Skinny-Y

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="5" id="2041930"] Quoting Skinny-Y, reply 4In real life UN Peacekeepers are weak and inconsequential. The game should reflect this. Also the presence of the Peacekeepers should drain your tax income by 10%. The game reflects an ideal where they are not weak and inconsequential. Just because they are in real life doesn't mean they're supposed to be.[/quote] But the game also reflects an ideal where I am supposed

In real life UN Peacekeepers are weak and inconsequential. The game should reflect this. Also the presence of the Peacekeepers should drain your tax income by 10%.

Very useful, thanks.

[quote who="galacticdoom" reply="9" id="2039513"]Your influence itself (which can be seen on each planet, starbase) makes the IP's each turn, which are then used to so you can vote during the UP each year. That is pretty much it, it has no bearings on your boundaries or anything else. I usually use it during the first 1-2 years when playing maso and above, but that's it.[/quote] So your influence at the UP is not what you happened to have been generating that

Yeah, I always trade techs one at a time. I'm curious though, about trading influence points. Does this reduce the boundaries of your civ? Is the effect permanent. e.g., my boundaries will always be calculated based on IP - what I sold?

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="22" id="2036156"] but I didn't know there was any untradable but stealable ones, either. Spore Weapons can't be traded or stolen, but Germ Warfare (the prerequisite for Spore Weapons) can be stolen. I've never actually tried to steal it off of someone who had that SA, but it's possible.[/quote] Even if you steal Germ Warfare, can you still research Spore Weapons?

Awesome answers, guys. [e digicons]B)[/e]

[quote who="clanlindsey" reply="15" id="2036055"]A lot of the Iconian techs aren't tradeable, and the Torians are the guys who colonize a jillion planets and then never build any improvements on half of them.....at least in my games.[/quote] You're right, I just tested this. You don't get to keep the Precursor Library and Archive and you can't trade for Precursor Studies. Feh. Here's another question for y'all: There seem t

[quote who="clanlindsey" reply="10" id="2035895"] Core Detonation: Never Gas Warfare: Never Information Warfare: Almost always Mass Drivers: Never Mini-Soldiers: Love 'em, except I never have them in TA. Tidal Disruption: Occasionally Traditional Warfare: A lot Also occasionally, especially against a race like the Torians or the Iconians, where they eithe rdidn't build any improvements or you're not goign to be able to keep any of the improvements

[quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="12" id="2035969"]The hardest planets to take are between 6 and 8b - you just can't get the morale low enough for IW, and traditional isn't quite enough. Those usually require a second transport. [/quote] Good stuff. [e digicons]:digichet:[/e] [quote]Taking a planet will always use up at least one transport. Invading sequentially (one transport loses, send in another) will always result in losing every transport used. Attacking i

[quote who="CaptainYar" reply="7" id="2035542"]I pretty much only use mini-soldiers. Almost never get an improvement lost and I never have trouble taking the planet with one transport with 3000 soldiers. I don't see why traditional would be used instead except for the 500bc price tag. Is that why?[/quote] Interesting. You're saying this is better than two transports of 1000, first Mass Drivers than Traditional or Gas. I guess the logic is that you only need to build one transpor

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="5" id="2035371"] No, I mean, the class 5 is a class 8 with soil enhancement, habitat improvement, and terraforming. The game calculates it if memory serves as a class 5 for damage purposes, so if you damage it down to a class 4 base, you wind up with a 13-16 PQ planet. It's been a while since I tried this, though.[/quote] Oooh, and if you've selected Neutral and researched the Planetary Improvement techs, then the plan

[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="3" id="2035364"]This is why you mass with 1 troop. [/quote] Jah, 1B troops, I know. ;) [quote who="Sole Soul" reply="3" id="2035364"]There's an interesting bug that to my knowledge never got fixed where mass drivers considers the base quality of the planet when doing the damage, so if you mass a class 5-8, you can actually wind up with more tiles afterwards. [/quote]

[quote]Mass Drivers: Only to cull population, never to take planets.[/quote] Agreed. I find though, with Mass Drivers, that you have to be careful when your soldiering gets up there. You can accidentally take a 10B planet with 1000 troops when you meant to cull population. Sometimes at this stage I'll shift to Info, Gas, or Mini for the tenderizing phase.

