One topic of spying-

Could there/will there be a feature indicating success of spying? Spying as it stands now is basically pumping $$ into a function and hoping each turn you're lucky enough to jump to the next espionage level. This perhaps is realistic, but you have no indicator if spending much more money would help much, nor how long it may take (roughly) to get to the next information level. Additionally, you don't know how effective your spying money is being put to, especially if you're throwing a lot of money into spying specifically to steal technology and you aren't getting any feedback on that.

Also, will there be both the general spying as it exists as well as the ability to purchase and use agents? Or will it be eclipsed by agents? It's not clear to me if you can still access this in the foreign relations area or not. I can see a place for both general and specific spying, but like I said earlier it'd be great to have more indicators and feedback so you know if it's "worth it" to throw your money toward this cost.

One question about the current level of things- is there any real disadvantage to cranking up espionage now until you reach the highest level on a race and then dropping to the lowest setting? You might not get any stolen tech, but at that point you'll have gotten as much information out of that civ as possible.

Brad- will there be a beta release of 1.4 just like in the past? I'm really in favor of economy improvements. That seems to be the biggest setback to making the game more fun and to allow more strategies than just expand, expand, expand population.

I think the game should introduce a fully-featured government simulator. The economy screen would display different stats every time you brought it up, none of the sliders would work, the cursor would only be visible 20% of the time, and most improvements would do the opposite of what they said they'd do.

It's a strategy game, not a simulator.

The Republican party is about one thing: greed. What can I get and how can I screw over everyone else to get it. But at the core the Republican agenda is greed.

And, of course, the Republicans accuse the Democrats of the same thing.

Amusing how it all works . . . and amusing how many people just go around pointing fingers at everybody instead of coming up with solutions.

The entire point of having a government is to take care of OUR needs.

And IMHO the entire point of the government is to maintain law and order, as well as to uphold human rights. Other than that, I think it should pretty much stay out of our lives.

Every American should benefit from our government policy, not just the wealthy elite.

Has anybody really stated that policy should only benefit the wealthy elite?

It just seems there is more than one way of thinking about what the government should and should not get involved in. Personally, I take the stance of a minimalist government, not the big huge one we currently have.

Unfortunately, Bush seems to have failed in that aspect about as bad as the Democrats usually do .

The Republican party is about one thing: greed.

No, a free market economy is about greed. We Americans do tend to focus on material things, but it is ingrained in our society. Don't blame the Republicans for that.

The entire point of having a government is to take care of OUR needs

I take care of my families needs with my job. My taxes are taking care of other people's needs. Do we have common needs - yes - defense, research, etc. Should the government be taking care of individual needs? Good topic for conversation. Adam Smith would say no (as would I, much of the time) but look at Victorian England ("Are there no poorhouses?"). I don't want the US to look like that. Lenin would say yes, but look at Socialist Russia. I don't want the US to look like that, either.

Personally I wish there was a third party, so that the Reps and Demos could both be punished for their blunders and inability to find common ground.

I agree. The country would be better served if our politicians were not always thinking about reelection. Term limits are the way to go, but how do you get people to vote themselves out of a job?

For a GalCiv III, it would be nice to expand the political factions further so that there was actaully internal competition in keeping your empire under your control.

Now how coool - and genuinely innovative - would that be?

Sid Meir had no problem putting his political ideas into his games, and neither should you. Politics should be WAY more important than it is in GalCiv.

Sid Meir had no problem putting his political ideas into his games, and neither should you. Politics should be WAY more important than it is in GalCiv.

Yea, I just want to be careful never to introduce any personal biases into the games. At the end of the day, they're games which means fun should be the primray goal.

For a GalCiv III, it would be nice to expand the political factions further so that there was actually internal competition in keeping your empire under your control.

Sounds good, I often thought that this was the least explored possibility of Gal Civ creating a more dynamic political system would be interesting. Especially with regards to making an empire work, I don’t think this has every been explored in any other space civ game that I have played.

On your espionage topic: Will minor races be able to use espionage as well?
Will there be types of espionage agents i.e. counter espionage and double agents, rogue agents?

Do you have any plans on developing minors any further for DA?

Yea, I just want to be careful never to introduce any personal biases into the games. At the end of the day, they're games which means fun should be the primray goal.

Your politics aren't quite mine, but what do I care? If I didn't want flavour, I'd eat white rice every meal and never try anything new. A game with a consistent, well-expressed philosophy that I'm not 100% alongside is far more interesting than non-offensive bland pap. I almost never commit thousands of millions of death-commandoes in core-detonation-assisted invasions in real life*, but that's not to say I don't want the option in GalCiv3. if you promise to keep your political philosphy less offensive than that that I shan't complain.


*Admittedly, not because I don't want to.

Yeah, who among us hasn't razed a city in a game of Civilization, or glassed a planet in a game of MoO? We generally carry out political policies that we wouldn't dream of endorsing in real life.

In games like these, the political themes are generally kept in the realm of hyperbole, so I don't think introducing such themes would really turn anyone off. I don't think we're talking about having options as subtle as Campaign Finance Reform or Estate Tax in GalCiv games.

Like others, things I'd like to see:

a) Make approval a little trickier to manage. Right now you can prevent low approval effects easily, with the tax slider. Add in a few more elements that are less easily controlled by the player.
Limit the rate at which the player can change tax rates. Perhaps only X% per turn. No more wild swings in the tax rate, which are unrealistic.
Have much harsher penalties for low approval. If an opposition party gains power, perhaps some of your colonies use their newfound influence in the Senate to secede from your empire.

Things I'd like to see...



This thread split into relevant to "the topic" posts and "political thread" posts.


My 2 BC, feel free to rip me now...

This thread split into relevant to "the topic" posts and "political thread" posts.

We don't have a split topic option, unfortunately.

Your politics aren't quite mine, but what do I care? If I didn't want flavour, I'd eat white rice every meal and never try anything new. A game with a consistent, well-expressed philosophy that I'm not 100% alongside is far more interesting than non-offensive bland pap.

It's really too bad that most people don't think this way, there would be a lot less medium gray sludge in the world.

a) Make approval a little trickier to manage. Right now you can prevent low approval effects easily, with the tax slider. Add in a few more elements that are less easily controlled by the player. Limit the rate at which the player can change tax rates. Perhaps only X% per turn. No more wild swings in the tax rate, which are unrealistic. Have much harsher penalties for low approval. If an opposition party gains power, perhaps some of your colonies use their newfound influence in the Senate to secede from your empire.

These are great ideas. At the very least, I would like to see voting power based on the average approval over the last year, instead of just the week before. Politics are just such a peripheral concern in the game as they stand.

My main complaint with this post is how my own questions regarding non-political topics were ignored, but the political comments were immediately answered... regardless of the fact that they came after my questions /snarl