TarlSS

...Attacking multiple times isn't much of an advantage. The advantage is being able to choose when and where to fight.

MIlitary is easiest.

How about making it a super project so all planets get the planetary defense benefit? Or making it part of the military starbase module.

Planetary defense techs also add to your troop's invasion capabilties

You're correct that yes, military is the easiest victory. However, the game is alot harder on tough+. The same just sucks at tactics, but frankly, that's every AI in the history of computer gaming ever. If you can pull off some basic guerilla stuff like hitting/running and sneaking around the back, or just parking your transports next to his biggest production worlds and skivving them, you can pretty much own any AI. The military game pretty

Generally it's not hard to max out your economy even with starbases, Populists make far more of a difference in the beginning of the game as you can get more cash via tech trading and more money via taxes. Also your diplomatic ability helps you get through wars and what not, allowing you to strike at the right time.

I don't see the beta update. It's not posted yet, is it? Otherwise I have no idea how to use SDC.

Yeah. It's an exploit that makes sense though, I mean, Hitler did the same thing to Russia, etc. When you launch a surprise attack on someone who does't expect it, it's pretty easy to slip past thier defenses. That's sort of how invasion works.

Why is the population increase cap set at 2 million? That seems a little low. There should be at least some room for incremental increases due to good morale, and also the racial bonuses. Right now I'm not seeing much of a difference between a growth rate of 45% approval, and 75% approval, aphrodisiac with univeralists and whatever the highest pop option is. The cap should at least be set high enough that there's a difference between having those thing

It'd be nice if the increased reproduction rate and aprohodisaic actually did something. Right now it's so easy to reach the cap there really isn't much of a point to it. Maybe if they just raised the cap or something? Or maybe there should be a disclaimer that the trait will make your morale go out of control due to overpopulation. Just something to think about.

The AI just doesn't seem to be able to cope with Guerrilla tactics. Granted I only have played up to challenging, but if I shove engines on a ship, and zoom around fleets just blowing up starbases and capturing isolated planets, the AI doesn't seem to be able to deal with it. I can ignore their slow moving fleets and pick my own fights. Does it learn to build faster ships on higher settings? I get the impression that if I set the AI higher

Uhm. For cash, why aren't you building tons of Stockmarkets/trade centers? That's what I do. It keeps pop low and isn't dependant on morale or anything.

Wow. I usually do low pop/high tax. The only high pop worlds I have are the capitals, maybe 15b. Normally I play a military heavy game and crank out big ships 1/2 turns a pop on my manufacturing worlds. It seems to take too slow for pop to increase. Does building farms increase your pop rate?

If you have a weak military, anyone will come and munch you up. It's just that if you're good, no one but evils will randomly declare war on you. I've had games as evil where I've out militaried everyone, and they were all hostile to me. Trading techs cost me a hand and foot. I was way behind in techs and the only way I got back online was kicking the pants off the nearest race. Granted, that was the optimum path since all my racials were in hi

If the colony has no research producing structures, it's not spending the money. Money only goes into places where there's capacity to spend it. So if you have a new colony with nothing but factories, the money will go to power the factories. If your colony's all spread out with structures here and there, then yes money will get spent there.

Sensor ships are a critical part in playing guerrilla. More often then not, destroying the enemy's capabilitiy to see you is more important then your battleships. This way you can't sneak transports and privateers around trying to blow up undefended targets. The AI -knows- what you are doing, and is taking the steps to prevent that. Goods to know the Dreadlords could smash your battlefleet to pieces, what it's worried about it you sneaking a task force

Empire at War is actually quite good. It's really innovative, if not too deep. An expansion or a big patch would is all it needs to be fixed.

No heroes please. Heroes promote micromanagement and playing Diablo 2. If I'm playing a strategy game, I don't want to be mooking around with General Salazar and his premier fleet of Space Rangers. Too much of the strategy genre has recently put effort into making heroes and experience units and baby sitting. Instead of furthering the strategic elements of the genre, they're spitting out hybrids. I don't want an RPG in my RTS. Heroes introd

No heroes please. Heroes promote micromanagement and playing Diablo 2. If I'm playing a strategy game, I don't want to be mooking around with General Salazar and his premier fleet of Space Rangers. Too much of the strategy genre has recently put effort into making heroes and experience units and baby sitting. Instead of furthering the strategic elements of the genre, they're spitting out hybrids. I don't want an RPG in my RTS. Heroes introd

Here's a solution. Make it so the capital worlds have unlimited tiles and unlimited population growth. Or at least give them significantly more tiles than the other worlds. Then increase maintenance costs for other colonies. Make pop growth based on a fraction of the population already in place, and give penalties for growth on colony worlds. Make improving planet tiles less painful for capitals, and more so for colony worlds. This will allow th

The other races were using Stargates, so they were just using what worked. Humans didn't really have those or real good access to them so they needed an alternative. It's pretty much well, the whole reason the aliens from Stargate never really progressed technologically, they were already dominant. The whole philosophy of self improvement and such could just be a human concept, there's no real reason why an alien species would want to spend the effort

Well, seeing how the mass drivers and tidal disruptions failed, it would only be logical to assume that the defenders managed to protect their resources....It seems like a fairly realistic tactic to me. Make some kind of gigantimus distraction, have them spend all their resources on it, and then pound them with normal troops.

Since it's a single player game, as long as you make sure the update doesn't screw up the game or create problems (THAT could be bad) , update as frequently as possible. Now seeing the logistics of 'not screwing up' it would probably be weekly/biweekly seeing how you need to actually playtest these things before they go out. And there should always be an archive of old patches and backward compatibility stuff somewhere, in case someone needs