Just a little poll. I have never used it, not even once. I find that I use Gas Warfare and Traditional constantly until I research Planetary Bombardment. Then for large planets, I'll use Mass Drivers to tenderize followed by traditional or mini-soldiers. I used to use Mini-Soldiers more often, but now they seem a bit superfluous, given that PB takes down the bulk of the population and with good enough soldiering, the traditional knocks off the rest. If I don't

[quote]In my experience that is the lesser of the problems the AI has with mining. The more glaring problem is that they simply don't build enough miners - they love to research the tech (and won't sell it, either), but they simply don't have the ships to use it. Add that to how often they target miners, and it's no wonder they never get anywhere.[/quote] They love to research SM I. In my games they rarely research SM II and never III. To be honest, I rarely have the luxur

Try the Arcea's Revenge tournament map. They do go after them.

[quote who="galacticdoom" reply="14" id="2034731"] Now granted, asteroid mines are way too easy to destroy, but I have yet to ever see an enemy destroy one. They usually fly right past towards a planet or starbase. Usually you don't even need to protect them.[/quote] They do go after them more often as difficulty increases, but not nearly as often as they should.

[quote who="tetleytea" reply="13" id="2034685"] This principle applies to any of the modules (constructors, transports, spore, survey, etc) as miniturization improves. A good tactic in general. .... Heh...I'm doing the exact opposite. I set ~2 manufacturing planets to put out battleships. The remainder are spamming tiny ships. [/quote] I was referring only to the "tiny ships" part, not whether you use one planet or many. Looking back at what I qu

[quote]I think you are on to something with the "set one planet to spam tiny miners"[/quote] This principle applies to any of the modules (constructors, transports, spore, survey, etc) as miniturization improves. A good tactic in general. Remember that you get civ-wide speed bonuses for ion, impulse, warp and some race specific techs, in addition to starting speed bonus if you have selected it. You can have a constructor move at 4-5 with no engines on

[quote]I know you are a fan of both the Altarians and the Drath, so here is a related idea you might try (works a bit better with the Altarains, but not bad with the Drath[/quote] Drath: War Profiteering + Super Manipulator. Do not overlook the War Profiteering. Let me add: Don't overlook the War Profiteering. In case I forgot to mention it: Don't overlook the War Profiteering. The Drath are absolutely crushing.

Thanks cl, I noticed that you are kicking some booty in the rankings, more than me. For the emipire! [e digicons]:digichet:[/e]

[quote]The problem is that it's definitely known that your military ranking is also in some way inversely proportional to the total number of ships as well. The precise nature of this inverse dependence of military ranking on total ship count is not well understood, though as I mentioned earlier I believe that Sole Soul has the best grasp of what's really going on.[/quote] Err, then how come you build 17k ships? Doesn't this lower score? Score proportional t

I beat that mission I think on Tough or Challenging. I found it very enjoyable and educational. The planet Weber 1 became the sacrifice planet which I allowed the dreadlords to conquer. I could then conquer it back and steal tech. I figured this out when the Altarians had Neutrino Bullets in their tech offerings. Their was no way they could have researched it, so I gathered that early on they must have retaken a planet. I Eventually got Doom Ray, Neutrino b

Great info. I did not not know that tech rate is related to galaxy size. Also, when you talk about the "cap", does this mean that after you've researched 64 techs the tech rate remains slowed by 2.7x the original for each tech thereafter, no growth, but no going back to "free" either? Or does it fluctuate after reaching the cap? I guess what I meant by Galactopedia TP info being useless is that if the price inflates on a variety of factors (i.e., not getting