BTW I do like the new passive spying feature in 1.99. Thumbs up to Stardock for that inclusion

I don't really belong on that list; I'm better at questions than I am at answers.

But I'm "stuck" on Tough and have probably spent more time playing there than I did on my long slog twoards being able to handle it. It hasn't bored me yet and I don't care enough about score to change just for a bonus.

For one-liner advice, I can offer an abbreviated slogan from the '90s: It's the economy. What you make of that is of course a potentially very complicated because this is a pretty darned good game.

But if you read up on various notions and tips about the economy, no matter what else you do with your game, you're likely to get "better" in the sense most of the Metaverse people like to use that word. The true scoremonsters know far more about how to get every bit of pointy goodness from a GC2 economy.

Me, I just try to follow a few simple guidelines on my way to mid-game (and I have a bias-disability, I only like larger maps and still haven't made myself do a war win):

1. Set your production slider to 100% and drop taxes until you have 100% morale.
2. Upgrade your starting miner to a colony ship.
3. Avoid building improvements until a colony can pay at least the maintenance and preferably also the production cost.
4. Rush-buy as little as possible so you can use your starting cash to fund a long stretch of deficit spending.
5. Go for sensors early and get at least a couple of additional survey units going.
6. Set a "comfort level" for your treasury, and when you start getting in that neighborhood, tweak your sliders to bring the deficit down around 50/turn--for TA, this is usually between 1,000-1,500 for me.
7. Try to keep morale at 100% on low-pop worlds but raise taxes and/or lower production as needed to avoid quickly burning your last cash.
8. Emphasize infrastructure research and ship building during this period but be sure you can start building basic war hulls pretty much as soon as you see someone else do it.

also when makeing you races go for high econamy

No, and no.

You get a moderate economic bonus on sub-normal levels of play.  From normal to tough, you get no bonuses and no penalties, but the AI functions at a slight penalty and does not use all human-countering tactics.

At Tough, the AI has no penalties and uses all of its code base (essentially) to counter you (as well as the other AIs, actually), but gets no bonuses and does not cheat.

Beyond Tough, all the way up to Suicidal, first the AI starts getting merely an economics bonus, and then this is expanded for the final three levels of difficulty into economics, research, industry, miniaturization, sensors, and if memory serves logistics as well (but I may be wrong on that final point).  They are also not as limited as the human player is in their choices of customization points-for instance, theoretically they could pick +100% research, which doesn't normally exist, and more to the point even a custom race's 15 points couldn't cover it.  My understanding is that they wouldn't be able to do much else with their points if they did this, even at the highest difficulty level-however, I have not yet felt like spending hours testing this.  Especially as I'm currently spending hours testing something else.

Secondly, from Painful up to Suicidal, the human player gets a marginal to moderate bonus based on the difficulty level and the research bonus the player has (customization points, techs, rings around planets but only for that planet, as well as mining research resources) to their research output that is hidden and not actually displayed anywhere specifically, but the lab output shows it in the numbers.

It used to be my belief that those playing at Suicidal were not -really- playing at Suicidal because of this moderate bonus, but lately I've come to be somewhat more lax about it, and hope to one day feel comfortable enough using it to play frequently beyond Tough.

Thirdly, the AI does not cheat.  There are some things in the coding that are borderline, but they are sufficiently dampened so that it is almost indistinguishable from a more complex coding method that would give effectively the same results without having the code look where it's not supposed to be able to look.

Fourthly: Artificial bonuses to the AI do not mean the AI is cheating.  It is still playing by the rules of the game; it just has an advantage within the confines of those rules.

It may also be the Krynn. They are just about the best in colonizing i have found. When i was playing on tough i would cringe when the Krynn were near me.

They are that good.

Only trying to help when i can (or however, since my English is somehow less complex than true US_England_etc folks!), otherwise i get to read OTHER answers from a great community.

It's real funny though that another coincidental reply just happened to be right underneath your post... if there is one person which i look up to for clarity and good Anglo_References it IS certainly GW_Swicord.

Metal Swarm, I find it hard to believe anyone would fully grasp the whole complexity of gameplay(s) under that much different conditions. Sure, we can almost feel some slight (or more, depending again) effects at Challenging or Tough (economy edges & other AI algorithmic functions - mostly hidden) but the variations introduced as soon as we click First_Turn are already exponential.

Throw in regular option settings (map parameters, number of opponents, events, AI intel, heck even MODS) and you may get an 'Insane' game while you had define it as 'Normal' or less.

Thus, why i was alsoooooo wreck minded (in a good sense) to actually experience the 12 unique trees of TotA.

AFAIC, GC2 went waaaayyyy beyond 4X_TBS with that feature alone.

Funny thing is that there's plenty of room for more and if SD designers/coders current results are any indication - we haven't seen the whole potential for innovation... 2.0 included.