Any military spending on a planet with no ship queued is funneled to social projects, and if there is no social project, the spending is refunded. Same works in reverse.

I'd use another perspective on this issue if you don't mind, Kryo & SoleSoul.

Production of anything not only has BCs but pure points cost; knowing this, all accumulated mps for Military_Social elements are being spent locally **and** empire wide by means of focusing in two specific but quite different ways.

1-- On individual planets... empty queues of anything are transfered back to the global estimates of available BCs (cumulative) or productivity potential and yet unused.

2-- When in the colonies spreadsheet listing... focusing everything by using the header tabs & pointing at the individual slots.

The variations are much more obvious when you examine the effects through the second situation.

3-- Sliders also have huge calibration factors applied to this "formula" as far as the general productivity (right below Taxing) is concerned.

4-- But, the underneath other set of three sliders is where the real action is; by using a lock on any single item... the other two or one only CAN be topped off at 100% (in total, together, or even 50/50 each) affecting ALL planets simultaneously.

5-- Thus... a Zeroed category is not wasting whatever amounts (BCs, mps or tps, btw) gained in #1 or #2.

Very helpful forum here, thanks guys. You cleared it up for me. It makes sense now how if I turn my military slider up and I have a lot of planets with shields but not producing anything, my net income increases.

Is it okay if I pose another question here? I don't want to derail the thread, but on the other hand, I don't want to create a ton of different threads every time a question comes up. This one is in regards to extreme planets in Dark Avatar.

Well, I'm beginning to hate them. I can always go back, play TA and turn extreme planets to "rare" but I'm sorely missing that option in DA. I do my colony rush and there's these little annoying gaps in my influence blob where there's literally are 2-3 star systems with *only extreme plantes in them. So is there any way at all, like some sort of mod, to turn them off in DA? I may even create my own map using the editor. I know, why relapse to a previous expansion when you have the new one? I'm just testing things out, and DA has been a lot easier for me so far as just getting the game because it seems they made TA a lot more complicated/harder to understand with all the different research trees and additional maintanence costs.

Not that I'm aware of; it would be a hard code problem.

There are several "solutions", among them creating your own map, as you've stated (maps made with the TA map editor should work in DA; alternatively there are at least two standalone DA map creators and one that is web-based around here somewhere), which might get boring due to knowing where everything is, or playing a race that gets some of those techs by default (this would require Isolationist, Adapter, or Annihilator as the SA of choice).

You might also just start researching the extreme environments during the rush-it's what I personally do.

Nope-you got in before me.  Didn't see your post up there, Zyx.

There are higher scores to be had in TA-but less planets.  Not only does the focus nerf annoy me, but the tech capital nerf annoys me.  For those who play on higher difficulties, it's actually better than it used to be-but only up until about a 62% research bonus at Suicidal.  For normal/Tough/etc players it's just plain worse all of the time, and it doesn't help Suicidal either because you're almost always in one of two situations: Your research bonus is >62% or your research bonus is irrelevant (all factories, all economy, late game, etc).

[Note: Research bonus is not useless with all factory, it's just generally not the focus.)

The colony rush is my drug of choice.

No, it's not.  Everything in GC2 truncates; a 10% bonus means you get one more tile on your class 10 homeworld, for class 11.  (Class 14 now instead of class 13 after terraforming.)  A 20% bonus means you get two tiles-class 10 becomes 12, becomes 15 after terraforming.

One point of morale is generally worth taking, and luck isn't a bad idea.  Creativity is helpful in TA-or rather, can be-since it completes the tech for you if it triggers.  It's not so helpful in DA, where it simply adds a percentage (of your output, I think)-you're better off choosing a research bonus.

I'm not real clear on why you'd choose a diplomacy bonus.  Unless you're focusing your game around buying/selling tech with the AI, it's not a necessary stat, and you get more than enough of it from techs.

I personally find economics 30% at 4 points to be too costly, but most everyone seems to like it.

I love military production, but ensure that you're actually building ships, so it doesn't go to waste. 

