Jacob Marley

The only problem is that the AI doesn't build farms.

Why is it that my 5 game winner medal shows on my posts, but not in the metaverse screen in-game?

I definately second the threats idea. Currently you can ask for money, but the AI treats it as a request rather than as a demand, which is often what I want. The way I'd do it is to have a check box to make a demand. Then, if the other civ rejects the demand, you auromatically go to war (or have a vote to declare war).

I've found that I can get good looking ships with only about 6-10 pieces of jewelry and about 10 minutes design time. Once I get one I'm happy with, I save it without any components so it will show up when I get the needed hull tech and I can add whatever functional componants I want.

I have also had a 0-0 draw, which is a loss in the sense of not getting the planet, but it did cause damage to the planet.

I like rushing to Medium hulls. I almost always get them well before the AI does, and they do a great job of mopping up tiny and small ships. Later when the AI does get medium hulls, I move to large (though I don't necessarily abandon the mediums).

There is a lot of variability in the current system. In my last game I had a battle of 3 of my frigates with 3 Anorian battle armor against 7 Yor Frigates with heafty mass driver attack. The first 2 of my ships fell taking one each with them. The remaining ship then defeated the remaining 5 Yor ships and escaped with half it's hit points remaining! It earned the name "Invincible" for that feat. Sadly, the ship later fell to a 5 on 1 attack.

You can dl this over 56k. Might take you 2 nights, but your using 56k so you should get punished. Get off your judgmental high horse already. It happens that I desperately want DSL, but my neighborhood does not have the upgraded phone lines it requires, so I'm stuck. And no, I should NOT be punished for my phone companies lack of se

I appreciate the points made by the OP, however, I disagree with his criticism of the tech tree. In fact I find it much more fun and dynamic that the Civ style tree. The basic problem with the Civ tree (I haven't played civ 4, so these comments pertain to civ 3 and earlier) is that you basically start and end at the seme points, and the only choices are what order to research in. For instance, you want armor, so there are a bunch of prerequisete techs you have to research, which give industri

This is a reflection of reality. The fact that human history is filled with war, exploitation, slavery, greed, etc. is prove that the "evil" choice is almost always the most beneficial to the one choosing.

To the OP: I think that you have the wrong starting priority. No matter how you look at it, economy rules this game. A strong economy will let you race ahead in research, or spam influence starbases for a cultural conquest, or buy allies for a political victory, or support vast armadas to gring your enemys under your heel... you get the picture. So, my advice is to build economy first. There are plenty of threads on how to do that, so I won't repeat them here. When your econ is solid, eve

My usual approach is to dial down spending and try to keep morale around 75%. I keep a close eye on the economy screen and slowly edge spending back up as my population increases.

It is the far right button on the bottom of the main display, or you can reach it from the planet screen, there there is a button labeled Starport.

I have a suggestion for research. When you aquire a tech (through trading, invasion or stealing) that is out of sequence with what you already have (ie stealing laser 5 when you only have laser 1) I would like all intervening techs to be grayed out and not show up as available. The excection, of course, would be techs that have other branches. For instance, if you only have Space Militarization and you get Beam weapon theory, Space Weapons does not disappear because it also branches into miss

Naming...I like the way it's done currently, with ship class + serial number. Any of my mediums and above that gain a lot of experience deserve special recognition; for those elite warriors, I'll give them a name of their own. The problem I have with the current system is that when I create a new ship design I name it "Slayer Mk 1" or somethin