I agree with Mr. Lucky. I remember reading something from Frogboy or some other official-type person saying that if you are constatly changing your tax rate around your morale will be hurt. This is to prevent people from dropping their tax rate just before elections and then raising it again just afterward. I've no idea how often is "too often" to adjust the rate, or if there is some sort of threshold that is safe.
I have also noticed this and wondered about it.
One more thing: Corvettes are pretty decent if you get them early and are fighting mostly defenders. But if you don't plan to do that, you can skip photon tech and corvette tech entirely and head straight for Frigates and/or Battlecruisers instead. The AI doesn't do this, though, so be prepared for the possibility of them building loads of corvettes and trying to extort or invade you.
Battlehammers have been tweaked in the 1.03 patches so that they and Frigates are more nearly comprable. Dreadnaughts are clearly better than either. And I think the fastest possible route to Dreadnaught involves getting the tech for Frigates but not Battlehammers. So you might well be better off ignoring Battlehammers now and making do with Frigates while you progress towards Dreadnaughts. Otherwise I agree with Ironhawk. Either Frigates or Battlehammers are better than Battlecruisers.
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This is good info guys, thanks!
DEEP HURTING! DEEEEEEEP HURTING!!!
It could be that your economy never recovered because you drained off so much of your population trying to counteract the negative morale that came from being so deeply in debt. If you reduced your population too much, too fast, then your income may have dropped to the point that you couldn't work your way out of debt. To put it another way: If you lower population pressure, morale generally improves. But lower population means less taxes. If you are in debt, your morale suffers. If yo
I've heard of this. Never had it happen to me yet, thankfully. These Dreadlords or whatever they're called are a very nasty random event. As I understand it, if you hear that they are coming your best move is to destroy the colony where they're "rising" before they become active. Otherwise they'll appear, with very powerful ships, too powerful to beat with anything but the very late game weapons.
Joel, Frank, Dr. Forrester, and the bots were the best cast. Mike is OK, but the show really dropped off when Frank and then Dr. F left. I am deeply torn between which bot was best but will give Tom the edge because of his beautiful singing voice and ability to bi-locate. I rank Pod People as my favorite episode. Not only is the movie absurd ("Trumpy would never hurt anyone!") and the riffing great, but it has (I believe) the ludicrous "Hired!" short preceeding it, and features the Rene
I found two purple stars in my current game. They have habitable, but not exceptional, planets orbiting them. Their base influence level is much higher than other stars. The manual briefly mentions stars associated with the precursors that you can occasionally find that have unusually high influence.
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I have definitely seen cases where my planet is attacked by say a Frigate, and rather than fighting with my BattleHammer with the big defense and hit points, the Frigate destroys a Corvette or a BattleCruiser. Personally, I think this sucks. We have specialized attacker and defender ships, we should be able to use the tough defenders to protect the fragile attackers.
I had a game where early on I was marginally good but militarily very weak. The Torians were nearby and had the biggest military. They (correctly) saw me as easy prey and attacked. The Altarians, who were off on the far side of the Torain Empire smooshed into a corner, gave me ships on several turns trying to help me defeat the Torians. I had to give up on that one though, the Torians smashed me even with the aid.
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Well, my ships do ask before starting a war. I take it you mean ask before attacking someone you are already at war with? I guess that would be nice, yeah...
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I agree with MojoJojoUK. If you ask me the entire military needs to be reworked. As it stands, it seems like the only ships anyone uses much are Defenders, Battleaxes, Battlehammers, and Dreadnoughts. Sure, you might throw in a few battlecruisers or battleships along the way, or possibly even a few Overlords or whatnot toward the end, but its mostly just those 4 ships. Kinda dull, if you ask me.
I get at least half of my constructors by using them as a sort of default military build for any place I don't need real military units from. That adds up after awhile. I don't play a SB heavy strategy but I still have no trouble getting a few in my most important sectors this way.
The best PQ I have seen on a planet before colonization and improvement is 26. Found two of those right next to each other once. :)
Whups... I meant to start my previous message with "Interstellar, in..."
Intelligent, in another thread you mention you are playing the 1.02 patch. I believe one of the changes in 1.03 was to make the AI less willing to pay for techs and stuff (or at least, not willing to pay as much). They also demand more in return if you are asking for something from them. These two changes ought to go a long way towards resolving the second of the problems you mention.
I think the War Party is fine, and certainly one of the best if you plan to be aggressive. But head and shoulders above the rest? I don't think so. The other parties have bonuses that are going to be a constant help to you. A bonus to your economy, or trade, or morale, will help you from the moment the game begins until the second it ends. The War Party's big hitpoint bonus only actually matters when you are fighting with someone. And if you aren't playing aggressively, this will hopefully be a
Already posted on this in the main bugs thread, but I figured I might as well chime in here... The game no longer exits properly. The screen goes black and locks up when I quit, or when I Alt-Tab out. The problems started when I installed the first 1.03 patch. I've been able to load 1.02 games and exit them without locking up.
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Many people have commented that the "major" minors like the I-League tend to beat up on the true major civs when those are set to lower intelligence, but not so much when the majors are smart.
Follow up to my post (#272). I have updated to 1.03.054 and started a new game. Saved the game, tried to quit, same problem as before: the screen goes black and my comp stops responding. I guess I'll have to get this SmartException thing... :( I'm running an Athlon 1200 with Win ME. Radeon VE video card. The only other programs running in the background are some IMs, but they were also running under earlier patches, when the game functioned fine.
I installed 1.03.? last night, and started a new game. After awhile I saved the game and then tried to quit. GalCiv went away and left me with a black desktop. The taskbar at the bottom was there, but everything but its edges was also blacked out. The mouse moved, but my computer was otherwise unresponsive, I had to cold boot it. The same thing happens now whenever I try to exit after having loaded that game. It also happens when I try to Alt-Tab to desktop. It does not happen if I simply start
For what it is worth, I have also started a 1.3 game as the Universalists. And I do indeed have slews of good planets nearby. Sol wasn't anything special but the sector just below it had 2 class 26 planets in it. 2 out of every 3 stars I've explored have at least a marginally habital planet. One sector (not the one with the class 26s) has 5 class 15s or above and 3 or 4 class 13s and 14s.
I'm with you, Vorlin. I hadn't heard about this bug until I saw this thread. And since it sounds like it very definitely is a bug, I'm glad I only spent about an hour on the game I started yesterday with big production bonuses as my civ specialties.