if the empire gets to the first page, wonderfull. But RL should always take precedence over a computer game . I find that I take breaks from the game also. Don't want to burn out on it. And good luck with your business trip. I am getting a business started myself, and that can be very time consuming. lol

Yeah, I wonder about the scores sometimes. They clearly are not based on how you preform during the game. If they were, then a lot of "cheese" would become moldy real fast.

As for the Arceans, perhaps a culture assualt would be of benefit. Another tactic I have tried playing with a bit, is conquer all the alien planets they are trading with. In theory, it will help you keep pace with their trade income, debilitate the other races, and keep you out of a war with them (for the time being) because they now depend on you for the trade income.

Some feel the best way is to send your own freighters to the big bad wolf. I still send mine to whatever pet minor I chose, and get the trade security blanket through conquest. Like I said tho, still checking this tactic out. Hard to see what the hell is working in my current game, everyone loves me.

Tis a strange map indeed. Nearest AI is several turns away from my border systems.

"What is it NOW!" he replies.

"There are reports of a new collective, called the "I-Leage", the Alterians have had several systems defect to this.... group of dissidents."

"Good, seceretly send them funding to convince more of our enemies to join them. This is good news, not a problem."

Yes Sir.
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What a sorry endeavor that turned out to be. Over 50k in the bank, most all spent on destabilization (plus the portions of monthly income devoted to it), and not a single further system defected to them. That is until I decided it was not worth continuing it any more. A few turns after I stopped, two more systems joined them. Go figure.

Anyway, after gaining several ships in a trade, I went postal on everyone but my trading minor and the I-League. Finally finished the game. Nice score too. Put the empire near the top of the second page. Won't be long (maybe one more game) and the Viraxian empire will be on page one. :neutralGrin:
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Ahh.......

(admires his new medals) LOL

Work for it and it shall come. As for the game, too much destab is bad. You don't want them hunkering down and building all sorts of culture resistance and calling back too many ships before one is ready for them. It is better to build more culture bases nearby while maintaining a constant destab pressure that is low in intensity. Better yet, buy their influence resource or their economy resource out from under them to hasten their demise. Slow, constant pressure over several years will crush them in the end. Destab does not buy too many outright flips overnight in my experience. Once in a while one does get lucky and earns a quick flip that seems due to destab, but do not get cocky. They will just be deciding which systems to bolster in the meanwhile after sacrificing a few "scorched earth" stripped planets first to buy time.

In my experience destabilization only has one use on higher difficulties: stopping the AI from destabilizing you. Generally when my morale and income begin to slip for no apparent reason, I just send a little destab towards each AI... once they get a little taste of their own medicine, they often can't afford to spend as much destabilizing me

I haven't used it that often to figure out the in and outs of it. Espinanoodle otoh, is a 3-4 turn endeavor max. Once I can afford my spy attack (around 500BC a turn per AI), it gets done fast. Once there, I set it back to zero (and I HAVE stolen techs while it is at zero). Was thinking it would be similar with destab. I was wanting to see a number of Alterian plantes defect to the I-League and I would pick off the remainder later. Several had already defected, but that stopped once I started destabalization. After I stopped that, they lost two more two the I-league.

Being a gigantic map, they were way too far to try culture bombing at that point, as I was in the middle of a 2 front war with the Drengin and torian, both streched at opposing corners. I was going to deal with the girl scouts after I had finished off the others, whatever had not got ate by the I-league. Funny how my actions stopped their defections.

I have noticed in the past, on one of the diplomacy screens, it shows if the AI is spending money on destablization. In the future, I think I will wait for them to throw the first stone (counter-destabalization measures).

Sorry if my post is poorly written, on my first cup of coffee and still not quite awake yet.

DAMN! LOL

Last one was a really fun game. Got real lucky on the RNG for planet placement. The colonization phaze took nearly 4 years, and I owned about a third of the large/tight/occasional galaxy before I even met another major. At first glimpse, it was a candidate for ctrl-n, but I have stopped doing that and just playing what I get. good thing lol. The resource grab phaze was just as kewl. Since I had B-lined (as usual) for impulse engines, I had just the jump on the AI I needed. more times than I care to try and remember, i beat the AI to a resouce by less than a turn's movement. I never did get them all up to par. 5 or 6 of them i managed to get the third upgrade, one made it to the fourth. no other upgrades ever got done (IE basic defence, ect.). Didn't do any trade route upgrades either. But that did not slow me down at all.

