The idea is that you won't need leasing if you can spend at 100%, because you'll get the tech earlier and then build it faster. But I agree, sometimes, you may want to lease some stuff. To me it's mostly culture enhancement on border planets (read planetary culture bombs).
I know the figures are totally out of sync with Brad's specs. That's why I posted them, too. I checked them twice to be sure I hadn't misread. My 5-year-old daughter even had me read each and every single figure on the summary screen! Now there might be a penalty for actally researching final frontier in too much time? Or the tech I researched in one turn instead of final frontier produced a huge boost to the alliance scoring? I should retry by putting spendings to 0% or everything into mili
They do read bug reports, but you should put htm in the stickied threads. CariElf often answers there too.
On maso, I feel it's better to drain the minor of all their money immediately because I once saw the Drengin do it before I had a chance to. I couldn't take anything from the minor (except their planet).
I just won a tech victory (yes, I know) by keeping mostly alone. I had a big bunch of the galaxy all to myself to start with (about one quarter) with a mighty zero resources in that quarter of the galaxy. Since everyone was far from me, except the Carinoids, I couldn't trade much initially (I was too busy sending colony ships to the north in fear someone else would be there to make contact). Then, my survey ship teleported in the middle of the ai's and made contact with all the majors in 2 turns
Use the button in the top right corner near the influence read button to create one. Then in planets production screen, you can select one waypoint so all your newly created ships in this planet will automatically go there. Problem is you can't move a waypoint or replace a waypoint with another one, so I find these useless unless you plan to spend some 30 turns sending ships from a given star to the same location.
[quote]The worst part of it was the fact that planet was pushing out from 2 to 4 ships a turn (only had 1 planet in its system). [/quote] You should report it as a bug. Brad said the ai plays by the same rules, so this shouldn't be possible.
[quote] It was an easy win from a supposedly dead-end situation.[/quote] I think this is still an acceptable deal. I just got a tech win on maso. It's worth 13k. If instead of a tech win I go for alliance, I get 30k. This means noone in theri right mind will post a tech win if they want to compete on the metaverse. (Well,I will probably post the tech one, though...).
Coda? What's this? You should probably post a link on what that system is because I've never heard of it and am pretty sure many people are in my situation. I know MERP, though.
Does anyone use these by the way? I find them cumbersome since they can't be moved.
Gerakken, espionage doesn't need cash every turn to keep running. Once you've reached a level of espionage, you can stop funding if you're set. As far as I know, all money beyond advanced put there is just wasted. Personnally, I always research the minimum espionage level and sometimes up to medium but never farther because I never saw any benefit. Knowing the stats of the ai may be useful, but it's marginal. Knowing what tech they are researching is also only marginally useful. I never got
Excalibur tech doesn't require 30 aligment. Javascour's site is built from the game fiels so it is always perfectly accurate, unless htere is a bug where the code doesn't take a value specified in one of the text files into account.
[quote]Research is not updated correctly when the economy sliders where moved.[/quote] I concur. At least an update button would be welcome. Also, the amount of BC available in the main screen is not refreshed every turn. You can force it by going to the economy panel, but it's painful to do it every turn when you're borderline.
[quote]What form is the campaign going to take? Will it be made up of a number of scenarios which progressively get harder, which seems to be the norm with strategy game campaigns?[/quote] I hope not. I'd rather have it be a scenario a la civ2 (though Spartakus and co. was actually a set of linked scenarios) or CtP2's Alexander scen, with game-breaking events happening at certain times or under certain conditions, rather than the usually uninspiring (for me) succession of "and now a har
The picture is a bit big IMHO. It looks like the ship is almost as big as an avatar... I'd also like another color (brighter / whiter - more in sync with the other Earth ships).
It is definitely more expensive and I think it affects your score. When you look at the econ score, there is an entry 'cash lost on leases/tributes'. If you rush buy a lot, you will have a huge hole right there in the econ score page at the end of the game. I have no idea how this part of the score is computed, however, so I may be wrong, but it shows. A typical rushbuy has 2 costs: The cost itself + the cost of the lost production on the planet (when you build ships - I think social imp
You know you can see the actual econ bonus of a planet in the details screen? You see the final result, like +103% which factors in all anomalies, pol parties, picks and social improvements. I think the most expensive social improvements are the +tech ones since they give f.e. +33% research and you have to pay for half of that so it's also +16% expenses, which means you may end up reducing your spendings in order to benefit from the improvements. For these, you're better off looking at the d
Tiny allows for alpha strikes and blitzkriegs. On larger maps, it's a bit harder, but, as Sirian said, if you can turtle a bit, the ai start sending their freighters to you, which means they will become nasty much later. Anti Matter Missiles are my favourite ships. They cost very little and take out almost any capital ship. You only need a small fast ship to clear colony ships and transports remaining in orbit to let your transports take the planets.
Actually, I never figured out the halloween mask thing, but decided that all minors were a threat so I tend to kill them all (except Alex/Scott/Carinoids) and haven't been poisoned since.
Stardock Forums
Andi5000, you can know your alignment by looking at your stats (one of the thumbnails in the econ window). When I get the fundies event, I usually rush them: Immediately stop everything you do, build ships and transports and take one of their systems. Do this before they build (many) ships. They start with 0 ship, so that is the time to strike. To me it doesn't look like they were overpowered, but that you didn't react fast enough. Of course, their taking twice as many planets as an
Stardock Forums
The Ctrl-L doesn't really cut it for me. What I want is a slow expansion phase, neither the current rush nor an even faster Ctrl-L (Ctrl-L just boosts everyone and causes contacts with the aliens to happen much faster). I'd like the game to give you a choice: Either expand like crazy or build up infrastructure. You could then have spread empires with poor production and military but a big potential and small empires with big production and military. The small would be militarily stronger and
[quote] on lower levels, they should be just as smart and get more economy penalties instead.[/quote] I disagree. Biasing economy to provide penalties/bonuses is something which is, in my opinion, a last resort. I'd rather hace more tactics/strategies available to harder level ai than bonuses to compensate their being dumb. Stardock does both, and some people (including me) asked that there should be separate levels, one for cleverness and one for econ bonuses, but Stardock preferred to
I wonder about scenario design: Will it possible to precise 'Major Race X will follow this tech path' or will we have to guess by setting the AI value of techs and wondering why the Altarians choose this tech and the Drengins that one through hours of playtesting the scenario?
Stardock Forums
Trade routes would be far too powerful if you had more than what's currently available. The rationale about limiting trade routes is already borderline, so calling for more logic there seems pointless. As a game mechanism, it works fine. About PQ, I don't know. On maso they get a +PQ bonus so this explains it, but on lower levels I never checked. About Trade goods, I disagree because I think it is a good thing that minors build trade goods. You can buy them. You should be happy
Stardock Forums
-1 on maso means they are at 0, so they will stay in their home sector until they find a +range tech. You, on the other side, don't have the +1range pick, thus you will need constructors to extend your range while they don't. You may give it a try and report what you think.