Naota Reign

As objectively as I can be: each race is very unique now. I used to play custom only since I didn't care for any of the races, but now I haven't even made a custom race yet due to the unique flavor of each race. They all have their ups and downs, which is really great for replayability. On the down side, it's way too easy to just trade away all your disabilities and become super powerful due to the situation. Ie. I play the torians, for example, and I can trade for all sorts of research

Try not building so much on each planet. Try keeping your population at 100% morale initially to build more population (even with lots of economy buildings, a small pop isn't going to make you much money). Trade for population bonus techs. The problem with building a big infrastructure early is it's expensive. Your colonies tend to start out losing money, so by building things on them right when you get them, you're costing yourself even more. Let them grow a bit before you fill up ever

The most effective thing I think you can do right now is just have everyone go to war with each other; the sooner, the better. At a minimum, make sure every AI is at war with at least one other AI and you'll find they're too busy to spend money on spies (for you at least). It might cost you a bit initially, but when everyone in the galaxy hates everyone else but you, life is good :D

Hey man, don't worry too much about it. You'll eventually meet the kind of people who play these games. Right now anyway, you're talking to a bunch of them :D Play what you enjoy and don't worry too much about what other people do, eventually the kind of people you want to hang out with will appear. Just make sure you're outside sometimes so this will occur :p

You're going to take big morale hits with a 20+ billion population, no matter how many morale buildings you've got. Something else to consider is that morale buildings don't give a static bonus - they're actually worth less the higher your population is. If you do a search for morale you can find the exact numbers, I don't know them off the top of my head.

With the specific racial techs that appear now in TA, this makes even more sense to implement, assuming it wouldn't be a programming nightmare as Willy pointed out.

[quote]research bonus has no effect when you use the all-factory strat. just maximize a research resource in 1 turn to test it--you'll see no improvement.[/quote] This is not true (assuming we're still playing DA). The improvement might be small since it's working at 25% of its normal effect, but having a high research bonus can greatly enhance your research even using the all-factory approach. It's most noticeable when you amass a 100%-200% research bonus. At 200%, your resear

[quote]I think my problem is lack of military. Usually, I avoid having any military units until someone declares war on me.[/quote] That seems to be pretty common. It was definitely an issue for me early on. The easiest solution seems to be slapping a couple weapons on a cargo hull (preferably stinger missiles early in the game) and let them hang out on your planets. You get a pretty good early-game military bonus and they are relatively cheap to build.

[quote]I never stop building military vessels. The only time i will slow down is when i am in the red.[/quote] While having a big military is certainly useful, part of the reason you're running into the red might be that same big military. Every war ship you've got costs a weekly maintenance, and having a lot of them means you're wasting a lot of money if you're not going to war anytime soon. Not to mention that building ships costs a lot of money and may be a heavy drain on your econom

Basically, some techs are going to be "no-trade" as far as the AI is concerned. That same laser V later on in the game might sell for peanuts when everyone's higher in the tech-tree, but when its the best (or near the best) they have they tend to not want to part with it. You'll see this too with the extreme colonization tree. I've found the only way you'll get those from other civs is to take it by force in invasions.

[quote]I also think we should keep getting ethical dilemmas after choosing alignment with Xeno Ethics, but either force the player to choose the option of his alignment (so that good keep getting disadvantages, and evil advantages), or allow players to choose, but penalise choices not congruent with their alignment.[/quote] That's a terrible idea with the current system. Players who choose good should be penalized whenever they colonize a new planet? Good is weak enough as it is, we sho

Brad, I'd just like to say: I'm always impressed with your dedication to your work and the awards this game is winning is a good indicator of that as well. Congratulations on a wonderful game and I wish you all at Stardock a very Merry Christmas :)

Okay, so there's your motivational speech. There are plenty of threads dedicated to strategy, which I suggest you read since you haven't said anything really specific as to what's going wrong in your games. That said, here are some tips: - Don't overcolonize. Just because the computer has 20 planets and you only have 9, that's okay. Work with what you've got. The AI will probably go broke for a while trying to build anything worthwhile on those worlds. - Only build shi

Building a civilization is not an easy task. You should not expect it to be handed to you on a silver platter - you have to work for it. Think about it; you are an intergalactic leader of an entire race of beings spreading to multiple [I]worlds[/I]. You complain that expanding is frustrating because managing the economy is difficult? Be happy that all you have to do is play with a couple sliders and decide whether or not to slap down a building here or build a ship there. I'm not sayin

Humans are weak. W- the Thalans only tolerate them because they give us gifts, as well as serving as a constant reminder of how awesome we really are. Skin and bones? We mean, come on; exoskeletons and hivemind are where it's at. [size="1"](This completely unbiased and factual post was brought to you by Thalan Promotions, inc.)[/size]

Because we... I mean [I]the[/I] Thalans are [I]obviously[/I] much cooler and more organized than silly humans.

[quote]They can colonize any planet at 25% capacity, and start with Extreme Colonization[/quote] Even if it's just being able to colonize any planet at 25%, I think that would be a great ability. Since they don't get any other special powers that seems about right. They are supposed to be [I]super[/I] adapters, right?

Basically, you're going to want to keep your population at or under 13 billion civ-wide if you want to have high morale in the end-game (or hell, mid game if you're super breeders). This will be the case for DA and anything afterwards (that we're aware of at this point). You can cheese your planets full of population in DL though, but in DA having it much higher than 13 billion gives you serious morale penalties. Anyway, you can make boku cash just by keeping your planets happy

Did the rush-built ship get built on the same turn it was attacked on? If so, what happened was the AI attacked the planet and took it over, and then the ship was built... for them, since it was their planet by that point.

For an all-factory strategy, I'm of the pursuasion that No Tech Trading is helpful, and it also reduces one of the more time consuming features of the game. Therefore, it is more fun for me. I "tech trade" by conquering nearby civs The economy is NOT a problem even if you cannot trade techs. It just means you need to be more efficient with the money you have. Money anomalies are nice, but you must play as if you'll never find

Not that I don't think more could be done with invasions... but... When I'm taking over 100 planets, I don't want to sit there choosing new invasion tactics for 25 worlds every week because it takes a few weeks to invade each planet. If they just make it last longer but require no new user input, that'd be one thing, but I'm totally against changing the basic mechanism as it is currently. I've got enough planets of my own to deal with on a weekly basis, not including new tactic

That far into the game it could possibly be considered merely a tourist attraction There's usually a good chance that there's a manufacturing/research capital there that is useful, but it certainly won't cripple them in such a large galaxy if you took it.

[quote]let me guess you are all playing on medium maps or smaller [/quote] Wrong.

[quote] see what you're saying, but I don't think it makes the best sense. Most countries that are afraid of other more powerful countries try to strike up Economic related deals/etc... not go to war only to be slaughtered for fear of waiting until 'it's too late'.[/quote] Most countries don't have to worry about being completely obliterated by any opposing nations. Would you just sit and "strike up Economic related deals/etc" when another race of creatures is [B]exterminating[/B] o

[quote]I still think FEAR should have a LOT to do with how AIs view another race when it comes to potentially going to war.... seems simple enough to me.[/quote] Neural, look at it this way. Fear [B]does[/B] have a lot to do with it. Assuming the race hasn't been bribed into war, if your war machine is getting so impossibly strong that no one will be able to defeat it, the AI will start declaring war on you out of desperation. They're afraid that if you're not taken down now that you'll