I ran up the tech tree for a little while, with a minor war with the Torians for a flagship violation, and a long one with the Drengin for the same reason. but his whopping two planets were way on the other side of the galaxy (he must have worm holed to my sectors) and only other space battle with him was a single corvette VS corvette incident. They were never able to get their ships past the Alterians and Acheans (and three minors) who ran interference for me (with out knowing what they were doing).

Making the jump to end game.

The torians surrendered their only planet to the Yor, and the following turn the Drengin gave their last to the Alterians. This left the Acheans with 2 systems, the Alterians with 3 and the Yor with several. I decided to give up on the constructor soup and moved to frigates, battle cruisers and transports. Knowing that the transports were too small, I rushed battleship tech for the combat transports. I didn't need the BB as the AI never got that far because I quit selling them tech long before, and they were more devoted to fighting their puny wars amongst themselves. Baddest thing I had to face was the Yor's small fleets of frigates at the end (saved them for last).

It was an exceptionally fun game. So why the comment at the start of the post?............ With this addition to my score, I was a mere 2871 Mpoints of putting my empire on the first page . And I am not gonna be able to play another game for a week or so. in the words of the Gov of California,.... "I'll be back".

(will still try and stop by the boards of course)

Oh yeah, one other thing was a hoot. Three turns before i finished off the Yor, I got the galaxy event about the bird eggs. Even though I was already at saintly(100), I choose the good option and paid the several hundred BC to put a stop to the egg eating. After all, I HAVE to keep the story line in mind LOL (I try to help out the bugs and worms a little too. hehehe)

Welcome to the Empire Dracil!

With your valued contribution to the Empire, the Viraxian Empire is now in the top 25.

And we did it with only 22 games combined. Woot!
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Yay!

Just finished a huge game for my largest score yet, and now we're at #22 and more secure on page 1. Got off to a good start colonizing far more than any other empire and never looked back. Never lost a ship! Destroyed a few extra ships at the end of the game just to try to bump up my score a few points.

Hadn't looked at that closely, you're right-- nobody else on page 1 has less than 45 games.

Don't think I've seen the bird egg event...

Welcome Dracil!

Well, this is interesting.

I will preface my action by pseudo quoting the metaverse rule regarding a re-submitted game. it goes something like "hey, I think I can do better, so i will try and resubmit". So that is what I am going to do with my last game. Instead of conquering the last Yor planet with forces, I am going to wait until I culture flip it (not using any culture bombnig SBs), and concentrate on getting some more techs. Should help the anemic score a bit.

You have no IDEA how much.

First submission with the early victory gave me 8050Mpts with the win date of Aug 2187

Second submit, with a win date of Sept 2194, and still a large amount of techs not researched, I got a huge score boost. It now is 18580. That is more than double (additional 10530 Mpts). That feels more like it, for the early ass-whuppin I gave the AI.

Ohhhhh, so this is that concrete stuff I heard about. LOL.

Still at 22nd on the last viewing, but knocking on the back door of the #21 now.
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Considering the story line, I really laughed at the bird egg event. Seems my storyline and the devs thoughts about a game were fairly close. Lots of things in the game I have found to match up with the story line (which I wrote before finding out about a lot of the events.)

OK, so what exactly did you do differently, and for how long to boost your score that much? How far down the tech tree did you go?

I research 34 more techs, and got most of my resource starbases up to 53% mining ability (still, no other SB upgrades like defence, production, ect.)

I let the tech tree drive my settings. I had spending at about 50%, taxes at about 40% for the most part. I would set the tech slider to whatever level I could to get the next tech the next turn. When I was not able to complete a tech in one turn, I would set it at 5% or 10% and concentrate on social and military (constructors only). Once I got the available economy and tech buildings built, I would go back to the tech slider and proceed further. This is why I only got 34 more techs, over the additional 85 turns. While I was tech progressing, I evenly split the surplus between social and military. I also build a number of trade goods and a couple of wonders during that time. I really didn't do anything different with my play style, except for refrain from taking that last Yor planet. All trade routes were with a single system minor. One 3 system minor flipped about half way through, but had no effet on the play, as the govenor did the social choices, and the military queue was constructors. When the Yor finally flipped, I still needed another 34 constructors to bring all my SBs upto the 53% mark. I am fairly sure the big boost came from the additional techs. I had a total of 18 resource SBs (no others). Oh yeah, I did build some combat ships..... I built a single battle axe at any undefended system. All the rest were constructors.
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edit:
The available tech choices at the time of the second victory were:
dreads, star democ, molec med, spatial rifts, artif sats, hyper comp, org armor, culture maxi, majesty, conglomerates, damage opti. (I know, bad abbreviations) lol

