winning on the tough level

I haven't had any trouble on this difficulty level but I use a cautious and patient approach. At this level in the long run I always seem to outdistance the AI in research, production, and economy. So its just a matter of getting to the point of having a wide lead or at least enough to make a run for tech victory. I don't risk playing any cards to early. I like to keep a competitive military to make myself less of a target for war. I usually start some military research early, create a small amount of strength 2 or 3 attack ships when the AI starts creating a significant amount of defenders. I upgrade to some more powerful deterrent ships a little later on, and then usually I have my infrastructure research pretty well developed I make a run for huge hulls and powerful weapons. Again I use this as a deterrent fleet more than anything. The AI never seems to make a run at a tech victory, so if you are patient and focus on keeping a competetive military while you are researching other techs you should be alright. As a last patient step, make a very strong military before trying to finish the tech victory tree. This seems a pretty sure way to win at this level. This level is a good practice at tightening the screws of your industrial and economic machine. After a while it won't be a challenge when you get good at that.

My problem, I guess, is that I play the Pacifist Political Faction, and in that sense I also hardly build any military ships before I have access to Medium Sized Ships. I usually win, as I ally myself with everyone but the Evil factions, who are usually either wiped out or surrender. (Me being good/saintly...) With the exception of retaking one of my own planets, I have never invaded another planet. (Campaign exemption...) TIP

Winning on tough and slightly above: (A Kats Guide) 1) Relationships - To win on tough and above, you need to have a good relationship with the folks who are stronger than you military wise, at least high enough like neutral or warm to avoid war. The lower their relationship to you, the easier it is for them to say the heck with your puny civilization or the easier for them to be bribed to do the same thing. Trade as in freighter, trade as in techs, giving money even, all help toward making relationships better for you. 2) Economy / Research / Building - Mix in some diplomacy with your research, get impulse drives fast and upgrade your colony ships to the fastest, not necessarily the longest range, that you can have and get to colonizable planets. Do not pay for a colony ship if you absolutely do not have to. However, you can jumpstart your building program if your "luck" ability kicks in and you have a bonus industrial tile or a research tile by buying that with cold hard cash, no loans, one time pay. Pump up the volume in the economic screen also, all the way to 100%, try to keep you approval at least above 50%, I recommend in the 60's, adjust tax levels on your citizens appropriately. In general build, 2 factories, 2 labs, (in that order unless a factory or lab is a bonus tile) than take a look at your economy, if you need a moment to catch up people wise (more folks pay more taxes) slow down and build a market tile than build what you need, usually on a pq 10 world I finish up looking like this. 1 - Star Colony (Original Tile) 2 - Factory 2 - Labs 1 - Market 1 - Entertainment 1 - Food 1 - Cultural 1 - Left Over for whatever. Specialty colonies are for 11 and above worlds, than you can start poking more factories, research tiles, food tiles (although I recommend that you only produce a tax world if there are bonus entertainment tiles). 3) Military - Pay attention to what the other folks posted here, if the alien with the most military force is near you, you need to have a minimum defense force to deal with them, if they are researching missiles, research missile defense at at least 1/3 to 1/2 of their firepower, plus a weapons tech that doesn't have to be their equivalent in level of damage, but must not be in their defensive scheme. They like missiles, you take beam or guns, if your a defensive player, take a look at the second and third most powerful, or at what the little minor is building offensively that is near you and no one would mind if you... uhm, helped them become a major power by ensuring that their planet is one with you...   4) Do not expand to fast, even if folks are friends with you if they perceive a threat, certain races are programed to join forces for at least long enough to take out the race that is doing... to good. Good luck and good hunting, W/R Suralle Straykat Kat Lord @ Large

Damn people, there's a thing called paragraphing you know.

But, to answer your question prophetau2006, I can beat a tough AI relatively easily. You just need to play more on lower difficulties and improve your strategy. I think it's better to learn by your own than following other's advice. It's more satisfying. Stupid Drengins.

I agree with 3xman. If you look at my metaverse games you'll notice that I started on a lower difficulty level and worked my way up, building my strategies each game. Based on the amount of games I've posted for each difficulty level I've 'perfected' (I.E. can win easily on) the learning curve seems to ramp up nicely (until masochistic, which is a major jump in difficulty). So you'll spend a lot of time perfecting your strategies at a lower difficulty, then you'll need less time to perfect the next one and so on.

