Lord Zardoz

So just dick your way around it. Build your constructors, put them near the starbases you want to improve, leave the UP, improve the bases, then rejoin (assuming you can rejoin). It will suck to have to rebuild your trade routes, but it can be dealt with. And misery loves company. As soon as that law is passed, destroy every well developed starbase you can find. END COMMUNICATION

3 factories and a manufacturing capitol on a world with only 4 tils Oldstatesman? I dont think you have thought your cunning plan all the way through. END COMMUNICATION

I think that you generally do much better if you have at least one farm on decently large planets, which for me is any planet with about 8 or 9 Planet rating. First, I do not put a starport on every planet. In the games I play, I have not needed it. It may be wise early if you want to put cheap defending ships on every planet. But by mid game, its pretty stupid to worry about having a starport on every planet when you cannot even use it t

The alliances were like this. My allies == Korx, Thalan Korx == me, Thalan, Yor Thalan == me, Korx, Yor Yor == Thalan, Korx Since I was not allied with the Yor, I dont qualify for a diplo victory. But both the Thalan and the Korx do. I will send the saved game shortly, just as soon as I figure out how. A Diplomatic victory is easy enough to prevent, just dont be allied with someone, and they ca

The guy who said your talking about maneuverability and not speed hit the nail on the head. The game has no tactical component, so there is no need within the context of the game to worry about the implications that newtonian physics have on space combat. If they were going to worry about this, the ideal way would be to separate engines from maneuvering thrusters. Engines are for folding space and interstellar travel. They dont

In my most recent game, I had reached a point where there were 4 civs left, Myself (Arcean), the Korx, the Thalans, and the Yor. Both the Thalans and the Korx were allied with everyone else. Neither of them got a diplomatic victory. Now, I dont know if this is really a bug or not. But I would have assumed that the AI can win the same ways the player can, except for conquest, since the game ends when the player is eliminated. I

I had the Pirates appear in my most recent game. Their ships were impressively powerful. However, my fleets were better, what with the psionic beam weapons. I was basically dicking around with that game by that point though, I was allied with 2 of the remaining civs, and had close relations with the last one. I did have the fundamentalists show up in that game earlier. But they had only 1 of my planets (playing Arcean as evil), which I r

Kind of a direct response to CKayote and his comments on the Drath.... I would say its a testament to how differently the game can play out for different people, but the Drath are one of the races that typically manage to be hugely annoying to play against for me. If they are around in the late game, they will usually be the most dominant race aside from myself. On top of that, they will typically manage to have a handful of alliances so g

Since I dont play the beta, I cannot say with any certainty if my advice is particularly applicible. First, its probably never a good idea to let any AI sit and do nothing for any length of time. It may be expensive for either tech or for money, but its never a bad idea to pay off an AI to get involved in a war. If they are busy in their own wars, then they wont be as eager to take a shot at you. Considering that, you may want t

As has been mentioned, there is really no perfect order for tech research. IT is very dependant on what your starting situation looks like. There are a few things I tend to consider important though. First, I tend to go after the government techs before the diplomacy techs. The govt tech will get you some diplomacy bonus, and the improvement to industry and economy is a good thing to have. I tend to hold off on building any shi

Why the love affair for carriers anyway? As a concept, they sound cool, I suppose. Hundreds or thousands of ships zipping around wreaking havok. In practice, I dont think it would add much to the game, and the amount of effort would be staggering to make those who want them happy. The typical suggestion for carriers that I have read calls for the ability to load fighters of your own design into the carriers, and to allow the car

Its hardly a surprise that this worked. I tend to do the same thing from time, especially if I am near a civ at the start which is likely to be hostile to me. The AI pretty much has to be generalized, it does not alter its initial buildup methods too much with respect to planet availability or galaxy size. (I concede I could be very much wrong here, its not like I wrote any of this AI). The AI starts out trying to colonize as many nearby

