LTjim

Researching Invasion gives you access to modules that hold lots more than the 250 on a colony ship. You can use those troop transports to more quickly shuttle populations about. Supporting the expansion phase while researching draws down the treasury. Higher taxes gives more income while reducing morale, yet population growth rate is a function of morale. It becomes a balancing act. The challenge is much greater on higher difficulties, when the AIs' bonuses

Wow! I have never tried a mod, but this one may be the first! (BTW, thanx for the cred!)

One way to slow down the game is to reduce the number of inhabitable planets, especially the ones that do not need research to colonize. That is, with fewer planets, each empire has fewer units of everything, including production. Note, however, that fewer planets to colonize means that the colony rush era of expansion will conclude sooner. This, in turn, means that the AIs will turn to war sooner. However, it also means that the wars will be fought with lower tech

Minor races also buy the player "time" as the most aggressive AIs will generally go after them first, instead of the player. On the higher difficulties especially, minor AIs are revenue sources in the early and early-middle game. With tech trading allowed, minor AIs are also a source of many early game techs. For example, they will always research a weapon, a defense, and life support. They always want Trade as a tech, and will use it to send you freighters which wil

Well done! :-) What difficulty level? Note that strategies change with big changes to settings!

michaelwhittaker - The campaigns never interested me and I have beaten both games in sandbox a great many times on the hardest levels by now. So, why not play only the one I find more interesting?

Gaunathor - That's why I thought be might have meant moi. As for why I do not play DL, the game is not quite complex enough, compared to DA to keep my interest. I do not own TA because it needs a patch to be enjoyable w/o trying player mods. That is, too many AIs are broken, among other things. If they won't patch it; I won't buy it.

If your post was to me, I play only DA. I do not have TA. On the larger maps, having ion engine at the start is a big bonus. On smaller maps, having super breeder is great. In large maps with abundant habitable planets, races that start with the ability to colonize non-standard planets have a big advantage. Being able to get others into wars more easily, or to have others declare war on those that declare war on you is most helpful when there are lots of AI

I played on in the All Bonus Tile galaxy. The only other AIs were the Torians and the Yor, with one minor AI. All the tiles in all the homeworlds were bonus tiles. The second planet in each home system also appeared to be mostly bonus tiles, as well. There were no other habitable planets in the gigantic-size galaxy. I sure wish I had a theory as to why it happened. I have been unable to repeat it.

Well, I tried to reproduce the mega-bonus-tile effect and had almost no success so far. Specifically, I selected largest map, max stars, max planets, min AIs, no minor AIs, and minimum habitable planets. The frequency of bonus tiles may be a little over normal, but nothing like I've got in that odd game I posted about. I plan to continue experiments to try to figure it out.

Econ buildings on low population planets cost as much as any other to build and maintain but do almost nothing to increase income. The break-even point likely varies by race, but I generally use 1B pop as the min. I thought shipyards had 1 BC maintenance on them. Am I wrong on this? (Or did this change between DA and TA?) I seldom let a planet go higher than 18B (and then only for high PQ ones with a morale bonus tile), as the cost for multiple strong morale

This game got even odder, but I have a theory now. First, the other planet in my own system had 14 open tiles, and 9 of them were bonus tiles: - 700% Manufacturing - 300% Manufacturing - 100% Manufacturing - 100% Research - 100% Morale - 100% Influence - Three 100% Farming My theory is that the number of bonus tiles is affected by the galaxy size and the number of planets and the bonus tiles are distributed among the habi

Class 10, so I have 8 empty squares (one for Soil Enrichment, one for Colony): - 700% Research - 700% Research - 100% Research - 100% Research - 300% Manufacturing - 100% Manufacturing - 100% Morale - 100% Influence I have never seen that before! Game DA, all settings random.

I must have set up a couple thousand DA galaxies over the years, but yesterday I had my very first Homeworld with TWO 7x manufacturing bonus tiles. There had been some question in my mind if it were even possible for there to be two of the same 7x bonus tiles on the same planet. Now I know it may be very, very rare, but it is definitely possible.

You can also "repair" ships in one turn by "upgrading" them to an identical design. BTW, you can repair starbases with constructors once you have the tech for starbase repair kit. I think it restores some number of HP per constructor. I do not recall how many, as it has been years since I did it.

The first problem would seem to be that you are keeping "Industrial Capacity" far too low. What you want is 100% for this setting. The only time I ever drop it under 100% is when my economy is crashing. This sometimes happens if I rush buy a few somethings early. For example, if I discover a high PQ planet and choose to rush buy a colony ship or upgrade a scout to a colony ship to grab it. Similarly, an early green anomaly is sometimes worth rush buying a constru

In DA, there are about 6 "buttons" along the bottom of the screen when you are looking at the galaxy. The third one from the left is "domestic stats." Toggle that button and several choices appear as sliders that let you move taxes from 0 to 100%, production from 0 to 100%, and three other sliders that are called something like "Distribute Empire Production." Those last three sliders are military, social, and research and always add up to 100%, such that moving one affects

I do not recall advocating cargo hulls for defensive platforms, as I have never tried that. I have, however, seen folk suggest kamikaze cargo hull attack ships, and have tried that once or twice. The way such would be used would be to attack a fleet with such ships one or two at a time since (unless attacked by a super warrior race) they would always get off one salvo. The best result I had with them went as follows: - fleet heading for a key mining base

In my experience, all the AIs in DA research weapons. The failure of all AIs to do so in TA is just one of the problems with the game.

Some of the most common reasons that a building will "NEVER" be finished include: - the empire production slider is set to 0 or near 0 - the empire social production slider is set to 0 or near 0 - the treasury is below minus-500 meaning nothing will be built until treasury back above -500 - the planet is one the player has not researched the tech to colonize (this can happen if a planet that can not be colonized becomes owned by the player after it is conquered

If those posts were to me, my view on TA is that if the company does not care to support the product , then I do not care enough to spend money to buy it. DA was supported until all but a couple bugs were fixed, not so for TA. If TA received a new patch fixing the known bugs so that I did not have to try to use a mod to make it playable at the fun level, than I would buy it. Until then, I will not.

There are definitely a few bugs in the DA tech trees. One well known one is the MCC. Two others I have found are that one of the "Barriers" techs is worse than the one before it and one of the higher weapons (can't remember which one) is completely screwed up (I rarely use that weapon tree, beam, I think, but IIRC you have to research it to get to the next one but you can't put it on a ship). In DA Suicidal, the old hands had it down. There are some odd wrink

It is certainly correct that there are many diverse paths to victory, especially at lower difficulty levels. Also, map choice can be tailored to fit a strategy, as well. In some of the old threads where folk were trying for zero year wins or max scores, they would specify exactly which AIs were in the game to make their results possible. On suicidal (DA) I have had AIs send multiple fleets at several of my mining bases well within my borders even while they were at war

marigoldran - Even if you bribe other AIs to declare war with AIs who declare war on you, those same AIs remain at war with you. That is, if you depend on your planets pop growth to defeat invasions, that same AI that is mounting those unsuccessful invasions will preferentially attack every starbase of yours, including the mining ones. Without strong defensive fleets, your strategy must assume no mining bases in your math, while ones like Gauanathor can assume multiple b

Very interesting discussion. In general, I agree with Gaunathor. I would add a few points. Minor ones first: - I use only ion engines for transports and constructors (with few exceptions) so that reduces costs, - miniaturization techs are pretty much a military strategy req requirement, making several ion engines possible, - I never add life support to invasion transports; one constructor in the fleet is far cheaper for range extension