All the above. Win the colony race to the best planets by increasing teh speed of your base transports. After the colony race, every empire will have about the same number of planets. At the higher levels the AI with its bonuses will out produce you. To compensate, you must conquer one neighbor early have two empires worth of production. Don't conquer more tahn one before you are ready or the AIs may see you as a threat and gang up on you. As soon as you can build or research or trade for aphro and speed bonuses. Speed is essential for you picking battles and concentrating forces.

All the above. Win the colony race to the best planets by increasing teh speed of your base transports. After the colony race, every empire will have about the same number of planets. At the higher levels the AI with its bonuses will out produce you. To compensate, you must conquer one neighbor early have two empires worth of production. Don't conquer more tahn one before you are ready or the AIs may see you as a threat and gang up on you. As soon as you can build or research or trade for aphro and speed bonuses. Speed is essential for you picking battles and concentrating forces.

Whats the trick for adding line spaces or paragraphs in this new forum software?

I can see this sort of thing is right up the Straykats' alley   , I just have a couple of points to add.

A minimum defense force is really essential; if AI factions see that you are weak AND you have planets that are completely undefended, they will attack. You need to build a few ships with attack values early on. My usual solution is to research or trade for Stingers (cheap, low tech, attack value 2). As soon as I get to a level where I can cram one onto a tiny hull (usually Stinger III, earlier if I get decent miniaturization), I design the Patrol Boat (tiny hull, Stinger, nothing else but extras) and make it the next ship I build on every planet. Sometimes this build interferes a little with my colonization and a I miss out on a planet or two. I don't worry, because chances are I'll culture flip them pretty soon.

Aside from the military force, research some of the techs that give you Diplomacy bonuses. They're relatively cheap and a good thing to research while you're waiting for planets to upgrade their buildings. Having a high Diplomacy rating will increase your relations with other factions, thus making it less likely that they will attack you. Because of this, I bust my butt every game to build the Diplomatic Translators. Since I started doing this, I very rarely find myself at war before I am ready for it.

So now we HAVE to use HTML tags to get paragraphs? That's a serious step backwards.   

all of the above. AND focus intially on your economy and prduction (i.e research the economic, production and reasearch (not all the way up though) branches first) early game so by mid game you can start getting ahead in reasearch and in military. you will be a lil behind in tech at the start (since you focus your reasearch on economy and production) but if you set it up right (cough neutality learning centers cough) then you should be able to catch up in reasearch preety quickly by mid game as well. good luck! 

oh yeah and damn drengins! *fist shake*

But I like being Drengin

oh yeah and damn drengins! *fist shake*

I like the Dregnin: Crushing them mercilessly is so satisfying! No offence to teaster.

Lots of good strategies for tough here. The only thing I would add: It is important to keep up a good show of military defense. One cost effective way to do this is to build a "Spin Control" center. This planetary improvement is available only from researching to the end of the Diplomacy tech tree. Any military ships built on a planet with a Spin Control center make it seem as if you have a much stronger military. Doing this has two advantages: 1) building even cheap, weak ships on the planet with a Spin Control center makes your military seem competitive even with those civs engaged in a military rush. I typically fill up that planet with defenders early, which gives me breathing space from aggressive civs long enough to build a solid economy and rush research a much more powerful ship. If it holds them off long enough, I then design a medium-powerful ship (e.g. Phaser VII and medium defense) and fill the Spin Control planet with those: that puts me way over the strongest civs in military terms. That in turn gives me the chance to choose when I want to engage in military battle . . . if at all. 2) As another poster has noted (MarshallONeil), researching the full Diplomacy tree early has the side advantage of reducing your opponents' desire to attack you, a reduction which the Spin Control center increases. With this small investment strategy, I can usually gain a decisive strategic advantage over AI at the tough level: the biggest problem at this level for me is a civ that attacks early. Best, Alex

Have to agree with everyone. Tough isn't very tough, it's a matter of focusing on production and research (ignore everything weapon related after space militarization -10% military production) and knowing how to keep the AI off your backs while you do it.

When they become anty, work on dipolamcy, trading , build a spin center on your best industry world. Trade for a good weapon (typically stinger or harpoon) with either a minor race hence saving research effort on space weapon and preceding techs, or an ally and start pumping those ships out at the spin center, that is enough to make you Number 1 in military. Then continue developing...

