brab_alan

brab_alan

Joined Member # 653293
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Reply to It's the right that's been naive about Iraq in Politics JoeUser Forums

One could try to decide on the failure or not of the Iraqi invasion by trying to answer a few questions: - The main question: would a more peaceful approach have worked. I believe so, as it seemed that the UN was making progress, thanks a lot to the pressure of a potential attack. - How many people died (civilian or military, Iraqi or foreigners) ? How many people would have died without the intervention ? - Is the region more stabilized, or not ? As Bush pointed out in his <a href="

12 Replies 10,413 Views
How much can one trust electronic voting ? in Politics JoeUser Forums

I just read this update on the Diebold affair, and I find this very scary. It seems that this company wants to make sure that noone knows how, and whether, their votes are counted. I have participated in many manual vote counts in France (all vote counts are manual), and I was really impressed by the mechanism put in place to avoid cheating. The great thing is that any registered voter can go and count votes, thus building

0 Replies 7,674 Views
Reply to A fantasy foreign policy in Politics JoeUser Forums

I also agree that getting Saddam out of power was a good thing. I'm just not sure that the way used was the best (in term of immediate human and material cost and in term of stabilizing the region). It's hard to know how many Iraqi civilian died, but most numbers I found are around 10000, that is 3 times the casualties of 9/11. Some might think it's not that much, but I do. The way I see it, the rush to war was justified by some immediate danger, which seems to have been fabricated. Fro

7 Replies 14,432 Views
Reply to A fantasy foreign policy in Politics JoeUser Forums

Yes, unfortunately Iraq is one of the few countries that have used WMD. It seems to be the only one that got rid of them since, though. But I guess all of this is hard to look at objectively as it is happening.

7 Replies 14,432 Views
Reply to CD Copy protection is not the way to stop piracy in Gaming JoeUser Forums

Great article. As another person said, I was also in group 2, because at the time I heard of Galciv there was no demo available, and I have been burned too many times buying games that sucked and that I could not return. By I have since repented, bought Galciv, and really enjoyed the frequent updates. Since then I have looked at the other things you do more closely, and even started arguing on this site. We definitely do not agree as concerns politics, but count me in as a loyal customer ;-)

69 Replies 124,583 Views
Iraq and 9/11 in Politics JoeUser Forums

As I have read that saying that Bush had hinted at a connection between Iraq and 9/11 was revisionism, I need some help to read this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-1.html I am pretty sure that my misunderstanding of this letter (that is, concluding from it that Iraq or its leaders are terrorist or have aided the 9/11 attacks) comes from the fact that I am not a native English

1 Replies 8,328 Views
Reply to another company as good as this one,, or close anyway in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I really enjoy playing RON, because it's a RTS that can feel like a TBS civ like (playing nomad, super slow and expensive research, abusing the pause key). I like that the nation are very different (starting at "tough" AI one needs to leverage advantages of his nation) while staying fairly balanced (reading the endless debates at Apolyton). The non-depleting resources are nice (reminding me of TA, with a twist: the commerce cap). And less micro-management let you concentrate on the fun bit (like

26 Replies 622 Views
Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Here is my aar. It's mostly screenshots with some bullet points of what is happening. I don't have more time to tidy it up (I don't even have time to play right now) but I thought you might enjoy it. Executive summary: pretty good game start, but as I am not aggressive enough, I suck at midgame. Enjoy :d http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~schmitta/galciv/aar_gotm_may_2003.html PS: as I am on a super slow link, it's taking a very long time to upload the screenies ... they s

116 Replies 7,836 Views
Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Mine was also a DAR then :D I started changing it to html, and putting the screenies at the right place. I took way too many of them (about 50), and as it is the first AAR I write, I don't really know what to say (besides the obvious ;) ). By the way, when is the gotm ending ? (ie when will we be able to post our AAR).

116 Replies 7,836 Views
Reply to Gal Civ Sales. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I bought it from Amazon because it was cheaper. I'm definitely for direct downloading, and in retrospect would have done it, just to give more money to Stardock. But at that time I was not thinking of supporting Stardock. Now it's different, I'm looking at this Object Desktop thing (even though I'm running enlightenment under linux) and maybe a Drengin submission ... Thinking about it, there must be some subliminal messages in the game :p

18 Replies 677 Views
Reply to Galciv Game of the Month Challenge - no.1 in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I'm going to try to play this game of the month, hoping I'll finish it in time (I can usually only play one hour a day, sometimes more when my wife is tired and goes to sleep and does not see how late I go to bed ;p ). I have a quick question about save game and cultural victory: sometimes when loading a save game it takes a while before culture gets to its stable state. So I guess that saving every turn and sending the last save does not work for cultural victory, as one would need to wait fo

116 Replies 7,836 Views
Reply to We desprately NEED a VERY VERY GOOD Manual in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

"Huge ai cheats aren't cheap tactics?" Not if they're Sid Meier's :d Seriously, it's good to have some information, and the interface to get info in game in Galciv could definitely be improved, but I guess I don't really care if I don't know the exact algorithm used for every computation. And I don't think tweaking the algorithm to make things more balanced is cheating.

12 Replies 406 Views
Reply to @Stardock - UI changes? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Many very nice ideas in this thread. I definitely second the "guard but don't care about planets" thing, as I often have a couple ships near enemy planets close to my trade routes. Maybe "guard" should be modified not to take planets into account ...

19 Replies 390 Views
Reply to European Empire Update in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I have just joined the European Alliance (adding a meager 180 points but I'm almost done with another game on "Challenging"). I'm living in the US right now, but I'm French and will go back to France (Grenoble) in a few months.

1,311 Replies 28,224 Views
Reply to The GalCiv User Manual Thread in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

One small thing to add as well (I quickly looked through the manual but did not see it, please ignore this if it's already in). I just discovered how to quickly edit the current project through the planet list (clicking on the bar showing the current advancement of the project) (this would fit nicely in the "planet list" section, with a screenshot). Are there other interface tricks like that ? I'd love to know.

15 Replies 2,146 Views