Motti, notwithstanding your full year zero games, I believe Neilo was referring specifically to the "spend 3x the cash you have until you meet the AIs" part of it, which is not quite contingent on a planned end date-although sooner is normally better!

Yeah.  You backed me in the ZYW thread though.  Thanks.  In the end , KP included it.

Anyway, the games were against all 9 AIs.  No spore.  I borrowed heavily from DeathAdder's tricks and named it the ZY-Death in his honor.  SCC and a mini mil starbase array with tiny 1/1 fighters (or maybe 2/1) were in there as I recall.  Nothing like a regular gigantic map though.

If our old forums backup is still accessible, it should all be in there.

On my current game, I did some tech trading for planets, but only in the classical style.  No homeworlds and the bulk of it was done without the SCC.  I did build the SCC later since it was an available tech, but I didn't focus on it.  The fighters under it were ones I traded for.  Most of my mil level was from trading techs for fighters and landing them for the standard planet boost.  I don't think the SCC really helped me much anyway since the fighters were small or tiny early ones.

I didn't even build a single fighter of my own until the Arceans declared war on me.  I'm not used to the AI declaring on me so it was a welcome change.  I built some medium and huge missile ships to wipe their fighters out and used transports that I mostly traded for.  I think I built 4 or 5 transports of my own and used something like a dozen or so traded ones.  

I still have one of my own transports in reserve.  I was building up to for a final assault on their last planet when my influence flipped them.  My warships then went home to sit under the SCC.

I'm trying to ally with the Drengin.  I gave them my econ and tech treaties and I have theirs.  I also have tech treaties from everyone and econ from the Yor and all minors.  The good and neutral races didn't go for econ treaties with me.

So far, the best I can get are friendly relations with the Drengin and Yor.  The others aren't particularly happy to have me around.  Besides me, the Torians and Krynn are the strongest races.  All are doing fairly well except for the Iconians and Drengin.  They're parked next to each other and I guess their production is focused on each other.  The Iconians keep popping up and asking me for help, but I take their money each time instead.  Silly Iconians.

Everyone is at war with everyone else for the most part.  There have been a few peace treaties showing up on the screen here and there and I get in there to bribe them to go back to war when I can.

I'm building tiny colony ships like crazy and the fighters and scouts I traded for early have mostly been converted to colony ships as well.  Still going all labs and each planet has at least 1 lab on it to drive production.  My tech level is screaming.

Another thing I forgot about was the warp slowdown when in Yor space.  It was a tad frustrating running my warships through there while chasing Arceans and pirates only to be dropped to a speed of 3.  My survey ship also went through there within range of a pirate.  Of course, their speed was also dropped to 3, so they didn't get me.

On the 700% tiles question you had up there, I only saw one other library on my last game besides the one I had on my homeworld.  In my current game, I've only seen the one on my homeworld so far.  Of course, there are boatloads of planets out there and I've only taken 1 other homeworld so far.  I came across a 700% production tile, though.  I built a Market Center on it.  That still feels odd.

Dropped in my no cheese, no scc colonize and invade game. I perhaps only colonized a quarter of the available planets, and that doesn't include the extreme worlds either. little dissapointed in the score, but this was a balanced build, no all lab or anything else, no array....nuthin. So...well i don't know, i'm not even sure we have a frame of reference for what a non cheese game will achieve.
In any case, the point was this game was extremely fun, in fact if i had got this score 5 years ago, rest assured i would have been ecstatic!

Great to play the game the old way for a change.

I do have a giga 9AI ZYW i was working on, but im not getting something right. If you recall Motti, what scores did those gaes you did net you? I did one, but it failed....i'll mess with it a little, but i won't be putting serious time into it, the "old" style is just much more enjoyable now!

Success!    

I've finally allied with the Drengin!  Break out the bubbly!

Relations went from friendly to close as soon as I started attacking the good and neutral races.  I went for the alliance and got some money in trade.  I've never gotten an alliance before.

And now, some mopping up ensues.  

Thanks SS.  It was Year 3, but I might have been able to get an alliance earlier.  I was building up and didn't know that attacking the other races would help relations with the Drengin.  I gifted Xeno Ethics to them and the Yor early on in the hopes that I'd get an alliance easily.  I guess it takes a lot for that to happen, especially if you're not maxing out your mil score.

It might have been the mil buildup that gave me close relations too.  I'm not sure.  I had dedicated my economy to huge warships with as much attack as I could get.  My mil levels probably almost doubled when I started the final war.  Attacking the strongest AI would have made me look stronger too, since his fleets were taking a pounding.  I lost a tad over half of my huge missile ships, but the Torians lost a lot more.  

I had forgotten about the AI's tendency to react to the Human player.  They all had built huge missile ships similar to mine, but with a higher missile defense than I had.  I then built huge death ray ships to mix in with the missile fleets and they built beam and missile defenses.   

Yeah, I wound up doing something similar but not as intricate.  I built combination ships and at the end, all guns. 

I was hoping that having an alliance would mean that I could end the game by killing everyone else off except my ally, but I had to take the Drengin out too. 

Your game seems like it could take a lot more patience than I might have.  I suppose it can also be seen as epic though.

I'll take a break from GalCiv2 for a bit.  We had some storm damage and I'm not finished with everything. 

The immediately important repairs are done, but there's some finishing and cleanup left.  The local lumberyard was out of the type of fencing that my neighborhood uses, so I had to go to another city.  Lot's of folks around here had damage and there was a run on supplies.  I found what I needed though.

I almost forgot.  My game...

Finished up my slow tech game...not much else to say about it, it scored pretty well 100k+, for slow tech rate i thought that was good, i don't think i had a warship till year 1!

Now onto something different...

Damn, sorry SS, i was just coming back into the thread to post my new game, that endgamesave is already gone, sorry mate, i wished i had checked the thread earlier. I can tell you that the date was 15th Sep, hope thats of some use..

Just ran through a vanilla game, just for kicks. Declared on the AI well before i was ready and just steamrolled over them.

I might dust off my old TA mods and see what state i left them in.

Sounds like an epic game! i seem to be just steamrolling the AI, with little resistance. I thought in my last game i had not set the AI to suicidal, but the game is labeled so.
One thing i have been doing, and i won't again, was set relations to friendly so i could talk to the AI on March 1. Something is tickling the back of brain about how this could be nerfing the AI or something???
Was there a bug or something, i don't recall, about when setting relations to friendly it lowered their intelligence?

I see the difference in our games, i'm not needing a military at all really. Iv'e been having 1ATT on my transports to clear out scouts and constructors, but apart from the odd ship or two, the AI is just building up, therefore, neither am i.

Here's a twist.  I went to my mother-in-law's birthday party yesterday.  She wanted to meet at a sporting goods store that has an aquarium and museum in it called Cabela's.  When we got there, she handed each of us a $100.00 bill and said we had to spend it in the store right then.  Epic birthday party!

I put mine toward this...

Yep, it's a Thompson Center Contender 30-30 win.  A pistol that shoots rifle cartridges for those who aren't familiar.  It's gonna kick.

I thought they only banned assault rifles.  But I don't know much about the gun laws there.

This is just for deer hunting.  I can't see much else to use it for.  I wouldn't try to use it for home protection or anything.  The bullet would go through two or more houses if I missed and it's only a single shot.

In America, guns are part of our heritage.  If we didn't have them during the revolution, we'd all be speaking English here.