Tertullian

So much for global warming...

Nuke 'em till they glow! That's what I'd do. Wins by influence are for wimps! (just kidding--I'll go for an influence win any day)

Remember also, population is not only for the purpose of tax revenue, it feeds the invasion forces. If you are going for a military victory, then one or more farms on PQ 10+ planets is good--this way you get the full tax revenue of, say a 7B population, and keep feeding the transports with the population growth over 10 turns or so. This way you build a transport every 10 turns, and every 10 turns your pop increases by 1 Bil---exactly enough to feed to the transport. Having a 1

The "doesn't cheat" means that the AI must play by the same rules as the human player (i.e., no magical repositioning of a fleet from its homeworld to your doorstep). Based on the AI intelligence level, it will either be penalized or get a set production bonus. At its worst, the AI gets something like 800% production/research bonuses.

Not sure how you are playing, but when I play on challenging I kick the AI's butt on pumping out colony ships. By the end of the colony rush I've got the rest of the pack creamed--perhaps you should buff up your own game a bit? My impression (at least on challenging) is that the AI focuses more on ship production than planet development (social production). Sort of like putting the military spending thingy up to 100%--then ships get pumped out real fast, but your planet's development su

Azrune: this is a family oriented forum. Please refrain from the obscenities and profanity. Thanks. Regarding the post: there is a way to keep your zone of influence free of unwanted starbases--simply destroy them. Of course, that will have repercussions in that a war will ensue. But perhaps it will be a "phony" war and you can make peace within a short period of time. Perhaps a better idea is to beef up the diplomacy aspects (which I believe is to be done in DA) so that you ca

Perhaps instead of Orbital Fleet Manager, there ought to be a tech tree thread that deals with incrementally improving fleet coordination over a planet. This changes things from a binary yes/no for fleet combat in orbit to more of a continuum. Just a thought.

My theme is the (violent) weather: Storm, Tempest, Blizzard, Thunder, Lightning, Tornado, etc. I design 1-2 classes per ship size, and use roman numerals to represent tech upgrades (i.e., Tempest II) for weaps/speed. Then for ships with defenses I append a "bd", "md", "pd" for beam, missile, particle defenses (i.e., Tempest II (MD)). That helps me sort things out. I don't name individual ships, I just leave the computer to do that.

Suggestion 1: roll back to v1.2. If you aren't willing to deal with crashes, don't play the beta. Suggestion 2: update video drivers Suggestion 3: update sound drivers Suggestion 4: if you still get crashes, post your debug.err and someone will likely help you (unless of course it is a rant/flame, in which case you will likely be flamed back).

I average about 4 years. I play challenging--time seems independent of galaxy size for me. You can actually do some investigation yourself on this question by looking at the Metaverse scores. By clicking on a player, you get to see their individual games, and this includes the time to finish.

Out_of_Ideas: I run a dual-core CPU and have no problem running the game and getting the right animations. I'm afraid I can't give any advise on what to look for though. I would say to update video drivers, but if the game works on one core, I suspect video drivers are not the culprit (but try anyway, you never know!)

Here are some more big-picture ideas (all of the previous posts are also good): 1) In the early game I focus on building my empire and economy. So I research the ship speed improvements (faster colonies for that colony rush and resource grab), some of the diplomatic line so that I get better governments (with their production and economy bonuses) and trade capability, and start laying the groundwork for eventual military (range improvements, miniturization, sensors) 2) My clue

To pump out colony ships fast, I build 4 factories on my home world (buy the first, and let the others build). Then I can pump out colony ships every 2-3 turns while keeping a balanced military/production/research program. While the remaining factories are building, buy partially completed colony ships every 3 turns to start your colony rush.

Regarding (4)... I recently played a gigantic map with "tight clusters". I found that while I had culturally overwhelmed my opponents by winning the colony rush, because there were vast areas where there were no stars, no one had influence coverage and so even with all of the influence bonus techs I peaked out at about 62% influence...leaving me short of an influence victory. I would have had to seed the star-free areas with starbases in order to win a cultural victory. I finally gave u

The slow colonization may unbalance the game in this way--whoever is first to obtain the extended colonization techs has a huge (and possibly unbeatable) advantage. However, this seems like an idea that can be modded in. Some possible alternatives to slow down or deemphasize the colony rush: 1) make colony modules hugely expensive 2) limit number of colonists to 100m or even less--this will slow down the new colony contribution to the tax base while keeping expenses as

I imagine it is very hard to program an AI to wage an effective war. First, the AI has to answer these questions: 1) What is my objective for this war? 2) What general strategy will I follow to meet this objective? 3) How do I implement the details of this strategy (building ships, fleet areas of concentrations, etc.) But these answers need to be able to change and adapt based on what the AI's enemy is doing and what their strategy is. So what balance is required fo

...I have noticed that sometimes these destinations stay even after the ship has reached the destination and has gone on to do other stuff (and it is not a rally point that I set up).

It is most likely the options selections that Linthar mentioned. One of the options is "show full battles only if fleet vs fleet combat". This means if either side in a battle is a single ship, full battles are not shown.

A couple of thoughts... 1) I agree that the AI can be improved at the level of positioning for fleet combat. 2) In the situation you cited, the AI may be preferentially defending their home planets against an invasion "raid" (transports just outside of their sensor range that would take advantage of invading an undefended world. Probably not the best strategy since it leaves enemy ships to be diced up individually by your fleet, but it is a strategy. Further, by keeping ships i

It has been reported in other threads that the "lost turn" for production/research on loading saved games feature/bug (depending on your viewpoint) is to be fixed in 1.3.

You can only design ships "in game". There is no "off-line" ship design capability, although it would be nice to have that IMO. When I'm in the middle of a game, I find it a bit disrupting to spend 15-20 min designing a new ship. In a perfect world, I would like to have the ability to open a "ship design" window outside of the game and go to town designing my ship along with specifying the prerequisite techs (particularly miniturization level, which is a bit tricky otherwise I would s

No I don't think so. The starbase will simply provide enhancements. You can view the Mil starbase as sort of a forward operating/logistics base that gives fleets its enhancements, but won't itself get into the fight unless it is attacked directly.

The starbase offenses and defenses will only operate when the starbase itself is attacked. For military starbases, there are starbase modules that you can build to enhance the offense/defense/speed/repair of your fleets within the sphere of operation of that starbase (the light colored area when the starbase is clicked on). In this case these enhancements will affect fleets engaged in battle If the battle happens within the sphere of operation of multiple military starbases

The developers killed a good franchise game when they released HOMM5. Slow and boring.

It is odd that most other people posting have not experienced your problems or the bugs that you report (notably without debug.err so there is no opportunity to even try to help you out). Try reinstalling the game. Try Stardock support. I suspect that you have not gone far enough in terms of troubleshooting your machine, and so are flaming the game itself without cause.