SlimScarpa

They could be putting multiple support modules on their ships you know.

I think the approval of the planet has a big part in it. I've had planets that wouldn't flip for many turns at high approval percentages flip within a few turns of that approval dropping.

Eyes of the Universe + Lots of Trade Routes = Spy Network

are you also designing your own ships? don't just wait for the core ships to become available.

A shield icon will appear to the lower right side of a planet if a ship is in orbit. I know this doesn't tell you if it's defended but it helps.

I cant even tell where MY ships are going most of the time. Is this a beta feature?

Excellent report! Crank up the difficulty now, the game is MUCH more interesting when all the AIs are smarter.

I would try to get the Drengin involved in a war with the Terrans. Also, don't upgrade your freighters, tech up to Sensors IV and build Eyes of the Universe instead. It's a GREAT way to turn your traderoutes into a recon network. I have personally found fast high power ships to be better than slow and balanced attack/defensive ships. Just stay a step ahead on logistics so you're always outnumbering the enemy.

I think resources should exist on Class 0 planets instead of just floating in space. Make it so you have to survey each Class 0 to determine if a resource is there. Once the resource is "discovered" a constructor could build an orbital factory which would give away the existence of the resource to other races.

Once you get down to the last couple civs you're usually so powerful an influence victory is almost a given. Keep yourself in wars if you want to avoid the influence victory.

Your sphere of influence, as far as I can tell, is calculated as each sector where you have the majority of the influence. There is some calculation for each sector on the map that determines how much influence a given civilization "exerts" over that sector. In order to have a planet flip to your side it must have a ratio of 4:1 influence, meaning you must influence that sector 4 times as much as the planet in that sector does. Therefore, yo

It's not really a bonus, it's that techs have a set cost, and if you produce more than that cost in a single week the balance is automatically applied to the next tech. Otherwise you would be getting screwed over in the scenario detailed above where they wait until the last minute to research weapons techs. You'd essentially be throwing away research points every week if they didn't carry over.

The invasion has to be successful for the damage from mass drivers to take effect.

There are structures you can build which boost ships in orbit. Orbital Fleet Manager lets them fight as a fleet and Omega Defense System doubles their hitpoints. I think there are other structures also but those are the only two I've used.

Once I get a good idea of how my ships stack up against their opponents I stop watching the battles entirely and skip to the report. Then again I don't play this game as a "war" game, I avoid war as much as possible.

Just curious, has anyone ever actually had an ally who you had good relations with surrender to you when another race was about to beat them, because as far as i've seen this never happens. Yes, this just happened to me. The Torians were being slowly conquered by the Drengin, I was on their oth

I haven't seen pirates yet, but I have seen a minor race spontaneously appear. It was sort of like a pirate encounter since it was an extremely militant race and, judging from the description at least, was spontaneously formed solely to destroy the Drengin. I was Terran, but I killed them anyway. They really weren't all that powerful either. Oh and I always vote to have the prison on my planet.

I never have built any defensive structures on my own, but in my current game the Torians surrendered to me after the Drengin pounded on them for awhile and every single planet I got from them had Orbital Fleet Managers. This has prompted me to plan a war of attrition with the Drengin. I've been stacking up heavy fighters on those planets and as soon as I wipe out the Korx I'm going to spark a war and just sit back and watch the Drengin fling their fle

Attacker gets a 5 point advantage for air superiority.

Specialized planets lets you spend more money and thus get maximum output, IF you are focusing spending on that planet's specialization. Diversifying your planets lets you maintain some level of production no matter what you have focused spending on, except for the case of putting one category to 100%, which I never do. But if you do decide to focus spending completely you have a lower maximum capacity than if a planet had specialized on som

I like the idea of being able to do colony management on someone elses turn, but having it take effect on your turn. That, combined with a reasonable turn-timer and the removal of jewelry for the ship designer would probably work out well. --- Another completely different method would be modeled after my all time favorite game, TradeWars 2002. (Which I'm going to keep mentioning until someone else notices.. <img src="http://images

Neither of those are in the Wiki either. Sensors III gives you the ability to build the galactic achievment "Galactic Guide Book", but it's not a trade good and it sort of worthless on most map sizes since it usually comes after all the anomalies are gone. The closest thing I could find to Galactic Monument is the Galactic Showcase which requires Expert Diplomacy to build and gives a 25% Diplomacy boost.

I love this game too but it is causing some serious domestic problems. I can't help it if I'd rather play this game than listen to my wife complain about carrying my child. *for the humor impaired the previous two lines were written "tongue in

I keep opening the game up and not doing anything, I just pore over the map and all the planets and stuff. I've never played a game that was so much fun to NOT play! I was off on my economics by the way, I'm pulling 450bc at 50% tax rate, but currently the tax rate is about 25% and I have 100% approval and 100bc coming in. My plan is to all

My best game to date was when I got tired of restarting the game to get a favorable starting position and played from a corner. I cherry picked the nearest worlds, going for class 15 or higher and won an influence victory on a medium map with only 5 planets in the entire universe. Life gives you lemons, make lemonade!