Bribing

It can depend on the strength of the Ai you want attacked. If to powerfull they wont no matter how much money you give. (:(

You can sweeten the deal with technologies too.

Well the Yor (whom I was trying to get invaded) and the Drengin were both at "average" military power ..I think I was "weakest" or somesuch but I didn't want to give away the Techs I had to them ...I had alot of Diplo and Industrial techs (the Industrial just cause I didn't want them to build up too quickly). Oh well, I'll just try to culture flip them I guess ..though I haven't been successful at this yet ..prolly don't have enough time in the demo to complete it.

If the Drengin won't go to war with the Yor, bribe the Yor to go to war with the Drengin. Doesn't really matter who starts it, the result is the same.

Culture flipping may require a lot of Starbased built around the area in question. I have had to build 9 SB in one sector to make them flip before. There is a limit to how many you can build.

9 SB's?!? ack! I've never had to use more than 2 ..well for single planets ..takes more if they have multiple planets nearby. I've figured out my problem though, I don't know what to research to get what I want half the time! I just wander around the tech tree researching this or that instead of having a coherent strategy about it.

Oh and I hardly ever build ANY military ...I start trading with them as soon as I meet them and keep them at friendly/close while I try to culturally assimilate them. I understand this isn't viable at higher difficulties, but at Normal it works fine unless you Ally with someone and they drag you into a war.

Hey I had some Event where some of my guys found a class 35 planet ..but I couldn't find it anywhere! I'm like wtf! I got to thinking maybe I misread it and it wasn't me that found it, but I couldn't find it anywheres.

I've never seen that event happen to any world I already have. I think it reads, "Alien archeologists...", the operative word being ALIEN (Not of your own). If you go long enough into the game, you are sure to "aquire" this world though! LOL LOL LOL

What isn't viable?

Researching all depends on your play style. I myself go with High Diplomacy and max influence at the beginning for attributes. I will toss in either Economics along with it and sometimes Moral or slam it into trade.

I then will go for the techs that will give me good diplomatic relations with the races. I also shoot straight for any techs that will provide even more influence.

I do try to go back and forth on the different types of techs as I reach certain points. This is where the tree splits off in a few directions. If you play with a Mod like Icho Tolots.. You will end up missing some techs many times if your not careful.

This is of course not practical if your playing another way, and my ideas are not always the best. I am a normal skill level player. I think my suggestions will work for about anyone.

Why use a max influence attribute?

It is a viable option. One that I use all of the time. Seems to me that you can get the same result using bribing no matter what level you are playing on.

Agree w/ Chip. It was probably an Alien race that found it. Although I have had it happen about 5 times to me in 200 plus games.



I have never used influence but I am interested in knowing how it affects your game. My only guess would be that it helps to keep your planents from flipping and may help you flip others?

I like to go for a 5% PQ bonus myself.

The higher your influence, the more the AIs will give you things for free. When you are the highest influencer in the game, I have had AI give me Dreadnaught Tech and related war techs that they will not trade for.

What I was saying wasn't viable is building no military at all - I thought at MASO you had to atleast have some petty ships as SOME deterrent. Am I wrong in this? I've not been even building a defender much less battleships (even though sometimes I get that tech first by trading for techs with the minors that are in the requirement tree).

5th game submitted!! (should have been the 6th but I think it overwrote that EndGameSave with another).

Oh btw, high influence does help you culture flip too - I was using that but decided to go +60diplo/+1trade route ..and something else, I forget. Morale I think.

Well, I play all games at maso with a no military game. You just need:
- to accept all demand of tribute (or refuse and offer something else immediately)
- build an important economy
- stay out wars and try to start wars between AI
- being the first trade partners for all AI
- have a high diplomacy rating to have be successfull on the diplomatic scene

I have only played a few games but, most of those were with high influence, in my latest submitted game, I hardly ever invaded a planet. What I did was place a SB with max culture in a sector bordering 3 or more sectores belonging to the target empire, and in a few turns I had one or more stars flipping. With high influence you can even colonise a low PQ planet, 12 or so, and watch the surrounding systems flip.

And having 50%+ of the votes in the UP dosn't hurt either.

One drawback of this aproach to a military victory is that the last planet might bee a long time in flipping.

Research, Inc Pol Party starts with a 5% pq bonus which ups the pq by 1, right? well if I chose (from my starting picks) an extra 5% would it up it 2?

Well 10% of 14 is 1.4 so no it will not upp it by more than one.

And as far as I remember +5% on a PQ14 gives you a PQ14 planet. There is a chart somewhere in the library that details the starting PQ and bonus results for all PQ levels and a good number of bonuses.

Nope. PQ are rounded down. So with only 5% PQ bonus, you need a class 20 planet so see a change in the PQ.
But if you take 5% from a political party and 5% from picks, you get 10% bonus. YOu will then get an increase of 1 PQ for planet ranging from 10 to 19. It would be 2 for a PQ 20.

Had that happen lots of times. Now I know why...