HighWater

I have to confirm sightings of armed transports attacking unarmed ships in orbit in order to take planets. This has happened to me two or three times ever... I generally don't keep defending ships in orbit. There are only two situations: -When I am not at war (to boost my military score). -When the AI has much stronger ships. In this case I will pile all my best ships in orbit around a planet that allows them to all defend the planet at once. This re

On par... On par... Apples and oranges. (And no, but it is close enough.) It is noticeable that the AI in DA and ToA has been derived from the much simpler DL. In DA, the complexity hasn't exploded badly enough for the AI to be seriously affected: it plays extraordinary well for an AI that doesn't cheat (especially with full processor use enabled). In ToA, the limits of the original DL AI shines through and this combined with the techtree-fails to make the AI ap

Sounds nice. I'll try it next time I feel like headbutting Galciv again... ;)

Sounds to me like the real problem is overextension then. Don't colonize planets that you cannots culturally back up. A single planet "way out there" is easy pickings for cultural flip, hard to defend in combat and generally quite useless in the short and long run. Unless it's a very-high class planet. Don't bother getting it unless you're really short on planets, or see options to radically expand your influence in its neighbourhood (for example, a close minor you intend to c

Strange. Do you have any mods installed?

All you need is to be able to build a ship or several ships combined, that can take on the more weakly defended planets, then touch down transports. your ships only need to last for their suicide strike for you to still be able to conquer the more powerful enemy faster than he can conquer you. The simple reason for this is AI undervalueing of building transports and carrying out invasions, meaning you can almost always beat it at the planetary combat game. Having good soldiering tech really h

I don't think I've ever received a precursor "corvette"... Didn't know they existed actually! Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a proper armada to win through conquest [e digicons]}:)[/e]

That's what I meant by kill 'em all. ^^

The only bug I see is that somehow their message wasn't displayed. If an AI declares war on you, you can't speak to it the same turn (or several turns after) without cheating/abusing exploits. Their communication to you in the case of a war declaration is very much just that: a declaration (very one-sided). The other choice is "Done". The AI will eventually grow bored of extorting you for money, and will then declare war on you without further notice (them extorting mo

Just kill 'em all...

Lol, this doesn't happen often... You can always go to war with them before the 10 turns are up, right? (They need to be at peace in order to win.)

[quote who="A88mph" reply="1305" id="3219240"](...) 1) I can't help but think that the computer is cheating some how. (even when the game promices that it is not.) (...) 2) Also, another thing I HATE about these games is that no matter what I do, the computer player always wants to go to war with me even though i'm not even in the lead, and never antaganized them at all. (...) 3) the 2nd thing I want to se in Gal Civ 3 is the abillity to turn off the computers abil

Added to that is the fact that the AI is rather lazy to get the Eyes of the Universe, and there is also an event called "Hypersensors" that makes even getting the Eyes pointless (I finally got to see an AI build it, lol). However, I must agree that early on, sensor ability could be useful, especially in the campaign, but if it is worth forsaking points that could go into morale, economy or birthrate... In the sandbox it generally isn't.

[quote who="MarvinKosh" reply="87" id="3211947"] Imagine having six players debating the placement of hull jewellery until a particular ship template is perfect?[/quote] Lol, priceless... Splitting up the empire into different parts that need to work together could be nice. Although I doubt many would-be-emperors of the universe really want to have to cooperate/delegate part of their operations to other people with free will. :D

No, You are not in debt until your stored reserves fall under 0 bc. If they fall under -500bc, you will be unable to continue construction until they are above -500bc again. The approval penalty does not strike instantly, you have quite a few turns before your people start to act up. However, once it does set in, you will be informed by a pop-up screen and a red frowned smiley will appear. Once this happens, be sure to try to get to above 0bc, even if it is only for one turn. It will reset th

I have played Birth of the Federation over LAN connection, and after the first hour or so, it turned into absolute waiting HORROR. As the bigger player is usually both the winning player and the player that has the most stuff to do, it is hard to expect from strangers that they wait for whoever is top dog to finish his micromanagement spree. Multiplayer in games like these just doesn't allow for the same epic feel. Would I not want multiplayer? Hell yes, I would definitely appreci

[quote]I have fought other races down to the last planet, keep them at zero ships and they didn't surrender, but when the npc races seem to fight each other they surrender alot, and alot of times its for no reason I can see.[/quote] What makes an NPC decide to surrender can be pretty sketchy, one time they will go home crying to their momma after only a few shots have been fired, and sometimes they will stay until the very bitter end. This is not really player-specific though, but

A ship fires all weapons ithas during each combat turn. Most likely, the animation of two of the three weapon types is very faint and overshadowed by the third. I know that some of the laser weapons produce a very faint beam, and some missiles and mass drivers can be hard to spot aswell. Most likely you will have to zoom in further to see it fire all weapons.

Did you mean "Defensive Meditation" and the "Defense Meditation Module"? The Defensive Meditation tech unlocks the Defense Meditation Module. If I am not mistaken, it is only available to the Drath and the Altarians, when installed on a ship it provides a bonus to installed defenses such as shields. The tech itself might also provide a bonus percentage to defense, but I'm not so sure as I don't play either race much...

[quote]1. How did the Korath have such devastatingly high fire-power so quickly. They had fleets of 84 laser power totals for example, but total hit points of something stupid like 12! What was going on there?! I could only muster about 6-8 attack on medium hulls by then, so a fleet of about 24 power, but much bigger hit point total and still got slaughtered by them.[/quote] A few things can be responsible for this: The Korath (if I am not mistaken) start out with a bonus for weapons,

The Planet Quality morale bonus applies for all planets that are, or have become, a class 11 or higher. As the homeworld starts out as a class 10, you can give it a morale boost by researching Soil Enhancement and converting the yellow tile into a green one to make it a class 11. However, anything above that doesn't matter for morale. Also, even the +10 morale isn't enough to make a population of 20B or more financially attractive. Do not cross the threshold of 16B for good planets (e

I never use the auto designer, so I can't tell you what's wrong with it. However, you don't have to let the computer do the designs for you, you can also do it yourself! You can choose to create a new type of ship altogether (in which case you'll be modelling how it looks, as much as what kind of weapons it has), or just improve on an already existing template. Either way, you go to the Shipyard and either select "New" or select an already existing ship and sel

Because the negative effect of population on morale very much resembles an exponential function that really kicks in around the 15-16 bil mark. The morale gap between 16 Bil and 20 Bil is rather huge, as seen in your example above. :)

[quote who="qrtxian" reply="1" id="3207109"]This is an option already. Uncheck the "allow surrenders" box. Although personally, I'll never understand why people keep complaining about this - I find how frequently the AI is willing to fight to the last man far more annoying than its supposed tendency to surrender too easily.[/quote] This, on both accounts... Do your enemies even have warships? Because they tend to not-surrender as long as they have some warships

They are (as LTjim is saying) most likely planets that require Advanced Colonization techs to colonize. If you by one way or another gain an Aquatic world, but don't have either of the two Aquatic colonizations techs, you will not generate any social or military production through factories. (You can recognise these worlds, because their icon will be red to indicate you don't have the techs, yellow indicates you have one of the two (production works at 50%), green indicates you have b