I played across 2 days I think, but I had time to sit on it for hours mate. I didn't colonize too extreme first off, I just took about the sectors around my home, maybe about 20~25 planets and then focused on getting my Econ going. I didn't build the MCC till I'd colonized those planets and really needed an Econ boost, plus I held off on the SCC for a bit too. I was lucky to have an Econ resource near my home planet so I took full advantage of that. once I was heading in the right direction, I went back to building colonizers and took maybe another 50 or so, built a farm on each and econed the rest of the planet.  

Like u said mate, the minors made the difference tho, especially in gaining tech. 

Just as soon as I was going green in bc, I started going after the major races. I perhaps left more than 60~70% of the planets untouched, just took down the majors, used their Manu production in the spaceports to build another troop ship and just kept leapfrogging. Had to build a few military ships, but the seemed to be building nothing but freighters, to the point of killing their Econ. 

By this afternoon i should have new rig up and running and will get another game going. I'm thinking a medium game with some mumbled tactics. By that I mean maxing out tech, all resources, population and building out Econ on every planet. 

Speaking of population, can u recall the pop sweet spot for planets. Was it 13B or were we taking each planet out to 20B?

But it's been so long I might be totally wrong. I think the max farm is 7B and the pop capacity of a non homeworld starts at 6B so 13B is one farm, 20B is 2 farms and 16B plus 1 farm is to high. Of course you could always build an obsolete farm to get different choices but these seem pretty reasonable dependent of course on your overall morale and your tolerance or lack thereof of allowing your approval to sag.

I haven't been to this site in ages but it's good to see some of the old guys back around. I got an email from DA a couple of months ago but then nothing.

It was sad to see the ToE site go away but it had obviously run its course. Nothing lasts forever not the least of which is the life that this old forum used to have.

Oh well no use pining for a past that's gone forever.

20B for class 10 and above, 18B for clas 8/9, 13B for less IIRC.  HWs should be 19B because 21B is too much.

5 morale resources, all morale techs, 10 starting morale, all morale trade goods.  No VRCs.  Any racial morale/resources/etc above that is excess as you can only achieve 100% after depreciation by population (the numbers listed give us 98 for 20B, which is close enough).

That's for DA.

Numbers are a little different for TA particularly if you play without a Terran tree AI in your game to get the trade goods from, but since you also get more from the galactic resources it evens out in the end; it's just tougher initially.  And the calculations are unchanged from DA, at least.

As for DL I don't recall quite how things were working there last, just that the floor is 20% instead of 10%.

Neilo, as far as I'm concerned, what's left of the community is all on the same side.

Empire secrets aside, of course.

A bit offtopic, but while I've never actually played DemiGod, I do own it (still in the box!)

If it's half as much fun as everyone seems to think it is, I could go for some games with you guys.

I've always stuck with 79% tax rate as 80% always seemed to cost more approval than I felt but then I usually felt uncomfortable going into the endgame with less than an 80% approval rating but that was because I typically did a massive endgame upgrade the value of which required about 3 years to extract all the time I would be suffering the gradual but substantial loss of approval such that I was down to the 20% level with 79% taxes but the time I ended the game.

With a different strategy I suppose you could go into the endgame with 20% or 21% (I forget which one actually loses you money). It sounds like this is what you're implying if you have 20B planets with no VRC's even with all the techs, trade goods, wonders and morale resources in the galaxy.

Also why PQ10's instead of PQ11's. If I'm not mistaken PQ11's and above get the 10% straight approval bonus that makes them easier to control at a higher pop. Is this correct? Then if so how do you get by with PQ10's with a 10% approval deficit at the same level of PQ11's?

It was your bankruptcy that required you to have higher morale, yes.

20% doesn't lose pop, 19% does.

The stated morale is sufficient for 20% approval at 20B pop with no morale structures, running at 79% taxrate.

I suspect you're correct on the point about PQ10s, in which case only 18B pop for them.  I'd honestly forgotten that.

Hi Mumble and SS!  

Ditto for me.  

My timing is off too.  My SCC purchase came too soon.  My economy went way negative and was losing over 1k per turn.  I saw no option other than to go to war and take everyone's homeworlds.  I also took out the 3 minors that I met.  I'm still down to the tune of about -5k, but climbing out at about 1.5k per turn.  Having hit a low of -14k, I've spent the 2nd half of year 0 at a standstill and am still not out of the hole at Jan 15 year 1.  Meeting two new minor races along the way has helped.

If I was playing for score, I'd dump this game and start over, but that's not the case.  I'll take my lumps and press on.  

Yeah, the competition ended a while back.  I see no reason for secrets any more.  Any new players should be given a level playing field with us if possible IMO.  Our only real hope to revive the game is to enjoy it and forget about trying to outscore another empire.  

Of course, trying for a high personal score is good if you have that kind of patience.  For me, score has to become secondary to having fun with the game.

Well, they say that money can't buy happiness.  But I wouldn't mind trying to rent it for a while. 

I wonder if I'll have enough time to play games when I retire.  There seems to be so much hunting and fishing to do.

Maybe by then, they'll have a direct brain interface so we can play while we fish.  Or maybe the brain implant will just make us think we're playing and fishing.  Yeah, that would be good enough as well.

Really, That sounds cool! 

I was trying to figure out why in some of games the scores were really different, like one would be 147350 then 90650 then 94500 then 100450 but they would be played the same way 1 lab and 6 opponents in my Super Diplomat ZYW.

@Neilo, What kind of video card are you using?  I am looking at getting a different CPU.

We are looking for players to join to become aggressive Admirals to lead your fleets across the Galaxy!

Empress Saint Mina of Ophelia VII of Order of the Bloody Rose of Orders Militant of Adepta Sororitas

@mina, i got a GTX 560ti from gigabyte, it's factory overclocked but also has plenty of room to push the shader clock more if i want to. I would have liked to have spent a little more on the graphics card, but $300 seemed enough, considering that there was a lack of 570's and 580's about.

@motti, yeah ive thought of water before, but always got great results with a fan cooler. i cna't say im not impressed by this setup though, its summer here and i have not seen the cpu go above 27 degress C.

ill have gc2 back on here this weekend, going to do DG first.

Oh and btw, i never did mention this before, but i never thought the full year ZYW was a true zyw, hence i never have done one.

the ZYW was always about finishing the game at the earliest time you can, April 8.

Ugh...after looking at Win8, i know i'll be using 7 for many...many years to come. Win8 is taking desktop pc's down the tablet ui road.

Every screenshot iv'e seen so far makes it look like exactly like a windows tablet, no taskbar, no start menu...just large apps on a screen.

Maybe you can reactivate those features, i dont know, but i won't be rushing to find out.

Ive got a mild OC going, 4.2 with ram left at 1600 (im on water and whilst using prime temp maxed at 55c ). i did OC the ram to 2133, just to run it though prime, and it was sweet. GPU is factory OC, so ill leave it be for now.

My Q6600 was running fine (been OC'd to 3.2 for months), but i only had 4gb ddr2 800 and with my 8800gts it was starting to feel a little slugish. So that rig will become the missus new pc and the one i built for her, core2duo E8500 with a 7600 gpu will be upgraded to 4gb and ill set that up for my boy.

I must say tho, the Q6600 is the best cpu ive ever used so far, 4 years old and still going strong.

I upgraded my vista ultimate to win7 ultimate and i will not be buying win8. And if subsequent versions of windows follow the path being laid out for 8, then me and win7 are going to get to know each other very well!