Jamest65

One of the things with this game (and TBS games in general) is that things do develop very slowly at first. I would recomend a few things: 1. Go to the domestic screen and set your tax rate to 39% (this should get you a bit more money without sacrificing too much morale) and your spending rate to 100%. Ideally, you should do this on turn 1. This will speed up things in terms of building stuff. 2. Rush-buy the first factory on your homeworld - again, this will increase the speed th

I would definitely like to see the UP playing much more of a role in the game. Personally, I thought the SMAC planetary council idea worked really well, with players able to propose motions and bribe others to force their ideas through. At the moment the UP is just another random factor and IMO doesn't really add that much to the game.

A couple of things: Firstly, with the whole freighter upgrade thing you were talking about, this isn't really an issue since once they've established a trade route all mini-freighters move with speed 1. The speed of your freighter designs only affects how fast they move when establishing the route. Also, you can obsolete old designs without decomissioning the freighters to prevent your shipyard screen getting too clogged up. Secondly, tactical combat. This has been disc

#3, I can see why you called yourself angryrussian! Take a chill pill, dude! Seriously, though, the AI in this game is very good, considering that it's playing under exactly the same conditions as the player (though it gets economy bonuses on the highest difficulty levels). Personally I wouldn't mind if the AI cheated in certain minor ways in order to improve the playing experience but I appreciate wholeheartedly what Stardock are trying to do and if they can keep improving

No - building farms IS a good idea, since more people = increased tax revenue and more troops available . However, you need to build morale buildings (entertainment networks etc) to keep them happy, typically at a ratio of rougly 1:1 (with one for the initial colony as well) in the early game and less later on. Hope this helps

I've seen 2 class 26's in my games - one was mine in one of my early games, the other belonged to the Korx in the last one I finished - tho they surrendered it to me when they were getting hammered by the Torians . Never seen anything better than that.

Bumpity bump.

Hi everyone, I thought it would be interesting to find out what galaxy setup people find most enjoyable. My personal preference is to play with all ten races in a large galaxy with occasional planets and habitable planets, common and scattered stars, rare anomalies and normal tech rate. This tends to create a nice balance at the start with everyone ending up with round about 3-6 planets - I love micromanagement so I don't want to have too many planets in my empire. <b

That's probably the problem - your video and sound drivers are both dated 2002. Try updating them and see if that helps.

These sound like interesting ideas - I'd definitely like to see the galaxy have more topology than it does at the moment. Of course, it depends on how easy it would be to program the AI to use and be aware of these things sufficiently well that it wouldn't simply give the player yet another advantage. I have no knowledge of such matters at all but I suspect, given that there are still plenty of other seemingly simpler things, like planet management, that the AI is sub-optimal at that it would

Just an idea that's come to me as I've been reading the stuff concerning starbase micromanagement - I've no idea how this would work, it's just a spur-of-the-moment idea. Personally, I don't play on big enough maps to have problems micromanaging starbases. How about having a building option that allows you to funnel military production from a planet directly into upgrading starbases? This could either involve setting a planet to upgrade a particular starbase, or just adding to a civ

As others have said, I find trade useful mainly as a diplomatic tool. I tend to send a few trade routes to each of the empires which border mine in order to keep them sweet. Once I start attacking people the routes get moved over to the nations which are now bordering my new, expanded empire . In terms of money I find that trade can be helpful early on to augment revenue from selling tech in order to fi

Damn, had no idea this was going on. Just played my first 1.1 metaverse game as the Drengin and got flagged as a cheater. Didn't pay any attention to what was going on at the start of the game as the racial settings were exactly the same as those I used with 1.0X and I got no cheater flag there. At least I'll know what to do for next time but it's still a right royal pain in the a***.

This is something with quite a precedent in sci-fi in general - in Stargate SG-1 the humans often use Goa'uld / Asgard technology without knowing how it works. That doesn't prevent them from being able to use it though, just means that they can't really use it to it's full potential. In terms of game balance, IMO it's not really that big a problem (if you see it as that) except in the campaign. In sandbox mode, if someone is far enough ahead of you in tech for you to be stealing som

No-one apart from me ever gets a chance to do well in my games . Seriously though, I find that it depends mainly on who gets the best starting positions.

My games barely get past the first tier of weapons techs (ie. as far as Harpoon, Plasma weapons etc) before they're all over! Admittedly I've only just got 1.1 so things may slow down now that pop growth's been nerfed, and I don't play on bigger than large Galaxies, but still...

Sounds good to me

Personally I don't buy any gaming magazines so I can't really help. Sorry. I can definitely see the logic in your idea though - showing people what the game is like rather than telling them seems like an excellent idea.

Personally I don't buy any gaming magazines so I can't really help. Sorry. I can defintiely see the logic in your idea though - showing people what the game is like rather than telling them seems like an excellent idea.

Post deleted - would help if I read the whole of the first post before replying!

You got my vote.

It would make sense for the AI to attack when it's behind economically IF the AI were playing like a human trying to win the game. However I read somewhere else (from one of the devs I think, possibly Brad) that the AI is supposed to play like a galactic empire ie. it should do everything possible to prevent you stomping on it. And yes, the whole 'let's declare war then sit here doing nothing for a while before sending a few unguarded transports towards the enemy' thing doesn't help

This does seem rather silly. IMHO you should get more points for winning quickly than dragging the game out - with a military/alliance/culture victory a quicker win is obviously harder than a slow one. Even for a tech victory their should be a reasonably high correlation between how well you've played and how quickly you win - though the timescale in question would be somewhat longer. Personally I would like this for another reason - i

* double post *

I agree with DrAtomic1 - since this information is effectively available anyway (if you check the treaty screen every turn) it shouldn't require espionage. Announcement of significant changes in relations between main races (declaration of war/ peace treaty / formation of alliance) ought imo to appear as popups. Since the information is available anyway it wouldn't change the game at all but would simply make sure you're up to speed with what's going