Games people play

I stick with Buff the Minor, my heart doesnot take so much evil around. LOL LOL LOL

That is quite disturbing, Downie! LOL

Love it!

~SDC~

Their deaths were not in vain! They died for the highest cause of all, the cause of Art!

[Message Edited]

Matthew,

This post and your last story on the last fellowship thread were great!

I'll add a 'game' for you:

Induce major to commit suicide:
It seems that major races don't live in confinement any better than large predators do. Sometimes when I'm about to eliminate a race, I colonize am isolated low PQ and name it 'Ashlyn's Zoo' after my daughter. Then I'll give it them as a 'gift', then take their other systems. They don't like living in the zoo (or the PQ kill them)... generally, they'll destroy the colony and themselves. It sounds mean, but I find it funny.
WARNING: If the AI is willing to trade you anything but a dozen or soinfluence points for this planet, it has too high a value and they may try and keep it instead.

~SDC~

These are some great ideas! Keep em coming!

Trade Center

Max out the trade starbases in each sector along your trade routes. You really need vertical or horizontal trade routes for this. Unfortunately, this won't work as well in 1.11, as starbases per sector will be limited. But there's always Trade Terror Stars! (I wonder if that will work: you can build starbases only in certain locations, but Terror Stars are unrestricted.)

This works best in conjuction with "buff the minor", putting all your trade routes with that minor. Trading with a major in this fashion makes the major too powerful.

Buff the Minor is what you play with the minors you want to conquer, not the ones you want to trade with.
In my last game I tried the Super Slingshot game (while it's still possible). That's when you build about thirty speed+ bases in one sector. If you do it right, you send your mini-freighters almost all the way round their trade route in one turn, into the last and highest-paying sector of their journey, where you put all your trade bonus bases. Can also be used for military invasions - focus all your military in that sector, and then launch devastating attack anywhere in the region.
It was a lot of work, but once I got it going, my trade income went up to about 7K per turn. The Carinoids, my trade partner, ended up about 90,000BC in credit.


~SDC~

Gengis Khan:
As soon as you have transporters and star fighters on a tiny or small map, wax at least 3 races before they ever break 3 billion in pop. Should try to kill one before they break 1 billion. Dine on the ashes. Should be able to kill the others in short order as well.

Iron Clad:
Control all military resources, build all starship improvements, build one Excalibur from said planet, name it Omega (the end), own all . You will feel like an Iron Clad ship going up against old wooden hull vessels. Wipe out the navies of all the AI's with just one ship, no more, no less. Try to never build a military ship until you get to that one. For the most fun, position Omega in center of large number of AI ships, declare war, let the feathers fly.
Be merciless, be very very bad

Star Destruction Madness:
Build all of the terror star modules except for one on starbases next to every enemy star. Complete every terror star. Press next turn. Proceed to blow every enemy star in the galaxy up in one turn. .

All excellent games.

I forgot the Survey Ship Game.
Early one the pirates of GROSS had this story that our pirate vessels were survey ships. As I result, I use the survey ship a lot - in fact, I have even been able to rush a major on maso once with a survey ship and still use it to rush minors.

I try to protect the ship and nurtue it throughout the game, I have had three games where I've used the survey ship to take out Dreadnoughts. About half the time, I can built it up enough to take down Frigates.

If you build up the attack values, it has a ton of HPs, excellent sensors, and good movement - and it makes a great privateer.

Some games you can't build it up very much - in those cases I use it to hunt down my opponents survey ships. (That's not a bad tactic either because the AI tends not to build other surveyors until the Ranger.)

Thought I'd share a game with a practical application...

True that. However I found that since graduating to 'normal' that the AI are a little more efficient at exploiting anomalies. So you have to be quick to get USS HERO to a good level to take on most ships.

I had one game that my HERO was the most powerful ship in the game, needless to say that we (the AI and me) didn't get beyond mere dreadnoughts.

How about the Hot Potato Planet Game.

This game requires an alien world to be completely under yor cultural influence.
Usually best played with a 'cooked' alien world (stripped by them and useless in late games).
Quickly swap this world for ships, starbases, tech and anything else you can get your hands on.
Wait a turn or so to get the world back then pass it on for more stuff.
Remember to keep passing the world on until you own every thing the aliens own.

~SDC~

A game I had fun with for a while was the Soldier Siege game.

