Reaver

Um trade is horrible on larger maps. PERIOD. (unless something has changed in 1.3) I don't even bother with it anymore, it's far too much work for the little bit of money and diplomatic relations. It definately wasn't play tested on larger maps. (who needs 750 to 1500 a turn in trade when you're making 20k+ a turn ?) For all the effort you'd have been better off just buying stock exchanges, and continued building your warships

You didn't mention if you have played on a lower difficulty level and if you haven't then that would be a good place to start, so you can get the hang of the strategies for the game. If you have played at lower levels and moved up to challenging, then thats a different story. The first thing to consider is that you have to keep a close eye on your economy sliders. To the point of micromanaging. Really. A strategy that I employ is to start the game off with heavy research f

Also, make sure your colony ship or constructor have a colony pod or constructor pod. I know once I made a ship without it and was wondering why it didn't make a colony. Yes, I had this happen when I tried to upgrade a 'core' ship. Some of the pod bits on the core ships are just for decoration. Cheers, Reaver

Yep, there is a penalty at 20k in the treasury, but there are ways past it and once you get by it you can build a vast treasury. If you build a strong economy and can generate a large weekly income (don't know the exact number but 1k per week) that ought to get you past it. The 'economy boom' event will certainly blow by that penalty as it will allow your economy to generate upwards of 5k bc per week (I have seen 10k+). A solution to your original problem is simple and you discovered

Considering that each of the smallest squares is a parsec and a parsec is 206265 AU's (3.26 light years) across while our solar system is about 80 AU's in diameter. This means that 2500+ of our solar system can be easily placed in a straight line in a single parsec (2500 squared arrayed in a single plane of a parsec!!!). That means the game's display of a planetary system should not be taken literally, but as an abstract representation. But trying to apply stellar physics to this is unrealist

Is it not reasonable the computer might see your faction in this manner? Yes it is reasonable. If they actually did that!!! When they say you are losing even though you liberating 20 of their worlds, they are not talking about fighting to the last being. I'd buy your arguement if they did. Cheers, Reaver

After a few more game weeks, I got some new numbers: Trade -- 314BC Tourism -- 880BC Taxes -- 21291BC Weekly net income -- 10,032 BC Even if I used your 1500 BC trade numbers, we're only looking at 15% of net, 7% of the Gross. Maybe early in the game Trade provides some value, but by the mid to end game I don't see the need. Maybe if I maxed out my routes I would get close to 1500, but compared to 21k... Cheers, Reaver

That's not entirely accurate. I believe Norway has something like a 75% tax burden and you don't see riots or assasinations and the people are quite content with their government. So in reality, a 70 or 80 percent tax burden can be implemented and the government can still maintain a decent approval rating. Thanks Commodore. I was going t

Here is how I build on my planets: All planets all planets > PQ12 focus on Economy buildings. its easier to house large populations and keep them happy on larger planets. this makes econ buildings more efficient. <br

In my current game @ 59% taxes and 100% approval, I make 280 of my 4919 weekly BCs from trade, less than 6% (I even have econ bases along the trade routes), and I make 813 BC from Tourism, and thats ~16.5%. So the answer is not trade. More important is population and Economic buildings (banks et. al.) You have to build up your population to increase your tax base and build those econ bonus buildings all over them. I make nearly *all* my PQ 12+ into econ specialized planets, get them up above

Just out of curiousity, do you turn on the "more cpu cycles to the AI" option in your games. I am curious if that would make #3 and #6 better. Cheers, Reavers

I have the mini-map problem but I don't have a dual core machine, my CPU is HT but I don't believe that there is a way to restrict the HT Cheers, Reaver

Interesting. I saw this phenomenon in my last game, Treasury would gain a couple hundred bc a week until it would approach 20K then would drop 1k+. One way past this: get the Economic Increase event; When you are raking in 8 or 9k per week, that meager 1k 'penalty' isn't as noticeable. Ended last game with 250K+ in the treasury. Cheers, Reaver

This will make farming and farm bonus tiles completely useless. As it is now, I only research the first 2 farm techs and rarely if ever use ANY bonus tiles. With a reduction in effectiveness of entertainment buildings, it appears that all bonus tiles will have to be ignored and only the first farm tech will be necessary in my future games. Any word on farming improvements to go along with the morale modifications, to make farming viable? Cheers, Reaver

Well, if you don't want them flipping, don't wait so long to conquer them. Cheers, Reaver

1)... No, nothing so sophisticated as that, no neural nets or fuzzy logic. The AI does not remember your strategies across games. Its more of an adaptive AI, the higher the intelligence settings, the better it recognizes what you are doing and reacts to your strategy. The most easily visible AI adaptations occur in the ship weaponry (if you have turned on the "Extra CPU Cycles to AI" option). If they had created a true learning AI in a game able to run on PC hardware, they would

I always go for the sandbox rather than the campaign in games of this sort (HoMM, and Warlords springs to mind, I don't even recall if any of the MoO games had a campaign), I even by-pass scenarios if I can and move straight on to randomly generated sandbox games. To me, campaigns are just (overly) lengthy tutorials. You don't carry over anything, you even have t

I always have trouble understanding alien humor -- but I'm pretty sure he's mocking you. hmmmm. Not likely since at the time I had 3x more planets, 3-5x more in Research, Industry, Population, Military, etc. 10x more Cash. His ships wouldn't have been able to scratch my defenses. Pretty sure he was just trying to save his green @$$.

The AI's occasionally offers a cash bribe to you in hopes that you won't 'liberate' any of their worlds. This Drengin bribe is a little lacking... Drengin Bribe need to put a check in to make sure that the bribes are > 0. Cheers, Reaver

1) Make sure you are running v1.2 or higher. 2) Make sure you have the "allow more CPU cycles to the AI's" activated 3) Having too many AI opponents on smaller galaxies can actually give *you* an advantage because of all the AI infighting. 4) Don't judge the game based on the AI in the campaign, the scenarios there seem to be easier despite the level you play on. 5) In EVERY game of this type, there is a point where you *know* that the game is won and all that is left is the mo

First thing I would do is reduce my Social spending slider to near 0% and my Research slider to as low as I could tolerate. Sounds like you don't need much research right now, you have sufficient weapon/defense techs. Then I would increase taxes until it hurts to funnel cash into the military building programs. I'd design a new "Altarian Killer" ship, smaller in size, nothing but weapons and engines, since they can rip thru your defenses anyway. Then I would find all my planets that are prod

OK, I got the error again, using the new nVidia drivers. I tried the 'hold down the middle button' trick too, which did not have any effect. Alt-Tab'ing clears up the bug, for a short time anyway, before it come back. Will try turning off the AA and see what comes of that. Cheers, Reaver

That's going to be true for most games that you buy several months after release, from a discount source. Bet you could buy Civ 4 somewhere right now for about the same prices as C4:Warlords (don't even know how much that will cost). Cheers, Reaver

Installed the new drivers for my nVidia card and played for several hours last night with no minimap problems. There is a likely still a memory leak in the game as well, after a few hours of play on a Large map (not even Gigantic) graphics start to slow down. Ship movement goes from fluid and smooth to one square at a time, video of the alien races in the diplomacy viewscreen get choppy, all of the UI's are slow to respond, etc. I find it best to restart my computer when it

Even so, the AI needs to build a factory before it builds anything else. I usually get max espionage and look at their planets and they are almost always building the terraforming tiles first. He did, look in the upper left corner. Maybe the AI was concentrating on Research while these were being built, or military for that matter, or d