questions from A to Z

Not sure I understand the question. Each AI has its own personal opinion of you.


No military = build only non-military ships such as constructors and colony ships and freighters. No defense ships.


When a ship or base is defending and it has more defense points than attack points, it gets bonus attack points equal to half its defence points. So if a starbase had 0 attack and 10 defence, it effectively had 5 attack points. Your battleaxe would not have got the any bonus points because it was attacking, not defending.


It's up to you. I keep it at 100 for as long as possible, even if it takes me into debt. This is risky, as it means I can't bribe AIs or build multiple starbases. Usually, trade will build up and after a while you can get out of debt while still spending at a 100.


I tend to pick my current priority and set that to 100%. If I'm colonising or preparing to fight, 100 military. If I'm building a trade good, 100 social. If neither, 100 research.

~SDC~

If you don't build any defense ships then how do you keep the evil civs from declaring war on you?

I bribe them to attack anyone they're trading with. Eventually, they end up doing all their trade with me. At this point, they can't possibly afford to attack me, as their economy would collapse.
I also give them free techs occasionally if relations are really bad.
And a strong military isn't the only thing that they are afraid of. A really strong economy has a similar effect.
___
Why not join:-
an alliance!
The Fellowship, for example.http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=329
[Message Edited]

when you tell them to attack another race, does that race know it was you who said that, or do you still remain cool with them?

As for allying goes, it's really a matter of degree. For instance, if you are bad, and the AI is bad, then they are more likely to ally with you (simiarl morality). However, the good civs will have a less than ideal view of you. If you remain neutral all game, the neutral allies will view you the best, but you could still have decent relations with the other civs as well. It might be tough to get any of the civs to ally with you, but they'll be less likely to attack you based on morality alone.

As far as building zero ships, it's very possible. You simply keep good relations with one (or more civs) and have them fight your wars for you. Or like Matt said, have the civs fight each other. As long as they are busy with another threat, they are less likely to attack you.

As far as the sliders go, I believe Matt had that correct as well. Going 100% on any one tree will most likely lead to benefits faster than 33% in each slider. Later in the game, you can adjust the sliders when you know a research project will not take 100% of the research for that turn, but that's more of a turn by turn adjustment, and not necessarily required.

They don't seem to notice or care that you just bribed someone to launch a major war against them.

~SDC~

Brackard and anyone else good with adjusting the individual spending sliders - I had some questions...

Whenever I adjust my sliders, I notice my income falls rapidly at some point - and to maintain level, I end up having to take my overall spending down to the point that it just doesn't seem to help (i.e. I start with even split 33% on the sliders, and say 85% overall spending. Military isn't important right now, so I knock the military down to about 10%, and let the others rise to 45% each. In order to maintain the same income level, I find I have to drop my overall government spending down to as low as 45% or so...)

Is this a factor of my government? I thought I remembered something about a "inefficiency penalty" when focusing on one area - is this it? And any hints on working around it (besides just having lots of cash - I normally redline my economy, and don't really see a huge surplus until late in the game...)

Most of all, it doesn't seem worth it to me for big adjustments - I end up with far less production, even in the area I'm trying to emphasize, than if I'd just left things alone. Is everyone else just leaving their overall spending at 100% when they adjust sliders?

Does your income really decrease? I'd noticed the drop in net income when I put a higher percentage into research, too, but I wasn't paying attention to income and just thought it was because my research capacity was so much more than my production capacity.

~SDC~

Could someone explain this, I have 88bc coming in each month, my tax rate is at 38% when I raise it up my money goes down to 67bc a month, why is that? And my moral was at I belive in the mid70s

One possibility is people don't like high taxes, if you set it too high some people will just stop paying taxes and your income will go down.

~SDC~

Yes, the type of governement factor in efficiency in collecting taxes and spending them. When you research a technology that allow a new governement (diplomacy, star democracy, star federation), a popup offers you to change the governement. But no popup appears if you gain them by trade with AI.

That tends to happen when you have a massive research bonus. A big research bonus allows you to spend far more per turn when research is high as you can when military/social is high. The only things you can do is cut research spending, destroy your Research Centres, or increase your income.


It's related to morale - try checking out your individual planets to see how they're performing. When a particular planet's morale goes really low, your tax income there suffers. I tend to keep taxes at 50% all the time. Population will grow until morale falls to 54% or so. If you increase taxes when morale is already at 54%, it will fall further, harm income, and sometimes cause rebellions. By keeping taxes fairly high all the time, your population level will max out sooner, so this is unlikely to happen.

~SDC~

Ok, I am far from an expert, just spitting out what people have told me, and what I've verified through playing.

With spending, Matthew is correct. Take research for example. Research is set to 100% and you can still make a profit. Now you build a TON of new labs. Your ability to research has increased dramatically. So when you go back to research 100%, that 100% now encompasses a larger research production than it did before building labs. This will be the same case for military, social, and research. Some will have max productions different than others depending on what your abilities are, what you build, etc. This is why you see a decrease in income, you're spending more in a specific area.

The government change allows you to increase spending in all areas, so you're able to spend more in each area individually.

As far as spending at 100%, this is what you want. More is good. However, debt is bad so assuming you can't spend at 100% all the time, you'll eventually need to cut back spending, or increase income (tax, trade, selling tech, etc.) I find I don't touch my overall money slider much, but I'll touch my tech/social/military each time I change game 'phases'.

Taxes: Taxes run on a bell curve. Low in the beginning, peak in the middle, low at the end. So as taxes get higher, the amount of people above the 'poverty' level decreases, and eventually you'll find less overall money coming into the treasury. **Note that as taxes are raised, satisfaction and morale decrease. Morale directly affects the population growth on planets, so you'll need to watch this.