Metaphase

On a more empire-related note, is there a way to converse with the other two members? A specific thread or something? I've wondered this also and it seems that short of sharing e-mail addresses or other contact information it would have to be a thread. I thought about starting one, but most of the people who have joined seemed to have stopped pl

I'm not quite sure about where popularity comes from either, but I know where he's seeing it. There is a stat when looking at the stats and graphs comparisons between civs and one of the categories is popularity, although there is also one for morale and one for influence. I can't say how it is caculated exactly, but it seems to usually be between influence and morale, so I'm guessing that it is a mixture of those 2, though I can't say how much weight each holds.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Torians getting ground into green paste, but I don't think that's what's going to happen. The Torian, Drath and Iconians already have their past difficulties that they have suffered through and have conquered or at least are now freed of. If say the Iconians were simply wiped out after being rescued, it wouldn't make for much of a story. If the Torians after freeing themselves from the Drengin aren't able to forge a future for themselves but instead just get stomped

I redesign my ships every game, though I do keep a few basic, stripped down models where I put a lot of time into the extras on the hull and want to save it for later. Each time I just pick a theme like birds of prey (Hawk, Falcon, etc) which are all fighters generally (good amount of engines) and I keep one type of defense craft that usually carries a different name. That time I think I was playing diplomatic so I built 'peacock's to orbit my spin control planet. A fitting name I thought.<br

If you don't object to playing beta versions, Stardock has added a ton of performance enhancements in the betas for version 1.2.

Yeah, the Arceans are jerks. I think they're stuck up from being such an ancient (and phyically large) race. I wouldn't rather pick up a Drengin hitch-hiker though personally because I'd always be worried it would try to kill me, eat me, or kill and eat me. Also, *ouch* for the French. All races have poor social skills. I have to

Are you saying it's best NOT to build farms? Just keep all colonies at 5 billion mark? (Except the homeworld) No, I was simply refering to the early game period at the end of the colonization phase. A few planets might be up to the 5 billion mark depending on galaxy settings, but in general you are going to have a much larger population on your hom

Home worlds have various bonuses including a big one to food . The minimal food produced is 10 megatons instead of the usual 5 for an average colony, it's basically like it already has a farm on it. Taxes and population are the major forces that cause low approval, so a tax level that is fine with your basic 5 billion tax payers colonies will generally hurt your approval on your more populated ones like your homeworld. During the early phases of the game (after or late in the

Sounds interesting Lunchbox, although I don't think I'd want them to be quite so pushy. I suppose if the consequences of failing to meet an objective weren't too severe I wouldn't mind so that I could brush them off when I wanted to. If you fail several objectives in a row though, maybe penalties could be cumulative and eventually mess up your game if you ignore them for long enough. Interesting idea and although it probably wouldn't be exceedingly hard to add, I don't see such a robust syste

My guess would be that there was some influence on the way they chose to ask those questions, even if at a near sub-concious level. My guess is that they are just further along with the jewlry pack idea, and yes, probably more likely to do one while the other poll was just testing the multiplayer market's waters. This game was not designed, or intended to be multiplayer. That's not to say it couldn't be added, but it was probably a major decision already passed / agreed upon by the execs, etc

I've been finding a lot of planets with lots of morale buildings in my current game also, my first 1.11 game. I'm finding it with the Arceans though which have apparently taken an influence approach this game, they got the restaurant of eternity and the highest influence and have been culture flipping Drengin planets. They aren't neglecting military too much since they are rated 2nd in that, but I've rarely found more than a couple factories on their planets, though I'm not yet up to their cor

I've seen several good race AIs actually build ships that have far more more defense than offense. I've run up against mass-produced ships with stats like 3/8 and 4/16 before, sometimes even suited to my current weapons which is a pain. Just adding defense though just isn't enough to save them though because if they are less advanced overall, their weapons just don't do enough so even if the ship survives 2-3 rounds, it loses anyway. If you are about equal or lower in tech and logistics, usin

