Hello & welcome

Give it another try some day, the player can design so much better than what the game offers.

It's an exploit based on one (or more) bugs. In DA/Tota the AI values IPs much more than in DL - if the amount is somewhere between the range of 1-999. Just start a game and see for yourself; offer the AI 900 IPs and note jow much money he gives you for them, then re-offer 1100 and you'll see he is going to give far less money than before, although you actually offer him more than before.

With a good diplomacy stat you can get as much as 1bc for 3 IPs, in essence, you can drain all AIs of all their money, most techs, and also alot of their ships (if the value of these assets fall under 1000 IPs in value - if not, you've got to throw in another tech, money etc essentially to bait him to agree with the deal while your offering the IPs are finishing tje deal)

Somewhere in DA/Tota influence generation got out of whack, that is why money from tourism also sometimes amounts to obscene levels (like, 100 bcs right on turn 1) and also, the zone-of-influence is also much bigger and tighter than it used to be in vanilla DL.

This is really dependant on your general strategy/game setup and the situation you're currently in. For example, me personally like to play with +50% military prod, +50 social prod, +20% research from technologists and thus, my base planet production is already enough, so I usually focus on pop growth, morale or economics on new planets. The goal is to keep the general spending slider always at 100% and not going broke from colonization - also not having to trade away techs to the AI (which will develop his game faster).

However, money is only important for 2 things: 1) keeping slider at 100% 2) being able to upgrade your ships to the latest design. Once you are meeting these criteria it is better to focus on production. As a rule of thumb, 1 production is worth 7 credits. Thus, a high production planet adds more to your game's strength than an economic world - although the latter are crucial to enable your production in the first place.

Of course, it also depends a bit on the type of game you want to play. For example, you could pick Korx and go full economics, basically buy anything you want. Going neutral with them will net you a +50% Interest Rates bonus in conjunction with their techtree - this will seriously increase the value of money in general.

They rise to quite some level, if you can cultureflip them I'd say leave them. The AI also doesn't terraform so much so these planets will not generate that much pop and can be taken militarily easily. If you're neutral, or build the orbital terraformer + plan to research the terraforming techs than it might be a good idea to colonize them as well. Also depends if you plan to play a heavy social game... ie. building up your worlds to max out production before declaring war. Still, these planets might be a better alternative than trying to get Extrem Worlds (takes longer and usually, nets less planets)

Yes, they do. Even if you research a tech which is at the end of the branch the points are stored in the cache and will be used up. However, that cache isn't saved so if you reload a game it'll be empty + points lost.

There's no way to edit this. I think the Thalans oftentimes show a "they don't trust us" versus the humans, but I'm not sure if this is more extreme in that particular case.

Note that the Yor have a completely hidden diplomatic penalty against all other faction as well.

You need to wait a longer time to do this, most likely until the rating got restored to better levels. IMO it's not worth it, having good relations is more important. I only become exploitative the turn before I declare war with the intent to conquer a civ entirely.

As for gifting money, it can increase your relation (the AI will tell you in response to the gift immediately), how much you'll have to gift depends on alot of factors, but mostly how big the size of the actual game is.

I find this useful if I want to ally with someone who currently is only "friendly". It's somewhat ineffective if you try to appease hostile factions - the diplo penalties in place do have a mucj stronger effect and constantly drain down relations, irrelevant if gifts - you are only supporting a likely enemy.

Note, if the AI asks you for help at least give him a single warship, it'll net you another positive rating in many occasions ("they appreciate our past help")

[quote]8. When can I ally and have treaties. I noticed that treaties between races pop up after the second UP ends is that a fixed minimum time to wait matter?

Yep, fixed, and no way to circumvent that, ~~110 turns.

No, but there are a number of shortcuts that can help you selecting next ship, and turning of auto-explore.

You might wanna consider building additional Surveyors based on Cargo Hulls, with lots of speed, range & sensors early on. These will do the scouting as well and pick up alot of bonuses from anomalies, such as additional hitpoints etc. Later on, you can upgrade them to passable frigates if you have a hitpointmod at hand. Don't put weapons on them because then they'll cost you maintenance. Early on the AI don't declare war anyway.

You can deduce from the diplo screen once you need to militarize up. I found it best to get an early MMR by leaving those ships in orbit because of the extra weapon bonus they get there. A +1 attack will be +2, a +3 ship can be +5 if you have +34% weapons rating etc

Yes, killing the AI's starting survey ship early on can make a difference in neting more anomalies. wjen playing with many anomalies in bigger maps these can be your #1 incoming source, and the increased racial stats will help in the long run also. Ofc you need additional Surveyors, too. The diplo rating will be recovered (if no additional penalites are there) until times are reached when the rating does really matter (after the colony rush, when the AIs are considering to go to war in order to expand their territory).

