I think you know most your devotees(like me) on here would keep buying the expansions.

You had mentioned in a write up or journal when talking DA about how a certain percentage of the original game's buyers will buy an expansion for said game. Is there any research about how many of that percentage would buy a second or even a third expansion pack? Probably not anything reliable, but in business I know it's hard to take a, let's see how this one goes, attitude. I think the fans of GC2 appreciate your efforts and will continue to support it as long as it keeps getting better.

I'm a twenty-hours-a-week type fanatic for these kind of games, but I have never bought an expansion pack for any Civ-type game. I just play the original version for years upon years. So I'm a lot more likely to buy your fantasy strategy game than a GC2 expansion. (I hope the fantasy strategy game is like Master of Magic -- that would be so awesome!)

Maybe if you could make your game like Magic:the Gathering where it would still be GC2, but each expansion was a new world with different ships to add to your original game. I just pulled that out of my ass.

I can't say for sure for myself but the expansions packs have been pretty awesome so far. Actually, I'm pretty excited about the fantasy strategy game. Can't wait to see that.

First of all, thanks for listening to us. Reading through these posts feels a bit like a mob shouting gimme, gimme!

But I can only add to that. Even though this complex game suffers somewhat from unintuitive mechanisms and game inbalances, the fact that Stardock continuously improves and updates the game, keeps me very excited about it and exept from multiplayer I will buy any expansion without question.

In a way, No. It should cost to be Good, being evil is always the easy way. Its what defines the universe, if you would suddenly start reaping benefits from morally good choices the universe would also align itself more towards a neutral alignment.

I mean, would saving a Planet of 500 million hamsters be a righteous thing to do if you would also in the process turn the planet into an intergalactic pet store and reap heavy economy boosts. No, because the morally good choice would be to leave them alone to begin with or even build a forcefield (with money out of your own pocket) around the planet to prevent anyone else dropping by to start a McHamster burger chain.

Whocj leads us to the evil choice, which would be to make burgers of the whole lot and increase your population growth.

Bytheway, does the above thing exist as a event or did I just make all that up?

I would really like to see more expansions after Twilight of the Arnor. Also waiting 4 years for GCIII is ok but the time gap between the last expansion and the sequel shouldn't be to big.



These are all great ideas. Combat improvements would also be nice but i don't think that full tactical battle is necessary.
Multiplayer is the one thing i would not spend money for.

Cheers

All right, here are the good bonuses:

"Citizens are more loyal and less likely to defect if their colonies are under an opponent's influence (A loyalty bonus, but who cares? I'd rather have the moral bonus.)

The five most populous planets have no maintenance costs for their initial Colony (This is the only real benefit from being good. But I'd rather build the mind control center instead)

Trade income with other good civilizations is increased by 25% (What are you suppose to do if no other good civs are around? Useless if you go solo.)

Gain a Diplomatic Ability bonus when dealing with other good or neutral civilizations (Same as the above except for the neutral bonus.)

Unique technologies include Superior Defense (Supperior defense my foot! You just get a few defenses, not enough to match the psionic weapons.)

The Temple of Righteousness Galactic Achievement is only available to good civilizations. (This thing thing works only if you have other good civs around)"

I am aware that "If no one else like you is around" scenario works for all races. It's just that good civs have no benefits that will make them competent to fight in a one on one battle.

All of these bonuses suck. There is absolutely NO incentive to be good. You don't even get that happy feeling about making the universe a better place. Being good sucks and I'm just giving suggestions to improve it. If anyone else has better suggestions I'd like to hear them.


PS:That hampster scenario is one that would not help the good guys out in the long run. It's a bad example for what I was trying to explain: Sometimes the good civs should reap the benefits and sometimes the evil civs reap the benefits. Right now it's a one way street if you want to get benefits, you have to be evil to get them.

The economic expansion is something I'd pay for, and quite simply- the UP is by far the weakest part of GalCiv II. Honestly, I feel Arnor should have the economic features.

What I think would work. Mini-expansions that cost $10 that tweak one thing released every 6 months. Affordable, keep the game fresh, could be done right up to GC3 development- and a good testing ground for that. This is your cash cow, you might as well milk it.

