tetleytea

That's a good idea with spying to piss off two races against each other. Another idea I'm starting to try is pre-emptive spying. In other words, if I think a race is going to start spying on me later anyway, it's better to spy on him first, so he's forced to nullify me instead of me nullifying him later. The risk is, you might be wrong and get ganged up on later. It's really hard to counter two races spying on you at the same time (unless you're just sweating money).

I have found Thalans (i.e. Super Hive) to be very much winnable on Maso. I'm sure it's winnable on Suicidal as well, but I'm busy trying new things--it is, after all, a beta. BTW Suicidal is not the max difficulty, Obscene is. I give the Thalans +30 Econ, +10 Morale, Federalist, and the remaining 3 AP is flexible (+30% Pop is not a bad choice). Super Hive + money = a winning combo. I'm trying out Super Annihilator (i.e. Spore ship) right now. I bet they're winnable, too, if you d

My favorite insectoid far and away is Zorak, in Space Ghost. He's my hero.

The reason I would consider this an exploit is because there is no way to counter it. You need to be given a fair chance to nullify the agent before they die. Sure, you could build a counter espionage center, but then all you do is plant an agent on a different planet's farm. You can't read their mind.

> You can kill population by planting a spy on a farm. I tend to agree with others here that that is an exploit. It's cool that you can do that, but you can't realistically counter it.

Ah, there it is.

Wait a minute, where is the Spore technology?? I just played around with Super Annihilator and researched Planetary Invasion, and I don't see a Spore module, Spore ship, Spore technology on the tech tree, nothing. ???

Did you know that in DA you can build Basic Factories now even after you've researched Industrial Sector? On the planet screen, there are now three tabs "New", "Old", and "All" at the top of the social improvements scrollbar. You no longer have to postpone research because it takes so stinking long to build the upgraded building.

I realize this is only beta, but I'm wondering if other people are observing the same things I am: 1) I look at the Secret Police Center and it says, "Improve base morale by 20%". So, my planet is at 59% approval, I buy the Secret Police Center, and now my morale is at 72%. I have no other morale structures on the planet. I'm sorry, but that's only a 13% improvement. It's being multiplied by the base morale, just like everything else. That sort of defeats the purpose when I coul

Mars can actually have a higher PQ than Earth in Dark Avatar, after you get terraforming. In fact, I've gotten the Orbital Terraformer and colonized some class-1's, and they instantly transformed into class-16's.

And the benefit to that is that you can equip Economic Starbases with trade modules, and the trade bonuses will apply to all the trade routes on that path.

A few more items from my last game: - I'm seeing a lot of invisible ships flying around. I lost my starbase to an invisible Korx ship. Also, I lost another starbase to a Yor FREIGHTER. And I wasn't even at war with the Yor (including after I got attacked). I think I might have gotten attacked by one of those little trade ships, and when both had 0 attack, the game just gave the tiebreaker to the attacker. There's definitely a couple bugs going on there. - The +PQ

What is challenging about the Yor is that anything in their influence is slow *AND* Yor are hard to culture flip. Only way to push their influence back is to go to war (or get your friends to).

I tend to disagree, because some AI's really are stronger, and the Drengin AI really is a little weak. Actually, I think evil alignment in general is weaker than the other two. It's okay, though, Stardock is focusing on the AI; it'll come out in the wash.

Actually I have found economy starbases to be not that useful and military starbases very useful. With econ starbases, I have found it hard to recoup the cost of the constructors you use building it; especially when you consider the time value of money (i.e. 1 bc now is worth more than 1 bc a year later). You can't just improve your economy for the sake of improving your economy--there has to be some other end in mind. Military starbases, though, I am quickly able to recoup the val

What about the Luck from Surveying the "1 bc...it must be your lucky day" anomalies? What's going on there?

I do think the AI should role play to an extent. Some features (e.g. Super Manipulator, Super Organizer) rely on the AI role playing. And things like Alliance Victory and Influence victory, I don't think the AI particularly needs to fight that. Although I do think those two victory conditions should count as shared victories, somehow, on metaverse. The only pure victories would be Conquest and Tech victory, and the AI *should* fight that. In other words I do think the AI should play

I saw on another thread that not enough discussion has occurred on balancing, so I thought I'd add some more input on that: - Engine technology has been nerfed quite a bit. At least, the Impulse Engines sure have. Fair enough. This actually makes the Speed race ability more worth the cost. However, Super Isolationist isn't all that useful, because they nerfed engines. - I like that they reduced the research time for Xeno Farm Construction II (Intensive Farming). It shou

My opinion on a few things. I'm going to disagree with a few things said here, but please don't take it wrong. It's just differing opinions: - I think it's safe to say everyone agrees the AI needs work (and it's getting it). - I disagree about hazardous planet techs being untradable. That adds a sweet strategic element to the game. - I'd be okay if Alliances could transcend alignments. The rationale I would give is that the alien race may be good/evil, but

What I was posting was, I just want MORE of that stuff. Planets just need this unique character to each one, & you're never quite sure which strategy is the right one. I'd say just brainstorm every kind of tile type you can think of--it doesn't have to be overpowered to be fun--and throw it in. I'd think ~1/3 of a planet's tiles on average should have something on it, even if it's some crap bonus/penalty you almost never use ("almost" being the operative word). Let the game randomize it a

A good tip I was given for fighting DL's was to invade their planets (which usually end up being your own planets which the DL's just took and now you have to re-invade), and steal their tech. Then you can steal the high-end weapons techs you need to stand toe-to-toe with them.

The Warlords series (e.g. Warlords Battlecry, Warlords: Darklords Rising, etc.) was very successful in doing quests, which were basically mini-missions. They were fun indeed, but they added a role-playing element, and I don't think Galciv2 needs a role-playing element added in.

My thought on Espionage: come on, they're aliens. I'm not exactly worried about alien squirrels infiltrating my civilian population and stealing all my secrets. I don't think espionage should be all that involved, and it definitely shouldn't be spy-based. It should be high-tech based, possibly augmented by researching Sensor IV. That's how you perform espionage: you put a spy probe on that neighboring class-0 planet, not plant E.T. in the Pentagon. I remember the opening episod

In regards to the different planet types and the tile types disappearing, I think there should be MORE tile types, and a greater frequency of them. I've had enough games with four class-18 planets and not one of them had a special tile on it. Planets need to have their own unique character to them. Give me planets with toxic regions (and not the whole planet), give me a class-4 planet where I can do a Soil Improvement and 5 new tiles pop up. Give me an ethical choice where I choose between

It seems a reasonable way to balance the custom races is to confer regular Ability Points based on the Super Ability. So if you get Super Spy you get a boatwad of AP, and if you choose spore, well...at least you get to choose your political party. And if you disable super abilities you get the generic AP. That seems like an easier (and cooler) way to do it than trying to balance all the Super Abilities.