Troop ship taxies

Yep. Growth rate among small planets is exponential, yet tax rate is based on the square root of the population. Get those populations up to around the 2 billion mark, especially those planets you conquered.

I also keep a ton of troop ship filled to the brim sitting in space to keep population in reserve when all my planets hit their max population. It's like depositing into the population bank (and withdrawing whenever I need, or recuiting soldiers for future conquest). I never have to worry about losing tax payers because my troops are always sitting in space ready to wipe the next empire completely sparkly clean.

boy, I wish I could see what would happen to those ships when you play the higher difficulty levels

I've kept standing fleets of troop ships. Unlike the AI, they're protected by a military starbase, a sensor ship, and a decent military fleet.

I also like to keep a small flotilla of transports filled and stacked away in a corner. If those people thought they were unhappy on their overpopulated planet, imagine imagine how much they must enjoy living on a ship packed with billions of people doing nothing out in the middle of nowhere!

Anyone know if the AI in 1.1 actually protects its troop transports yet? I'm playing on tough yet the AI either has a whole wave (13-14) troop transports sitting around or running to my planets with either no protection or only a really weak 1 ship guard.

Boy, it'd be cool if, after researching all of that high-fallutin technology, that you could have like...interplanetary transporters. *lolz* Wouldn't that be just a h00t?

I have to recommend against this strategy. If I have troop ships standing around somewhere in the game some AI will declare war on me because I am threating him. They can be deep in my own space even! In the center, in the corner of the galaxy. That AI detection thing reeks. Should be totally shut off of minor races. Who would bother mass up to invade thier 1-3 planets? I hate that feature! Anyways I recommend instead that you use colony ships to transport your people around, or at least one colony ship, and keep all transports inside your planets or some ass AI will declare war!

mY reply to that is generally "You want it ? You got it. " I declare war next round.

The only time I've had the AI detect my troop transports has been when they're one turn away. By then it's too late.

I'd like to see a type of population module. It'd be like the colony module and troop module but not be able to colonize or invade. It's only purpose would be to ferry population. To compensate for it's lack of ability, it would have a lower cost(maybe?), use less space (probably), and be able to carry more population than colony and troop modules. The AI wouldn't feel threated by them if they not in their influence or sitting at their borders for too long.

I have had a few games where, torwards the end, I start getting a huge morale dent from the number of people on my homeworld. Then I figured out a strategy for it, that I am not very proud of. I started making ships that were nothing but a cargo hull and a bunch of colony modules. They built fast and cheap, and could take quite a few people (I had researched almost all my mini techs by then). So I set my homeplanet (and one of my overpopulated manufacturing worlds) on autobuild for a couple of turns, made 2 or 3 of them, put a couple billion on each, then launched and destroyed em. This was of course, before I got the idea of trading them for techs. Minor races asking for military support, mostly.

yes, I was playing an evil race at the time.

I did pretty much the same thing when I was playing a good race too, but I didn't blow blow anyone up, I upgraded them to constructors instead..... Soylent constructors.

I did pretty much the same thing when I was playing a good race too, but I didn't blow blow anyone up, I upgraded them to constructors instead..... Soylent constructors.

Hahahaha soylent constructors! Very funny

Another reason you might want to consider colony ships instead of transports is that you have to pay ship mainenance for troop transports, but not for colony ships.

Hi!

I have had a few games where, torwards the end, I start getting a huge morale dent from the number of people on my homeworld

The same effect, but cheaper, would be to destroy a farm. Less pop, more happines.
BR, Iztok