Also killing starbases or colony ships, freighter can throttle his development. You could build a fast Interceptor using a Cargo Hull, one basic weapon, lots of speed, range, sensors - and attack anything that is defenseless. 

When playing with Drengin/SuperDominator declaring war can mean a constant flow of ships, which you could use for anything, but with enough AI in game you can easily win most games with this bonus if you use it early on. (essentially you declare war every turn, make peace, declare war etc in the end you'll get +100 ships from one war alone wjen the AI is still colonizing....)

Correct.

You'll see in the diploscreen the penalty ("your threatening influence"). However, that penalty isn't based only on starbase-influence, but on all your current influence. So if that AI is closeby, your worlds are pop developed, your influence is just bigger than his', this penalty can pop up all the while. Also if he colonizes planets in your ZOI you'll get this penalty.

The games diplo evaluation mechanics essentially point the game to war, with many factors aggravating over time. There's not mucj what you could do about it. If your neigjbours are of mis-aligned ethics, consider to invade them. If you have a similar ethical faction at the other side of the map consider sending all your freighters to this one, it's the best shot for an ally.

Toxic worlds w/ Korath - as early as can be. As for other extreme worlds - don't bother. Korath are (together with Drengin) the best faction to enforce early conquest - your sporeships enable you to take worlds without loosing population on your planets. Do this as fast as you can! Build Dark Influence on your core worlds so that spored worlds don't fall due to foreign influence. If you don't mind the micro, build ferries and distribute population on these worlds so their pop can start to grow to reasonable levels. Otherwise transfer your core worlds to econ planets and the spored worlds to industry worlds (you'll need 100% toxic world support though)

Because 9 was the maximum amount of stock factions the game had in vanilla DL. Krynn+Korath got added later in DA, but the game wasn't changed to reflect this.

No, they will always move by 1. Personally the only thing I find usefull to give these freighters is addiitonal sensors & range. The longer that min-freighter is away from your world the more it will net you. With additional sensors you could sometimes see something interesting deep in other terrain. Speed would also a good tjing so the freighter will arrive sooner at its destination, but engines are expensive and the aaditional buildtime doesn't always justify it...

I remember that some modders pulled that off, but I don't know how that worked, maybe someone else can chime in on this.

Large/Huge map, common planets/stars, if you play TOTA then abundant habitable planets. Techspeed low. Occasional extreme planets. Asteroids/anomalies like you want. Random events: Frequent

Disable: -Surrender, -techtrade (or, at least, brokering)

Enable: -Blind exploration, all victory conditions, megaevents, super abilities, tech stealing

Predict? - Not possible.

The AI will be more inclined to vote in your favour if he sympasizes with you. There's a (hidden) rating for this, but I can't say what the factors are that influence it. Not that it would be of much importance considering how irrelevant the UP votes are. Perhaps being aggressive, unhelpful, having troop ships around foreign territory etc

Yes, I think this is spot on. No idea why it never got fixed...

The only instance I've encountered when an AI did break an alliance with me was when he was at war with a strong third faction and was asking me for help (*) - which I refused, so he replied something along the line that this alliance is useless and canceled it. The statues is then reduced to friendly and you usually can ally soon again.

Your influence doesn't bother your allies - as such, an alliance can be a legitimate prequel to an influence conquest without triggering wars.

edit:

(*) to be more precise, he was asking me to declare war on this third party

Yep, it's mostly the influence dilemma that prevents being able to ally with anyone; esp. on maps with close planets. Nevertheless, you could always try to conquer or eradicate those that are unwilling^^. No idea really when you got that influence-penalty hit, but I think it's rather situational and might also be influenced by AI personality and/or their abilities to thwart off alien influence...

Militaristic means that this specific race considers conquering others and that they are going to develop their game accordingly. There's no way to avoid it, but it's only a small diplo-hit, usually you should be able to ally easily even with it in place. If you look at the foreign relation window it's the most important or severe factors that are mentioned firstly (some even with double ++ or --), the ones that are at the end of the list are more or less irrelevant. 

The peaceful/aggression slider will only influence certain behaviour - such as, if the AI asks you to give him money etc, and if you turn him down, then an aggressive species will declare war more fast.

TBH I've never encountered a game where historic animosity did go away, because it's usually already lategame when one is forced to make decisions that'll call that diplo-hit in. But it might be feasable that, after some time, the AI might give you "our historic friendship" which could equalize that penalty. However, those 2 are also kind of minor influencing factors, just like the Torians "lingering racial grudge" and the Yors hidden penalty against all organic life.