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So the tech boosts were > time taken. Is it generally better to culture flip or to destroy everything at the end? So far, I've just culture flipped my way to victory, but I'm wondering if I'm losing a lot of potential military points by doing so, especially in my 2nd game, I had several terror stars and starbases, most with +64 defences. Absolute suicide if they tried to attack me. Just building those combat transports and getting them over there is a bit of a pain.

Also, is it worth it to terror star a system, or should I always try to take it over?

I'm into my 3rd game now (Huge, Painful, everyone on Intelligent). The Altarians are again the most powerful (last game I could understand, since they were the only intelligent and the rest were bright). I'm starting to *really* hate them. Maybe I should set them to evil. But I'm having a ton of fun bankrupting everyone else. Just met the Arcean Empire and traded all my techs to him for 12000+ over 20 months.
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I think (not 100% sure) that the increase in scoring you get from the added population from a culture flip is worth more than any bonus you get from a military confrontation. However, I find a total culture game a bore. If I need to get a foot hold against an empire that is far away from my core planets, then I will culture my way in. On average tho, I would guesstimate that I conquer about 25%-35% of the AI planets by culture. I like the battles.

As for using terror stars, I can see where they would have their uses, but Ihave only built 2 in all my games, and they were culture terror stars. I have never blown a system up.

In that game, they proved to be a waste of time and money. By the time they got to the next target system, I had the AI beaten anyway and didn't really need them. (didn't turn them into terror stars until after they had finished their culture bombing)

I am sure, that if your facing a system that military conquest would be too difficult then by all means use them. However I am not afraid of a bunch of space battles nor escorting my combat transports with frigates (avg 4 to 1 ratio).

I usually have the game won long before I can build terror stars.

WOW! on the Arcean tech trade. Most I have got is around 500bc X ## months. 200 BC over 35 months and all their ships and SBs makes it almost impossible for them to retaliate any strike I might make afterwards. And I don't wqanna hear the cheese naysayers over that either, considering those trade usually involve 15-20 techs (2.5 yrs of tech research). I have found also, that if you can afford it, don't trade with the ai. make them do their own research. You would be supprized how inefficent they are at running up the tech tree. IMO it's fair. they spend two years building death knights, frigates and BB, I spend the same amount of time researching tech. Big difference there is after the trade, I still have my two years of work, and they have corndog with chips and coke. LOL

Terror stars....... don't need them.

Actually it turns out it was the Torians. I did it with the Independent League too. I spent 40k buying all the ships from the Altarians since they were getting too strong and my military too weak. Then I proceeded to declare war and got about 4-5 planets off them. However, they've used my money to rebuild their fleet now, but they've been severely weakened. I get a couple grand in every turn anyway, so hopefully I'll be able to buy off their fleet again soon.

Some real tech whoring there! Too rich for my blood. I never intentionally try to bankrupt an AI. I will readily withold a lot of mid/late game techs from them all, but amply provide them with +trade route and +trade income tech to keep them somewhat solvent. After all, I already know I got the game in the bag after the colonization phase if I got more systems than the others. It then just becomes a matter of time to wear them down, just as long as I do not make the mistake of letting them maintain a real big military edge. The awesome power of the culture club will soon beat them down. If, by chance, I come out behind in the system count, it then becomes time to prune an alien of a system or three to tip the scales in my favor. The thought of a pure culture flip game lasting into the age of active terror stars is unnerving.

Well, I pretty much bankrupted everyone who had money this last game. I think the best was around 100000+. I just did max expenditure with lots of tech, and still managed to get 6000/turn until 120000.

Score wasn't that high though, took too long trying to culture flip. Will probably redo it and just crush them with ship superiority.

