Damn, sorry SS, i was just coming back into the thread to post my new game, that endgamesave is already gone, sorry mate, i wished i had checked the thread earlier. I can tell you that the date was 15th Sep, hope thats of some use..

Just ran through a vanilla game, just for kicks. Declared on the AI well before i was ready and just steamrolled over them.

I might dust off my old TA mods and see what state i left them in.

Nothing serious.  We had a big rainstorm and it knocked some of our fence out toward the road behind our house.  The dogs stayed in the yard luckily.  I'm still on long hours and had to do the repairs at night though.  It's not the prettiest job, but the dogs are safe from traffic now.

 

I didn't use ARC, ZYW or Mumbler tricks in my last game.  No ships for planets, mass upgrade or declaring war and selling peace for planets and such.  Once war was declared, it ended with the demise of the AI.  I did trade tech for some planets though, but that's pretty straightforward.  

The only "tricks" I used were ctrl-n until I got the library on my homeworld and saving/reloading so I could talk to the AI early. Without that, I'm not sure my economy could have survived the all labs build.

I built the SCC, but it wasn't really much help early on.  The fighters were the small ones that the AI built early that I traded techs for.  I landed the fighters on the nearest planets and that boosted my mil standing more than the SCC in years 0 and 1.  

My mil score really took off when the Arceans declared war on me due to a diplomatic event.  The whole map had slow small Arcean fighters wandering around so I had to build warships everywhere I could.  They were killing my colonizers and resource starbases so I built up quickly to counter them.  I landed the surviving warships at my homeworld under the SCC after I was done and moved the tiny fighters to other planets. I recall having 3 huge and 2 small missile ships after the Arceans fell. Around that time, I had also traded some techs for a few AI frigates and they headed to the SCC.

I had a starbase array started, but I never got around to finishing it.  It was only there to boost the fighters in the planet cluster around my homeworld.  I didn't put the starbases where they could overlap at a "sweet spot".  It wouldn't have been effective for score, but I was using it to help defend the home cluster.  Even with it, I lost a planet close by.  Only 1 though.  

 

Sounds like an epic game! i seem to be just steamrolling the AI, with little resistance. I thought in my last game i had not set the AI to suicidal, but the game is labeled so.
One thing i have been doing, and i won't again, was set relations to friendly so i could talk to the AI on March 1. Something is tickling the back of brain about how this could be nerfing the AI or something???
Was there a bug or something, i don't recall, about when setting relations to friendly it lowered their intelligence?

I see the difference in our games, i'm not needing a military at all really. Iv'e been having 1ATT on my transports to clear out scouts and constructors, but apart from the odd ship or two, the AI is just building up, therefore, neither am i.

Nope, Neilo, without knowing what the component scores were, I can't do anything. 

I don't suppose you'd be interested in playing another Very Slow game?

Maybe.....perhaps on a smaller map, though i guess that doesn't help you as much tho.

Smaller map is fine.  It helps me just as much, actually. 

Here's a twist.  I went to my mother-in-law's birthday party yesterday.  She wanted to meet at a sporting goods store that has an aquarium and museum in it called Cabela's.  When we got there, she handed each of us a $100.00 bill and said we had to spend it in the store right then.  Epic birthday party!

I put mine toward this...

Yep, it's a Thompson Center Contender 30-30 win.  A pistol that shoots rifle cartridges for those who aren't familiar.  It's gonna kick.

sigh.....stupid Australian government and its tight gun control laws....

I thought they only banned assault rifles.  But I don't know much about the gun laws there.

This is just for deer hunting.  I can't see much else to use it for.  I wouldn't try to use it for home protection or anything.  The bullet would go through two or more houses if I missed and it's only a single shot.

In America, guns are part of our heritage.  If we didn't have them during the revolution, we'd all be speaking English here.

   

 

Good one.

Sorry Motti, didn't understand what you were saying!

 

And in their infinite wisdom, the Aust govt made many rulings as far as gun ownership goes. To own a gun you must get a firarms licence, to do that you either have to be a secuirty guard, who's employer has submitted to the police that you require a weapon on the job. A rural land owner producing goods (a Primary Producer), so you can take care of your land (pigs, rabbits and the like). Or, if you join a Gun/Shooting club, but then you "must" attend the club once a week (or month IDK), with documentation to prove it.

Even then, the gun must be stored in a safe (there is a min weight) and it must be bolted to concrete. the ammo must not be keeped with the weapon, oh, and the police can make a surprise inspection at your house to see if your complying with all that. And that is for is pistols and single shot (low power) rifles. I think the primary producers can have shot guns, but just standard single or double barrels. If it's an automatic weapon, illegal, no matter of licence will help you.

So to buy a 9mm Glock, which i looked into for home defense, i had to join a gun club, even though iv'e held a Security License for over 12 years with an impeccable work record, i'd have to install a safe and have it bolted to concrete, which is a problem, the house is not on a slab, so id have to put it out in my shed, and then make sure i attend the gun club once a week/month, and then i might be able to buy it for around $1100.