Take max soldiering and a bit of population growth and morale (I usually took the Universalist party to go with it). Don't ever colonise another planet or build a ship - sit on your homeworld and research all the soldiering and planet quality tech. Keep your morale high so your population explodes. If anyone demands tribute, tell 'em to stick it. Let them try and invade Thrill to the feeling of repulsing five consecutive combat transport assaults. You'll probably go down eventually, but boy will you take a few with you.

Money will get tight eventually but with a bit of luck someone will trade with you. For extra entertainment, take the "luck" special ability and you seem to get more than your fair share of Rangers. Either sell them or use them!

I actually won a game like this when I got random planet quality specials boosting my PQ to 49. My population and soldiering were so high that no-one could invade me successfully and I eventually won a narrow tech victory

TV Sales

But wait...........there's more!!!!!

You can strip an AI from most all it's belongings. When you set up a tech trade, just don't stop with money over time. When you find your comfort range n the cash part, check and see what else they will give you.
EXAMPLE: you set up a trade of 10 techs for 400bc over 30 months (31 months are not accepted). See what else they will throw in. Might get a couple of combat transports, a SB, and half a dozen frigates to boot. Then, for good measure, see how many IP you can get to put an icing on the deal.

I have gone from being a military wuss, to the major powerhouse in a single turn. And I am not talking about a paper tiger. Battleships, Phoenix, Death Knights, you name it....... Only thing the AI seems to value a lot is colony ships......like you need any of those at the BB point in the game. lol.

Better art, or better pointless Torian killing? LOL


I had fun telling the leading millitary power that I would go to war with all the minor Civs, but I'd need a few more ships... So I took all of their ships and made peace with the minors (rinse, repeat) until I had the highest military rating. Gave me some breathing room to tech properly for some decent ships of my own, but played havoc with my income

Done the hot potato thing too

But I've not been playing much due to borrowing games from friends atm. and uni work. which reminds me...

*goes works*

Whats the difference?

Why not both?

~SDC~

ai vs ai

i just found a bug where if you deselect all but two ai races and try to use the cheat key for dividing the galaxy the game crashes.

but, another way is to choose the two ais you want to duke it out. make one totally evil and make the other totally good. keep the other races at neutral. make them incredible so they are using all their strategies.

divide up the galaxy with ctrl-L. then give away all but one of your planets to the two ais you want to fight.

hit shift-ctrl-s to get all techs but final frontier and set research to zero.

then take over the other races you are not testing. use ctrl-a to make invincible super ships (and keep the ais off your back by having a high military rating with like two ships). use ctrl-t and ctrl-c to clone and teleport fleets to the major neutral races and kill them off.

take over the planets and give them to the two ais. make it so they are intermixed. or just give them to the minors. on a large galaxy you can do both.

if a moral choice pops up always pick neutral. on your one system build the influence wonders so you can no be absorbed and also try to get the population and happiness enhancing buildings.

i had the drengin and altarians duke it out in a grudge match. even though i had a very high espionage budget the stupid drengin visited me late in the game and got assassinated. so i had to beat them up a bit so i could get peace. forgot to shut off destabilization so that hurt them toward the end of the game. oops .

altarians managed to take them after a very drawn out fight that took many wars. the minors were often caught in the middle getting atttacked by both sides sometimes. drengins put up stiff resistence but the fools kept biting off more than they could chew by attacking more and more minors. even when they crippled the minor fleet they had no transports set to invade. the altarians seemed to do ok at invading minors but didn'tdo many invasions of drengin planets. maybe i just missed it since that has no video showing an invasion like when a minor dies.

eventually the drengin surrendered to me and i gave the planets to the minors, hoping an i-league would form.

the altarians managed to get final frontier sometime during the game before that. they almost had a culture victory but i allied with them before that happened.

so you spend the time looking on as a kind of superminor as two superpowers fight through the centuries. kinda like switzerland in the cold war.

Dark star

Build a terror star and name it dark star. Then send him around and destroy PQ<5 planets that might be in the way of a future traderoute.

Tax attack
You know how there's an optimum tax rate point at which you get the maximum possible income? How high can you get this point to be? Increasing the rate gradually and boosting morale in every other way seems to be the key. Today, I managed to get my taxes up to 91% without harming my income.

~SDC~