Higher Difficulty Level gameplay tips & strategies for TOA

Id go with super diplomacy.. its handy

Played a game on Tough recently and honestly, I spent most of the game in last position because the AI is much more aggressive about colonising and once they get their economy running I find it's difficult to catch up.  So you need to take some chances yourself and secure a healthy-sized empire.

Dont be affraid to be a bastard. If you see a weak empire, even if you are playing the "good" ethical allignment, go for it as alot of your power comes down to the economy in end game

1) Use influence starbases to steal worlds. (watch your relationship with the civ you are stealing off.. if they are more powerfull dont go past cool.. hostile and they will often be about to declare war on you)

2) Start your race with economics, research and morale bonuses as these all help to get you going early and help you tax more

3) Read up on how to maximise worlds. i belive its a good idea to have 3 or so worlds with just a farm, morale place and banks to every factory world or research world you have.

4) Use economic starbases to help your factory and research worlds out

5) Using the drath war profiteering is a massive bonus too.

I've been playing on tough for a while now, so here is my start-up-tip of the day for "beginners"

1. Use humans (with super diplomacy - and as Federalist (20%eco-bonus) on an imense sized map.

2. Upgrade your miningship to a colonyship (at the start) and fill it with sweeds  

3. Try and balance your reserach between economy, moral and weapons (later on u should focus on influence and government).

3b. Do research the first missileweapons so that u barely can "keep up" in the arms-race. Do not focus heavily on weapons in the first few years... Be friendly to all, and pay of races that could be a threat to u.

4.  Go for the Evil-side whenever u get a pop-up with choices.. This not only due to the evil-bonuses, but then its less likely the evil-doers (drengin, korath etc) will attack u.. 

5. Dont build anything besides the improvement that gives u a population-bonus and economy boosters on new planets until they can support it economy-wise...

In other words.. Be patient, build up your economy, be evil (and friend with the other evil races), focus heavily on research, try and keep up in the arms race, then..... When your economy is strong enough, by tehcs u need from the other races, bulid an armada and wipe the galaxy clean.. I hardly ever use more than a few years to be totaly superior.. i just love the feeling of being a " god" so i keep playing without wiping them out I support one side... the flip and support the other side. To me the challenge lies in to keep the galaxy going 50-50 not to wipe everyone out.

Well... until i get bored of course.. Then i send my minions out to slaughter them all...

I have never lost a game on tough (yet) by following the 5 steps.

I've been "stuck" on Tough since late DL. For me, the most important thing to remember when I moved to Twilight was to *go slow* in building infrastructure. It seemed weird the first few games, but now I'm used to my early colony rush yielding a bunch of worlds with nothing but the initial colony.

With the exception of things like the Thalan "second homeworld" (you're crazy to put the Hyperion Matrix on Thala), I try not to start building improvements until a world is finally returning a few BC to the treasury, and then I start with econ, morale, and if trade has gotten it, farming.

     The above advice is certainly sound.  If you are attacked, don't be intimidated.    Read TA101, one of the economy threads, and cheesy fleet tactics.  Put a cheap defender on all your planets.  Research sensors early, and get Eyes of the Universe.  (Galactic Guide Book is also helpful).   Use military bases at key choke points.  Set up a defense line of fleets and bases.  Grab and defend all the resources.  Research logistics early and put your older ships in fleets with newer ships.   Upgrade the high level survivors.  Also, research Xeno Ethics fairly early.  (Read TA101 for advice on which alignment - depends on your race to some degree).

I always play on Suicidal and usually play TA.  I've found with TA, it's very helpful to play with tech trading on.  One technique I like focuses on trading for a few early unique techs that are very useful.  Playing as a race with starting diplomatic advantages is useful but not necessary (though diplomacy penalties are tough with this strategy).  The Arceans early on will usually research and trade a tech that gives +10 speed and another that gives +10 military production and +10 creativity (very nice).  The Thalan will trade a tech that gives +15 morale and another is usually researched early-ish that gives +10 morale and +20 influence.  If you make building the diplomatic translators and researching alliances and trade (for the extra +20 diplomacy) early priorities, you can usually trade for those techs.  The +25 passive morale bonus (total) makes a big difference in how much tax revenue you can generate while still keeping morale at 100% (which is critical, since you need to rapidly establish a population base to stabilize your economy).  Researching Xeno Ethics early is a good thing, since whichever alignment you go with will help you (Neutral and Good being more useful in the early going) and the Harmony Crystals (morale again) are very handy.  Habitat improvement is an important early target because of the importance of the Aphrodisiac wonder and becuase the tech has a high trade value in tech brokerage.  It goes easier if you cntrl-n until you get decent homeworld when you are just starting on Suicidal also.