Your last score was not really that bad, and a new system might be a lot more fun. But either way, try to find tune your tech trades instead of buying ships for cash. I am a real skin flint in trades, I try to never give the AI any cash. This is how I fine tune it (on crippling).
I put all my techs (except diplo boost techs) on the block, and try for 100-200BC for as many months as I can get. Usually in the 20-30 month range. Then I see if I can pull any techs off the list and still keep the same payment. Then I see if they will throw in a ship or two for good measure (namely any corvettes or better and transports). If I am not able to remove any techs, thats ok, I still try for a ship or more to sweeten the deal (this allows me to have a military AND keep building constructors). If you want to get anal about it, you can lastly see if they will give you any influence points in 100 block increments (I don't usually bother with inf points with the majors).. If they have any techs, they get included with the first batch. I have found they overvalue ship techs (like defenders, corvettes, frigates, ect) so your better off researching those yourself or getting them from a minor in a tech trade.

Second round, I get what ever I can for the removed techs, even if it 50 bc for 2 or 3 months as it's all gravey then.

IF they have more than one SB I want (I usually get all their SBs, just for good measure, and might just disband any "blanks" I might get thought I try to not buy those. Archeans are good for building those POS) I will trade for the SBs one at a time. I put their SB on the block (and any tech they have), and see how many of my techs it will take to get it. Then I see how much BC per turn they will thorw in the deal. Repeat for the next SB you want. If you still have techs after that, then sell them for whatever BC per turn. I don't want to bankrupt them, just supplement my income. hard to bankrupt them at crippling anyway.

Move on to the next race, rinse/repeat. Begin the tech laundering with any empires that have techs (including minors), then the (remaining) minors, then the majors. By then, I have enough BC per turn to keep spending at 100% until the next laundry day, and if a major is not nice about it, screw em (IE: we will only give you 50 bc for 0 months for those 7 techs). Let them research the techs themselves (try again after 4 or 5 turns to give them time to "think" about it. lol) It will take them at least 7 turns to get them. If they buy them from another AI, fine. I don't mind the second AI being the middle man to the tightwad's bank account.

I have not had any luck buying tech from the AI with infl points, but they do seem to like them for trade goods. As for my trade good, I rarely sell them. I might toss in a morale trade good if need be for a sweet SB or chunk of ships. But any that are +movement, +diplo or +ship stats never get sold.
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Yeah, I do the same. The only thing was that I had more money than I knew what to do with (I was out-teching them, got all the SBs I wanted. But the Altarians were too far away to culture flip properly). Even at the end of the game, I still had probably like 40-50k left.
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remember, per the manual, you get penalties if you have too much money in your empire (in addition to possible anomolus meta scores). Spend that crap. It does no good to have a huge bank roll. Buy those trade good and wonders as soon as they are available for BC and 0 turns. You won't even lose a turns social production doing that (unlike buying military production items).

I have also found two culture bomb SBs in a single sector is enough to flip the first planet. Send the constructors over in a fleet of 7-12 times two and plop yor arse down. I try for an empty sector that is adjecent to as many AI controlled sectors as possible. If they have 3 adjoning sectors, those two bases will wreak havok.

Well, I didn't really notice a difference (is the manual even accurate anymore? e.g., the formula isn't really divided by the # of years anymore). I just resubmitted my game for 20050. The Draginol appeared and I extracted 623,431,682,738,000 (over many many many years, at 147k/month and all I offered them was a peace treaty) from them. Completed all the research, used an Excalibur to knock off other empires' ships. Really helped to increase my average income/month.
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Updated my 2nd game score slightly too (almos 1k more points). Draginol appeared again and were super cheesy to use again. Peace Treaty for 153728 for 1410065407 months, + my planet back. Of course that meant they disappeared the very next turn and so I didn't get any tribute.

I read that tribute income continues even after a race is gone from the game. Are you sure the tribute stopped?

IMO, fixing that is a good thing. Will have to keep an eye on that in my next game.

Speaking of which.... NICE start. In my starting sector I have Sol with two planets, two others with 2 colonization targets and yet another with 3. Total of 9 colonizable planets in one sector. I am beginning to really like the "occasional" setting. LOL

I am also very close to the Torians, Alterians, and two minors. Unforutanely for them, I have to go past them to expand further. I am fairly close to the center of the map, but almost nothing to the SE and E.

2 Close trading races, two close races for the "bum's rush".... It's like playing a small map on a large grid. The two systems directly west are mine also, both single system secotrs. One has one planet, the other has two....including a PQ 28 one. Anomalies seem to be in short supply though. Will be interesting to see how this one plays out.