However, be very careful to not trigger "they don't trust us" - this one has a huge influence even on techtrade and can lead to a situation where an AI won't agree to peace no matter what is offered (mostly after the 3rd or 4th war).

Uh, I donno but I don't think so. I always design ships by myself, at least, the amount of modules I want to use and where to place them.

Quoting Kivara,

reply 6

Is tech research cost and trade route yeld influenced by size of maps? Does tech on a smaller map cost less? Also when and why do tech increase in cost, i found myself with invasion at 5000 tech cost .

Techcosts are based on your initial techspeed settings. That is a most critical setting and should be in alignment to your available habitable planet count (as these are your #1 resources of research). In short, this setting should enable the game to be developed harmonically, for example, in an big epic game you don't want to be able to have planetary invasion during the colony rush (the AI cannot really react to early military threats). On the other hand you don't want to wait too long for the military phase once your planets are build up or maxed by population.

A few other factors will also weigh into that relation, for example enabling techtrade&/brokering will greatly speed up technological development.

Difficulty setting will influence techspeed by presenting a hidden research-multiplier up to 2.6 on suicidal.

Then there's the system of researchcost-inflation - in short, whenever you researched a handfull of techs then automatically all other techs will increase in costs. Red techs - offensive-military relatied stuff - suffer the most while defense, diplo & growth (grey, yellow, green) suffer the least IIRC.

This actually offers you to make some meaningful decisions early on - e.g. you could try to research planetary invasion while it is still cheap although you don't wanna use it right now - just in order to save some research. Or you could take the gamble and not research it at all but instead try to trade it from someone else. Please note that the AI also observes this inflation and therefore, some techs will become increasingly hard to get from the AI.

But usually it's best to go for those initial techs that hold racial bonuses on growth, diplo, speed etc.

edit:

re: on trade income. This is based on

- the economic level of the 2 planets that are connected

- the distance the mini-freighter is away from your planet (more distant means more income)

- the bonus that mini-freighter receives from econ-starbases

Mapsize has only insofar something to do with it as you obviously can set up more distant routes on bigger maps.

The second & third part cut themselves out a bit. Most effective would be to set up econ bases at the end of your trade-routes, however, this is not optimal for a number of other reasons, mostly because econ bases should be around your own planets giving bonuses to production etc. There, they are also more easy too defend and constructors en route to a far away destination use up considerable amounts of maintenance cost.

On the other side, boosting up early tradeincome can equalize the penalty if your mini-freighters have been shot down.

There's 2 ways. Either from successful invasion or by placing spies on planets directly. The placement of spies on the whole empire will only serve to advance your intelligence level, so you can see where their ships are aiming (that's good to know during the colony rush) or to see their planets without having to use a spy (not really important though). I usually try to get level 2 ASAP and once achieved, use my spies defensely. Depending on diff level, you may find it impossible to place spies on alien planets because of the AIs enormous economic bonuses. But if you can do it without your spies getting nullified right immediately, I suggest you do so. You can monitor what techs an AI has in the trade window, and it's usually better to place multiple spies on a planet/race, and this is even most effective when another AI uses spies against this particular enemy, too - so you place your spies besides the other spies - but on, more or less, unimportant tiles, so the AI will most likely only nullify the other AIs spies.

You could start the game in cheat modus by adding " cheat" to the link which targets the .exe (can't use the menu to start the game though..) e.g.

"C:\Program Files\Kalypso\GalCiv2Ultimate\Twilight\GC2TwilightOfTheArnor.exe" cheat

then ingame you could either use Control+R or Control+Shift+R to research techs (1 or all respectively) and then unveil all those ethical techs. I think the Thalans also have some very individual ethical techs as well.

Yes, sometimes, but it's not really a priority over scouts, colony ships or defenders. The only ship they'll never build+use are surveyors; ie. a galaxy setup with lots of anomalies gives the player some sort of advantage.

There are some scenarios possible in which it would indeed make sense to go for SpaceMining1 soon, for example when generally Astroids are sparse, then the starting Space Miner would have only the few homesystem asteroids to mine. Besides, it's also better to advance those to level2 instead of sending the Miner too far faraway.

AIValue influences the priority of the AI researchorder + the prize when trading. The higher the value the more important the tech becomes for him. However, there are many other coded factors present, besides randomization, which can make that the AI will choose another low-AIValue tech over a high-AIValue tech, esp. when he has other empire-wide plans (in this case, specific techbranches get multiplied in their importance or value)

WillingnessToTrade is used solely to determine the prize when trading - 0=most unwilling, 100=very willing - to trade. The researchcosts, the AIValue (and sometimes the branch as well) is also thrown into these considerations.