That said, when do you think you'll announce that fantasy strategy game?
(I'm just hoping it's how I imagine it)

Yes, I will continue to buy GC2 expansions. Mainly for the reasons mentioned above. Keep up the good work.

"Unique technologies include Superior Defense (Supperior defense my foot! You just get a few defenses, not enough to match the psionic weapons.)"

What do you mean? You get 4 defenses: Subspace Rebounders, Dynamic Shielding, Telepathic Defense and Arnorian Battle Armor.

Subspace Rebounders and Dynamic Shielding aren't really great, and don't do much to stop the Psyonic Beam.

Telepathic Defense, however, is good enough to nerf the effectiveness of the Psyonic Missile to some extent.

Arnorian Battle Armor is supreme. No Armor tech can match it until Adamantium 2 at the top of the tech tree. It's compact, cheap, strong and increases hit points as well, severely demolishing the Psyonic Shredder's effectiveness.

Arnorian Battle Armor:

Defense: 6 Armor
Size: 4
Sizemod: 2%
Cost: 50 bc
Bonus: Hitpoints +5%

vs

Psyonic Shredder:

Attack: 10 Mass Driver
Size: 9
Sizemod: 4%
Cost: 150 bc

Telepathic Defense:

Defense: 3 Point Defense
Size: 4
Sizemod: 2%
Cost: 40 bc

vs

Psyonic Missile:

Attack: 6 Missile
Size: 10
Sizemod: 3%
Cost: 100 bc

This is a really interesting game biz question. I'm very happy with the money I spent on DA and will buy TA sometime this year. And I think that the notion of numorous expansion packs should be attractive to all of us who like to pinch a penny when it comes to our PCs--expansions to the current platform mean even more return on what you paid both for your system and what you paid to Stardock.

But I wonder how much of the GC2 crowd will end up fully distracted from the stars when we can finally check out NotMoM2 (please give it a name soon so we can nag more consistently ). I'm sure there must be a good share who have no interest in the fantasy genre, but I'd still be playing MoM in emulation mode if I hadn't already thoroughly played the frak out of it.

My only point is basically UP and economics. But be careful not to over-design the economic systems. A simple change (such as making the sliders all able to reach 100%, thus removing the spending slider and letting you adjust spending independently) would be best. Yes, super cool new economic systems sound nice, but keep in mind the lesson of MOO3 . . .

UP things sounds wonderful, it would be amazing to be able to choose the bills to vote on, but it might be wise to prevent influence trading in that case. A wise player could gather massive influence and then use it to screw everybody. This is especially true if you have any 'embargo' or 'war' choices. Would suck to have stupid AIs selling influence only to have it turned on them to screw them over.

"Speaking of which, it would be cool to guide your race from primitive society into the space age of Galciv2. Yea, I'm asking a lot that will probably never happen. Combine Sid Meirs's Civilizations, little of the Age of Empires series, Master of Orion, and Galactic Civilizations to get the ULTIMATE GAME! Yea, i'm asking to much aren't I?"

This game is already coming out. It's called Spore.

Doesn't Civ 3 have a victory condition of building a colony ship and setting up a colony at Alpha Centauri(8pc away)? Isn't that how GalCiv 2's sandbox starts out(slightly). And you start out in ancient times.



The only race-unique buildings we know for sure yet are the Arcean Aerodrome(increases empire-wide ship defenses) and the Drengin Slave Pits(high-output manufacturing improvement).

The Krynn will probably have some super-espionage building, the Korath will probably have some 'genocide chamber' style things, the Thalans may have super-hive factories, the Terrans... what would they have?

Terror Stars are a 'cool' addition, the most destructive way to attack an enemy planet yet. Now we can attack planets in 5 ways:
-Culture/Influence
-Spies
-Planetary Invasion
-Spore
-Terror Star

...and maybe more we don't know.

Well, that is hard information to get from an informal online poll I would think. I, like most here, would of course continue to buy expansions for this game, it is an all time classic.

Purge (reply #10) really has it right on though. You know better than us the cost to develop an expansion. You know the fatigue (or lack thereof) with this code and product that your developers are feeling. If the team can be inspired to keep working on this product, then your profit margin for TA should give you the answer you need.

I for one hope it makes you enough money to justify more expansions.

- Wyndstar