Because the AI colony management is still pretty bad (better than 1.1), you should be able to outstrip the AI even if you have fewer colonies (also you don't waste research/production efforts on unnecessary weapons).

Make a special effort to ensure your colonies have enough food to grow past their limits, every few turns check the colony management list, and order by population. Look for 'round' populations, specificly 5.0 billion, 9 billion, 11 billion etc, check that those colonies have enough food production, if not, go there and build a farm ASAP (buying one if you are rich). But don't build them until you have to.

I don't build multiple farms, instead when necessary, I prefer to research more advanced farms and upgrade the existing farm.

Don't neglect picking up morale improvements particularly when your population grows large or when you need to raise taxes...

If you have the time research and build xinathuium hull plating and dipolmatic translaters ASAP, because if you don't the Ai will and both are pretty good. The next one they go for is microbot repairs and aprhodiac, I don't find the former as important. The later I don't go for because when I play neutral I don't need habitat improvments which allows the latter.

Another one to grab fairly early is Tir-Quen training.... For all the others you can take your time.

These days I like playing the influence war, so I pick up the relevant techs (don't forget the government techs which add influence too) , build tons of constructors and Galactic achivements like Resturant of Eternity and Galactic show case, then start building influence starbases like crazy...

There is also an art in choosing the order to research plantery improvements, like factories ---> Industry sector... or labs ---->discovery spheres.

Generally, because the newer improvements are less efficient, you might consider waiting untill most of your colonies have finished building most of the tiles with the lower improvement.

For example, if your industry colonies still have a lot of unbuilt tiles, you might be be better off holding off researching manufacturing centers until most of the tiles have built enhanced factories.

I specialise a lot, so most of the time I find myself staggering my research, moving from researching industry improvements to research labs improvements to econ improvements and back again rather than researching 2 of each category in a row. The exception is the banks to stock market ....

Oh yes, don't forget to upgrading your mining bases, whenever you research a new level of factories!

I posted this in another thread but seeing as it is relevant this is my strategy for beating the computer on Tough without building a military

I played Terran Alliance, War Party, Abilities: 10% Planet Quality; 70% Population Growth; Moral Bonus.

I start the game queue to build 6 factories on my home world, a farm and the rest market centres. Then I put tax rate on 49% and production rate to 100%. I set my survey ship to auto-survey and send my colony ship to Mars. On Mars I queue to build 3 market centres.

Still on the first turn, I set research to 100% then research in this order, Xeno Research, Stellar Cartography, New Propulsion Techniques, Ion Drive then Impulse Drive. This takes about 8 weeks, in which time I buy about 4 factories on my home world - more if none are on bonus tiles.

Then when Impulse Drive is finished I set research to 0% and military to 100%. I go to the shipyard and create a quick colony ship with a basic support module for range. Then I buy one immediately. But with military production on 100% the ship only takes 2 weeks, if longer I buy more factories. Then I colonise lots of worlds using the mini map to direct my ships.

The colony rush is over and I set production to 50% social and 50% research where it pretty much stays for the rest of the game. First I research basic factory for manufacturing capital. Second I research up to Advanced hulls for - Hull plating, then I research up to Enhanced miniaturisation for - Micro repair bots. All wonders are built on the planet with the manufacturing capital. Then I research the Yellow branch and get Ethics first - Neutral, then Trade - for Economic Capital, then the first government type, for the vote!

Next I research up to Enhanced factory, and then I research the economics branch up to stock exchanges. Interspersed in this system I make my way up the research centres branch and so that I get a new building when my research planets finish production. Then I research up to level 2 farms, and habitat improvement and build Aphrodisiac. Then I research some Soldiering techs and build the TriQuan training facility. Also it's very important to research the diplomacy techs and build the galactic wonder to make others like you because I don't use trade!

By this stage you're pretty much invincible but someone will attack you, or may have already done so. So now you create an ally... say the Arceans and give them all your techs and they pulverise the enemy for you . Game over, takes about an hour.

I start the game queue to build 6 factories on my home world, a farm and the rest market centres. Then I put tax rate on 49% and production rate to 100%. I set my survey ship to auto-survey and send my colony ship to Mars. On Mars I queue to build 3 market centres.

Why Mars? I'm sure there are bigger and better quality planets or are you one of those people who are afraid of wasting the chance of an ethical event on the first colony?

