What difficulty are you playing on? The AI gets bonuses at the higher levels, so sometimes its hard to compare ship to ship. Also, each branch of weapons functions a little differently. Some are cheaper to research but larger when added to a ship. Others are expensive, but you can cram lots on a hull at a time.

Basically to keep up with the AI you have 2 options when it comes to ship building.

1. Pick one line of weapons techs, lets say beams, and keep researching farther down the line. In general, the farther along the line the weapon falls, the stronger and smaller it is.

2. Research your miniturization techs. This allows you to add/cram more crap on your hulls. Of course this also makes your ships more expensive, but it definitely helps.

Have you checked your opponents' civilization-wide weapons rating? That may be what's giving them the huge boost, especially if they have a few Military Resource Mining Stations around.

To check their weapons rating and other ability stats, you have to get a low to medium intelligence rating for the civilization in question. Meaning, you need to use spies on them to gather intel. After that, you should be able to see their ability ratings in the diplomacy section.

If you want to even out the odds a bit more, try to find their Military Resource Mining Stations and take those out. That should lower their attack and defense by quite a bit. You can also research or trade for more weapon techs. That should also boost your weapon's rating. I don't think all weapon research will give you the boost, but it does somewhere along the line, I believe.

I can't really suggest anything about the saved game though.

I generally find miniaturization quite a weak research area, and defence is only worthwhile if you think you're going to be able to steam ahead of the AI in terms of research (since otherwise you're left with say only half their attack in defence and a mediocre attack, meaning they deal far more damage to you proportionately than you do to them). Therefore I'd suggest you get to medium hulls with just one focused weapon branch (you won't be able to do much with small hulls, even with lots of miniaturization), and once you start getting decent weapons quickly research a few miniaturization techs, but don't spend long on it since you're only having a small impact on the efficiency of your ships with it compared to the much larger impact that better weapons will have.

Pretty much - its why most times you will have faster ships etc (blue techs), and certainly better diplomacy etc etc (the yellow techs). The AI leaves the yellow and blue techs alone (as such), and will concentrate very early on weapons techs. Their tactic of leasing ships (thats why they appear so quickly), restricts greatly their options due to an increasingly crippled economy in the early game, so they cant research all.

They end up with better ships in terms of weapons, but rarely defensive techs in equal numbers, and always with slower ships - they couldnt do the others as they spent time on weapons, didnt have the cash/production to drive more research. A lot of their cash is paying for the lease of early ships, and little left for Major Research flexibility, as well as production, as well as military, as well as social (etc). The AI prioritises to military spending.

Almost - note almost - every time, a few low value ships (+1 attack etc) or Defenders will keep them off your back in the early game, and they will not bother you - doesnt take much, maybe 2-6 ships. That works as their early ships have little or no defense abilities.

With the AI, dont use our logic and deductions on how a human plays the game, the AI plays it very differently, considerably so, it has to, else it could not keep up with us. The AI is very good at maintaining an appearance of strength and resilience, but look behind what you see. Its an empty shell with little depth and flexibility, and (in relative terms) abysmal Production facility in the long term.

Hold "The Line" early game, and you'll always "win" in the end, just a question of by how much and how quickly depending how good a player is at manipulating available resources, and building an overall Industrial ability and economy. Stick to basic principles in building an Industrial & Research Base, dont be mesmerised by early AI numbers (all they did was lease ships, and that cripples them fairly quickly), and you will always start to out pace them from the 12-18 month point.

Regards
Zy

I agree with Piznit's last response, my first couple games I got blown out of the water by some pretty weak AIs because I wouldn't mess around with the sliders.

If you're getting beat 130 - 6 in terms of damage output there might be something wrong with your play in general. Try a few games at a lower difficulty level experimenting with new things, or stay on bright, but i suggest at least trying some of these:

1> Take more planets in the opening rush

2> Be on the offensive early, when atk and def values on everything is lower, try to outproduce him (try thalan for this one perhaps?)

3> Put points into Diplomancy either thru research or traits. And/Or switch to Human or Drath
a)Trade to improve relations with unhappy neighbours
b)research all the way to Total Majesty and build a Spin Control Center to scare off potential threats

4> Switch to Altarian if you think you're research output is to blame, they get great research bonuses

5> Build a token force just after the colony rush (Defenders will do) just as a presence

Sounds like your #1 problem is money.

