qrtxian

[quote who="LTjim" reply="6" id="3229968"]When you set up the game, especially when bumping up a difficulty level, do not be afraid to use the "control-N" key combo to ensure a decent starting set-up. That is, iterate until you get at least one decent bonus tile, if not two. For example, a 3X manufacturing and a morale tile are good. You need to colony rush just as the AIs do, especially grabbing the best planets and mining anomalies nearby. You just need to avoid the economy collapse, if pos

Is there a reason there's no screenshots?

[quote]1) The philosophy behind the game seems conceptually flawed. You start off being aware of all the other races in the galaxy even though you haven't yet begun exploring the galaxy. Surely a "first contact" scenario with each race would make more sense and be more realistic?[/quote] Um, that's exactly what happens if you set your opponents to "unknown" in the setup screen.

Part 16, continued Two weeks into 2234, the Altarians launched a direct attack on the Korx home system. Precisely how they'd managed to get this far into Korx space - which had largely withstood ground invasions so far - was a mystery, but the damage they did was considerable. Both Korx and Korx II lost their orbital defenses, though the Altar

Judging by what apparently happened next (if your post about being culturally eliminated was from the same game), I'd guess it's not a random event at all - it's a warning that you're close to being culturally eliminated.

Wow, I've never seen that before. What effect (if any) did it have?

While I still have no mouse and can't actually continue this or any other game, I recently realized I still have about a post of screenshots and game information left. Expect to see it go up sometime soon.

Are you sure Mars turned radioactive, specifically? A planet spored by the Korath is supposed to turn toxic.

Actually, there seems to be some kind of a requirement to see a ship fire multiple weapons (not necessarily even when it has multiple weapons types) in the combat screen, beyond just having them. It probably relates somehow to total attack, but I've never really bothered trying to figure it out.

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.

For what it's worth, I have never seen "Team" settings occur with random races. It sometimes happens when playing against known opponents after playing the campaign, but never when playing random opponents. Although given that non-good AIs tend not to form alliances very often, I almost feel that having random teams might make things a bit more challenging - too often have I watched an aggressive evil race be destroyed by the "axis of good".

Given that the AI is usually not too good about clearing them out, the pirates can often prove more help then hindrance, if you resign yourself to losing every ship and starbase you own when they arrive. When you eventually tech up and defeat the pirates - they never advance or rebuild losses, so they will be defeated eventually - you'll likely be in control of the largest (sometimes only) military in the game. You can also try just bunkering down and going for the tech v

[quote quoting="post"] 1. When i zoom out the universe map and it changes to the tactical view, i can still see the symbols for the anomalies that i have already surveyed and they are no longer on the universe map. Is this a bug or do the symbols remain for a reason? [/quote] I'm pretty sure this is a bug, although it's not one that I've ever encountered. As for the mod questions, in order: There are two majo

The event isn't consistent - I've never been able to tell what makes the difference, but sometimes they show up with a nonexistent ship and sometimes they don't.

For starters, you probably need to adjust your starting settings.

The unmodded game isn't unplayable, but it is unbalanced. There's a couple of mods out there that try and fix things up - this is probably the closest to one that fixes the game while still remaining as close to it as possible.

You call that weird? I had eighteen races in a tiny galaxy once. That was weird.

Personally, I continue to call it Twilight specifically as a big middle finger to those vampires. But to each their own.

One comes on the game "disk", yes.

[quote]It then gets weirder, as it turns out that the game registered the dread Lords being conquered as fulfilling the victory conditions for the scenario, and I got the victory screen the next turn, even though the original Dread Lords were still around. I'm not sure if I should count myself lucky, or rail that I was cheated out of victory.[/quote] Are you sure it wasn't the new Dread Lords that conquered the original Dread Lords? That would make a bit more sense. &n

I can confirm that building an influence starbase out in the middle of nowhere does add to your influence score. I've used it once or twice to give me that push needed for an influence victory without having to alienate the surviving AIs.

For one thing, you need Close relations to get an alliance. I'm not sure how you're even able to ask at just a Friendly/Warm level.

TOV, if I remember rightly, actually added in lines to give all races a fair share of unique dialogue (it's weighted towards a few, largely those from the original GalCiv I). I just made sure all of the original dialogue can show up.

I think that whatever it is that's supposed to keep the Dread Lords permanently hostile in DA has some flaws - in a couple of my games, they gave various civilizations "scouts" with 80 or so attack, and one time they actually gave a full-fledged frigate to the Drengin (who then "upgraded" it to a regular Drengin frigate. Morons.) And I've reported the fact that occasionally minors trade with them as a bug before.

I honestly don't remember ever actually uploading that anywhere, though I'd have to go back and check the thread.