CraigHB

CraigHB

Joined Member # 2525151
3 Posts 80 Replies 15,829 Reputation

Am I missing something? Yes. There are "free" bonuses for every race and they vary. When you reset the bonuses from the setup menu, you'll see them remaining. BTW, don't clear those or you're giving yourself a handicap. They're free and supposed to be there. These are, in part, what sets the races apart. Other factors are home planet PQ

28 Replies 13,523 Views

Yea, I think you definitely need to help things along as far as development. I often buy the first factory or two on a planet to get things moving. Later in the game, I may even shut off social spending at times and buy all my improvements. Letting things grow on their own would be a serious handicap AFAIC.

23 Replies 16,916 Views

what is up with people and 70+% in taxes I always run taxes high as I can without putting approval into the red. I keep overall morale in the green, but individual planets I'll run to the bottom of the yellow. I just take the reproduction hit until I can get approval up. I run the 70% population bonus to counter it. Don't know if that's the best w

13 Replies 9,293 Views

I'd hardly call constant crashes convenient, but that's just me Gawd I hate the software industry. I can't tell you how much time I've lost and will never get back dealing with computer software. I'm so fed-up with upgrade hell and problematic software I could spit. Thanks Bill Gates. So, rather than correcting an incompatability issue inv

34 Replies 16,718 Views

Well, I've got a pretty up-to-date gaming system, Athlon 64 4000+, nVidia 7900 GT and I get a stutter in the explosions. This system runs much more graphically demanding games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 butter smooth at high quality settings. So, I think there may be something a bit lacking in the explosion department. If you're running something as low-end and old as an FX 5500, that problem is going to be magnified 10 fold. You can shut off explosions or live with it. For me, it's not a big

42 Replies 25,054 Views

I know they get something because I've seen groups of colonizers 10 sectors away from any starbase or planet they own within the first 6 months of a game. They're able to do that even on intelligent, it just takes a bit longer. There's no way a human player can jump out of the gate like that without a pretty darn big treasury and some serious life support. Short of accusing the AI of cheating, they're getting some kind of bonus at the start. I'm not complaining because I kick their butts in

23 Replies 16,916 Views

Trick is to look at your opponent's ships before going to war with them. It doesn't cost that much to get advanced espionage so start putting money into it as soon as you can afford it. Look at how your opponent is outfitting his ships. The AI tends to specialize in one type of weapon and defense. Initially. build your ships weak with respect to theirs, don't defend against their weapon specialty and build weapons to counter their defense specialty. That will trick them into staying on thei

12 Replies 5,203 Views

The AI gets a lot of bonuses that help it get a good jump in the beginning. It has to be that way because expert human players can smoke them at anything below incredible intelligence. When I first started playing, it irritated me that the AI was able to get such a good jump on me. Now I don't worry about it. You can out-smart them and out-play them further into the game. Just hang in there. Use diplomacy and cultural conquest to get more planets. Bribe losing races so they surr

23 Replies 16,916 Views

I think one of two things will happen. Either man suffer some kind of cataclysm and get reduced to living like he did 10,000 years ago or, will not and continue to develop culturally and technologically. In that case, the game could be true to reality in that man will have discovered a "hyperdrive" of sorts and go to the stars. Don't know that the galactic pioneers would meet Drengins and Thalans and the like, but they'd probably find lots of interesting things to say the least. Tr

28 Replies 14,766 Views

Yea, hehe, you can spend less on a card capable of running the game than the game costs itself. However, most PC gamers spend at least a couple hundred on their video card. Extreme video systems can cost close to $1000. I spent $350 myself, always the most expensive component in the computer.

5 Replies 6,552 Views

Yea, baffles me how you can accomplish a military conquest in 2 or 3 years with Gigantic on Suicidal. But, it's possible and the Metaverse scores prove it. I guess you have to come out swinging, but I never have the nerve to do that. More power to the masters.

11 Replies 11,427 Views

I like the way the influence bases work. In fact, "flipping" planets is a really fun part of the game. I don't find it all that easy. For me, I have to install all the influence increasing modules (11 in all) to really get a good probability. On top of that, I need a fairly effective overall influence level. I've had planets that wouldn't flip and have had to delete the base due to its impact on relations. They notice them and will get hostile if you try to initiate an all-out influence at

11 Replies 7,427 Views

Not using Stardock Central. Don't see the need for it other than having ready access to live support. The forum seems to work well enough for that and I download the updates from the web site. Web site states version 1.2, should say 1.21. Game seems to be running better with the latest update. I'm not getting lags and disk activity when closing the game down like I was before which is a good sign. Haven't made it to the end of my current game yet (where I was having problems befor

37 Replies 24,695 Views

I think the most fun part of the game is the first battle. The result pretty much determines the course of the game. Enjoy!!! Really looking forward to the 1.3 update. Sounds like a good one.

8 Replies 6,174 Views

Be stonger than the AI yea, but to expand, use diplomacy to hold off war. The AI will get a head very quickly, but you can catch up and pass them later. Hold off on war until you are stronger than them. It takes a human player longer to develop resources than the AI. But once you do, you get stronger pretty quick.

12 Replies 9,746 Views

That's not very nice. You should be happy for people when they get cool stuff, like a drivers license, a new video card, etc. If you can't share that stuff with people than what's the point of having friends, and we should be friends here since we have a common gaming interest.

12 Replies 11,333 Views

Did you upgrade to the latest official build of 1.2? They had some memory leaks with the first release of 1.2 that were fixed by a later official patch. Hey, thanks for that. Yes I was using an old build (dated 6/15). I downloaded and installed the latest one. I figured the version number would change on a new build...Stardock, please add another

37 Replies 24,695 Views