Credits make the galaxy go 'round. I usually have my spending pegged to 100% and it stays there the entire game. More tips:

1: Rush, rush, rush. You can't go as insane as you did pre-TA, but you can still grab a bunch of planets. Tech up to the Recruiting Station, slap down some economy buildings and put your taxes at whatever gets you 100% morale at first. When you're about to go broke, ramp it up until you're making enough each turn to stay solvent. Depending on the size of the galaxy, you might have as many as 20 planets at this point.

2: As one President said, "It's the economy, stupid." Get your economy tree researched in a hurry, at least up to Xeno Trade Centers. Do NOT go to banks until you can easily research stock markets. This lets you pay for your constant 100% spending.

3: If you have twice the tech somebody else does, you probably also have twice the weapons capability, twice the economy, twice the diplomatic bonuses, and so on. Tech is good. Pay for it with your screaming-fast economy.

4: Are you playing SimCity or Galactic Civilizations? If you're not going to attack anyone, take lots of diplomatic bonuses, research diplomatic techs, distribute frequent gifts, and trade with everyone. Get a decently strong military, and you can win a diplomatic victory. Technology victories are ridiculously difficult now, so that might not work out for you.

Other than that, you need to go pound somebody most of the time to win the game. That means military, either to defend your starbases as you ascend or to finish off the other guy's planets. Start pounding whenever you have an advantage over a neighbor, and stop pounding when you see the victory screen. Build your space navy, research Planetary Invasions, and start weeding out the weak.

[my bad on the DP]

and always have your "Production Capacity" on 100% ALWAYS! unless you're heading toward an economic crash of epic proportions (losing more per turn than you have in your bank)

Your problem is clearly a general strategy issue, not a specific problem with how fast the AI develops weapons.

There are a LOT of strategies that can work, but none of them involve a 33% spending split. My personal favorite, which works for me with all races in DA and many in TA, is the 1/99/0 strategy. You can probably find a more detailed description elsewhere, but here is basically how it works:

For racial bonuses take the highest +Econ and +Morale bonuses you can afford. Do whatever you like with any remaining points, though with some races you will want +Mil or +Soc.

At the start of the game set your tax rate bar at 49%. Don't worry about your actual morale right now, but about 20 turns into the game you will want to start checking it regularly (every 10 to 15 turns) and from there on you will want to try to keep morale as a whole over 80%, raising or lowering the tax rate as necessary to achieve this.
Set the production bar at 100%, you shouldn't EVER need to move this again.
Set the Military rate at 1% and lock it, it shouldn't need to change ever again barring an emergency war situation.
Set the Social rate at 99%, this will only change when your research needs to go up temporarily.
Set Research at 0%, this will only change every once in a while around mid-game when you need to rush a few techs to start building some more efficient ships.
Set ALL planets to "Focus on Research" from now on.

All planets then get one production, morale, and population cap facility to start with. However, early on you might not want to build anything on a planet until the population reaches about 1 billion. This decision basically rests on whether you are currently negative or not.
From this point there are two options for each planet, Military or Economic. Generally speaking larger planets, or ones with high production bonuses become military production planets, and smaller planets become economic. Build as appropriate.

The way this strategy works is this... 99% social production guarantees that all building production will go as fast as possible, especially ensuring new planets catch up relatively quickly with older ones. Older planets that are fully developed will either have a starport or not. Those that do have one will have all that social production automatically rolled over to military production, resulting in fast ship building. Those that have no starport will build nothing once their social production is done, and so those planets will generate huge positive income since their only outlay is maintenance and research, and they have economic bonuses to make sure they can more than cover those low costs.
The focused research on ALL planets provides a solid research base. It is not extremely high, but you are also not wasting effort putting spending % into research for planets that have no significant research capability. You can build research facilities anywhere you do have a 300% or 700% bonus though, as it is probably the best use of such spaces. When you do need lots more research just turn the percentage up temporarily while lowering social production. Then research a tech or two and turn it back down and turn social back up.

Generally when I use this strategy I never go negative, and I can keep up with the AI on almost any level unless I get really blocked in at the start.

