Who says the ToE is dead..only took us what, 3 years to revive her! LOL

Nice game, yup, i avoided all micro, i didn't use shills to trade or anything. i'll look to start a medium abundant all game in the next day or so.
Did you use ARC Motti? I'm thinking of still using ARC but going in an odd direction. Not sure what that direction is yet, maybe influence, idk.

I assume I had the ARC from when we used to play in my games folder.  I didn't ARC specifically, but I didn't change what was there.  TBH, I don't remember all of the settings. 

Good to hear that you have Demigod going again.  I'll try to find you on skype or in the game when I get home tonight if I'm not too tired.  It'll likely be a few hours though.

Disturbingly, that's one of her better pics.     

I started a game from my newly transferred account.  I joined it up in TOE as 3vilTwin.  I don't think it'll be a spectacular score or anything.  More like relearning the ropes and all.  I copied the .xml files over from the Mottikhan games folder, so whatever ARCs we used way back when are still in play.  I dumped the ships files and started new there.

Still on long hours and not much gaming time, so it might be a while before anything gets submitted.  That, and I'm playing around with my new Roku streaming device.  Cool stuff.  I could do the same thing on my computer, but the Roku makes it easy.

Yup, me and DJ played around with them trying to hit the sweet spot with them, and i found and used 2/2 tiny's but you had to be real quick with them. Get above the 10 to 1 military ration fast and then use them as trade. You could get about 4 ships per planet...roughly, but as soon as the AI got any form of military, they were useless.

The shills work only when they are an attractive buy to the AI, once they have their own ships rolling off the line, they cease to be of value to them, but then you use them for currency with the minors.

Now, all the above is off my very shody memory of how me and DJ nailed the best use of the shills, which i think Mumble then used to great effect as well, and perhaps the Kzin. Maybe if DJ can be tore away from SCII he may be able to shed some light on the matter, but thats about how i used em, best as i can recall.

Like i mentioned though, i didn't use them in my last game, and nor will i be in the next one (starting in a few days i hope).  I have GC2 installed, and played a loss out on my centurions character so i can get the purple heart medal, something i thought i had done but hadn't, oddly enough.

Remember when trading tech though, don't trade any of your diplo techs, since that lowers your advantage over the AI in trades.

@Neilo, how may missions does Anno 2070 have? I was wondering about the $49 Euro ($ 59 Euro for the Gold) price tag if it was worth it? I down load Anno 2070 Demo and played the first 2 missions and got a nice little taste for it. I like the huge Coal Diggers and the graphics. I have a XFX ATI 4770 Graphic Card with a HP 20" widescreen so I can only image what it looks like on your 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

Yeah, that makes sense then.  If I was trying 1/1s and I needed 2/2s, my efforts would be wasted.  It also makes sense that they see their own fighters as more valuable since they're putting more attack on them than the 1/1s would have. 

Anyway, trading techs works pretty good and the AI will trade fully loaded transports for decent attack tech until you turn them against their prior owners.  I wait 1 turn so my invasion tech gets set on the transports.  I'm not sure if you can turn them around right away and have your own tech levels in play.  My invasion tech is something like 5 to 1 against them, so it only takes 2 or 3 transports to take a fully populated homeworld.  

My economy isn't smoking along like it did in our old games.  It makes it harder to maintain a military.  Still, by trading tech for fighters, I can easily maintain a 10-1 mil advantage.  I'm actually building a starbase array this game and sending the fighters I got in trade towards it.  It might not be as spectacular as our early efforts, but I'm lazy.

Nice start!  I haven't seen bonuses like that for a long time.

Yeah, it would certainly be incredibly difficult to win a suicidal using all labs on a gigantic all abundant without using some edge.  Especially with a library and 300% tile burning a hole in your pocket.

You have me itching to try one without any ZYW tricks or ARC.  I might see what I can do to end this current game so I can start a true classic one.  I'm not in a position to end it yet, but if I concentrate my economy on a military buildup, I should be ready in a few turns.

Who would have thought that we'd end up dumping the chase for score in favor of the old classic games?  

I think the SCC is part of the classic makeup.  It works as designed, so there's nothing advanced about using it.  Even the starbase array works as designed.  The only building that doesn't work properly is the MCC.  Since it always worked the way it does (until TA), it's hard to call it advanced either.

I'm thinking the ARC and extreme diplomatic tricks might be the part that took this game over the edge.  With those tricks, we could gain incredible military advantages that led to extreme scoring.  I think the tech/ships for planets was probably one of the 3 items that removed the classic feel of the game.  The others were taking the enemy down to 1 planet for score and the mass upgrades.  Without those, the game can be returned to its original glory.

If we stick to standard play methods, I see no reason to disregard any building that could help the process along.  Custom race config from within the game's UI would also be classic since that was built in.

Anyway, that's how I plan to approach it.  

We might not really revive this, since there are only a few of us active anymore.  Still, there's some life left in here.

Once I turned my economy to nothing but transports, the AI folded.  My 2nd game...

Yeah, the cargo hull fighters might be a bit of cheese.  Having regular fighters under the SCC until you need them shouldn't be a problem though.

I started a new game without ARC.  I just deleted all of the .xml files in the Dark Avatar folder.  I also deleted the ship designs from the Metaverse folder.  

Korx is my race of choice on this one.  I was hoping to get a 700% manufacturing tile so I could go all factories, but I ended up with a library.  All labs it is then.

I had thought there were only 2 of each of the 700% tiles, but it's possible in older patches there were 3.  What version are you on, again?

And IIRC it was reduced further, to only one of each per galaxy, in TA.

Maybe it was 3 in DA and 2 in TA-I've forgotten, and I don't know where I placed my research files.

I suppose it's possible that one 700% manu would turn into a 700% research or vice versa...but I don't believe that I've EVER seen it happen.

I have to ask about "giga ZYW mode", What is it?

One more thing, I can't see Mottikhan's picture or any picture from imageshack. I have been using photobucket and have no problems. Tell me if you can see it but it says "Domain Unregistered. To view, register at: bit.ly/imageshack-domain"  Do you know how to fix it because I have tried? Thank you for your help.

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