I apologize in advance for this noob question

Yes you do - the colony tile! Click on the colony tile and you will see it gives you a certain amount of production, research, food, etc. - and it has a maintenance cost of 12.

Its that building that makes each new colony cost you money when you first colonize. It causes you to have to plan your economy against this cost when you have no income.

Don't appologize for any question. No one here ever judges. The are all very helpful. I play i win and i still have questions.

If you have a specific problem you should post it and maybe you can get the ball rolling on your games so you can do better.

Firstly, THANK you guys for answering SO fast.... your answer makes perfect sense

FYI, this is my 1st game of this type, been playing RTSs since Starcraft yadablada, but this is my first "4x" strat game.. still don't know what that stands for, lol.

I am in ABSOLUTE love with this software... think I'll be playing it for the next decade.

I'll be back with more questions soon,


Chr*s
: )))))

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Exterminate

More info...

There are some good gameplay examples (in the journals, I think) and a lot of good threads here about starting strats and/or general basics.

Or, if you are a Dalek...er...Yor (or a Korath),
Exterminate,
Exterminate,
Exterminate,
Exterminate



drrider

I've found the initial cost rarely to be a limiting factor. Most of the time, it's the cost of building that gets you. Planets start to break even pretty quick as the population grows so get as many planets as you can, but only build on them what you can afford.

If you want a way to get into the game a bit easier, try using the 'tactition' game.
It slows the tech rate for every race and also gives you much more starting cash. You can focus on building things on planets, etc etc, learn what different buildings do etc etc without having everything stall because of no money (as long as you don't rush buy things)

That tip is from a DL player, so i am just assuming it is still the same in DA?

Mystic, you are waay too vet a player to still be only doing DL. Hope you have at least ordered the DA / TA combo deal.

drrider

I bought DA some time ago but stupid SDC would not let me download it, saying my serials were invalid. I wasted allot of time trying to get it to work, but to no avail. Later I recieved an ambiguous support email from Stardock support and then gave up. I don't think i really need DA anyway, i am happy to live without it.

Mystikmind, it's worth the hassle to get it to work. DA adds a lot. I had some problems as well at one point after both DA and DL had been working. I ended up just sending an e-mail asking for them to send me valid keys that would work with both Meta and SDC. Then I flipped the keys on both my computers to match. The keys they sent me where not the originals I had installed with for either DA or DL, but the new ones worked.

I have been learning with the Yor Collective... I love sentient robots : )
been playing with 2 comps, Thalans and the Iconians (played about 4 games now, 1 REAL one [i.e. actually finished it]) and have got them both on 'dunce' difficulty, so I can learn the game.

I had a minor race in the game I played last night. One thing I learned is NOT to turn the tax slider up to 100% for more than a turn er two... I did that (hadn't saved in close to 30 minutes, and had the automatic save option turned off, doh@!) last night late into a game, and I ended up losing TWO planets to a revolt/rebellion.

Needless to say I was extremely pissed off. I figured I could send a spy to those two planets I lost and try to win them back that way combined with building Influence Starports in the vicinity of said planets. Does Influence have ANY bearing on Minor races? I was NOT happy when the game told me in so many words to not waste my time on a Minor race by placing my spy on one of their planets... how about let me do what I want to do... really not happy that the minor race can't be spied on YET, they can make a military and be ranked Higher than the Major races - hypocritical way of implementing their 'seriousness' in the game I think.. hope that last statement made a lick of sense.

I ended up taking the planets back by force (invasion) which went down w/out a hitch... but I still wish I could have taken them back with Influence like you can with a Major race.... really baffles me the reasoning behind that. Please don't tell me that the player can't trade with Minor races as well (still haven't done ANYTHING tradewise). If a race makes money, and can make military ships, why aren't they treated the same as the Major races...

Oh yeah... I really have ZERo clue what the "points" are for... when one is looking at the planet view and see the tiles/etc... what are those 3 sections at the top for? The 'social/military/research' ones... I'd read that clicking on one of those is supposed to prioritize said action, but I've noticed no difference... unless it's so slight, it's hard to tell?... dunno. Lil confusing though.

Another question.. what is one to do with leftover Space Mining ships after all asteroids have been mined to level 4 say for example...?... simply "destroy them for the mula"?...

I'll save other questions for later, THANKS in advance people for your time in helping me to understand this wonderful, wonderfully interesting software.

I'm going to be playing this game until part 3 comes out it looks like,


Chr*s

79% is the limit for tax.

Note on the tax screen that there is also a production slider.....this is ultimately your expense budget....more it to the lower side of 100% and you'll spend less in total production - military, social, research.

Note also on that screen there are three sliders for military, social, research. The total of these three is 100%. If you spend 100% on military there is nothing available for social and research. The combo of how to set these is well documented in many different threads. As you are starting out when of the best helps is Wyndstar's AAR. Read it to understand this as well as you possible can.