You can find other posts with a lot more detail on this method if you look around.

I agree entirely, the all-factory strat is effective and powerful, but you lose a lot of production in the social ---> military transition at 1/99/0, you never produce as much, but it keeps fleet production going during quiet times, and during/builing up to a war i tip the scales in favor of military production.

In the beginning when i have but a handfull of planets, and less than that in ship-production mode i usually keep the sliders at 0/50/50 and focus on military production on shipbuilders (usually my homeworld). This enables me to breeze through some easy techs, alot of which give bonuses to social/military prod.

Also it is all factories, no labs, labs are a waste of maintaince most of the times (1/99/0 means no funding is going to the labs) and if you do tip the scales for research than all your factories go offline, usually producing less research than the factories did in the first place. Stick with factories, it has caused me great pain to build an enhanced factory on a precursor library, but sacrifices must be made.

And lastly, always be mass producing a ship at (1/99/0) unless you're crippled by ship maintaince fees and/or the cost of building them, at which point i turn the bottom 5% of shipbuilding planets into econs stripes (a couple factories and the rest econ, if it's a larger planet, drop a farm and morale)

Well, I shall give my 2 cents advice on this thread.

I'm not used to the all x approach since I find it "unrealistic" (as how "real" future may be), but I shall try it one day, to be a score blockbuster too but I'm off topic doing so ^^

But as far the thread is about, its about weaponery.

I play in huge/immense maps, masochistic, abundant all but habitable planets (common or rare) and tech slow or slower.

So... How to crush aliens in a few lessons..

First of all, Diplo is your friend: Early on, as soon as the first warships are being built by everyone, check AI's ships in their list in the diplo screen - assuming you got contacts with them and universal translator. Cheap spying, but still effiency. You can see toward wich kind of weap a given AI is going to focus on. Often beams weaps, sometimes mass drivers. Korath, Yor and Drengin seems to pretty like missile weaps instead, but not always.

So having in mind wich weapon kind your potential foe is gonna research, you can research appropriate defenses.

Early on, focusing on missile weaps will allow you to get expensive ships, but AI seems not research any ECM tech until you aren't at war with them AND using missiles against them. As for shields and armor, they often research for it due to early (often useless) wars.

Secondo, never ever trade (I mean give to the AI) +x% weaps and/or def techs giving bonus. As for diplo techs, it may turn one day against you. On the other hand, try to grab every unique techs aliens may have discovered in such fields.

Needless to say, try to grab those precious military ressources asap. It helps you show stronger to them (even if you got a "fake" spaceship power), since it grants you both weap/def bonuses.

Tertio: Ship designing is the key to victory. To only rely to core designed ships is (imo) a real mistake (you hadn't the choice in gal civ I, but now you do). One may say that core designed ships are a little bit better than player's designed ships (since they do have usually one or 2 "free" functionnal component aboard) BUT sadly they doesn't really reflect your real tech level: you might have very good shields but poor armor, then not being able to "discover" a kind of ship. Those ships often focus to a given weap and def kind: mass driver with armor, ect... Sadly, ie AI may have armor too and is using beam weaps. So that ship would be next to useless against them..

So don't be affraid to spend time in ship designing (and, like chess, it can be different from one game to another), it will be your key to military success.

Also, as said above, AI may seems VERY strong. But is is often a "paper strength". A good ship design, and bye bye AI's ships. Medium hulled size (or bigger) are better here, since you can fit on those the punch you need (the one AI cant defend since they don't have yet researched required techs) and some defense in the right field.

There is many schools about ship designing (you can design all attack ships without any defense aboard, or defensive ships with a few weaps, depending of your gamestyle and how strong your foe is, practise is your buddy.), I won't get into that topic here otherwise my wall of text already here will be a galaxy's arm sized wall of text

Here is enough for now, don't hesitate to ask questions, we are all here to help.

Edit: Forgot to say that miniaturisation is your friend: it means more things on a given hull size, like an additionnal engine, life support, fleet module, ect... However, check how many same components you use on a given ship: sometimes the best "miniaturisation" is to research the next step in weap/def/engine/life support tech than "global" miniaturisation, especially for all weapons ships.