Morberis

I like playing with tight clusters, rare stars, abundant everything else, and slow tech.

My military can almost always hands down beat the AI's, but I'm also usually sitting at a 40 for my military rating but at a 200 or more for my tech rating.

I usually get morale, econ, lots in research, luck, and maybe speed.

I've noticed this, but very rarely. Sometimes when I'm trying to add an engine to the ship and there are 8 slots open and the engine requires 8 slots it won't let me. And selecting another part then reselecting the engine doesn't help.

I always get xeno research weapons centers first, that way I can research things faster so I may end up being 3 turns behind the AI in the very beginning but I catch up fairly soon. I also reasearch other techs as they become either necessary or a better investment than another notch up the tech latter. I also usually research Universal Translators fairly early so I can start making allies and trading techs.

It seems to me that it would be nice to be able to set the AI's relations to other AI's before a match starts. That way you could seperate teams without having to resort to creating a scenario. Just the normal settings that we get to choose when we choose our relations would probably be fine.

Yeah it seems the AI usually goes up one tree, or if there are two factions forming they may go up two trees. Personally though I usually try to go for the weapon that they have the least defense against, which is usually the weapon no one else has.

Do they lose access to them after a set amount of time? I've noticed that after I trade one away (usually the hull plating to an ally in a war) I lose the ability to trade it to another player yet after a few turns I get that ability back.

Number 5 is fixed by just playing through, it disappears as the population plummets over a few turns. The few times I've had it or the comp has it didn't seem to have any lasting effect (by that I mean planets rebelling etc) other than skyrocketed taxes for a few turns.

Yeah I never upgrade unless I only plan on ever having one or two or I can trade enough tech to make up for it, its just way to expensive. Does the current system make you buy the new stuff outright, or does it make you pay the difference between the current ship worth and the upgraded ship worth? If its the first maybe they can try the second but if its the second one they need to reduce the ship upgrade costs. As for just replacing the ships, I dislike doing that because then I need

I totally agree, though for different reasons. I often find that once I put a part on one side of a ship the same part on another is at a slightly different angle or just slightly off. This get annoying because often when I want something to meet in the middle its impossible to make them match up.

You don't need to do anything but add the parts that do stuff onto the hull. 95% of what you see on the ships is just parts that are there for looks.

How about the ability to choose your race with at least some of the scenarios. I find it disappointing that everytime I want to play anything but normal I need to be Terrans.

From what I've noticed is when you upgrade an existing ship design sometimes all your planets, or at least the ones not building anything, will set that as their new ship to build and they build enough to completely replace your existing ships no more no less.

I'm not sure about the campaign, but if you research the planetary improvement techs like soil enhancement, habitat improvement and terraforming then you should be able to increase the class of a planet.

How about a way to barter with the other races to swing their votes, ala Alpha Centauri

It also seems that a majority of the races are good, so if you want the evil races to have as much a chance to succeed only create a match with a balanced amount.

One problem is that your killing of taxpayers thus decreasing the amount of money you get per turn and your taking on a planet that has a highish maintanence cost. So if you take it a bit slower and let that planets you conquer recover in the middle of the war then you should be fine. On the other hand you could just blitz all their stuff and start out with a huge deficit but come out in a better position faster.

If you just exit the game your in and not exit GalCiv2 it stays.

Yeah it very well could be stuck at the boarder. I'm not sure how stardock handles it but with Ebay its your job to find out whether it is or not and then go deal with it paying any fee's. Hopefully Stardock doesn't leave you out in the cold like that though

Are you talking core ships or just the large sized hulls? If its the hulls in the ship designed then its got to be a bug, if its the core ships you may need other techs (but just design your own)

First thing I do is set the tax rate as high as possible without dropping approval into the negatives. Second thing I do is I adjust the productivity so that I'm not losing more than 50bc a turn. I change military production to nothing and give research the majority of my funding. Then I purchase one factory, possibly set up another factory or a xeno research lab depending on what my plan for that game is. Either way my first 3 buildings wil

Yeah I've noticed that the Yor are usually on par with other races, or get wiped early. Though if they do last longer they end up quite powerful. Though the same can be said of almost all of the militant races.

It could pick it out of the most powerful, or randomly from the most powerful faction's world with a preferance for worls above rank 6.