So a smart strategy then would be to have a couple (or maybe one) large ship that has the highest attack value but also very high defenses, supported by a lot of smaller ships with no defenses and high (but not as high as big ship) attack values. Is that correct? It really all depends on your goals, and more importantly the make up of the enemy f
the computors also start with 7500... so i dont see what the problem is. The problem is the AI will probably use it to rush buy. Meanwhile, the player who knows what he's doing will sacrifice the immediate results a little and use the cash to build instead of buy. 2500 will buy the AI another couple of colony ships. It gets the player either t
In my second attempt at suicidal I managed to grab more planets than everybody but the Drengin who got a small handful more, I completely filled them with research labs and put my research slider to 100%. That only put me 6th out of 9 in research. The Drengin had twice as much research as me and still rising rapidly when I quit. So no, I don't think it's possible to keep up! Either trade for it or go to war early and keep invading at a rapid pace, otherwise you're screwed techwise.
From a pure efficiency point of view, a buying strategy for social and military production is not good...a stockmarket is only going to produce the equivalent cash of 3 or 4 points of production, and even those levels are going to be tough to achieve with the new rebalances. However, it does have logistical benefits, in particular being able to get your military material exactly where it's needed almost immediately. The same comments don't apply to research with tech trading on as the
I've been using a no industry strategy for a long time. You do need some industry originally to get the infrastructure down in a reasonable time though. Once that's done, I convert the factories to something else. I go at it from a research heavy angle rather than economy though...all research buildings then use the focus buttons for production. Enough economy buildings to support the research (which is expensive since with this strategy 100% of your buildings capacity is being used at all t
Don't think I ever bothered to check the tax income equation at a later stage of the game but pretty sure I checked it when Populatios were up in the 6-8B range anyways. Guess I'll just have to keep an eye on it for myself if no one knows more. Every time I start a game, I remind myself to keep checking. Invariably I get caught up in the ga
I know luck will influence battles and anomalies but is there more? You have more tile bonuses on planets I'm not convinced. I ran some tests with no luck bonus, the 25% in game bonus and a modd
This no longer appears to be accurate. I know it use to be completely accurate. Checked it out on a lot of planets and looks like they have added a .85 to .875 modifier somewhere in the process but I cann't seem to figure it out exactly. I'm not seeing any change. Is the game you're looking at a mid-late stage game? For as long as I'v
Slow down on the Neutral Research Centers. The best time to go for most planetary improvements is after you've already completely built up most of your worlds. That way the buildings will be both cheaper to maintain at any given production level and they'll also be working for you even whilst they're being upgraded. Once you run out of room and assuming you have the money to support them, then go for planetary improvements. Also slow down on Star Democracy and the other forms of gove
Bump. Wouldn't this be cool? Blind exploration's fun, but not when you find out you've been slaving over a gigantic map with just one other race on it...
What is "blind exploration"? I haven't found any documentation of what this option actually does. If it's off, your map shows the influence zones of each race (the coloured bits!) If it's on, you won't be able to see those zones until *after* you've explored the area. It's a cool feature to use if you have a random number of op
I have a small number of bare hull designs saved which I upgrade and use throughout the game. I think there are plenty of ship packs out there for download that would save you the bother of even designing your own. Putting the components on in orderly fashion is usually no big deal. Not sure why I even bother with that since I play the entire game zoomed out as far as possible!
At high enough levels, the AI gets bonusees to pretty much *everything*.
Of course no way I can pack a warship with engines like that. It would be so lovely if I could. Actually, you can once you get to the end of the engines research line. Dreadnoughts with 30+ speed are then (just about) viable.
If you have nothing in your social building queue, the production gets shifted to military spending, as long as the military slider is set to at least 1%. This is why clicking on a building appears to increase the social numbers...that production stops being transferred. What you're seeing with using the highlight buttons is a glitch. The planetary screen often does not display the correct build times (and as far as I can remember, has never been totally accurate in any version). The
Yep, it used to be 10. That actually makes a significant difference to the colony rush on the larger maps. Again, it's more likely to hurt the AI, which keeps trying to colonize as long as there are empty planets, than the player, who knows when to stop to avoid overstretching starting resources. Though I guess it might make it touger at the top levels where the AI bonuses mean it doesn't suffer too badly financially putting small populations down.
The bank has finally been fixed (hoorah!) No need to jump straight over banks any more. Fairly strong downgrade to morale buildings. I think I like this...I've not bothered with the morale research tree at all for a long while because you can get 80% tax rate easily enough without it. Now it looks much more worthwhile. Morale trade goods (which have not been downgraded) are much more worth pursuing now. The farming tech changes though...I like the idea in principle. Combin
Does the AI ever surrender to you if you're at war with it? I thought it always surrendered to a friendly or neutral race. (Same with AI vs AI). I've had the AI surrender to me before when it was losing a war with someone else...frankly it's a bit of a pain - suddenly you're fighting a war on two fronts with a bunch of isolated and undefended planets!
Oh, I see. Only the basic production gets transferred from social to military - you won't even get your race bonus. Couple of ways to help with this...either put some slider points into military spending, or at least use the focus button on those planets you want the bonus. With focus, 1/3 of your social and 1/4 of your research will convert to military and you *will* get both racial and starbase bonuses on that. The remaining 2/3 of the social will still transfer over without bonus.
Can you trust the AI to use the new buildings properly though? A while back before the 1.3 beta, I tried putting in a "nerf center" to create a difficulty level between crippling and masochistic. This building had 25% morale bonus (to match the entertainment center I'd have put on the tile) and then a load of penalties (negative bonuses). I put it on the lowest AI priority possible. Originally, I made it cheap, but the AI built loads of them so I made it more expensive than an entertainment
There isn't much I can think of that would fix that Once you reach the stage where nobody else can beat you need either entirely internal or entirely external forces to come into play to keep things interesting. Example of each Internal - in Rome Total War it became harder to control your empire as it grew. It was never really
I wouldn't have used sandbox myself, but others seem to so I've tagged along. Stuff like Sim City, that's *real* sandbox where there's no set objective but those you set for yourself (box full of sand, make what you want ) I guess it's similar to non-campaign modes in 4X games where you control exactly wh
Speaking of the speed boosts... if you have overlapping starbases do you get stacked speed boosts? IE I've always thought about trying to build a really dense 'highway' of starbases down the middle of the map... dunno how useful that would really be tho. It used to and I assume it still does. I remember a post from a guy who had done ex
It lists the bonus in the planet details but I have now in numerous instances taken a planet and then blitzed 3 or more economy bases, only to watch the production numbers there not budge more than one or two points. It may very well be working as intended then. Are you sure these increases don't match the expected increases? The boost to produ
However with tax rates i canr arley get above 39-42% without my approval going low. I try to emphasize on approval building but it doesnt make a significant difference. Hmmm. Sounds like your populations are too high. A couple of entertainment buildings on each planet, even the worst ones, should get you somewhere over the 60% tax range. If yo
