To stop finding precursor ships you might choose to be a race/political party combo that doesn't have luck as they seem to be related.

It also seems that a majority of the races are good, so if you want the evil races to have as much a chance to succeed only create a match with a balanced amount.

It also seems that a majority of the races are good, so if you want the evil races to have as much a chance to succeed only create a match with a balanced amount.

Actually, according to the wiki at least, there are 3 good (Altarians, Torians, Drath), 3 evil (Yor, Drengin, Korx), and 4 neutral empires (Terrans, Arceans, Thalans, Iconians) in the game. I've been playing with Altarians, Torians, Yor, Drengin, and Arceans (as Terrans myself), so that's 2 good 2 neutral and 2 evil.

the evil races benefit more from intelligenmt difficulty upwards more than anything, as the penalties from lower difficulties make them suffer more than the other races

TURN UP YOUR DIFFICULTY!

sorry for the all-caps.
too many of these threads.

MG

TURN UP YOUR DIFFICULTY!

Happily done, but I'm playing on normal here, not cakewalk or something. Regardless, that may fix the evil empire problem but does it change the random event frequency? I've read elsewhere that it doesn't, but don't claim to know.

In the past three games, I've had to deal with a monster Drengin. You know, the type that quickly has four times the military rating of his closest competitor? The kind that decides the gobble up its neighbour simply because they smell funny?

In my last game I managed to catch them early and prevent them from eating the Torians. Their attention was redirected toward me and they sent fleet after fleet into my solid defense. After a while, they got tired of that and sued for peace, but only after their military rating was halved. That game was relatively balanced, for most of the game. No one except for the minors fell until much later in the game.

In the previous game, however, the Drengin were quite monstrous. After the colonisation phase, they were as big as their Torian neighbours in terms of influence, so at first I didn't worry. To be honest, I was more worried about the Torians. Soon, however, the Drengin declared war and started gobbling up Torian worlds. I was on the opposite side of the map and between us was a massive expanse of empty space, so there was really nothing I could do other than trade and give some tech to the Torians. I also had my hands full dealing with the Yor, who honestly weren't too much trouble, but I was still on the defense, due to a lack of good ships.

By the time I started taking Yor worlds, the Torians were gone, having surrendured to the Altarians. Apparently, the Drengin didn't appreciate their prey disappearing, so they started munching on the Altarians. Once that was done, the Drengin controlled half the galaxy and their military rating was at least 8 times their nearest competitor: me. It wasn't all fluff, either. I had finally decided to try and do something about them, but my best ships were very easily outclassed. They had a tech advantage and they were using it well. . .

Needless to say the game ended painfully. I couldn't hold out against them. They had a powerful economy and industry backing them up, while I had an alliance with the Thalans. Heh.

I found a challenging game to be much different than a normal game. The evil races dominate more easily the harder things get. They just play much much more effectively, and the pactifists cannot compete!

This is the first game where the difficulty levels actually "feel" the appropriate difficulty for me.

Even on Tough, the Evil races are pretty much make or break. They either become a significant late game power or are mostly destroyed by the middle game. I'm afraid I still haven't had a game where the Drengin manage to achieve anything. They always get horribly outcolonised, then out-teched then beaten down in a war of attrition. They always manage to achieve highest military statistic at the start of the game (together with the Altarians and sometimes the Drath) but they have never amounted to much in any game I have played.

The Yor sometimes fare a little better. They tend to colonise well and get a goodly number of planets under their belts.... but they also tend to get into a lot of wars that slowly wears them down.

The Korx tend to be a medium power in most games I have played. Nothing threatening, but enough to be quite demanding.

I basically agree with the first poster, late game political maps tend to have mostly entirely Good and Neutral races left in them.

One solution as posted - Play an Evil race!!

I have been playing on beginner level w/4 races, tiny (or small sometimes) galaxy, have played about 3 games so far and never did I find a Ranger ship, not one and not in one game. I imagine my galaxy size has something to do about it? I would like to know how just the opposite, how can I find one of these ships so I can conquer the galaxy?

I think I can advise there: crank up your luck. These events don't seem to pop up until a certain length into the game, so it may be less your map size and more that games on small maps tend to end more quickly.

Sounds like fun. Can I ask what difficulty you're playing on?

I play on "Tough". At my current skill it'd be insane for me to give the any AI economic advantages. . .