Rigit

How do you break an alliance? Sometimes you've got one civ making life difficult. But that civ is aligned with 2 others so if you attach them then the other 2 will attach you. Going up against 3 civs at once is not a good idea. Maintenance of war ships is high enough for one war much less 3. Then there is the price of producing them in the first place. So if I align with the same 2 civs as the other guy then when I start a war with them our alignments cancel each other out, usually. After it's o

OK how do you do espionage on minor races? It's easy with main races you just slide the bar up but in the minor races screen you don't have that.

I use mini-soldiers pretty much every time I have to fight. They give a good advantage and aren't all that damaging to the planet. I can't build 16 economy bases around something when there isn't even 16 resources to start with. It looks like maybe I don't have to have a resource to set up a starbase. I'll try that next time in the game, Obvious

OK if by DL you mean dread lords then that's what I'm playing. Now If all I build is bank centers won't that effect things like research? I mean research starts off really slow if I don't build research centers won't my research rate stay slow?

First problem this newbie has is making a profit in this game. I research trade to the max and have all the routes allowable. Other than taxes what can I do? My approval keeps dropping more and more even though I have researched and built reality centers. The only thing that makes moral go up is starting a war which leads to my next question. Why do I keep getting beat up? I research shields to the max so I have ultimate invulnerable shields and armor to the max of ultimate kanvium or whatever i

Yes I do have the option to update to 1.4 and I did. I guess I'm having a difficult time figuring out the economics of the game. Trying to keep taxes low enough while still having a positive cash flow has eluded me. I turned off taxes for a while in the game that my population went to 0. Didn't make a difference. Now I have money but my planets

OK so all of the sudden my population went to 0. No wars or planet destruction just 0 people. Of course when that happened all of the 10,000 credits I'd worked for were gone I had no money was in debt and no way to get out. I can't research build or nothing. My approval rate was always at least 50%. Then again I don't know if approval would cause people to disappear. Learning this game is maddening.

Yea I've got it on cakewalk right now. Just to learn. I've actually got the money thing handled for now too. Lots of factories, as many trade routes as allowable right now, and a booming population for tax revenue. I can actually turn that down for 85% or more approval. I'm not sure what everybody means by "turn based" I know that I have to hit turn button to keep going after I've done all I need/can do. Guess that means it's the computers turn. Seems like half the time something bad happens.

My wife just bought me this game for Christmas. I've never played the original so I'm really new. Is there a really thorough how to play for dummies somewhere? I'm in the game but either I keep going broke or my stuff gets taken and I can't figure out how to build a warship much less use it. I've researched up to mass drivers and have shields but can't do anything with them. I can't equip my ships or nothing. Somewhere there is a war screen but I haven't found that either. I'm not sure what I'm