That sucks. I haven't actually had this happen yet, but I'll be on the look out for it now. I really think they need to do something about the "We know what you are doing" factor because most of the time it's just plain wrong. They are also quite sensitive about it, yet have no trouble leaving their own fleets and transports strewn all through your territory if the target they were headed for makes peace with them or is defeated. In my current game, some minor race (who's planet I

I got stuck with the unmodded Earth and Mars on a Tiny map with averge planets / systems once with 2 crippling AIs. I just pulled diplomatic cheese (agressive tech trading) and went the diplomacy route and got political victory. Conquest victory would be something to see, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard from where I was, once they are your friends, just wait until you get the top level techs or something, build up a ton of troop transports and use the first-strike advantage to decimate y

If they're gonna do that, at least do it professionally and cap the tax slider at 80%. First off, I also wish they wouldn't use these hard caps and even morale drops at the 10s percentages, though I suppose there is a some logic to that since people are often fooled to an extent by number manipulation like that. I don't see why they can't just use a

What you say? So was he declaring war on you? It's not quite clear to me... Move out every zig for great justice!

How could you get 1000% miniaturization, there's only so many techs right? You can always capture 9 hyperion shrinkers after making your own. If you were really crazy or just wanted to see how far you could get, you could keep an enemy alive and only take planets that they build one on. Capture the planet and wait for them to buil

But hey, if you have actually a horde of fellows, I think you perhaps meet a bit trouble to do that. It's really hard to call up everyone to obey an order. Unless you are commanding a group of aliens that follow you without a doubt, I don't think it is a easy task to go just like in a game. Naaah, If I have the extreme logistical magnificence to be a

This is much less surprise while I see a colony ship or transporter can hold up to 0.5b ==> 500,000,000 population. I also think it's quite implausable that I could build and design a transport to carry 3-5 billion people easily and leave it out in space for months or perhaps even years in peace time, I just figure they are in some sort of stasis or

-I "bait and lure" dangerous enemy fleets using fast (or disposable) ships... Sorry, but I consider that to be quite exploitive. It's just a situation where the AI is foolish enough to fall for something that no self-respecting human player would. Taking one of their few, big, offensive fleets that was on a mission to attack a resource starbase o

/hurray to the death of auto-focus! And the people rejoiced. yay. No, for real. w00t! You just saved a bunch of money on your car insurance by switching to Geico? I use Esurance. "Quote, buy, print" like the low budget cartoon gi

Personal opinion would be no to this. I can see an argument for having the option by visualizing the galaxy differently, but I would still say no to a 4-way wrap since in a real galaxy there would be stars that would be on the outskirts / edges that would essentially be like a 'corner' of the map we have. A 2-way wrap maybe, but that just seems wierd to me in such an environment, it would feel like playing a civ game on a planet. As an option, it wouldn't hurt though, and if they di

I dislike shuffling my people around also, but I can understand why they capped the population growth of planets per week. If you take over a planet from an enemy and all your current planets are full, it's unrealistic to expect 5-20+ billion people to just suddenly flood it to max in a week or two. If you conquered the planet you can always think of it as a slow process in which you integrate POWs into your society and that the planet is already nearly full. Maybe it is as fast as

In my first 1.11 game there were trade routes that should have been stopped, but were still on the map. Case 1, I had just started a war with the Arceans which I agreed to because they declared war on an ally. That turn all my current trade routes with the Arceans ended as they should however, on that same turn or the turn after it I culture flipped a planet that had a trade route with them, the route did not end when it came under my control. It was an Arcean originated route, and

1.11 is definately better as far as planetary planning goes. I'm so far behind in tech and military on my current non-tech trading masochistic game I think I just may lose. I am Yor and have no friends save a warm relationship with the Drengin whom I paid not to attack me. Surrounded by all the good races I seeded the galaxy with, I'm starting to wonder what I was smoking when I set the game up.