New Player: Declaring war and Econ

Hi!

I've read these threads quite a bit but I not posted until now. These are mainly for DL, although I may buy DA and TA soon. I mainly play on Tough and Challenging I couldn't find an answer to these questions anywhere, I hope someone can help!

1.) How do I declare war without using an attack/invasion vessle? Do I have to open a chat with a third race and "offer" them to attack someone and gift it? What if I'm alone with one other race? I like to play as realistically as possible, and I don't like to surprise attack people if I can help it.

2.) I read somewhere that the computer doesn't cheat. If so, how does it do so great (research, production, etc) without building as much farms/econ buildings as me when I check through espionage? Sometimes, it out-researches me by a lot without going broke! Am I doing something inefficient and could do with only 1 econ building per planet and still make massive fleets and research fast?

3.) When fighting a winning war, my econony often goes into shambles because of the large influx of empty planets. Is the only way to solve it preparing large amounts of transports beforehand and filling the empties up asap?

Thanks for the help,

strategies

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The espionage thing is deceiving. The military/social/research numbers you are seeing on the espionage screen are not what it gets if it does 33/33/34 spending--it's if it does 100/100/100 spending (which it can't). In other words, if you see 52/52/24, that means it gets 52 military if it was 100% focused on military, 52 if it was 100% focused on social, *OR* 24 if it was 100% focused on research. And building economy buildings will do nothing to change those numbers.

On the winning war, yes. That is called ferrying population. It is a very good idea to get your population above 2.5 billion. That is the magic number where your population growth gets capped. If you go below that, your planets are not growing as fast as they could because they have less population to start with.

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Hi!

1.) How do I declare war without using an attack/invasion vessle?

AFAIK in DL you can't. But you can attack something very "cheap", or you can use "passive" declaration: just park some of your troop transports close to AI's planets any THEY will declare war on you eventuelly.

I like to play as realistically as possible, and I don't like to surprise attack people if I can help it.

In reality the most of best attacks were the surprise ones.

2.) I read somewhere that the computer doesn't cheat. If so, how does it do so great (research, production, etc) without building as much farms/econ buildings as me ...

At "though" level AI doesn't "cheat" (it gets exactly what you'd get). But it uses extreme slider settings a lot (very high taxes, very high production of ships...) when it calculates it would be beneficial. If you want to compete with them, you too must fiddle with sliders, at least for each particular phase of the game (e.g. whan you realize you'll really neeed some tech, you set research very high, until you get it; or when you're expanding, you set your mil slider very high, and set focus on social production on non-production planets).

...when I check through espionage?

Please be advised the info from a spy on a planet (DA feature) shows the MAX production a planet can pump out, not the actual one. Only when you get the second level of espionage you see actual production (in DL it's IIRC when you spend 500 BCs in espionage on that race).

3.) When fighting a winning war, my econony often goes into shambles because of the large influx of empty planets

The usual way to decrease costs of newly conquered planets is to dump there 1-2B pop, so that these planets start producing some taxes and with them cover the maintenance costs of buildings and production. Yet another way is to scrap some (usually the most expensive) buildings on that planet, or change (upgrade) them into econ buildings. The last and the most radical way is to destoy the entire colony. Beware though abandoning a colony will lower planet's class by 2-3 points in DL and set it to 0 (uninhabitable) in DA.

BR, Iztok

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Thanks for all the help! Especially with the 2.5b cap.

I think I have to clarify, I can see the enemy's planet and improvements by "advanced" espionage. I learned not to trust the numbers because it always puts me at the lower end even though I have more tech, better economy, and am able to kill most civs in war. I... actually have no idea what tetley meant by espionage screen showing... the enemy's slider numbers? I don't think I can, there is no espionage screen in DL?

I do use the sliders, but I may be less efficient at managing taxes as I only change it when it feels like I need to. It explains a lot. Their approval rating always seems to be low. So low that when I use "info" tactics I almost always gain extra colonist. I also tend to try and have my approval above 80% for the governments I run. If I run my economy with <60% approval with imperialism, will I be able to get more money to fund research/hammers than with forms of goverment and more than 1 econ building per planet?

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Declaring war is one of your options on the left side of the diplomacy window. I guess it might be difficult to declare war on a race that doesn't want to talk to you because you just traded with them, but if you can't attack them this turn anyway I don't see that it makes a difference.

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Quoting George Simpson,

reply 4

I was going to post this as well, but I fired up a DL game and the option does not appear to be present.

Additionally, DL doesn't have the diplomacy limitations that DA and TA have (not being able to talk to the same un-allied race multiple times in the same turn/with minimal intervening turns).

@JP

60% civ-wide approval is more than sufficient to win the vast majority of your elections, if not all of them. Dip below 55% and you may lose a few, though.

With that said, you can run as low as 21% (lowest point where pop doesn't deplete) or 41% if you prefer (lowest point where pop still grows) on non-election turns. If you don't feel comfortable with that, then run at an election value (>60%) on the turn before an election -and- the election turn.

As an aside, this is planetary rather than global approval, so your numbers will probably be close to ~25% and ~45%, if not 30% and 50%. You don't want planets to lose pop in the former, so none under 21%, and you don't want them to not gain pop in the latter, so none under 41%.

While the governments only provide a 30% economic bonus, and late game this can be almost inconsequential on the larger maps, it is worthwhile to do it this way. However, one might also consider running an imperial government with other economic bonuses and running at a lower approval rating overall, to simplify things.

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