Check how much pop the AI puts on their col ships. IIRC it is minimal, because they are optimised to keep almost all population on high-PQ planets where growth rates will be the highest. You can use transports and col ships to move your own population around.
Stardock Forums
The AI is as far as I can tell highly optimised for early game expansion (colony rush, resource rush) and also gets a lot of bonuses to various stats depending on diff level. Try using propaganda to maximise your population growth, concentrate your population on high-PQ planets and if necessary destroy enemy col-ships in the early game to get ahead in the colony rush. The AI races also trade among each other (or get tech via demands) and if you don't participate in this you are likely t
It makes it a bit more important to control space around your systems whereas now you can turtle (stay in orbit for the combat bonus) with no ill effect and I would love to see some more uses for Starfighters so I hope it will be considered for the expansion pack.
It's definitely available (see my submitted games) ;)
Stardock Forums
I've played it and enjoyed it. The game diff is definitely up, I had to step back and do some relearning as the AI is now much more challenging than in 1.02. It runs stable even with some Library mods installed.
According to Stardock most of the crash issues were caused by 3rd party mods from the Library. Did you install any user mods?
As a Swedish citizen who is living and working in Scotland with ***no need*** for visas, work permits etc and automatically getting electoral rights in Scottish elections I've experienced the benefits of union. Go EU!
Try setting your spending to 0% for a while (to build a cash reserve), then pay the other races to attack each other. They will destroy starbases so stand by to rush in with your constructors, also you may be able to position some transports and invade undefended planets when you are ready to fight again.
Logged another victory btw - Empire score is now 95855.8. I had to step down from Crippling/Gigantic to Tough/Medium in order to re-learn the game, 1.04 is a bit harder than 1.02 LOL but the starbase maintenance change didn't really affect things much IMHO.
The links work fine, I'll see if I can do some work on tables and such for the site. Maybe a collection of hints and tips as well... I don't have any PHP skills for setting up a forum and my webspace probably doesn't allow me to run a forum anyway :( What's the limits on the site you put up, can we run scripts etc?
Just finished an Alliance Victory game with the Yor as my loyal sidekicks. They had very large fleets and kept pounding the Arceans, Torians and Altarians making for an easy victory. In a little twist at the end, the Altarians surrendered to the Yor rather than to me.
Hehe, we obviously need our own forum so we can avoid these attempts by other empires at stirring up trouble LOL
The buffer starbase is really only for early game (ie before battleships). It doesn't work against capital ships and AMMs until late-game with the last few defence modules. Regarding number of starbases and maintenance cost the key here is that there is no cost to establish a starbase (ie like the Terror Star 5000 bc cost so you can build a starbase, let it do it's (specialised) task and disband it again. Constructors are cheap on larger galaxies where you have 50-100 colonies and can't
Right now there's no effect from isolating a planet. The economy still ticks over as usual, you can rush build ships and the population is happy. Perhaps there should be a penalty if a planet is blockaded, say a -20% economy penalty, -20% morale penalty and no rush rush build of ships. I think it should also stop any production bonus from starbases. Blockading could be defined simply as for example four of the adjacent squares being enemy-occupied or perhaps it could require starfighter
Snyggt jobbat ;) Ga med i European Alliance nu sa vi kan visa jankarna vem som kan strategi bast :) In my current (1.04) game the Drengin built up a military resource in Earth sector (!) and didn't garrison it at all with ships (!!!). While I love the way they snuck in to steal the resource while I was rushing to beat the Torians to two other resource with my first constructors, I was quite disappointed that they didn't defend their base with a few cruisers. If the Drengin had held
I found 50% tax rate to be a good spot for one of my games, but then I had a few morale-boosters (ability + political + resources + trade goods). On medium maps there's a lot to be said for higher taxes with selective propaganda to boost morale to 100 where needed while on gigantic maps it's just hopeless to micromanage propaganda. The game desperately needs a Propaganda Governor.
You can pop down a starbase and add a few defence modules where you expect the AI to attack. It will waste many ships trying to destroy the starbase, as long as you have decent repair tech the starbase will survive for a long time. If the enemy fleet is always targetting a certain sector and has a tech advantage then place a few starbases there, add modules to increase ATT/DEF of your ships and fight the enemy only within that sector. If the enemy is garrisoning key planets w
In my current 1.04 game the Arceans are building a lot of influence starbases. They are in a terrible position though so I don't think it will matter in the end game (famous last words!). They are also the most active race when it comes to gifting starships to assist somebody in a war against whoever is strongest. Bribing races to fight each other is extremely useful, not only does it keep their fleet strength down (thus it becomes easier to avoid tribute demands) but it also tends to p
Torians and Altarians should be quite reliable, I've found it quite easy to work with them as allies.
I'm halfway through a 1.04 game now, does anybody know if beta games will submit results to metaverse?
*shrug* It's a way to find out if there's other game developers etc among the forum members. I know of at least one non-Stardock game designer who hangs around here, there's bound to be more.
Yet ;)
I also habitually trade trade goods to minors but limit what I sell to majors unless I'm really desperate for cash. If another race develops 2-3 trade goods I usually go to war over it, once you destroy their fleet they will usually beg for peace and offer up the goods if you demand them.
I've also stepped down in diff level (after two abortive starts) to try out 1.04 and found that it helps to specialise in military tech. The Yor and Drengin will give anything to get their hands on certain ship-enabling techs and the minors certainly seem willing to hand over a lot of cash for mil-tech as well. I wonder if the Arceans will pay extra for influence boosting techs seeing as they now seem to pursue a culture strategy (judging by the module choices anyway).
Well it would limit population gain via culture flipping and put improvements at risk - a good thing IMHO. It just seems wrong that an entire star system decides en masse to defect with no struggle at all from security forces etc.