind of like plastic.

This thread is for people who have found some bug, glitch, typo, oversight, you name it.  If you are running into a serious in-game problem (i.e. one that prevents you from playing) see the other sticky on IN-GAME problems. 

Here's how to report something we screwed up on:

1) What the bug/glitch is.

2) How to reproduce it.

Note: Glitches are things that are definitely glitches.  This is NOT a wish list thread or a place to tell us how you think we should have implemented some feature differently.

Thanks!

IF you've installed the game and cannot get it to even get into a game, then this is the place.

IF you're able to play the game and run into a problem later, find the other thread to post reports. This thread is only for people who have installed the game and simply can't get it to work for some reason.

If you run into same basic problem such as:

a) Game doesn't load

Game causes your computer to catch fire

c) Game formats the hard drives of your neighbor's computer even though it's not connected to the net.

d) Some other basic problem that is keeping the game from running for you.

Then post here.

WE NEED:

1) Your debug.err info (which is located in your GalCiv II directory)

2) Any other info you think is pertinent (such as what you were doing)

ALSO:

MOST COMMON REASONS:

a) You're running your desktop in 16-bit color

or

You have ancient video drivers.

Make sure you've updated to the latest version of the game! Click on the downloads links above.

It's been another long week.  I went to bed at 6:30am this morning, got up at around 10am and worked until around 11pm.  My schedule is pretty screwed up at this point.  But I think we've turned the corner in terms of work. 

GalCiv stuff...

We got Galactic Civilizations II 1.0X out the door.  I certainly hope it's "good enough".  It's really difficult to tell on so many different systems. I always get worried that we'll put something out and there will be some sort of catastrophic problem with it.  And the reality is, for someone, somewhere, there will be some catastrophic problem.  It's all about numbers.  The goal is to never have 0 problems because that's impossible. The goal is to keep it at less than 1% which is the goal of 1.0X.

It's been a pretty crazy ride though.  I don't think I've been flamed as many times in a 2 week span ever than these past 2 weeks.  On the other hand, I don't think I've ever had as many kudos/ataboys/cheers in a 2 week span than these past 2 weeks. 

It's probably the first time we've made something that had such instant, large scale success/availability that we've been able to attrack the kinds of attention we've gotten.  Last week we were the top selling PC software product at Walmart.  That's just crazy. 

This week, the reviews have started to come in.  Gamespot gave the game a 9/10.  That's the first 9 or better Gamespot has given a PC game since last October. It's very rare for them to give a game a 9 or better so it really means a lot.  Gamespy gave it 4.5/5.  UGO gave it an A-.  And so on.  Good reviews, strong sales, all seems well.  But man, am I tired.  Exhausted.  And soon I have to switch back to working on the core business stuff, the utility software.

Taxes

We also need to start hiring up to go to the next level.  Here on JoeUser, there's regular debates on taxes.  It's easy to talk about how "they" (i.e. "the rich") should pay a lot more in taxes.  But when you beocme "they" it's tough.  For instance, let's just us GalCiv as an example.  Let's say it sells 300,000 units.  We make around $20 per unit at retail.  So that would be $6M in revenue.  Since Stardock was already running well in the black before release, that woudl be $6M net.  The government would literally take around $3M of it.  Our accountants will probably be able to get that down to being a mere $2.2M probably.  But still, think of that money, gone.  

That's money that would have gone to give people raises.  Hire more people. Invest in more equipment.  Who is better qualified to spend the $2.2M?  Us or the government?  I guess that depends on your point of view.  When I hear of how much is wasted in Washington on boondongle projects, it's really painful to think that it's our money they do that with.  Those 90 to 111 hour weeks for the past few months spent making something so that the government can squander it on some pork barrel project or worthless study or one of the myriad of other blatantly, undefensibly wasteful things they do.

Investing and hiring

So like I said, we have to hire quite a few more people.  If we're going to expand our development team to make the most of Windows Vista as well as capitalize on the popularity of GalCiv to continue that series as well as expand into Society we're going to have to bring in more people. A lot more people.  Which of course is always a challenge.  I'm terrible at interviewing. I basically go by personality and potential ability and am tone deaf when it comes to measuring one's actualized ability.  That is, I can usually tell what someone is capable of but not very good at weeding out people who simply are not willing or able to meet their potential.

