[quote who="dnzrx" reply="20" id="2987135"]I was thinking about an escort system for freighters where you can assign ships to move with the freighters and protect them.[/quote] Good idea. I would like to see that extended to starbases as well. I find it terribly frustrating when a foreign warship or fleet destroys one of my starbases without engaging my fleet stationed there first.
In a future upgrade, I would like to see the "Guard" and "Sentry" options become more useful -- I have read a couple old forum discussions but nothing that included my proposals below. Apparently, I am not the only one who thinks these options should actually do something. In Dread Lords at least, the game is played at the stratigic level and not the tactical level. As leader of your chosen civilization you make policy decisions that affect planets and your c
Diplomatic Assassination is a random event that occurs with a civilization you are trading with. The level of espionage or level of relations with that civilization or relative strength doesn't matter. In fact, the first two times it happened to me was by a civilization that was an ally -- which really surprised me. Some civilizations had higher and others had lower military power when the assassination occurred. I have learned to keep some fleets in
In addition to achieving "Close" relations, you also need to research the "Alliances" tech (available on the "Interstellar Governments" branch) in order to make an alliance with another civilization. Another relations factor that is harder (but more fun!) to achieve is building a large fleet. I have found that if your fleet has relative parity with another civilization, it won't appear in their factors list; if your fleet has an advantage, it will appear as a single "+"; an
You need to research farming on the green Planetary Improvements technology branch before you can begin building farms. The orange Xeno Engineering technology must be researched before Planetary Improvements (and other technology branches) will become available, though. That should be one of the first things you research, in fact. From your other comments, you are badly in need of the GalCiv wiki web site. It should answer most of your questions and is an essential r
What are some good strategies for using fleets to guard starbases in Dread Lords? Up until now, I have been deploying small fleets of 3 or 4 vessels at each starbase. This works well (so far) against the major civilizations as generally my picket ships detect enemy fleet movements in time to allow me to merge all the small fleets in a section into larger fleets. However, I have discovered the hard way that this strategy backfires when a huge fleet of Pirates appear in a
I ask because in the initial default Dread Lords game, I invested more into espionage of my enemies than my allies -- as one might expect. However, once I achieved the Advanced level against all of the other races, I ended up stealing just about as much technology from my allies as I did my enemies...even though I had considerably more invested in spying on my enemies. Up to now, I have generally left the sliders where they were when I got to the Advanced level for an alien r
I am in my third game of Dread Lords and am still uncertain how much investment to divert for espionage. Specifically, I haven't figured out what to do with the Espionage slider once I have achieved the Advanced level and supposedly know more about that alien race than they do. I don't want to set the slider to zero since I want to be able to steal a technology from them on occasion, but I want to reduce my investment to use the money for other things -- especially ships. An
Ah, yes...the complexity is what is so great about Dread Lords! I am still "tinkering" with things in it to figure out what is affected when I change something. It is encouraging that one can still learn something new about it even after three years. Anyway, thanks again for the advice and wiki address which I am sure I will be using.
Based on your explanation then, the maximum population displayed in parentheses on the planet screen should be the lower of the food limit and absolute Maximum Population for that class of planet. As it is now, the Maximum Population shown for Class 4 planets is misleading, particularly to us novices. I can't imagine that I am the only one who doesn't care about the "food limit" for planet, just the most folks it can handle regardless of the limitations. Many thanks f
Now that I am playing my second game of Dread Lords, I see this as a recurring issue. In both games I've played, all Class 4 planets (like Mars) are listed with a maximum population of 6.0 b, but in every case the population hits a ceiling of 2.5 b. Why do they never get to their listed maximum like all the other planet classes do? Unless I am missing something, shouldn't their maximum populations be listed as 2.5 b instead?