Still on the first turn, I set research to 100% then research in this order, Xeno Research, Stellar Cartography, New Propulsion Techniques, Ion Drive then Impulse Drive. This takes about 8 weeks, in which time I buy about 4 factories on my home world - more if none are on bonus tiles.

So you spend 8 turns researching and buying factories but not buying colony ships so you don't have any colony ships for 8 turns? Seems a bit slow. That's why I like to play with races that already have Stellar Cartography and ion drives, like the Drath or the Korx.

I played Terran Alliance, War Party, Abilities: 10% Planet Quality; 70% Population Growth; Moral Bonus.

You might try customising the Drath, you get even more bonuses. Drath has free race bonuses of Diplomacy 25% Defense 50% Military production 25% With humans you get free bonuses of Diplomacy 25% Trade 25% But according to you , you don't do trade, so Drath is far better for you. IMHO the 25% military production bonus is better than Trade bonus anyway. The Defense 50% bonus is just gravy. And with the Drath you can start producing colony ships immediately with ion drives while researching Impluse engines! No need to waste 8 turns on stellar cartrography and propulsion methods, ion drives etc. The Drath IMHO are by far the best race you can use to customise.

chill Winston, it was just an example not perfection

Winning on tough and slightly above
(A Kats Guide)

1) Relationships - To win on tough and above, you need to have a good relationship with the folks who are stronger than you military wise, at least high enough like neutral or warm to avoid war. The lower their relationship to you, the easier it is for them to say the heck with your puny civilization or the easier for them to be bribed to do the same thing. Trade as in freighter, trade as in techs, giving money even, all help toward making relationships better for you.

2) Economy / Research / Building - Mix in some diplomacy with your research, get impulse drives fast and upgrade your colony ships to the fastest, not necessarily the longest range, that you can have and get to colonizable planets. Do not pay for a colony ship if you absolutely do not have to.

However, you can jumpstart your building program if your "luck" ability kicks in and you have a bonus industrial tile or a research tile by buying that with cold hard cash, no loans, one time pay.

Pump up the volume in the economic screen also, all the way to 100%, try to keep you approval at least above 50%, I recommend in the 60's, adjust tax levels on your citizens appropriately. In general build, 2 factories, 2 labs, (in that order unless a factory or lab is a bonus tile) than take a look at your economy, if you need a moment to catch up people wise (more folks pay more taxes) slow down and build a market tile than build what you need, usually on a pq 10 world I finish up looking like this.
1 - Star Colony (Original Tile)
2 - Factory
2 - Labs 1
1 - Market
1 - Entertainment
1 - Food
1 - Cultural
1 - Left Over for whatever

Specialty colonies are for 11 and above worlds, than you can start poking more factories, research tiles, food tiles (although I recommend that you only produce a tax world if there are bonus entertainment tiles).

3) Military - Pay attention to what the other folks posted here, if the alien with the most military force is near you, you need to have a minimum defense force to deal with them, if they are researching missiles, research missile defense at at least 1/3 to 1/2 of their firepower, plus a weapons tech that doesn't have to be their equivalent in level of damage, but must not be in their defensive scheme. They like missiles, you take beam or guns, if your a defensive player, take a look at the second and third most powerful, or at what the little minor is building offensively that is near you and no one would mind if you... uhm, helped them become a major power by ensuring that their planet is one with you...

4) Do not expand to fast, even if folks are friends with you if they perceive a threat, certain races are programed to join forces for at least long enough to take out the race that is doing... to good.

Good luck and good hunting,
W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

I'm making the jump to 'tough' from 'challenging' myself, and the newest patch made a fair difference in how difficult it is!

The cheezy way to win:

Quick Colony rush. Gotta be competitive in the number of worlds you have. It's been said before, but if you want to improve your game, you need to improve your first 10-20 turns.

Build cargo hulls packed with nothing but your highest weapon. Beam works good here, because the AI evaluates your military strength by how many points of damage your guns can do, and beam is most effective (?) at the lowest techs in terms of space/cost.

Once you have highest military ranking, (3-6 cargo ships,) research Diplomacy up to Total Majesty. Get Spin Control Center.

If you slip from 1st rank in military, QUICKLY research a few more weapons techs, and use the 'Upgrade All' to get those ships more weapon points. Better you go 6000 in debt than present yourself as a target for war.

Then more cheese...

