Another bonus of trading exclusively with minors: You can sell them your obsolete ships. Sometimes, you can sell current ships for more than your cost of production. That both raises cash, and helps keep your trading partner in the game. I do tend to avoid trading with the Alexians on tiny. They tend to get culture-flipped too easily.
Has any ever received the "artifact of increasing power" event that grants a bonus of 1% to a random stat each turn? I'd like to see the savefile as proof. I've received all the other events. In fact, I've seen the "trade assasination -> war" even happen between two AI players!
Very poorly.
It seems like there have been several requests for difficulty options unrelated to AI intelligence. - Frequency/severity of random events. Especially, the "draginol", "artifact of increasing power", "new minor civ", "pirates", "trade assassination -> instant war", and "boosted PQ". - Frequency/severity of morality events, both colonization and post-colonization. - Intelligence/power of minor civs. Power of new minor event. - Anomaly distribution, and frequen
My only issue with auto survey is that multiple survey ships can be headed towards the same anomaly. This is particularly annoying on gigantic. I periodically check that my survey ships haven't grouped together, and send them to different sectors if they are. A wormhole will eventually fix the problem by itself.
Which position matters for the mini-freighter? Start of turn? End of turn? Average for turn? If freighter passes through 2 or more sectors in one turn, does it get all bonuses? Has anyone performed an experiment?
The "all eggs in one basket" isn't as bad as it sounds. Keep an extra set of freighters in position near another race, and activate the new trade routes after a war starts.
There is no literal cap. You can build one on each square of a sector, if you desire. However, the +production benefits are capped. Remember that you pay an upkeep of 5 BC per starbase. Capped starbase benefits: - Production bonuses are capped. You get a limit of 10xPQ for "paid" production, and 3xPQ for "free" production. However, they are not hard caps. I can still get 4x or 5x PQ for free production. Still, I wouldn't recommend more than 2 maxed out +production sta
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Don't forget about culture starbases. The AI players don't use culture starbases very effectively. Also, multiple culture starbases in the same sector are much more effective than you would expect.
Wouldn't it be neat if, on the diplomacy screen, techs where one party had a monopoly were displayed in a different color, say red. If I have a monopoly on battleships, I'm more reluctant to trade them than if another AI already has them. That information is already available; it just requires checking each race's diplomacy screen.
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Don't use "auto-launch ships" when building colony ships. By default, too many people are loaded onto the colony ship. There's no way to adjust the population on a colony ship once you launch it. Launch the colony ships manually, and put 100-200 people per ship. Sometimes, I even put just 1 person on the colony ship, so I can leave a good production capacity on Earth. Experiment to find the number that works best for you, but don't go above 200 unless you know the colony ship is hea
This is a well-known problem. I don't know if this was fixed in the expansion. Enough people have made this observation that it must have been. This also works if the AI players have an alliance against you. Suppose the Yor and Drengin are allied, and you get into a war with the Drengin. The Yor-Drengin alliance forces the Yor to declare war. You start winning the war, and now negotiate peace with the Drengin in exchange for concessions. You remain at war with the Yor, and in a fe
Morale is on a per-planet basis. So, your overall approval rating could be 80%, but you could still have some 1% morale plants that will defect to the I-League. Solutions: - use transports to move population away from low-morale planets - rush-build entertainment network and soil enhancement on newly acquired planets - keep overall tax rate around 33% - max out your morale resource starbases
I would recommend finishing all your old games first before upgrading. Even if the developers say it's safe, I'd still wait.
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Staffa's comment about "too easy to buy starbases on gigantic" basically boils down to "The AI doesn't properly adjust the value of trade goods and techs based on game state." An AI with 52% approval rating really doesn't need aphrodesiac. An AI at war or planning a war will really want Tri-Strontium Steel. A resource starbase is worth lots more on Gigantic than on Tiny, but the AI doesn't seem to adjust the value.
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When the AI players have an alliance, and you are beating the alliance. You make peace with one alliance member in exchange for concessions. They immediately declare war on you due to their alliance, and you can now extract peace concessions again. The problem is that negotiating peace with one alliance member should get peace with the entire alliance. Or, the peace treaty should override the "must declare war on allies' enemy" rule for a reasonable time interval.
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I find that my most interesting games on tiny/rare/intelligent occur when: - One of the AIs gets the PQ boosting event (either for 1 planet, or for an entire sector). - I get the "trade incident/assasination causes war" event, and all the other AI players have an alliance. I've noticed 3 PQ-raising events: #1 - a single inhabited planet gets a huge PQ boost #2 - all planets around one star get a medium PQ boost (both inhabited and uninhabited) #3 - all
I sell planets to minors late, especially if I want to establish a nice trade route. Also, if a minor shares a system with a major, and I defeat the major, I may give the system to the minor if I don't want the minor to be eliminated.
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I found that I got a 50% increase in metaverse score just by turning off the "cultural victory" option. As soon as you qualify for a cultural victory, you will soon get a military victory as all the planets flip to you. Plus, you can drag things out for a year or two with max research so you can get The Terraformer and the Guidebook and other late-game wonders.
As soon as I get the prison or zoo, I put +military upgrades on my starbases in the sector. One or two starbases with maxed out military usually is enough.
Not only that, you can take the AI's last planet, and then STILL trade with them. I take the AI's last planet, and then sell them all my trade goods and tech for as much BC as possible, getting a 50 year lease so I extract the maximum. I also throw in a peace treaty for a few hundred extra. Not only that, you can sell them back a planet, to keep them from being eliminated. (Doesn't matter, because the planet will culture flip back to you in a few turns anyway.) It doesn't wo
You need to adjust your spending sliders. Go to the economics screen. Try sending your 3 spending sliders to 33% each for military, social, research. Set your spending slider (underneath the taxes bar) to be the largest amount that gives you positive cashflow. (or 100% if it's the start of the game)
Actually, a starbase by itself does give a (very small) influence boost if you don't already have a planet or starbase in the sector. Look at the encyclopedia article on influence. For sectors where you don't own a planet, your base influence is determined by "distance to nearest planet" or "average of distance to neares planet and nearest starbase" (whichever is less). So, building a starbase in a sector where you don't currently have a starbase or planet, increases you influ
Because scoring is much easier in 1.05, he decided that he was better off starting fresh than having his old scores drag him down.
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Why is it that you can get a starbase up to +50% trade immediately at the start of the game, but you don't get any further upgrades later? For example, you don't get a "Phase III Factory" until the mid-game. Every other starbase ability can be improved more as the game progresses. Why don't more starbase trade upgrade become available later? (Other than the obvious answer: because the game is written that way.)