Spies don't really much help in flipping a planet. Influence is what sways planets and one of the major components of that would be population. The minor ai's are so badly underpowered that its only fair that they can not be hurt by spies.

The three items that you refer to at the top of the planet screen is the focus area. You can focus your efforts towards one of the production abilities: military, social or research. Focus attenuates the production towards that area but is by no means a complete transfer of resources. Again, in Wyndstar's excellant AAR you can get what this is all about.

I've never got to the point where my miner's were caught up with their automatic mining functions...I am always killing civ's with asteroid fields that need the miner's attention, but you can upgrade these to something else more useful if you do get to that point.

Good Luck!!

"Wyndstar's AAR" THKS for recommending this, looking it up right now.

THanks,


Chr*s

Good race to play. They get a hefty miniaturization bonus and nice starting techs. In Dark Avatar, they get the super isolationist ability which slows ships in their space. It's really powerful. I may play as them, but I don't play against them. That super isolationist ability is a killer to go up against.

I did the 'resend serial' option twice and both times all the serials were immediately rejected by dumb ass SDC. I even tried reinstalling SDC but that just made things worse since it then proceeded to reject my previously valid serials for DL!!

You know, after paying good money for the game, I do take offence at being informed that my valid serial codes are all invalid as if i'm some kind of idiot!

It sounds like you found the exact same serial hole I fell in!

The resend serial thing didn't work for me either...I had to do an actual support email telling them the resend serial thing was broken for me, the original serial number the game shipped with wasn't working right anymore and have a human intervene. I was up to three serial numbers for the same game at that point(one it shipped with, one registered in SDC, and the one from the resend serial e-mail), which I listed for them and all I really wanted was one that worked for everything! It took a couple of days, but the human response with one single set for DL/DA did it. I was able to reset everything to the one they sent me.

Thanks!

It feels like i am a follower of a religion and have to offer up my burnt sacrifices of serial codes to appease the almighty god called SDC, then SDC looks down upon me from on high and says "your serial is unworthy, be gone!".

In a nutshell, NO.

Before I got that one answered by kryo, I once built 18 influence SBs trying to flip the Akillians sitting in a KEY strategic location.

drrider

I have seen minor races flip only in Galciv1. I like the idea that they cannot be flipped because i often trade with them, and there is nothing more inconvinient than having the planet you trade with, flip to you! especially when you have build hundreds of trading starbases and cannot find another planet to get your mini freighters along the old trade path!! most inconvinient, and then you have to go and give several influence starbases over just to re-estabsish the old trading route.

BRILLIANT point and that makes all the sense in the world to me now!! Thks to BOTH of you for chiming in.



To the people discussing having all those serial issues... sounds really terrible and a big pain in the ass, etc.. sorry to hear about it. One question for you guys... why did you not initially simply call that Technical Support phone # the MINUTE you couldn't get your game up and running.

The FIRST email I sent to Stardock was answered the next day by a human being with a phone # attached... naturally, I like most humans respect and enjoy speaking with other human beings when it comes to solving matters such as this... way less typing/etc. Anyhoot, he was/is BEYOND helpful.. Name is David and he's a really nice guy. I find it hard to believe that you guys couldn't have simply called that man up and had your problems solved to some degree if not in full in less time than it took y'all to do the email thing or whatever line of communication you guys utilized.

Not trying to talk down to you guys or demean your problems... it's just that I think Stardock is handling the tech support thing as good as can be... and I think it's one of the best Customer Support situations I've ever encountered.

It'd be a 10/10 if David could tell me how to play the game though : ) lol


anyhoot, Good morning guys

Old habits die hard. I tend to live and die by the keyboard in my job, so that tends to also be my first response...I wasn't in such a rush to resolve that a couple of days was a big deal at the time, and I kind of figured a response e-mail would show up sooner or later. Last, but not least, it never occurred to me to use the phone! So much for me being a master strategist!

I prefer the phone everytime = quicker/less wear on my hands/etc...


I am going to move up a level from Dunce tonight. Thalans/Iconians/and finally gonna add a 3rd race. It's taking me a while to get used to this, but I AM loving it.

Showed the game to a friend last night (he's been playing 4x strat games forever... all the Roman/Old World ones/etc), and he FELL IN LOVE with it at first glance... I let him sit down and start a game, and I think he was creaming his pants because he was so impressed/intrigued. : )


I finally figured out (go ahead and laugh, I did) that I need more than 1 Starport, otherwise the game takes too long.... gonna research the Trading techs in my game tonight... can't wait to see what Trading is all about.

You guys have a kickass weekend and I'll see you on Monday,


Chr*s

Long distance call from Australia can be expensive!