This is one thing thing I always do:

If you play with minor races and have a system real close to yours that have 2 or more minor in it get Planetary Invasion ASAP. This works if you are a race that has even a little Soldiering.

I do nothing else but get PI right away. One transport will be able to take down a minor civ that early as long as the pop is 3 bil or lower. I once had a system that had 4 minors in it and within about 15 turns I controlled four 15 pq planets. After I got those I hunkered down and played strategies similiar to those posted here.

The second thing after PI I go for is the building (cant remember the name) that gives 10% econ and 20% pop. I rush build these.

Ah, recruiting centers.  Yes, those are critical.   I always make them my first build on a new planet (excepting 700% bonus tiles).

Minor races are often more valuable as trading partners (sell them tech and grab the few things they have that you don't-not to mention the economic and research treaties, as a minor will let you buy an economic treaty off of them in the first 2-3 years when buying it from a major is prohibitively expensive: in most cases the majors will charge anywhere from 35k to 65k BC) than their class 15 world is to you, except in small and tiny maps, and even then rushing to invasion is questionable.

In addition, in TA 1.95 or TA 1.96, the minor races got a significant upgrade and now actually build and utilize a military.  This is relevant in case you find yourself at war with someone and, ideally, you are friendly with minor races of your same ethical alignment.  It helps if you gift/sell them weapons tech as well, but it's not strictly necessary.  Do note if you can manage to get an alliance with a race (any race, minor or major), they value things that you trade them far more-or maybe it's they value their side far less.  Either way, it works out the same: you get more for your money.

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Ontopic: If you're wanting to play Masochistic up to Suicidal, choose Technologists and the 20% research bonus with your customization points.  You're free to do whatever else you like with the rest of them, but a point in morale for 10% is always a good bet.  Additionally, research planetary improvements as soon as is humanly (or Drenginly, whatever the case may be) possible.  A rush to Nano Recorders off of sensors 3 is also in order, if you can manage it.  As you need sensors 1 to get survey ships up and running, this shouldn't take you off your optimal route too much.  Further, if you're playing the Torian tech tree, you'll want to run the blue tree right after planetary improvements (the prerequisites for tech victory) for even more +research.  You can pick up a total of +45% research in this tree, but not all of it is worthwhile.  However, the first +25% or +30% is relatively cheap.

So why are you focusing on research so much?  Well, for one, you need to get things researched, and the AI has massive bonuses (Maso through Suicidal) that most would say you can't hope to compete with (and most of the time they're right).  However, on Painful through Suicidal (and particularly beginning with Maso and up), there is a hidden bonus conferred on the player to research, when they have a research bonus.  Whether it is selected before the game, from government, researched, mined via starbases, or a trade good, it still counts.  I seem to have lost my table showing the values for the different difficulties, but I remember Suicidal as being a 2.64.  That is, if you have a +40% bonus (20% customization and 20% technologists), your research production will have a bonus of +105.6%.  This means rather than having 140 research from 100 research production you will have 205 (the .6 is truncated), which is approximately a 47% increase.

Additional note: If you like, you can just use diplomacy and tech whore around, rather than actually researching things yourself, but the focus listed above might help you get that far faster.

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On the higher difficulty levels, you need, need, need, at least one colony ship per turn-preferably from your homeworld, as it's the only thing that will have sufficient population to actually man them.  While a number of players can get by averaging one every two turns, and some of them only have one per three (at least on the homeworld), it's a good rule to live by.

Note: Ignore this if playing a tiny or small map.  It is, however, perfectly relevant on medium and larger.

If you haven't tried lease buying yet, experiment with it-but only on your homeworld and only to get yourself the building capacity you need.

I have to agree here. The minors are also a nice little buffer, as the AI will tend to go after them before it comes after you. A neat little (dirty) trick is to pay close attention to the GNN, and when you hear that a major has declared war on a minor, send off a fast invasion fleet and snatch it up from under the nose of the AI. This would really piss me off, but the AI doesn't seem to mind. Waiting also gives the advantage of taking a more fully built-out planet.

Don't forget about the resourse starbases. Park a fleet of constructors near the starbase, and when the AI destroys it, scoop it up.

Being good doesn't preclude you from being devious.

That depends entirely on what your meaning of is might be... 

That reminds me of the game that I didn't want to end, so I donated transports to the Snathi and had them invade everybody.   Pretty soon the galaxy was dominated by squirrels.

I tried this on Masochistic level (with the Torians).  As you mentioned, my research is incredibly fast, and I am the tech leader.  The AI players had a secret meeting, and there were 8 icons posted.  Forturnately, the Korx declared war against one of the aggressors.  (Drath, Altarian, Iconians)   Several minors also joined in.  Only the Drengin are at peace.  Should be fun!  If nothing else, the Torians are great at filling transports.

