Empyrean

Use them in conjunction with military starbases. A fleet with three Medium ships would get a total of +9 attack with the first level upgrades, while six Tiny ships would get +18. Throw a point of defense on there and they become a lot more survivable thanks to the defense bonus from your starbase. It's a very cost effective way of defending yourself if you can't afford an advance fleet to intercept the enemy on their own ground.

If you've already got fifteen factories on the planet, getting speed +1 instead of a sixteenth factory makes perfect sense to me. I find that the extra movement point matters a lot more than one would initially think.

Personally, I think it's bad for gameplay that homewolrd and other planets in homeworld solar system have random bonuses. Agreed. I can't imagine ever losing a game where I start with a 700% manufacturing bonus tile. The initial advantage is just enormous, which translates into an extremely strong position in the mid game. There is just never an

You don't need to acually change anything at all if you don't want to I don't and beat the AI's to all the good planets and outclass them in reseach every game. Starting with a 700% bonus tile, you'd have to be an idiot not to beat the AI. I'm telling him how to maximize his production and produce more research at the same time, producing an even c

Empyrean, it was not me that stated that. I agree with your advice. -Wade Sorry if there was some confusion, the initial sentence wasn't directed at you. I addressed you when I switched to talking to you. Perhaps I could have been more clear on that point. <TABLE cellpadding=8 width="95%" align=center bgColor=#FFF394 class="m

I think that one thing is that it just doesn't have much atmosphere. That's because it's in space. ... what?

Use the money that you save on research to build troop transports and lower taxes to increase morale/population growth. This strategy is effective and quite cheesy. You trade a small amount of citizens and less than 150 BC for the transport in exchange for a relatively reliable shot at a high level tech. Even if you only get a mid level tech, that's still an awesome deal, especially if you get a weapon tech.

okay, well i've gotten into tweaking the game myself from time to time, as you can see above. would you happen to know how i might be able to change the way combat rolls are calculated myself? I'd suspect that it's hard coded. Sorry. <TD class="

I'm sorry empyrean, but you're just wrong. The fleet calculators don't work on the coming model, so they won't allow shots to be fired by the defending fleet. You have no idea what you're talking about. Even with the defensive fleet attacking first, they still lose consistently. Defensive fleets can't take as much advantage of a first strike, and

researching high-end defenses is much easier than researching high-end offenses. Even so, the additional cost of building and maintaining defense modules makes their use a bad idea, even when you have a technological advantage. Using higher tech weapons is almost always a good idea, because cost increase is smaller than the performance increase, ex

It rolls the sum total, so instead of a curve you have an equal probability of all possible results.

Defenses are a lot better if you've already got a huge advantage because it makes the damage you take a lot smaller when victory is already assured. A fleet of defensive ships facing a fleet of offensive ships will get wasted on a consistent basis, unless the defensive fleet is composed of very large ships and the attacker is just a swarm of fighters without military starbase support. Anyone who thinks that defense beats offense needs to spend some time with the fleet combat simulator. Even w

Perhaps the website is fine, but the forum software is the distilled frustration of eternal torment poured directly onto one's soul.

Note to wade: do not build a factory on it in the beginning of the game unless you want to see your economy ruined by the excess bc allocated to spending in the beginning. Complete noob advice, to be certain. Manufacturing all of your initial colony ships (at around 100 BC each) instead of purchasing them directly (for 900+ BC

Since you apparently haven't noticed, all of your planets get an influence bonus based on the total influence produced by your entire empire. An influence planet in the middle of your empire makes all of your planets have more influence, so influence matters even on planets that are not at your borders.

There are, in a sense. A good tax planet has a couple of farms as well as the economy buildings. A farming bonus saves tiles that you can place economy buildings on. Same deal with approval bonus tiles.

A mobile factory ship for making small or tiny ships would be an interesting and fun mechanic, but possibly rather difficult to implement. I wouldn't allow making medium ships from a mobile factory, as those are capital ships. As long as production is slow enough that you still need to plan your campaigns in advance, I could see this being a very fun addition.

I always found it more useful to use a cargo hull loaded with engines and a couple sensors for scouting. It may cost twice as much, but it's twice as fast and has a far better sensor range on top of that. Way better for finding resources and scouting more planets more quickly.

Due to the unexpected popularity of the ship designer, I was wondering if anyone at SD had considered making it possible to run the ship builder without actually running GalCiv. It would be great to be able to play around with all the ship styles, hulls, and upgrades. This is also the sort of thing that could be distributed online as a marketing tool to get people to buy the game and really play with all the cool ships they've made. Perhaps it could come with a collection of great looking shi

In my games, the Arceans are almost always in the top three, as are the Altarians. The Torians usually do well also. The Yor usually get hosed, and the Drengin usually do well until the Happy Super Justice Friends (the good races, and most of the neutral ones) join forces and stomp them into the dirt.

Calaban, that has nothing to do with the artificial slave center improvement. It boosts military production by a whole lot. Build one on a manufacturing planet and notice the difference.

Have u ever considered a job with the USA government they would like how your mind works Heh. As if every other government isn't solely dedicated to shamelessly advancing their own interests at the expense of anyone else whenever they can get away with it. Maybe you haven't considered this before, but there's nothing special or different about th

Nope. Nerf them if you wish, but they aren't hard to overcome if you play to your own advantages. A player can overcome the disadvantage, but can the computer? Will it organize a deep strike into your territory to take out your resources? Does it know that you must have influence resources someplace, then go looking for them if its borders

Ok We all know the game cheats, as a way to counter the effects of our ability to strategically think, but this is rediculous. No, the AI does not cheat until you turn it up above the "tough" setting. It really is just better than you. Here are a few pointers to get you started. Make sure your spending is at 100%. Each tax rate that is

i ask you this. if you can answer me then ill agree that the light speed question is simple. if you travel at C, and look behind you what do you see? Nothing. Duh. If something were moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light along with you, you'd see it dimly with a reddish tint due to the wavelengths being effectively lengthened relati