Or, like most Australians do, or those i know with guns at least, i can go to any number of people and spend about $600 and get a blackmarket 9mm with a box of ammo.

And they wonder here why the black market is so huge, and that there are many, many robberies at gun point.

So if i wake up to an intruder in my house with a knife say, instead of owning his ass by pulling out my 9mm, i get to fight him with my baseball bat.

Try doing that in the states (the south especially if Hollywood is to be believed) and see how far ya get!!!

Guys, can anyone recall how to, or the thread about, forcing GC2 to use 3GB ram? I'm getting OOM on my latest game, and iv'e long forgotten how to force it to use 3GB. It sure is frustrating to know i have 16GB in my rig and GC2 can't use it...if ever there is a GC3, i sure hope Brad makes it a native 64bit game.

My latest game is the best yet! Usual map specs, all labs, but i set the AI to friendly and so on March 1  sold every bit of tech i had, apart from weapons, to each AI then declared war on all of them, and i have no intention of suing for peace. Iv'e rolled over the Arceans already, and now im hitting the terrans, who are about equal in strength to me. The Krynn, who is a half way converted race to the Ildrians from Saga of the Seven Suns is by far the strongest, but luckily they be on the other side of the galaxy and no threat.

I'm using MV compatible versions of my mod races, so the Yor are the Klikiss Robots, the terran are the Terran Hanseatic League, the Krynn i mentioned, and i play using my Roamer Clans Custom. I had to cut out alot of the mod to make it MV compatible, and because alot of it isn't finished...and...it's actually a TA mod that i had to backport for DA...but its fun.

I'll try and finish the mod, MV version anyway, since the vanilla races have become boring, essentially it will be just window dressing, since you can't do a great deal when wanting to use it on the MV..but even simple name changes and portrait pics are freshening up the old AI look.

I can't remember that trick.  I bet Mumble could help though.  He's pretty good with that stuff.

Sounds like you have quite the epic game going Neilo.  The mods probably add some nuance to it too.  Having an AI that's equal to you in strength is awesome.  I bet you can't wait till you meet up.

You're not selling weapons tech?  I haven't thought about that.  It's usually sell it as fast as I can.

I started a game too.  For the first time in forever, I'm playing as the Terrans.  I'm quite surprised by their strength.  They can pretty much talk to any AI whenever they care to.  Well, comparatively anyway.  Their diplo skills are pretty wild.  I haven't used any tricks as far as ARC/ mumble/zwy, etc. and I have tech treaties from all AIs and econ from most in year 0.

I'm doing all labs with a library on my homeworld and I'm not struggling with economy much.  I only went below -500 for something like 2 weeks.  

Iv'e been thinking about it, and i think im going to get whopped! It will take a great effort for me to get my economy going enough to the point that i can rush buy some real huge hull'd firepower, all labs focus is not going to be enough to build as many as i will need i think.

Depending on the game, i usually do as well, but it was always my intention when i started this game to be at war with the AI ASAP and for the entire game, so keeping them devoid of weapons in the early game served to let me gain the upper hand. I'm in the process of selling my beam techs, since i am no maxing out the missile techs and will switch to them once these pesky terrans are done with.

Speaking of which, i don't think i have played with Terran since i first got the game!! I should not be surprised to hear that they are strong, i often found in games that the Terrans were more often than nor the next greatest power after myself, certainly when no Drengin were involved.
I wouldn't mind playing a game with them myself. Obviously their diplo strength would be one way to focus your game....use a custom Terran, retain SuperDiplo, put all points into diplo, loyalty and influence go all labs and just rape them of their planets......

As for the 3GB trick, you lurking Mumble or SS? I know it's on the forums, but iv'e been lazy with my searching, hoping to avoid having to go through all the OOM thread replies that popped up.

Looking back, you're running 7 with 16GB of RAM, which means:

This tells us either that GC2 isn't large address aware, if you were running into the limit at 2GB, or that it is, but you're hitting the 3GB limit.  And in either case, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, since you can't very well recompile it.  This is odd, because it seems that you could extend its usable portion to 3GB, if you were on a 32-bit OS; see below.

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There's a switch to allow a program to use up to 3GB, but that limits the kernel to as little as 1GB, as 32-bit can only see 4GB.

This is further complicated by the fact that included in this 4GB that the OS can see is your VRAM, IIRC-so with a 512MB video card, you only have 3.5GB visible, leaving 1.5GB for the kernel without the switch and a mere 512MB with it.

Fortunately, you can choose in-between values-otherwise it'd be more or less impossible to make any changes if you had a 1GB video card.

Here's the info for XP, and for Vista.

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Kind of silly that you can kind of sort of fix it with 32-bit, but can't fix it with 64-bit.  We clearly need more 64-bit applications...