Use the spy on farms+morale buildings prior to an invasion (1 turn before for farms) - makes it much easier!

If invading a tough target, send one transport in first using mass drivers tactics - providing it fails it won't cause any damage to the planet, but will have taken out a lot of their forces.

When attacking with a fleet, if most of the defenders are destroyed and it's only really cannon fodder remaining make sure to split up your fleet and attack with each ship separately, and then rejoin your fleet at the end, to maximise the number of attacks you can get.

Leave the planet by your homeworld unoccupied, so the computer then takes it, spends money building it up, and then has it revert back to you thanks to your influence

Send your colony ship back to your homeworld to get 250 colonists starting off instead of the 100 it starts with

Thanks for the replies,

You can usually bribe a civ (CivA). into warring with another civ (CivB) who's stronger than you. Start the CivA v. CivB proxy war wait about 10 turns or so until CivB's ships are over dealing with CivA then swing in with the transports and steal a lot of planets from CivB

This also boosts relations with CivA, who is by now, your new neighbour.

This is best used stealing the top one or two planets is the system (IE. not all of them) and leaving the rest to be cultured onto your side.

Not to mention, when they have more banks, they have more money to spend on stuff you want to sell them.

If the game stagnates and turns into several sides glaring over their phasors at each other, my populations have a tendency to cap (or any game I play Superbreeders) filling transports during peacetime gives my planets chance to recouperate and be ready for another attack sooner while damaging my economy less.

[I thought this one up after a game where I needed three waves of transports (4 billion each) to completely conquer a larger civ, my economy was in tatters]

When playing with minors, gift/sell/trade them the techs "Trade I" and "Advanced Computing" as soon as possible. They will immediately start building economic and tech. capitals. As soon as you see them complete it, conquer them, and you have a second...and third...and fourth capital of the corresponding type, not to mention a PQ 15 world. Just be sure to have YOUR capital at least queued up on a planet, otherwise you can't build it after you've conquered another.

Cool thread!

The AI places a lower value on planets which have low populations. You know what planets have really low populations? Ones that have just been conquered! So, when the Galactic News (or whatever it's called) informs you that the Lentzlandians or another minor civilization has just been taken over by the Yor, contact the Yor and offer to buy Lentzlandia from them; since it's a civilization capital, it will be a powerful planet and relatively safe from enemy influence, though it will likely cause tension as a result of close borders.

In my last game as Terrans, with their incredible diplomatic bonus, I managed to purchase five or six different minor civ homeworlds, replete with tech capital, economic capital and other goodies.

And put that together with the previous one of selling them Trade1 etc in the first place, its a wonderful self feeding circle - definitely going on my list, and I'm onto a new game tonight, so I'll try those - Love It

Regards
Zy

Here is my tech trader approach. If you sell or trade a technology to another race, also sell it to every other races the same turn. This assures you maximum reward for your tech and prevents the other civilisations from trading it. By trading the same technology to every races i could sometimes get 6 techs from one tech. Then repeat the process with the newly gained techs. Always trade the lowest tech possible first and Never trade diplomacy boosting techs. Instead you specialize your research in this area and keep it for yourself. When this works well you can get the AI player to do alot of research for you as well as providing money. I usualy play at painful or crippling and if you start off with good diplomacy skill and rush diplomatic translator you can get this method to work pretty well in your favor, I dont know about the higher difficulty settings however. I found this strategy surprisingly fun and gratifying as you rob the crap out of the AI civs, hehehe. When you apply this strategy at a compulsively methodical level it basicaly kills all opportunity for the AI to trade techs among each other and all the bang goes to tech-mart's big daddy (you). It also has a tendency to reduce the technological gap between stronger and weaker civs. Wich when put in relation can strenghtens your allies and weakens your foes. And the fun part is even though you trade them all the time you nearly always seem to end up with more techs than the AI. Having alot of minor civs is also a major plus when using this method

One I put on another thread, but its more appropriate here.

Use Minor Races as a free tech source. They tend to go for non yellows, and in the main go for trade and military. Whilst keeping some low value ships around as tokens to ward off crys of "pay me dosh", concentrate on yellows etc, not military, initially, and get a the invasion techs / Ti(thingy)Quan whatever its called.... for soldier bonus. Get good diplomatic techs to have a better level than the minors (more efficient to trade that way)

At the point you want to "get going", click on the nearest minor, look at what weapons he has, build defence for it, one medium fighter using weapons he has not defended for, two transports (one will probably do it with the soldier bonuses), and head on over to the minor. position the "fleet" (all three of them!) within striking range, and open up negotiation for every tech and cash they have. By this stage they have been been getting weapons techs, and if you dont do this too early lots of cash from their tradingso you get lots of freebies.

Trade everything you have - the lot - if necessary (dont give them soldier bonus techs). When you've drained the lot, say "Ta", pull out and on the same turn attack (that way he has no chance to trade your techs you just traded to him, to others) and take the Planet. Then on the same turn sell/trade the lower techs to any other AI who doesnt have them.

You kill him him one turn, get lots of freebie techs, all his cash, resell a lot for more cash, catch up and often leap ahead on military techs, get back all the cash he earned from your trading with him, and get a good influence bonus - all for for free

You have to plan ahead for this, but its easy to do. Later for desert, use the other minor AIs you didnt hit for this, as a culture bomb see (reply 15). I am a fan of the maximum Minors option .....

Its a Dog eat Dog Galaxy

Regards
Zy

Hi!
Works best with tech-trading on and lots of races/minors:

When playing all-factories it's difficult to get good research. So get just some most important techs, and trade them for AIs' research treaties. One treaty will not give you much, but 10+ will make quite an impact.

BR, Iztok

You learn something new every day. I didn't know you didn't get the reputation hit if it's a one way treaty. One thing though, if you're play TA, it seems the AI will not part with either treaties until about half way through year 1, or about 75 turns. They usually say it's too early or you haven't proved yourself yet.

I would've posted this - I think it's probably the best use for spies in the game ever. You also don't risk losing them as the AI never gets a chance to counter them.

You don't need to put spies on the farms/stalks whatever one turn before invading, though. I found that while the planet information still reads the original population (say, 10 million for a Yor world with two stalks), when you invade, you'll see 8 million defenders.

Anyway, I'd also add that if you're outnumbered, you can put the spies on the morale buildings and farms, invade, and select information warfare. There's a good chance defectors will make up the difference, unless you don't care about property damage, then...

Another nice trick with invasions is Tidal Disruption - if you're invading a planet likely to have loads of buildings you'll demolish anyway, just spend the 200 bc for tidal disruption. As far as I can tell, the improvements are destroyed before the unusuable buildings are removed.