tetleytea

I've got two: 1) I had my trusty Apple II+. I blew a whole summer playing nothing but Wizardry I. I got two of my friends hooked on it with me, and pretty soon "Katino", "Kadalto", Mahalito", and "Tiltowait" became household words. Katino was our code word for farting (that was the name of the spell that put everyone to sleep). I cheered out loud when I finally found Werdna once and for all. 2) When I was 7 years old, we didn't h

I usually wind up with "trade routes" of military SB's instead of slingshots. i.e. a couple of SB's here, with some speed on them...which leads to SB's there, with some more speed, which leads to.... This is on abundant, of course. They're a byproduct of past battles. They're just sitting there, so might as well just throw on some speed modules (and -1 speed modules) for cheap. It's not as ideal as a slingshot grid, but I'm not investing 100+ constructors, eithe

I've never particularly been a fan of overlapping Military SB's too much. Maybe on sparser galaxies, where you know exactly the direction the AI is beelining from...the AI doesn't exactly take evasive maneuvers. Then maybe you could stack. But on abundant, what I really need is coverage more than anything. Plus when I use military SB's, I tend to be losing. When you're winning and you can build all the pretty starbase grids, you don't really need a starbase.&nbsp

[quote]5) General trick 2: spend some money on espionage once your income is positive; early spies are cheap + you avoid those nasty events such as 'you insulted XYZ ambassador which could have been avoided if you had some spies'[/quote] Disagree, to an extent. No need to wait till your income is positive. You can rest assured that everybody else is doing just that, which means that if you can get that first spy out the door ASAP, he can cause some trouble for a LONG

Stardock certainly has a lot of really good art, good communities, and good distribution channels. IMHO--some are undoubtedly going to disagree with me on this--but now it seems the weak spot is the games' nuts & bolts. Game mechanics. Stardock needs another brain. Brad was that brain on Galciv. But now his brain is on "bigger" things, like managing a company, driving sales. And now some of SD's other games are not doing so good. Sins is goo

That trick with putting transports in orbit is sneaky, but a bit late in the game for me. I may use that trick in ToA on extreme colonization planets. If you invade a red planet while it's still red to you, you probably have the transports lying around anyway. Anyway, the point is to give your "friends" some white elephant gifts. If you happen to get something out of a trade, that's just a bonus. They're vulnerable to a drag on their economy at the same t

1) About the population growth/100% approval, it depends on a lot of things and there is no general answer. I will say, though, that at all times having 100% approval for planets below 2.5B population is CRITICAL. Above that number, population grows linearly, meaning 100% approval will double that growth. But below that number, population is growing exponentially. Believe me, you want to double your exponential growth! Your homeworld tends to be well above

I can say I've had the WORST mega-event ever. I was two clicks of the "Turn" button away from an Influence victory, when the Jagged Knife event happened and took half my planets.

Thanks to Halo, I could kill everybody in SupCom myself. SupCom requires lots of Mass. Thanks to late-night Halo parties and eating WAAAY too much pizza, now I have plenty of Mass. I should also mention the power plant I start with thanks to eating chili.

Banned for pooper scooping crap with corn in it but we were trying to fertilize a future corn field.

Banned for making poster #10925 hold his crap in and giving him bad constipation.

They would both die. Master Chief would easily take out the ACU with his Plasma Rifle, but the nuclear blast from the ACU would kill Master Chief.

Military SB's rock, but I do have to admit I almost never play anything but on abundant/abundant. OTOH, economy SB's aren't so great on sparse galaxies, either. I've been playing on Obscene (mostly), some Suicidal, and everyone else gets so far ahead of me in tech it's not even funny. These military SB babies even out the game. What's nice is that the AI doesn't consider your 8 constructors in his territory a threat. So you send in your pu

If I got that event I'd upgrade as many as I could with a point of defense, set up military SB's, and rule the galaxy. [e digicons]:drool:[/e]

[quote]This principle applies to any of the modules (constructors, transports, spore, survey, etc) as miniturization improves. A good tactic in general. ....[/quote] Heh...I'm doing the exact opposite. I set ~2 manufacturing planets to put out battleships. The remainder are spamming tiny ships.

I almost never get the luxury of choosing my wars. But if I do, it's right after i research that tech right before Aeron Missile Defense. I try to gun it up the missile D tree early on and get Hyper Computers. I tend to have ships with obscene defense but pithy weapons.

I do tiny hulls all the time. It just never occurred to me that you can build a blank hull and research miniaturization after it's well on its way. I have, however, launched loaded colony ships, researched Advanced Miniaturization along the way, and upgraded with some life support. It's just better to do the upgrade sooner rather than later, because it takes more turns to do the upgrade the further out you go.

I thought the small hull was 15bc cheaper than a cargo hull.

[quote]Do I wait for the "turn" button to turn green before I click on it or just click away?[/quote] I would recommend not hitting the Turn button when it is not green as a matter of practice. If you're "done", you can hit the Tab button a few times to see what all your idle ships are doing. If all your ships are orbiting, autopiloting, or guarding, it will turn green.

[quote]A method I've used to a fairly good deal of success is to build/buy blank cargo ships and move them the first turn as far as they'll go in the direction they'll be taking for the rush. [/quote] Hey, that's a good idea! Especially if you're playing on abundant planets/rare habitable. I bet you could put out Tiny/Small hulls as well and research the required Miniaturization techs later.

[quote]Is this one of our important tools that I havent been using?[/quote] It's an important tool everyone is not using. I think it's because most people just don't get in the position of fighting someone far ahead of them in the first place. It's probably a combination of difficulty level, and probably a lot of diplomatic shake-and-bake. The trick with constructors is, they ARE ships. Think of those military assist modules as weapons. You normal

I.S. is worth it on 300% tiles. Sometimes on 100% tiles, if you have the money. You multiply that by Quantum PP, Manu Capital, Doomsday Generator, ethical bonuses, and econ starbases, it can be worth it if you have the money. Are you aware of the "Newest", "Old", and "All" tabs up there in the Social Improvements screen? There is no reason you can't build MC's after you have IS researched. Just don't have that "Newest" tab selected. Getting I.

[quote]Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.[/quote] The exploitable bug I found trading influence comes darn near close, IMHO.

I take on vastly superior enemies on Suicidal all the time. It's probably the most satisfying part of the game for me. There are so many tricks you can do vs. a dumb AI, he has to runaway quite a bit ahead for you to lose. There's espionage (you really need to get Medium on him), guerrilla warfare (as in fast, low-attack ships that raid his traders, asteroids, undefended starbases, transports, etc.), luring his fleets off-course, the "let him take your crap planets then reta

[quote]2) Or do you put 50% in social production (to build and rush-build factories) and 50% in military production?[/quote] I always choose 50% military. And I always rush-buy factories--not colony ships. Also, I have chosen Industrialist to get another 20% social/military before, but at Obscene and Suicidal it seems to make more sense to choose Technologist and get the +1 Sensor. What else I discovered, the Drengin and Iconians have a kick-butt c