Recent content by Harry Haller

Apologies if this has been asked a hundred times already -- I like some of the new BTS units but am not crazy about the game overall. Can I play Civ IV with just the BTS units? Thanks

I liked the senate in Civ 2, but I think that your chance of over-riding the senate should be based on your popularity.

I think that the key to cultural victory is that you have to reach a certain level of technology where you can defend yourself, and then turn your research down and your culture slider up and coast to the end. I have won cultural victories a couple of times, and I researched to infantry and...

Is it possible to customize scenarios? For example, to play the "Earth" scenario with the space race turned off?

Does this increase the aggressiveness of the computer players toward each other, or only toward the human player?

There are no armies now. But I think that I read someplace that the "SDK" [whatever that stands for] modification kit, which is supposed to come out soon, will allow people to mod armies in.

There is no "cold war" in the modern era (ie, there is no risk that military conflict is going to trigger a nuclear exchange). I don't think I've ever seen an AI build a nuclear missile, and the short distance between the completion of the Manhattan Project and the ability to build SDIs means...

The expansion pack is nice. But if you never played the original that much, it might not necessarily add a lot to your experience. I also don't think it's that easy to find any more. The biggest thing that it does is add some more factions and a few more secret projects (wonders) and a small...

Another great thing in SMAC was that if you thoroughly defeated one of the other factions, you could make them your vassal. So you didn't need to go around and occupy everyone, but they would still vote your way in "Planetary Council" votes, fight against your enemies, and turn over all of their...

SMAC/SMACX is just such a great game, for all of the reasons that everyone else has mentioned. There is just so much more to do, from customizing units to terraforming to espionage to dealing with the alien lifeforms... Each of the factions has a really distinct set of starting advantage and...

Don't some of the shields that you have invested "decay" over time while you are building something else?

The Fall from Heaven and other ones look interesting and I think I will try them eventually, but for now I am more interested in something that keeps more to the basic flavor of Civ 4, but that maybe adds some gameplay tweaks and new units for the later part of the game (industrial and modern eras).

I still like Civ 2 best. Although if SMAC were included in your poll, I would probably vote for that. I thought that I would go back and play a game of Civ 2, just to compare it with Civ 4. I ended up playing it non stop for 3 days. Even though it does have some problems by today's...

I have not tried any of the player-made mods yet, and it looks like there are quite a few of them. A lot of them look like various combinations of other, smaller mods that were made by other people. Out of all of these, are there any that stand out as being especially good?

I think that psychologists estimate that for most things, it takes about 5000 hours to become "expert" at it. So you have a way to go before you become a Civ expert. Keep playing. If you are unsure about which of 2 strategies is better, save the game, play one strategy, go back to your save and...