The AI just utterly had its way with me!

or, "Challenging" wasn't so easy after all

So I thought I had a technology victory pretty sewn up... I was all the way to Near Omniscience, which meant only two more stops on the tech tree before sweet victory. The Drengin and the Arceans seemed pretty content to lie back and do their thing, and my military was clearly superior, so I wasn't too worried.

Then it all turned on a dime. An auto-upgrade to some higher-level farms wrecked my economy (in retrospect, that was my big mistake), and then -- the Drengin offer me a sweet trade, they want to give me manufacturing centers! Wow, well who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I take the trade.

Too late, I realized that it was a ploy. The auto-upgrade to manufacturing centers double-pronged my economy, and sent it into a spiral from which there was no escape. I desperately tried to backtrack, but it was all damage control... meanwhile the Drengin's cultural influence was spreading fast, and finally they just got tired of toying with me and declared war. They smelled blood, their military had surpassed mine when I wasn't watching, and all of a sudden I'm on the losing side.

Wow, I've never had a game turn around that fast -- victory was in my grasp, and now I have a serious feeling I'm going to get creamed. I have to stop playing for the night, but I doubt there's much hope. Still, I have to admire how craftily the AI screwed me

aars

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Well, I don't know how to help get you out of this bind you're in, but here is a way to prevent one of these situations from developing in the future.

First, when the auto-upgrade starts, go to the planet screen and look at the build queue in the lower right of the screen. Highlight the first auto-upgrade, and look to the right of the words "Build Queue." There will be a triangle pointing up, an X, and a triangle pointing down. If you click the X, the selected upgrade will be cancelled. (BTW, the triangles will move the selected building around the build queue.)

Once you've eliminated the upgrades you don't want, click on the details button underneath the build queue. Then, click on the “Governors” button. The top check box says something like "build upgrades when they become available." Clear that checkbox. Now buildings won't automatically upgrade--you'll have to do that manually.

You'll need to perform those steps for each planet in you empire.

I've been caught in the same situation you're in. I've tried turning off auto-upgrades, but that causes more micro-management than I like. But if it's on, then I have to be very careful in researching upgrades. And I'm beginning to think that it's probably a "six of one, half dozen of the other" setting.

Eric

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Rough game. I can't think of anything that would help you get it back other than to throw all your money into research and focus all your planets to research. If you don't have to long to go get peace anyway possible, including a planet or to to the AI. You might be able to hold off long enough.

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In my experience you rarely need to build those super farms. Your infrastructure must be pretty good to give you a lead over the drengin in the first place. It might be time to switch your social spending to zero.

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Wow, thanks for the helpful advice, everyone -- I really appreciate it.

Yeah, the farms were a mistake -- I got them because I wanted to increase my population caps, not remembering that it would send my economy into a tailspin. By the time I remembered to turn off my social spending, it was too late. Bad call on my part!

I'm going to try to sue for peace, although I doubt I'll be able to, the Drengin have far superior weapons to mine -- I've seen them in the espionage tab. I'll play it through and see what happens!

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Once you accepted "Manufacturing Centers", you are not forced to upgrade your "Enhanced Factories" but you lose the ability to build new "Enhanced Factories". This does not make sense. When mankind learned how to build wooden wheels did it forget how to build wheels from rock? When it learned how to build rubber wheels could it no longer build wooden wheels?

Although most people today have lost the knowledge to start a fire by rubbing sticks together, we are no longer depended on oral history. A simple Internet search reveals the method. Making Fire with a Bow Drill

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

In DA (at least right now) you have the option to build obsolete buildings if you like (but they won't autoupgrade, if you later want better ones in their places you'll need to upgrade them manually).

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