The DLs tend not to escort their transports. If your ships are faster, you can tease the DL warships to chase. Try to invade before the DLs build the first ship. In one game, I send cheap ships crammed with population towards the DL planet as I researched frantically Planetary Invasion, then refitted en route.
Unless TA is different than DA in this regard, I believe the AIs are suffering under a handicap at the "Normal" setting. In DA, at any rate, any difficulty level below "Tough - Max CPU" has the AI playing with a negative handicap. At that setting, the AI gets neither a handicap nor any bonuses. The AI does not begin to get bonuses until the difficulty setting is advanced further.
Unless TA is different than DA in this regard, I believe the AIs are suffering under a handicap at the "Normal" setting. In DA, at any rate, any difficulty level below "Tough - Max CPU" has the AI playing with a negative handicap. At that setting, the AI gets neither a handicap nor any bonuses. The AI does not begin to get bonuses until the difficulty setting is advanced further.
Iztok - I only play on Suicidal. As jacklv already noted, researching out everything is routinely done in larger games. For that matter, I have found it very tough to win at Suicidal with the largest all-abundant galaxies simply because the AI bonuses will take them to the Research Victory before I can exterminate them. One long game I lost was when I was racing to kill off one enemy because I had gotten their 10-turn warning and, two or three turns befor
There's several ways to look at this. Consider that you are in for a lonnng game. What % of the time will you be building improvements on any specific planet? Or, once your Empire has reached its natural boundaries and you begin to gear for serious war with high-end systems on your ships, how many of your planets will be your main fleet warship source? Or, how long will you be researching? Eventually, you have gotten done what you need and shift away and almost
Yes, Research is the issue in all fac. That's why I do the work-around I posted for the first dozen or so turns. Later, once you've expanded, there's more than enough research flowing in with focus, just as long as you're using good factories.
They nerfed All Fac in TA, or so I've seen posted. In DA, I've beaten it on Suicidal with All Fac and only play the largest galaxies, all abundant, etc. However, I do a twist that you might need to use also in TA. I use the Control-N maneuver to get a homeworld with bonus tiles for morale and research, and maybe even another for production. The 7x tiles are very rare, but I can generally get one or two 3x ones. Buy a research building on the research b
Two books, _On Death Ground_ and _Shiva Option_ by Weber and White. Huge fleets, transiting warp-worm-holes. Battle stations, mines, various ship classes, missile and beam and slug weapons. Short range fighters launched from carriers. The works.
[quote]My ships have pretty low attack, and theirs have higher attack. Mine have no defense whatsoever, and theirs have a value of two for the 3 types. Also, they produce much faster than me... This game is hard.[/quote] The above shows why you lost the battles. Every hit on your ship went against its hull (hitpoints), while most or maybe even all of the hits you scored bounced off their defenses. The mechanics of battles favors defenses early in the game.&nbs
Go back to a save game just before one of those space battles that you lost. Click on the enemy ship or fleet. Compare the enemy attack factor, defense factor, and hitpoints to the ship/fleet of yours. Compare the enemy attack weapon (beam? missile? gun?) to your defense (shield? anti-missile? armor?), and yours to that of the enemy. In general, it is best to have your weapon not match the enemy's defense, while it is a good thing to have your defense match the
DL, DA, or TA? What difficulty level? You might play some sandbox games first. If you have trouble there, tell us how big a galaxy, what galaxy settings, how many AIs, how many minor races, etc. There are some tutorials out there. Hopefully, someone will provide some links.
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I do not play TA, but I do recall threads on this, so you might look in the thread history. IIRC, posters believed that the behavior was due to the evil AIs being unwilling to colonize planets in Influence zones of other empires (due to flipping concerns in the strategy math). Thus, the evil AIs would seem to stop expanding as soon as they reached a border.
Keep in mind that starbases can be built by constructors in the cheapest hull in which they will fit and w/o engines. Once the constructor is done, just adjust which square into which the ship will launch from the planet, launch, and build an influence base, and add influence modules the same way.
On your #6, I would offer that the presence of escorting warships should prevent that. IOW, the warships conceptually would always interpose themselves. Thus, the support ships should not be able to be targeted until all the escorts are destroyed or de-weaponed. If the battlespace is offered for tactical fighting, the escorts should always start (be placed) between the attackers and the ships being escorted.
The Dreadlords do attack in DA sandbox, though I've not seen them for a while.
The bug is that they will not trade anything for planets. The only reason I can think of why you would not see techs would be if they stole none that you did not already have.
The Espionage one is interesting. Somewhere in these threads, I saw a reference to a math analysis. In a smaller galaxy, one simply worked to nullify, nullify, nullify and then move on. In a larger galaxy, however, when one had lots of planets, it was generally cheaper to demolish the asset and rebuild, due to the steep rises in spy costs. That is, once one has more than a certain number of planets on which there are spies to nullify, it became cheaper to rebuild than
Wow! I've never had the Pirates event, not the Peacekeepers one. In fact, since I've gone to Suicidal, I've not even seen the DreadLords. I've hypothesized that the game must have some pre-event check that looks to the strengths of the Empires before the randomly-selected event is actually imposed. Then, if the Empires are too strong, the event does not happen. By the time enough turns have passed such that those events are enable
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I bought DA/DL, play DA, and enjoy it. I have not bought TA. Games that look pretty but are not fun and challenging to play do not interest me. In 4X games, the AI is paramount. If TA were fixed, I would buy it. If it is not fixed, I will not buy it - - it is as simple as that.
Exactly!
I like to build a nexus at a 4-quadrant corner for a fleet rendezvous, then put 16 SBs so that the +2 speed boosts add 32 movement factors to the fleet. This allows easy intercepts, a strong invasion thrust that can pick off a lot of planets on that first invasion turn, and can also allow non-engine ships and constructors to be used in that first turn.
I had OOM crashes, too, and also have to play the game with the display settings minimized. But -Dude!- if you're going to complain of poor quality, you ought to get your spelling right. I stopped counting after ten mistakes.
Willy - #18 Yes, it's the same in DA, the end of a long research path. However, in my current Suicidal strategies, I try to delay wars until I am ready. I end up researching just about everything I need and simply leave some research coming in late, and I research those techs then. Meanwhile, I am assembling the invasion fleets, etc.
In DA, there are three 30 attack modules for starbases, one for each weapon type, and three 16 defense modules, one for each defense type. If I decide to arm my bases, I generally use the two 30 attack modules that work best against the enemy defenses and the one 16 defense module that matches the enemy weapon type.
I never trade. The key element seems to be not to build on most or nearly all colonized planets until the populations grow enough to make them relatively financially independent. Depending on racial bonuses, that number seems to vary from maybe 700M to 1200M. I tend to use 1000M as my default to begin building. If I snag a high Q planet early, or one with some great tiles or great bonuses, then I do develop it some early and accept the hit. Gene