The Bongolian Deathcrab. The USS You Are All So Boned. 17 days of Galactic Civilizations II, and a really, really funny (if longish) running commentary to go with it.

Us Spectres have 12 billion people on every planet, and our nymphomania means we recouperate losses quickly, but the scale of the onslaught was such that we still lost one or two planets. So when it came to the fun part - designing my capital-class super battleship to use all the best technology in the universe, I was angry.

This is how, by the end of the half-hour design process, I ended up with a ship that is too wide to fit on the screen.

Maggie Greene

GalCiv 2 War Report: One small step for space aliens, no steps at all for man in pants [PC Gamer Magazine via Joystiq]

There are some solid real-world figures here that show how much developers actually make on each sale, with and without going through a publisher. It's also refreshing to read about Stardock's perspective on copy protection (there isn't any), how to improve on your previous game, and future proofing their software (the game was built to scale well for future PCs).

Postmortem: Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords