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[quote]Question: can you turn over that tactical stuff to the computer? I liked being able to manage the tactical fights in MoO2, but I also really liked being able to delegate when I was sure a battle was horribly one-sided in my favor.[/quote] I tried the original demo of SOTS, and it does have an autoresolve option for combat, but I had some problems where the autoresolve would preform badly in battles I should have won easily. But if you're planning to delegate the combat, SOTS probably

[quote]As a compromise, will tech stealing be an option? Can I turn it off so I don't have to play with it?[/quote] I'd really like this option, too. Even before TA, it is unfair and exploitable that you can get any tech that your enemy has when you invade their planet. If you get lucky, you can get a tech that you are nowhere near researching, and then you can skip all the prerequisites. Or maybe just a change so that you can only steal a tech that you are currently capable of resea

Hmm, that is strange that you are being ganged-up on so often. I don't really know what would cause it. Some ways to avoid war are to have a high military rating, a high diplomacy ability, trade routes, the same alignment, and to give in to demands. You could try doing each of those more, since your first priority in the game is to survive, and worry about domination later. Also, don't annoy the Drath, because they will use their super ability to make others attack you.

[quote] If your having issues with your economy, especially on gigantic maps, I'd suggest going Super Breeder. I've never had an economy crash early on me with super breeder because the most I colonize the more my tax revenue skyrockets with my population. That said I rarely use it (Super Hive is just to much of a draw when I go all factories, which I always do). [/quote] If you're not using super breeder, you can get a similar effect by putting a

My planetary development scheme is pretty much the opposite of CraigHB's. All my planets get a few factories, so they can build their other improvements. My low-quality planets are mostly factories and labs. My good planets have some factories, a farm, a morale building, and lots of market buildings. I do this because you make much money by having a high population and many market buildings on the same planet. Against the dreadlords in the original GC2, a good tactic is to build l

I only played the demo of SEV for a little while, and the impression I got was that it was a very big game with lots of "stuff" in it, but it was also micromanagey, repetitive, unbalanced, and the AI was weak. If you play GC2 at gigantic/abundant and wish the game was bigger and longer, then you might like SEV, but it didn't appeal to me at all.

Military rating, diplomacy ability, trade routes, and same alignment seem to be important for getting to "close" relations.

I think that tech trading is an advantage to a player who's willing to do it a lot. If anything, the AI does not trade often enough, so leaving tech trading on probably makes the game easier. On the other hand, sometimes it is nice to play a game without having to check for trades often, so I play with tech trading off sometimes. Bottom line, play however you like, I don't think that either way is really better than the other.

Well, that's kind of vague, how exactly are you getting beaten? Tech or military or what? Anyway, here are some tips: 1) Play on a difficulty below "tough" which is he fair difficulty level. 2) Expand quickly at the beginning of the game. Buy some factories on you homeworld, then switch 100% spending to military to build colony ships quickly. Try to get more planets than each AI. 3) Next, build the basic factories, labs, and lots of markets on your planets. That will get yo

I think the Federalists are best because you need money for everything. More money means I can fund more factories and labs, plus do all the other stuff that costs money. Population growth and morale are good too, but no political parties offer large bonuses to those traits.

Big fleets of tiny ships should still work against the dreadlords. They can still only take out one ship with each gun, so a fleet of 11 can finish off a dreadlord that has 10 guns. That seems cheaper than using defenses to survive the attack.

Visuals and animations are key part of any gameplay. That is the foundation from which you start building. Everyone knows that's why games like Chess and Go are terrible, right? Just remember that auto-resolve option solves all your "problems". No it doesn't, not for me. If controlling the battle well gives you an advantage in the game, then

I disagree with your conclusion about production. I think there are good strategy decisions in the sliders, and in building a combination of factories and labs. By building factories and labs, you can set your civ's overall bias towards production or research. And you can change this slowly by upgrading factories or labs, or replacing one with the other. The sliders let you quickly change between production or research based on your immediate needs, such as an unexpected war. This gives you

You wouldn't need tactical combat on a separate screen to have abilities like these, instead make the different weapons and ships behave differently on the main map. This way, different weapons are useful in different situations even regardless of whether the current enemy has the counter. For example, a particular ship design might be especially good at defending your planets, but poor at attacking enemy territory, not because of a particular bonus, but because of how it can move or fight. I

Nope, but if you want immediate access to all the hulls and part, start the scenario "Battle of the Gods". You have to play as the Terrans, but you can change the ship style to whatever you want.

When morale goes below 40%, population stops growing, so morale sort of regulates itself. Low morale can be bad with certain random events, but otherwise it's not really problem, especially if you eventually fix it. And hopefully you have enough planets with high morale that your homeworld does not drag down your total approval below 55% so you can still win elections.

1) I've never seen a minor race become anything significant. Although if the have one planet to your four, they could do okay. Yeah, you can't spy on them, and there is no destabilization in GC2, but a direct attack would work fine. 2) Press F1 for the ship list. Or it's the first big button on the bottom of the main screen, then switch from the planet list to the ship list. 3) I think the easiest way to find enemy ships is to zoom out to the icon display, and look for

I think D3 is a very good strategy game. There is so much content that it seems like the developers threw in any magic thing they could think of, but it is actually all quite useful and balanced. There are a good variety of strategies available, based on what nation you choose, how you design your god, hidden magic sites you find during the game, your research path, and counters to what your opponent is doing. The 300 page manual is daunting, but the game is not too hard to play because most

Yeah, there is some hard range limit on ships no matter how much life support you use. It's about 5 sectors, and it shows on the map, but it's shaped like a square rather than a circle like normal. Send out a long-range constructor to build a starbase in the direction you need to go.

The game doesn't feel too small or too fast to me. I prefer it that the game lets me make "big" decisions frequently, like influence or military, research or production, friend or enemy. Slowing down the colonization phase by forcing me to research life support and build stepping stone starbases doesn't seem to involve big decisions. I'd rather interact with the AI players soon, than fight against restrictive game rules for the first hours of the game. GC2 is already the opposite of instant

It's a boost to attack power for all ships built on that planet.

I guess from Masochistic up to further levels it is wiser to switch off tech victory as the game quikly finishes ans lets you wonder what happened.... I've never had that problem, but I play much more aggressively than rputran did. If I was only able to colonize a few planets, I'd research planetary invasion ASAP and continue colonizing that way.

Well, starting range still covers about 25% of the map on tiny, but it covers many fewer star systems. Plus, since you have fewer colonized planets on tiny, building a starbase to extend your range costs relatively more than on a huge map. Anyway, here are my suggestions for creating a booming economy with lots of planets: 1. Pick abilities in population growth, morale, and economy. 2. Keep morale on all planets at 100% until you use up your starting 5000bc, then increase t

Well, that information is quite useless, because you really need to design your own ships to do well. The pre-designed "core" ships will rarely have the right attack and defense types to combat your current enemy, and they'll essentially never fully utilize your current techs. The AI designs its own ships, so if you use the core ships, you're doomed in combat.

I'd choose super annihilator, and spend my points on +2 speed, military production, weapons, luck, and the industrialist party. The idea is to colonize few planets and begin warring as soon as you can put a gun on a ship. You shouldn't need much money if you abandon most of the planets you conquer with spore ships.