The game is extremely static after mid-game, especially if you're in the lead. If you are on top of everything, every race automatically loves you and no one ever attacks.

I realise this is a difficult problem inherent to all RTS games, but it seems to me to be idiotic that everyone automatically loves you if you are #1, or conversely, that everyone will hate you if you only possess a few planets and have no millitary.

This is just not the case in most of my games. In my last game I was just barely in the lead militarily. The galaxy was pretty polarized with myself and 2 allies vs. everyone else. As I grew stonger and stronger I eventually had one of my allies backstab me because they were at war with my other ally. But I patched it up with a couple old enemies with lots of trade and goodies. By the end of the game I had totally different allies then I had mid-game.

I do agree with you in some respects that at a point it's pretty obvious you are going to win and it's just click the turn button mode but if you are seeing this every game and quite early then I challange that you need to up the difficulty or try other strategies or opponents so you get some good vs. evil things on.

Hi!

The game is extremely static after mid-game, especially if you're in the lead.

I have to agree here. My early game is usually a strugle for survival. Then it's "vulturing" the weak sides in AI battles. Then, after I get enough planets and tech, ellimination of one or two neighbours. After that the game is basically over. My empire is too big, my econ is too strong for any single AI to even HARM it, and (because in game course I did whatever I could to get better relations) most of remaining players like me.

So the only one decision that's left is how to end the game:
- exterminating everyone one by one is easy, but boring and repetitious task,
- an all-out war is a MM nightmare, but probably the only one decision to keep current game interesting,
- cultural victory also involves too much work with influence starbases, so
- tech and alliance victories are the only two that end already-won game quickly.

BR, Iztok

I freely admit that I have yet to ascend to the parts of the "Difficulty" ranking where the game starts to run out of good adjectives ("Painful," "Masochistic," "Suppurating," "Abatoir," "Chuck Norris," etc.), preferring so far to stick to "Challenging" for the most part, but I've just won something like nine games in a row without firing a shot.

For that matter, in four of them, I never even launched an armed space craft, and in two of those, I never even built an armed space craft beyond having one basic Atk:1 Def:1 Defender on each planet (at least not until I got to the "Ten Turn Countdown" warning for a Cultural Victory, at which point I would build a Spin Control Center and the biggest damned dreadnoughts I could all on one planet, just to see how quickly I could wind up as the #1 ranked military).

I usually prefer to go for a Cultural Victory, but the last time I was even engaged in any kind of hostilities was my first ever Metaverse game (on "Tough"), where the Korx, who started the game next to me, blustered at me early on and declared war when I told them to sod off; at which point I whacked them across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, using a handful of fast but otherwise not very effective attack ships to fly around behind their lines destroying all of their unprotected starbases and unarmed ships. I then offered peace and settled down to enjoy the galactic resources that I had liberated from them in my starbase destructive frenzy, and that was it: No one ever bothered me again that game.

Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is, if you want to see an endgame that really lacks dynamics, sit in on one of my Cultural Victory games.

(Oddly enough, the game before this peculiar streak started involved me, in the center of the map, being constantly attacked by ever-changing sets of two or three different enemies at a time throughtout the entire game, until I finally just stopped the thing, because it was going nowhere at all, and was just plain annoying me; so a little bit of peace and prosperity in the next couple of games was a welcome change of pace)

Marc, you are the man

i used to play somewhat like you do back when wars were cheap to buy, but i just don't seem to have the stomach for socking away the better part of 1mil bc just to start a single war, even if i am pulling in 30k per i just can't bring myself to do it. i have been trying to instigate wars by other means, but so far i haven't found a fast or reliable means. the ai actually knows to disband useless starbases and such when it is to it's advantage now, lol.

stabilizing the galaxy part i have down pretty well, but do you have any tips for starting these wars without just straight buying them?