I can't tell if keeping your research facilities going once the tech tree is finished helps your score or not.

It does. You have to be a bit careful about making an apple to orange comparison between one game and the next, but it makes enough difference to notice, just not enough to make it worthwhile, in my opinion anyway. I really did take tech to the extreme in one game and got about three times my normal tech score but it was still the smallest component of score by far.

Also you're right about going through all your planets and converting research to something else being marginally worth the hassle. But I tend to concentrate *all* of my research on a few planets surrounded by econ SB’s. It doesn’t take much to convert these to super production planets that can really crank out the battleships. It sure helps in that last war against your final two opponents that are allied so you need to take them on at the same time.

Well,,my Military score tends to be somewhat...disappointing.
It seems like being hyper efficient in killing and keeping my losses to an absolute minimum both for ships and troops isn't what is premiered here

Like my last game...
For once I did well in the colony rush,,boxing Dregin into the southwest corner and the Terrans to the west side.
What I didn't think of was that cutting them of from the rush would mean I'd still be churning out colony ships/constructors while they began to build a real fleet with the weapon tech to back it up.

All focused on getting to the huge cluster up north before Yor got them,,I felt like kicking myself when Dregin declared war from Cool state.
All I had researched was Space Mil to get the 10% production bonus,,while they were well into the Singularity drivers.
Only migating fact was that I had Midsized hulls already (like to upgrade my flagship earliest possible as well as making a few more).
Normally,,I have enough Diplomacy tech to make someone else distract my opponents until I can achive a weapon adventage,,but this time I had totally overstreched in the colonyrush,,so no one was interested in declaring war on Dregin in spite of being as low as wary.

To make it worse,,my low diplomacy ensured I couldn't trade directly for some kind of weaponary.
Making a long story short(er at least),,some complicated tradeteching and panic upgrading along with total focus on military power made the war end with me paying blood for peace in spite of me taking most of the Dregin planets as I simply couldn't afford war anymore with income in red and approval around low 30.

When I some later gave away my fleet in support of the Iconians (thus making friends while lessening my maintence costs so I could afford to build up the infrastructure) in their conflict against Thalan,,it turned out to be a very bad move...for the Dregin.

Their Declaration of War a few turns later (in spite of me trying to keep them happy with bribes) left them with two PQ5 planets that alone demanded more maintence than the tax income,,a huge fleet pulling them deeper into the swamp,,and me offering just enough tech to get renewed peace and all money they had.


I openly admit that the reson the whole mess occured in the first place was my own mistake.
However,,there is something that keeps me playing... getting bad starting positions,,making stupid mistakes and/or having bad luck like when UP first decides I should "donate" 2000bc in the middle of the buildup phase and then limiting the sole evil player (me) to one traderoute when I finally has been able to crank out a full set of tradeships on their way to their destinations.

Can I still manage to come out on top in spite of the difficulties presented?
Struggling through and perhaps eventually limp ahead will never give me any great Metaverse scores,,but that is the question that keeps me glued to the comp.

Well,,my Military score tends to be somewhat...disappointing.

Don't worry about the score, the score will come. I took a look at the games you've posted and you seem to be progressing nicely.

What I didn't think of was that cutting them of from the rush would mean I'd still be churning out colony ships/constructors while they began to build a real fleet with the weapon tech to back it up.

You want to keep up or exceed their rate of colonization, but you do need to cut off the rush a bit before they do because they can get ready for war faster than you because of the bonuses.

When I some later gave away my fleet in support of the Iconians (thus making friends while lessening my maintence costs

It sounds like you need to work on your economy a bit more. Unless you have a ridiculus amount of ships maintance costs shouldn't be an issue. Build more economic buildings. Ships are for conquering opponents, not to be given away to them.

I simply couldn't afford war anymore with income in red and approval around low 30.

Again, more economic buildings. Plus you're evil, are you building the Mind Control Center? It provides a 100% empire wide economic bonus. The documentation has said this helps flip planets but this is wrong. Build it as early as you can, it's the prime benefit of being evil.

Can I still manage to come out on top in spite of the difficulties presented?

The answer is that you usually can and besides that you'll probably learn something that will help your next game.

Good Luck.

It sounds like you need to work on your economy a bit more.

Aye. That was what I did once I solved the Drengin issue.
I did however got caught with my pants down near the end of my own colony rush.

Ships are for conquering opponents, not to be given away to them. Plus you're evil

Actually,,I'm playing Good this time (not sure if there is any real benefit of it when compared to Neutral or Evil,,but I wanted to give it a try at least) so I couldn't afford losing the Iconians just yet.
However Thalans are the strongest empire (currently),,so using my ships openly would be a bad choise,,especially since I had some economical...difficulties

The answer is that you usually can and besides that you'll probably learn something that will help your next game.

True,,but I enjoy not knowing until I'm actually on the other side of events.
Just like you said,,unless there's a challange,,there's no reason to play the game at all.

As usual,,you are giving sound advice,,Mumblefratz.
The Mind Control Center thing was VERY interesting to learn,,since I belived the documentation to be true,,and hence got a tad irritated when certain planets took forever to flip lol

Actually,,I'm playing Good this time (not sure if there is any real benefit of it when compared to Neutral or Evil,,but I wanted to give it a try at least)

Never saw any benefit when I played good, but I only played it once. There's some wonder that gives a global defense bonus and then there's the halls of empathy that increases the chance of someone surrendering their planets to you.

The real benefit of being good is that your supposed to not be such a target of early wars or maybe that it's easier to get a good race to ally with you. But I've never seen any real benefit in either case.

Neutral gets a 10% moral bonus and the Neutrality Learning Center, Evil gets the Mind Control Center and Good gets the short end of the stick, in my opinion anyway.

Evil also gets the Artificial Slave Center which helps out your military production. I haven't seen hard numbers on it, and haven't really looked, but empirically it does make a difference.

Evil also gets the Artificial Slave Center which helps out your military production. I haven't seen hard numbers on it, and haven't really looked, but empirically it does make a difference.

Absolutely does. It's kind of sneaky because it's a hard coded increase to military production that doesn't appear in any bonus screen. But it appears to be a 50% bonus to all military production, even other bonus production. This makes it one of those rare bonuses that does more than "stack" i.e. add, it actually multiplies other bonuses as well. Very powerful.

The first half of this thread was actually quite good. Oh well.

Reply #30Why would the races get rid of stargates just because humans gave everybody hyperdrive? If I recall the GCII story rightly, the gates were disassembled for economic reasons....

Also the Stargates are actually slower than travel by hyperdrive so they pretty much have no redeeming factors to them.

If you wanted a point to point instabt travel tech it would just need to be a new propulsion of method that requires loads of power and have a name like "hypergate" or whatever.