Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Info Guide By Brad Wardell
Designer and AI Developer  

Title: Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor

Description:
Expansion pack to the award-winning PC strategy game, Galactic Civilizations II

Requires:
Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition or Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords + Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avata...

There's something to be said about walking into a room and seeing that the 18 month old has thrown all the books on the floor making a big mess with the top most book being the book on discipline.  I think she's sending a message.

I have a lot of obnoxious opinions on a whole range of issues. But I never allow my personal opinions to be injected into software. Our customers are buying products and services from us. They don't want to be forced to deal with my diatribes.

But on-line is a different matter. If you're visiting my blog or reading one of the off-topic forum categories on one of our sites, something I write might pop up.  I value my freedom to say what I want more than anything.  I'd sooner close ...

New opening cut-scene of course...

 

So here we go, we're in the final stages. Lots of features being tweaked. The computer AI has been enhanced. I will go so far as to say that it is about twice as intelligent as the last publicly available beta. If people find this AI unsatisfactory well, they can go write their own game.

So in my testing, I want to make sure that the AI personalities are doing a good job and just make sure all the new content is working right.

 

 

Setting up a custom civilization....

I read a news announcement about a new freeware program that does some cool stuff. I check it out and it is vastly superior to an existing freeware program. Yet when I read the comments, the new, superior freeware program is being flamed. Why? Because the guy making it also offers a for-pay version that has more features.

I check out the forums of a game I enjoy playing. Normally people are singing the praises of this game. Now, the forum is full of flaming and angst. Why? Because the devel...

 

Take Windows to the next level

A look at how to completely transform your Windows experience.

  

After a full year of effort, Stardock has officially launched MyColors to the general public.

So the new bees have arrived. I got 4 packages of them today and my son and I installed them into their new homes. We were horribly inept while doing it as the picture shows (I'm reaching down to pick up the queen cage that I dropped).



Definitely not for the faint hearted.

There's me on the left and Chris Taylor on the right immediately following the signing of the Demigod publishing agreement.  

ImpulseDriven.net is an alternative virtual community site much like JoeUser.com. There is a lot of overlap between the two in terms of content but ImpulseDriven has more game and software categories and excludes the political and religious categories.

The two have considerably different UIs as well.

So which UI do you prefer?

a) JoeUser.com

or

b) ImpulseDriven.net

Who would win if the human player stepped out of it.

Let's find out if the AI improvements are making a difference..



Early game: Gray = Korx. Orange = Arcean.  Dark brown = Korath. Purple = Thalan. Blue = Humans

 



Year 2: Gray = Korx. Orange = Arcean.  Dark brown = Korath. Purple = Thalan. Blue = Humans

 


Year 3: Gray = Korx. Orange = Arcean.  Dark brown = Korath. Purple = Thalan. Blue = Humans

 

Planets: ...

Over the past few months the AI has gotten access to a lot of new APIs that are letting me significant improve the computer AI in Galactic Civilizations.

Armed with these APIs, I am now ready to revisit the Korx and the Thalan who have fairly unique tech trees which provide different challenges.

One of the APIs now tells me how many of a particular improvement is on a planet. So now I can keep an AI from filling up planets with stuff I don't want it to have.

A lot of the AI issues...

But I want to live!  

Hat tip to DigitalChet.

Today Stardock and Gas Powered Games announced their partnership to develop and publish the much anticipated PC strategy/RPG game Demigod. Demigod is going to be a milestone PC game for a lot of reasons that will be made clear in the coming months.

What Gas Powered Games and Stardock are doing is not your typical publishing agreement. Just as Stardock and Ironclad teamed up in an unprecedented way on Sins of a Solar Empire, the three of us are teaming up in ways that, to my knowledge, have ...

 

Somehow, I just don't see Abraham Lincoln and Nancy Pelosi being ideological "buds".  Eric Alterman once again proves the point that most liberals simply see things as a "good" vs. "evil". Good people are liberals. Bad people are conservatives.

It might make modern day liberals such as Eric Alterman feel good thinking he's in the company of say Thomas Jefferson, but I suspect Jefferson would take issue with today's modern liberal agenda o...

I have been pretty fortunate in my life when it comes to health.  To put it in perspective, I never had to blow my nose until 3 years ago.  I typically go years without getting so much as a cold let alone the flu.

So I guess it was time to catch up on being sick because on this trip, it hit hard. I started coming down with it just before I left but by yesterday, I could barely move.  I managed to drag myself in for the Games for Windows podcast where an equally ill Jeff Green...