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Zyx, why would you play without bonuses?  Let me guess, custom so you don't have any inherent, either, and no starting techs?

Difficulty levels are tooo much of percentile evaluations for my taste and i grew tired of Toughing a +/- esoteric boost to AI opponents.

That way, i'm leveling the play field to desperate situations against my silly brain and as a bonus, i get to observe mod effects i wouldn't otherwise 'see'.

Call me a freak for negative odds (which, btw... were already tried by GeneralPants stuff!).

Yeah, there's only the two levels.  Hardcoded, with a maximum of 100%.  I checked that, too.

After my last game, I'm trying this. The AI started back colonizing all my extreme planets, and it got really annoying after a while waiting for them to flip. I'm assuming those with Super Adapter can be given another ability much the same way you can add techs? Not sure, but I'll mess around with the files later. I used to edit my EU2 games quite a lot so this is all kind of familiar to me.

re: Sole and Zyz. You guys are definitely right, and I realize this because I actually tried it. Ugh, good thing that was a really short game.

I chose diplomacy because I have a heck of a time trying to trade with the AI. How can I make it easier for them to give up the techs I need? They seem to want to attack a neighbor by just giving them a weapon tech but they won't give up anything without me offering up some really good/a lot of techs.

Oh and the Terran alliance will not be making an appearance in my next game. My last one they beat up on a few weaker civz, befriended everyone else (everyone loves them, don't know why) and then started demanding things from me, I refused, and all out war ensued. And since everyone loves Terrans ... well you know how that goes.

I know im trolling and i offer the OP very little help, beleive me with these guys you don't need anymore.

But Zyx.....

I gotta love that you are poking fun at yourself now!! The "hold on, people" people had me in stitches.

Also, saves the rest of us pointing it out. ( I couldn't be too nice of course, had to throw that one in )

What you could do though and since SA when with the Icos in the default state is none too powerful anyway, is give the Iconians Super Trader.

I have done this and it gived the Icos a new lease on life, especailly with their already fine Tech Tree. (TA of course) With everyone having extreme techs and Icos with Super Trader it actually balances out quite well, though i did adjust some of the research costs for extreme techs in the Icos Tree to give them back a little colonization advantage for the extreme worlds.

Iv'e done this in, (look out shameless plug) my race mod that may or may not form part of a larger mod the ToE/SS is working on, or at least was.

3) Anything under 3 to 1 military will not get you the "big stick" that you really want. Like SS said get to Total Majesty ASAP and along with 3 to 1 military rating you should have the AI melting in your hand.

They will trade defense techs, up until you get -- in "we don't trust them" anyway. (or whatever it's called). No matter the advantage you may have you will never get anything from the PI branch from the AI. They just do not give that up.

Btw...DA FTW. TA is fine...but DA is the rooster in the hen house IMHO.

Honestly i've never seen it. During my war cycles in mumblers with far more than 10 to 1 military, high diplo and offering them everything, they simply do not want to hand out PI.

Though..admittedly, i am not offering cash in these transactions since i am always in debt at this point. If it's cash that they will trade for and nothing else, then that may well be so, i've never tried offering them cash.....

I don't mind the Thalan tree at all actually, the Yor tree is the default tree of my choice though.

(just wanted to say, thanks for the help so far everyone!)

Yeah, I think my smaller military was the problem. I was always below 100, and that probably hurt my bargaining skills. The AI would always begin with "always willing to help my relatively weak neighbor" - it should have been a sign, haha.

I don't know if you guys can help but I ran into a spot of trouble editing the race file to give everyone the extreme colonization techs. The problem is that I can't seem to give the Custom Race group the techs! Sure I can add them, and sometimes they show up on the selection screen (sometimes not, it's really weird), but never in-game. I have every other race with them ... but I can't seem to get it to work for me. It seems now that if I select a race as my own, the techs and any other changes sometimes go away. Very odd.

edit: And things get even stranger. I selected the Yor and the techs showed up on the selection screen, but when I started the game I only had half of Barren World colonization researched. There's really something I'm not understanding here. I may post a thread over in the modding section.