Livonya

No I do not use them. I play on gigantic maps and I think they are a complete waste. In fact I never put any defence or attack on any of my starbases. I can see that they might be useful on a smaller map, but on a larger map they are a total waste. I prefer to use ships that can move. I put my ships at the edges of my territory and as my territory expands my ships move to the new borders. - Livonya

Choice is a good thing. I personally want to choose when I want my defence in a fleet and when I do not. The AI should be developed to do the same. A unilateral change where all ships are in fleets reduces strategy and reduces choice. Yes, there are times where an OFM will help, and in those situations the AI should use them. When there is no advantage to a OFM then it would be better that the AI does not use it. It makes no sense that all

I think this is a bad, bad, bad idea. 90% of the time it is better for the AI to NOT have their ships in fleets in orbit. In my opinion the problem for the AI is when they build a fleet manager because that makes it easier to take out their ships in fewer turns. It would acually be easier to defeat the AI if all ships were automatically fleeted. - Livonya

Bingjack - I totally agree with you. I managed to achieve this in DA before the update. Logistics was largely pointless. I just built huge ships with tons and tons of defence. Early on these ships dominated all enemy ships even when my ships had the wrong defence. Towards the end of the game I did have to put some of these ships in fleets and I did end up creating 3 types of ships so that I could have the correct defence to face the correct weapon. <br/

I play Suicidal and I never take economic bonuses . I just don't see the point. Economics swing wildly in my games, it starts hard, and then gets extremely easy. But the amount of revenue that a bonus will really generate in those first 6 months doesn't seem worth the points. In my games I never have enough BC in the first 1 to 2 years, and then after that I have more BC then I know what to do with. I always take either planitary quality bonuses or moral bonuses or

This thread makes me laugh (not the posters, but the issue itself). In my opinion defence was already very, very powerful in DA before the new uopdate. When i saw the changes with the update I was pretty sure people would start saying that defence was over powered, as it was already really good prior to this update. I haven't tried the new update as I am still finishing an older game, but in my opinion defence in DA was already great. And capital ships were the bomb.<

I took some enemy planets in a peace deal in a DA game. Some of the planets have enemy ships in the starports. I can't launch them. I am not sure if this is going to cause a long term problem. I guess I will try to buy them from the enemy AI as it makes me a bit nervous to have enemy ships docked in my starports. - Livonya

I did some test and the Secret Police Center works exactly like the 20% morality building. No difference. You can easily test this. Find a planet that has a low moral. Build a 20% moral building look at new moral for planet, then re-load and instead build the the Secret Police Center. You will see the exact same result. So it is a pointless building just like the Galactic Resort. Secret Police Center (only does 20% moral boost which is far less than 40% from the b

Yes, that is exactly what I mean. All tiles gained through any terraforming tech are lost when a planet is transfered. So if you build a PQ1 planet to PQ15 and it is invaded then it will revert to PQ1 and can never be build back to PQ15. Trading teraforming tech to an enemy nation is really bad because it actually means you will lose tiles in the future. Neutral enemies are the worst because their planets will have no terraforming available when you take their

I can not prove that I didn't turn Surrender off. There is no way to check it in game. However, I do not believe that I turned it off. And when I start a new game it is not turned off. All other settings remain, so I have to assume that surrender is not turned off. In the end it didn't matter. In what seems like the strangest trade ever... In two turns I was able to reduce all remaining nations to 1 planet each. I declared war on everyone. In the next turn I was allowed t

Yeah, I am at war. I have been at war with one nation for over 1 year. They only have 1 planet left, and have been down to one planet for over 7 weeks. They have 0 ships. We are at war, but they won't surrender. I would rather not invade them, but they won't negotiate and they won't surrender. I would be willing to negotiate peace, but they won't negotiate either. It is just weird.

Oopps... I meant in my DA games, not DL games... duh. My mistake. Actually, there are a number of typos, but I can't seem to edit to fix it...