For the amount of time required, pure conquest victories are not really viable once you get past a certain galaxy size or planet count. It does help that you can trigger a diplomatic victory or an influence victory rather then manually sending transports to every planet. In and of its self, I dont really mind the notion of having to wait a whole lot of turns for my invasion ships to arrive. What I do hate is that by late game, if your in a

I was having serious stability issues as well, and I eventually concluded it was my ASUS Radeon 9800XT card causing the problems. My game would play fine, for a while, then it would boot me out of the game. It started crashing very hard, and reached a point where I would start up and my screen would be usable, but full graphical errors. In my case my videocard ended up developing bad VRAM. It was the 2nd time that my card had gotten cooke

For frame of referneceI have a game ongoing at the moment where I can essentially end it in victory any time I want. I have a staggeringly overwhelming advantage in all things that matter. So at this point, I am just messing around with the game. For whatever reason, I decided that I wanted to eliminate two other Civs, the Terrans, and the Iconians. In short order, their fleets were decimated. However, I did not want to bother building t

I for one look forward to the day when I must start each day by swearing featly to the invincible corporate overlords of Stardock. I say that for delivering such a quality game at a reasonable price, that they should very rightly bask in their hard won glory, and that we would do well to acknowledge that greatness. END COMMUNICATION

I am sure that everyone on this board has managed to lose at least one game. I have lost to the AI by the AI just steam rolling me, at which point I was out of the game, and by having the AI get an influence victory (I was not able to get near any of his things to go to war with him to stop it). Has anyone ever had the AI win a diplomatic or Tech victory? A diplomatic victory is hard to see happening since they need to be allied to you as

In the games that I play, the primary nuisance races are either the Drath or the Altarians. The Torians are usually harmless. When playing a game with all civs active, it appears that the Dregin and Yor tend to get stomped out early by the good races. who in turn re-enforce one another, at least indirectly. The races that appear to do the worst in my games are the Dregin, the Yor, and the Iconians. The Torians are simply average nuisances

I often do much the same thing. If I am concerned that a given race is likely to target me, I try to get him tied up in a few ohter wars. And if I cannot get that race to attack someone, I get someone to attack them. It does not matter which side starts the war. I often like paying off one race (say the Drath) to attack another (lets say Terrans), and the Drath agree because the terrans are weak. I then start giving ships and tech to the

You could consider going for an alternate victory. Since you already have a huge influence area, I suggest going for the influence victory. Just buy other races influnce star bases and influence mines. And try to put at least one farm on each planet. If you have a huge tech base, you could also try for the tech victory, but if you have not done that before, it takes an unholy amont of time. If you are hell bent on slugging it o

I would like to see some real use for the Influence points outside of the UP. Right now, they are useless as a bartering medium. Perhaps you could spend points to set the agenda at the UP meetings? END COMMUNICATION

Allies can be beneficial, but you really want to work on choosing them early on. I recently finished a game on Tough with all races present as the Drath. I had chosen max diplomacy, the diplomatic party with diplomacy benefits, I was basically a diplomatic god. I ended up only having to destroy the Yor, Arceans, Korx, and Iconians. The Dregin were defeated by the Arceans, but I had allied with them. Everyone else was my ally.

Just a stray thought... I assume that everyone has encountered the game event where the United Planets suggests that your allies get the benefit of your starbases. Does this also apply to mining starbases? END COMMUNICATION

I tend to like using medium hulls when I decide to go for my first offensive push. Initial survivability is much better then small and tiny hulls. And they are the first hull I can slap 2 engines on and still have room for weapons and defenses. The AI likes to use small hulls for quite a long time. And defense is applied against every attack, so a swarm of 5 ships with 4 attack each would only get the benefit of 1 attack if I can ge

The military graph is mostly only useful for AI diplomacy purposes. Just slap some guns on some ships and build plenty of them. Being effective militarily is a different story. The most critical military engagements in the game usually take place early on, and your often going to be overmatched in Tech. Dealing with the opponents ships is easy enough to manage though, just build a star base and do everything you can to use the enhancement