Race

So, what I am hearing is that when I turn up the difficulty my Allies become smarter. Do the Dread Lords not become any harder? They don't adapt to the new level of difficulty? Maybe I'm backwards here, but it seems that on an easier level, my Allies should be BETTER in order to help me more. Then, in higher difficulties, the task would rest more and more heavily on the player's shoulders - not vice versa. Also, I think that the skirmish (which I like and have "mastered")

Unless you are a master of the rush assault (which I am not) and have the missions (in which the DL are present) locked up in 10 turns or so, you're going to struggle - and most likely fail - to overcome them. The sad part about it is, you will spend many, many, many, many turns fighting off invasions and carefully balancing your budget only to look up and find that the DL's now have literally dozens of FLEETS patrolling the galaxy, stopping by any planets that have produced a ship to destroy it

This must be a non-campaign issue, becuase the Dread Lords are wiping the floor with me (and all the other races) in the campaign - and I've yet to push the difficulty above Normal. I do think that map size may have a role to play in how soon you encounter resistence and to what degree. The more limited the resources, the more urgent the need to get/fight for them. That's my experience, at least on Normal mode.

Has anyone else noticed that when trying to Upgrade a ship in the shipyard, you just get the hull and have to start over placing all the extras? I find that rather annoying. Instead of making visually appealing ships, I'm just throwing everything on the basic hulls and letting them go - as it takes too long otherwise.

I one of the early Campaign missions (or was it a stand-alone?), the Drengin and I were warring. I had expanded pretty quickly, not building up adequate defenses for each planet I took. Their military prowess showed through and they pushed me back to two planets. I was barely hanging in there, managing to get a defensive ship built every turn or two and repel any invasion attempts. All the while I was researching my butt off. When I finally got to a certain level of military tec

I just started the Seige mission and have been trounced twice by the DL. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one! I was wondering, has anyone tried exploring/colonizing around the star in the far corner of the map? I'd assumed that's where the DL's were coming from - but I'm begining to think it may be a good place to hide/rebuild forces.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but enroute to a Cultural Victory, I recall one of the "techs" allowing me to build a structure that enable or enhanced destabilization. I never built them, because my strategy was built on diplomacy and sheer influence (along with a healthy economy), so I'm not sure exactly what they did.

I'm in the process of conquering a medium sized galaxy (had 5 races, now down to 2) and pushed the Korx (is that their name - the mercenary/merchants?) onto their last planet - a PQ 14 or 16, i think. Anyway, I load up 5 or 6 transports and head over to invade (which I do one ship at a time using traditional warfare) and got a real shock when I found out they had over 170,000 troops waiting for me! Apparently, they gave up trying to maintai

What good is a Factory without a Starport? Other than building, well, buildings . . . which you can't fit too many of on a small planet.

Well, I'm interested to know how other players utilize these seemingly "useless" planets, and to what effect. Myself, I've been buying (takes too long to build) three Reasearch Labs for them and kind of ignoring them the rest of the game. I've heard talk of putting one farm, one entertainment center, and one market to generate revenue - but I haven't tried this out yet.

Good stuff, you guys, thanks. I came away with one bit of knowledge and one question: > I didn't realize you could pay another race to go to war. > Does Gal Civ II have the equivalent of a "Zergling rush" I should be aware of (if I were to bide my time using Inocare's "arsenal of democracy" strategy)?* *For those of you unfamiliar with the tactic - named for a race in Starcraft - it is comprised of using a horde of sma

I've only recently gotten into the game (lovin' it, btw) and played the Humans. I've won a crushing Cultural victory without a single military/defensive ship or structure being built (my military rating was 0, while the Drengin were over 200). My diplomacy helped me stay on good terms with all the other races while they waged war with each other. Towards the end, I was able to buy up most of the advanced military tech available (again,