I have not seen a single defeated empire retire. Right now I am about 2/3 done with a gigantic game and enemy empires will not surrender. I have 400+ planets and some of my enemies have less than 5 planets and 0 ships and they will not surrender. They don't surrender to me or to their neigboring nations. I am just wondering if this is unique to my experience? I now realize that I have not seen a single surrender in any of my DL games. - Livonya <

TLheart --- Try re-invading that plantet. When you get it back it will remain a PQ 2 and you will never be able to change it. I have all teraforming tech researched. And when I invade a planet all tiles dissapear that were created via teraforming. But I can't upgrade the planet. It would be one thing if I could re-teraform the lost tiles, but I can't. This is the worst bug I have seen. It pretty much ruins the game on the larger maps as so many of the wor

I didn't start playing Galactic Civilizations II until long after it came out. At first it was hard, and as you say there isn't a lot advice out there. What I finally did to learn the ropes was to create a game. Save it before I did anything. Then I played through the first year. I did this about 7 to 10 times changing my strategy each time. By doing this I figured out what worked, and what didn't work. In my opinion the game will be won or lost i

At no point was I trying to say that in every situation defence is great. What I am saying is that it does have uses. And It can be very, very effective. And in many situations it can and will make you invulnerable. I can tech to the highest defence levels much, much, much faster than I can tech to the highest weapon levels. I can also get a lot of defence on a medium sized ship long before I have researched all the miniturization. So mid game I can easily dominate

Several things. 1) It takes a LOT less BC to reasearch to the highest levels of defence than researching to the highest weapon levels. Defence is expensive on a ship, but the research is pretty cheap. The ships survive so the BC cost of the defence is well worth it. 2) If I had all attack ships then I would constantly be replacing ships. Once my defence ships are in place I don't have to constantly replace them. Thus I can start building much larger

Once you get a lot of defence it starts to pay off. Here is an example. My capital ship. 142 HP 65 Beam damage 36 Mass Driver damage 163 Mass Driver defence vs. enemy fleet of 8 ships 231 HP (fleet total) 178 Mass Driver damage (fleet total) 172 Mass Driver defence (fleet total) I destroy the fleet and take 15 damage. If I didn't have the Beam damage I would have lost (luckily I almost always use 2 kinds of

Yes, Nullspace is correct. Once you get to 50, 75, 100 or more defence your ships are amazing. Defence might seem like a waste early on, but once you get enough defence the ships are unstoppable. I am playing a Gigantic map on Suicidal. Nothing can stop me. The AI just keeps putting more weapons on their ships. And that doesn't work. If the AI wants to beat me it has to put on an equal amount of defence. I am pretty confident that I could defeat the

I did some tests just to make sure it isn't my imagination. The enemy has a planet. It is PQ 7 but it has 11 tiltes. They have built a Temple of Neutrality. If I invade OR if I trade for the planet (I tried both) then when I get the planet 4 of the tiles disappear. I went back to the game start and checked on the planet. It started as a PQ 7 and all the tiles that vanish are upgraded to useable. I then did more tests and it happens a lot, a

I just wanted to say that while I do think the AI in DA needs work. It is WAY better than in DL. Seriously, the way the diplomacy works now is awesome. I started a war. Two other nations join against me. I can't force peace for several turns. I finally force peace. I then attacked the original nation once again. Now they won't go for peace. No one trusts me and no one is interested in peace or dealing with me. I was at war for over 1 year

I saw a lot of posts where people were saying that defence was too weak. I like defence so I was a little bummed by that. I also saw one post where someone correctly calculated, that defence was on a curve... the more you have the more powerful it is. This made sense so I tried it. In my current game I built mostly defence ships. My ships are unstoppable. I don't even fleet them. I have about 20 of these ships, and I am pretty sure I can completly stop maki

I have been noticing that when I invade planets a tile will dissapear and sometimes as many as 7 tiles will disappear. I believe this has to do with the bug where the PQ doesn't update. For instance if I invade a PQ11 planet and it actually has 16 tiles, then 5 of those tiles will disappear. It is really, really annoying. Especially when something really useful is on the planet.

I have to agree. The expansion is great. Here are the things that I love. 1) Being able to use old tech. Oh, god. This is awesome. I love flexibility. 2) Being able to choose where the ships exit the planets. (small but nice) 3) Not being able to trade with enemy AI every turn. There is a timer that seperates each encounter. (The only problem is it often resets when you re-load). 4) So far I really like the super powers. Some of them do add

I agree that the AI will never be human. But it can always be improved. I spent a few more hours spreading my power through the galaxy in my current game. I still love the game, even if I have some complaints. Here are some things I saw. There are some things that are just sad and some that are weird. I found an enemy planet that has two bonus tiles (the 700% research and the 100% research) but the enemy AI built factories on there and is using the planet as