I also noted this game that with an extreme planet, research does not seem to be affected.  You can rush buy a research center (courtesy of one of the minors) and it seems to work at full capacity, even with no tech in that environment (a captured planet).   Also, the AI rarely seems to build Counter Espionage buildings.  (perhjaps because they are too expensive)

Correct, hostile environments don't penalize your research output, just industrial.

Thanks for the advice on how to play on higher difficulites. One question though, it seems that the party to play as in higher difficulty levels would be the technologist. Does it matter and really affect my performance in game if I play as a different party such as Federalists, Industrialist, War Party, etc?

I take it you're prioritizing my suggestions, then.  Considering most others would recommend Federalist, there's nothing wrong with choosing it, either.  Industrialist can be helpful, in my experience, but is somewhat situational-you need to know that you need that 20% social and/or 20% military before you take it.  It is, however, not duplicated via a mining base as research and economics are.

I wouldn't recommend war party-the weapons and defense bonuses are easily duplicated with a military resource, and the soldiering is only +15-playing a race that gets Tir Quan sets you up better than that, and IIRC the Drengin and Korath get an extra +25 from ultimate shock troops, which is a tech other races don't get.  But then again in my mind soldiering is more of a baseline necessity (i.e. getting equal your opponent's as soon as possible) than something you'd want to pump points into, even if there were more ways to do so.

Early game, though, for at least the first 15-20 turns, you are going to be losing money (no two ways about it-in DA with full economic bonuses and playing Thalans with their +25 inherent you can actually break even on new colonies, but expansion will be slow as you'll be limited to colonizing from your homeworld, or alternatively using 500M pop colony ships from your homeworld and then doing one launch per new colony).

In addition to this is the fact that most players, for at least the first 10 turns, try to keep their homeworld at 100% approval so as to grow population at 2x the rate.  Otherwise, and when not playing Super Breeder, population depletes fairly quickly on your homeworld, assuming a one-turn colony ship build (which we've already established is near necessary) about 175M a turn.  While you can safely let your homeworld pop get down to about 4B, much below that is increasingly detrimental, and dropping below 2.5B will place your base growth under 75M (which is the cap for base growth), so avoid that at least.

Given that, Federalist doesn't help you that much in your first 20 turns-you have to be making money, and therefore taxing, to take advantage of it.  But, again, this is a recommendation a number of veteran players make, so it must not be that bad. 

Situationally, the Populist and Universalist parties can be very powerful in addition to Federalist and Technologist.  Populist gives +10 Morale and +10 Diplomacy, and that combination works beautifully for a few Diplomacy focused techniques that can be very powerful on Suicidal.  The Universalist party is actually my favorite.  It gives +25% luck, +10 pop growth, +5 econ, and +10 defense.  The econ and pop growth are very useful early game and luck makes a massive difference in combat mid to late game.  I think it's the pick that makes winning easiest (at least for me), though the others can be superior for score-mongering purposes.

       I tried the technologist strategy with the Iconians, without first reviewing  TA 101 - big mistake.  The Iconians have almost no economic techs, but have great research.  (Not even Interstellar republic)   I had a great starting position, but no yellow or green resources.  (I had 2 research, an influece, and a military resource.)   I almost gave up, but an economic uptrend allowed me to build up and expand.  Still, noone attacked me and continued to trade with me.  The Terrans are starting to dominate all of my good allies, but hopefully my Huge ships with max miniaturization, nightmare torpedoes, self healing hulls, and the good armor (Terrans are using guns and shields) will prove effective.  I finally managed to secure 2 green and yellow resources.  Once those are built up and defended  (+55 - as good as the Thalan) , I should be good to go.

I discovered that a good way to secure starbase resources is to play with a lot of minors.  They tend to snatch up the resources pretty good.  Then you can bully them.

There must be some play style and/or map factors that are really important in this context. I've almost never even *seen* a resource mine on a minor's trade list, and the few times I've seen one it has apparently been ludicrously valuable. Great trade and diplo skill ratings, mountains of BC, stacks of trade goods, a tech from every branch, and still I get "no way." (I have an attitude problem that prevents me from offering worlds in trade--maybe that would have worked.)

Threats never worked for me either, and the rebuke just made me laugh. And then destroy them and take the damned mines.

     This game was on a Gigantic Map and the resources were out of reach until later.  For a long time, I had only made contact with 1 of the 8 minors in the game.  I am in the process of getting my fleet together and securing those bases, although I am much slower than usual.  I built the Empathic Temple (something like that) off of the Good Tech tree, and the Korx just surrendered to me.  (I haven't even attacked yet!)  I guess the hidden (or not so hidden) advantage of being good is that everyone likes me, even at Masochistic level.

No need to trade with a minor for a starbase resource.   Simply blow it away and put your own constructors on it.   It's a minor.  Not a threat.