I'm not sure if this is a bug or just me not understanding what this option does and doesn't do. I unchecked the "Full Screen" checkbox on the Video page of the Options screen thinking that it would cause the game (Dread Lords) to open in a separate window and allow me to open other applications without exiting the game. Specifically, since I am playing my first game, I would like to be able to open Word to take notes as I am still figuring out which features are impacted by
[quote who="Sole Soul" reply="1" id="2132650"]Check the lengths that the timelines display for-it may be resetting it back to 0 weeks; just set it to show all (or whatever the equivalent is) and it should work.[/quote] If I click the Show All button, the timeline graphs appear normal up to a particular point and then everything plummets to zero from that point on. Setting the turn limit to anything up to 52 weeks results in an empty timeline. When I begin a game session an
For some reason, all of the timelines for all of the races went to zero at a certain point; that is, up to that point the graphs are normal. This occurred in both the large timeline graphs and the small ones on the control panel at the bottom of the main screen. After continuing to play for a couple of days, I have discovered that when I first start a session the graphs go from zero to the appropriate statistics on the second turn, but when I quit the game and restart it everythin
There is no change in their Diplomatic Timeline. There may be a change in their Economy Timeline, but it jumps up and down so often on a normal basis that it is hard to tell if a vessel disappearance results in an Economic increase. Also, when one of these ships vanishes from a planet's orbit, it is usually replaced a few turns later by what I assume is a new vessel. One of the alien races in my game has begun replacing its disappearing ships with battleships latel
Recently, I have discovered that a ship/vessel in the orbit of an alien planet will vanish for no apparent reason. Initially, it occurred very infrequently, but it is becoming more prevalent as the game progresses. The first few times it occurred, I searched the star map in vain to find them, but then noticed that race's Military rating decreases each time. Lately, however, an orbiting ship will vanish at a planet that is in view when I click the Turn button but I never see
If an alien race responds to my request for an alliance with "That will never happen", do I take that at face value and give up any hope of ever forming an alliance with them? Or, should I keep trying each time I improve my Diplomacy factor? Are there other factors that would prevent them from accepting my alliance request?
I discovered the hard way that the "Auto Attack" command doesn't work on non-enemy vessels. However, I thought the "Sentry" command would get my fleets to challenge a foreign ship when they couldn't advance any closer, but I couldn't get them to react either to the raider or to its victim freighter with that command. The foreign vessels had to be in range since I couldn't get any closer, but fleets under the "Sentry" command would do nothing.
Gee, that was it! I never thought to right-click on the raider; I would create a rally point on the raider, move my fleets until they couldn't advance any further on it, and then try to get them to attack using the check box commands. The "Auto-Attack" command doesn't work on non-enemy ships, I kept getting a message telling me that there was nothing to attack when I tried to use it on the raider. In any case, right-clicking on a vessel to attack it should be
Upsizing and building vessels in the Shipyard isn't the issue. The manual was very helpful and I played around with it a bit and figured out how to use it quickly. In fact, after the Alliance "Defender" and "Star Fury" vessels became available I designed upsized versions of them; since these core vessels came with beam weapons, I put missiles and mass driver weapons on the upsized versions and added some armor to give some "balance" to my navy. The problem i
Yes, this is my first game (the default) in Dread Lords. I have already made several mistakes -- as one would expect -- which I only discovered with hindsight, but want to continue in order to learn from my mistakes and be wiser for the next game. It may well be that I am simply not doing something or doing something wrong due to lack of knowledge -- which is why I am asking for help. At this point in the game, the Drengin raider has been destroyed by a
I am still struggling with the issue of not being able to declare war on anyone. All of the planets of the race I want to attack (Drengin) are guarded by their fleets. If my (Terran) fleets were unable to attack a single lone raider in my space, they are going to be even more inept against alien fleets in their own space with military starbases nearby. Since I first reported this issue, an alien race (Torian) who is an "Ally" has declared war on the hostile race and fighting
Okay, then back to my original question in my Game Play post: How do I get my ships to attack a foreign vessel belonging to an alien race that I am NOT at war with? I surrounded the raider with up to five fleets and in several instances the raider stopped long enough to where my fleets could not advance any further on it from several directions -- so they had to be in range. When that happened, I set my fleets to "Sentry" to get them to challenge the non-enemy
Being a "newbee" playing my first game of Dread Lords, I first reported this problem under Game Talk ("How do I attack a raider?") I'm still not sure if it is something that I am not doing or doing wrong, but the "Sentry" command does not work. Looking at the manual, it is the only command you can give your vessels to react to a non-enemy vessel. However, whether I try to order a fleet or an individual ship to "Sentry" duty, the check box is nullified after I click
Okay, here is the scenario: The raider is a Drengin ship, the victim freighters belong to the Altarians with whom they are at war. I (leader of the Terrans) have "Friendly" relations and Trade routes with both races. At this point, the Drengin raider has destroyed about a half dozen Alterian freighters in and around Earth and the Altarians have discontinued use of two of their trade routes as a result, significantly reducing my income. Strategy failures: A
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