No nuking from orbit, either take a planet with transports or through influence. I guess its a balance issue, but on the bright side in a planetary invasion your exterminating every former inhabitant.
But it doesnt defend your planets like Starbases in MOO2 did, so invading fleets can fly around them to invade your planet Military starbases improve the attack and defense values of all fighting ships in its area of effect (which can be see by clicking on it) this means fighting an enemy fleet anywhere in this area gives your fleet a massive
Are you joking? Military starbases can give huge bonuses if you research the right techs to both defense and attack. A couple starbases can turn garbage units into powerful ones.
Racial bonuses and galactic super project Hyperion logistics center are two other ways.
Edit: should stay out of this
You know you can turn influence victories off, so you'll have more time to win by conquest since as soon as you control enough of the map the influence victory timer starts. It sounds like your not so much winning a true influence victory but failing to win a conquest fast enough. As for the AI being weak against influence....hardly (at least at harder difficulties), I've had a few games where the AI wore me down with influence and proxy wars even though i was way ahead in research a
The coloured area are not your borders, it is your area of influence. Going for an influence victory entails spreading that area to encopass enemy worlds and converting them to your side without invasion. Technically the only borders you have are the parsecs your planets occupy.
I usually specialize my core planets, quite a few econ only, some production planets (usually surronded by econ starbases improving production) and a couple research planets. It really depends on the situation though, sometimes influence heavy planets are in order; that said I do make some mix planets out of habit. I always take econ improving race attributes since a strong economy is so important in this game since it allows you to set your spending high. I set taxes pretty high, e
accidential double post
Missiles do the most damage vs size but cost the most, whereas mass drivers have the worst damage vs size ratio but cost the least, beams are the middle ground. There are also exceptions such as the Nano Ripper and Psionic Ripper which are massive damage mass driver weapons (8 and 10 respectively at a tech level where 3 dmg is the norm) that are hugely expensive.
Well I've never had the AI surrender to a weak civ, and even a moderate civ can be dangerous if your already at war with others. Anyways if you are the most powerful civ and your attacking them the AI will surrender to you most of the time (at least in my games they did). It might be nice to have the option of whether or not to accept a surrender but I can't see myself ever turning down a surrender so why would the AI, I mean free planets..
It wouldn't make much sense for the surrendering AI to go to a civ your already at war with since it wouldn't stop invasions and their mandatory genocides. To spite you often the AI will surrender to a powerful civ your not yet at war with meaning that you will either have to stop taking their former planets or declare war on a new civ. At first I found the surrendering a little frustrating, but I've grown to like it since it can totally change the dynamics of a match instantly.
Surrendering to an ally who is also at war with the same civ thats killing you makes no sense, your still going to get killed just under a different flag. That said once when I was going for a influence victory the Iconians who were my close friends and at war with three other races (one of which I was at war with as well) surrendered to me and since they had 5 heavily populated worlds my influence spread to the point where I won an influnce victory......I don't know if the AI knew his surrende
Ok, I know what your talking about now, the "just let me play a couple more turns" option after winning a game of Civ3. Its not available in Galciv 2.....it was a nice feature though.
Hit new game instead of campaign and you can create a custom universe in which you can slug it out with the other races.
Personally I like fairly high defense (in general) about a third of the ships attacking strength late game. I find that if I optimize the first wave of ships to enemy weapons by the time my opponent adapts the first wave has tons of experience allowing them to stay effective until I begin adapting to the changes my opponent has made and upgrade the highly experience ships who become like a immoveable object in enemy territory.
The techs you need to build medium sized ships are (in order) : Xeno Engineering - Basic Logistics - Advanced hulls - medium scale building. Going along that reasearch line will also eventually unlock large and massive hulls.
I usually postion a small fleet (usually with obsolete ships) on top of the mining starbases for protection, if the starbase is far away from my main planets however and it's difficult to defend I turn them into porcupines with weapons upgrades.
Safari Joe, that's like saying that all you have to do to win is win (have a big emp with strong economy). That's kind of obvious. I guess I was a little glib. What I meant was that with social production running an economy grows (well as long as you don't just build research centres and factories) and allows you to increase your sp
Ever heard of social production, its a slider too. A big empire with a strong economy can run at 100% spending which means its researching, military production and developing worlds all go quickly.
how do i find out what direct X ive got? go into the windows start menu, click run and type in "dxdiag" you can get all your computer stats, including directx version and driver versions.
8 out of 10 is the same as 4 out of 5, fractions ftw
Planetary bombardment also improves soldiering (by +5 I think) so even if you don't choose the mass frivers option you still get some benefit from the tech. The mass driver option unlocked by planetary bombardment is probably the most ruthless of the options it can more then double your advantage factor but halves the planet quality, good late game invasion tactic.
I found this comment curious: "To me, removing this element of tactics depletes the game somewhat, even if the overall goal was to focus on a grand strategic approach. Personally, there are plenty of times in games like Rome: Total War when I would just let the computer decide the outcome based on stats, but it'd be nice to be able to feel like my keen tactical expertise could help my civ pull victory from the jaws of defeat in certain cases. May
Well gamerankings has another vote now