JoeUser melodrama

JoeUser is going through one of its melodrama cycles.  I've joked to friends in the past that this stuff could almost be plotted and graphed.  Every on-line community goes through it.  Seeing a prominent member like LW leave is sad but inevitable (not her in particular but prominent members leaving).  And it gives me no pleasure in saying that in another 9 months only a few people will remember her.  In fact, I find that one of the more depressing things about on-line communities.  The communities stay and grow even when individuals move on.

The Jark episode at deviantART is still one of the most troubling examples.  Here was a guy who was the heart and soul of the site. The literal founder. And then one day, he was fired by the other stock holders. Gone. One day he's there. Next day he's gone.  You can learn more about it from Jark's page (or at least his side of things).  The point of that isn't who is right or wrong but to point out that even someone who is the founder of a community and a daily presence for 5 years can be quickly and utterly forgotten by the community as a whole in less than 5 months.  There are plenty of people -- individuals -- who remember. But the community moves on.  That is one reason I never romantacize about any "community".  I have no illusions that if I disappeared from JU, there would be individuals who would care, but in time, the community would move on.

The point is, if you're going to be part of a community, be a part of it because YOU enjoy it. Because it brings you happiness or is interesting.  Be part of a community because you want to be.  Don't do it for the sake of others.  Blogging is about expressing yourself.  Putting your thoughts down. Expressing your opinions.  If you're not having fun doing it, take a break for a day, a week, a month and come back when you think it will be fun for YOU again. 

Never ever sacrifice your own interest for the sake of an on-line community because in the end you'll only be disappointed and embittered.  I've been doing this stuff for literally 20 years now (20 years this month actually).  From the earliest BBSes to this.  I'm part of dozens of different on-line communities. I've seen things come and go and the only way you can keep it up is to not confuse a community for a virtual family.  Individuals in a community can be counted on.  But not the community unto itself.  A community is a thing. It's not a person.  Communities have no loyalty, no compassion, no appreciation.  It's about the individuals of that community -- specific ones.  Each of us have people here we care about, that we like. Maybe there's some we don't like. It's all good. 

Just don't confuse the individuals for the community and make sure you're having fun.

Spin

Though to people on JU who care a lot about the community, and god bless them, the melodrama means a great deal to them.  If I had more free time, I'd be right with them.  The one thing I have noticed are the tell-tale signs of spinning.  For example, the melodrama here on JU was precipitated by a prominate user (LW) leaving in response to her husband being banned.  The spin I've seen is to imply that I got mad at her husband because of his blog article. 

On the contrary, I found the actual article amusing.  What I didn't care for was the personal (as in bringing in off-topic elements to use to create a personal attack) button pushing.  And congrats, condescension and patronziing push my buttons.  And if there were awards for being good at pushing someone's buttons, LW's husband would get one.  But I'd also argue that it's probably not a good idea to push the buttons of the person who runs the blog site.  I warned him, he persisted, he's gone. 

What really set some people off were my words: "I don't care if people blog here or not."  But that's the thing I don't care one way or the other.  People create their own virtual homes here.  I'm basically an indifferent landlord.  JU's complexity means that it's a problematic site at times.  I wish I could justify putting more dev time into the site but right now, we're stretched too thin.  Things slowly do get better on the technical side but it's slow going (though they'll be getting much better this Spring when the new server farm is in place which will automatically help JU).

I don't really feel that people who blog here owe me anything. I don't really look at it like I'm doing them a favor. I just don't like it when someone implies they're doing me a favor by being here.

What's next

Well hopefully in the next few weeks things will return to a more "normal" 60 hour a week thing.  Then this summer, things should really settle down and I'll start to take some serious time off.  I've even considered working only part-time this summer.  I'm 34.  I really don't want to think I've wasted all my youth working.  So if I'm posting about how many hours I'm doing this summer, you'll know I failed.