Xeno Entertainment through Cultural Conquest. A dozen constructors building/upgrading an influence starbase in your enemy's best star system will cause a quick revolt, and you gain planets without firing a shot. Lather, rinse, repeat until your economy is insanely dominant.

Then mop up. Either give a few high level techs to gain friends and make everyone your ally, or build up a massive research effort and top out some offensive techs and clear the galaxy.

Neutral, and Neutrality Learning Centers are game-breaking. Get Xeno Ethics and go Neutral early for all the extra tiles and to make your research leap ahead of the other empires.

At 'Challenging', this is cheezy. At 'Tough' it's still cheezy, but a little tougher, as you have to PAY ATTENTION to the military ratings of the other civilizations and be ready to upgrade your dummy cargo holds bristling with unuseable weapons.

Keep a first ranked military, and a lot of your problems never materialize.

masochistic is when it gets 'tough'.

Here is a small guide to win at crippling or lower playing the evil Drengins, with tech trade off. I always play with very slow tech, tight clusters, all nine opponents, large or bigger galaxy (so that there are 5-12 planets per player) the strategy may not work with other settings. It doesn't work so well at masochistic even with tech trading on, at this level you will need something better than psyonic blast.

1) Technology: During the first turns focus on the technologies that increase your production and economic habilities and on the ones that let you build capitals.

2) The first thing I do is set taxes low enough to have 100% aproval, set social production to 0%, main slider to 100%. I rush a factory and design a faster colony ship, focus on military production and play with the sliders military/research to produce the ship in the minimum amount of turns.

You will need to rush 2-3 more factories and you should have your first ship after 3 turns, and then a ship every 2 turns with military/research around 55%/45%. If you get production bonus tiles you will need to rush fewer factories, with a +700% tile you can produce a ship per turn from turn 1. Rush only what you need, if tou have an aproval bonus tile rush it to be able to rise taxes. Once you colonize a new planet focus it on social, you'll get some hammers despite your social slider being at 0%

Fill each ship with the 300.000 pop you are getting every two turns. When colony rush is over you can rise your taxes again. Before you turn off military production and rise social prod. make sure you build some sensor-cargo hulls and 2-3 constructors, you need to find the resources around you before the AI does. Don't forget to put your survey ship to auto survey form turn one. Build the four freighters for the extra money, it helps a lot early game, and you need to research trade anyway to build the economic capital.

3)At some point you'll run out of money, so that you will have adjust the industrial slider until your economy gets on track, this can take too long if you have overexpanded. Focus on developing your colonies. I usually use the three better planets for the three capitals, then all other PQ>10 are economic and the lower PQ planets are production or research, but it deppends on what you have got. Playing as the Drengin make sure you have enough planets for ship building,and you will need a high population, so don't forget farms.

4) Now you can start researching the laser tree, but get also the first miniaturization tech and some engine techs, you may need to build some defenders to avoid being attacked. The nexts turns are a race to research xeno ethics (choose evil of course) and psyonic blast before all the good races start attacking you, so focus on that, put research slider to 100% if needed. If you get to Psyonic Blast on time, it's pretty much game over:

5) Start building your first Psyonic ships with whatever engines (two engines per ship), the altarians/torians... will attack you soon, you will see your military rating start to soar, and if you start building them soon enough you won't get attacked, pay them every time they ask you to avoid war at this point. Don't build more ships than you need, they are expensive to mantain and you still need to research a couple of things: Stock markets, maybe some better factories and labs if you have the income, medium hulls, some defenses, some sort of goverment, logistics... and most important, the last tech in the ethics branch. But don't take too much time doing this or the AI will have time to reserach better weapons and defenses that will make you psyonic blast useless. Don't forget economic star bases too, they're crucial.


6) Once you get the last tech in the ethics branch, build the mind control center that doubles tax income, all your economical problems are over!,and the slave cencer, increased military production! Lord Kona's Dream come true! You can start producing Psyonic Medium Hulls non stop and have fun trashing every race at the same time if needed. Ah! now is the moment to research the planetary invasion branch!

If you get into economic trouble just lower research, set it to 0% for a while if you need to, but never give up your military production, that's the source of your adventage, you will get a lot of techs invading planets anyway.

As for the diplomacy branch and spin control center I just ignore them, that's simply not the Drengin's way! Damn Altarians!

As a final comment, be carefull with military waste, that can ruin your whole strategy. I usually adjust my military slider to so that my prodution capital makes ships with minimum waste, and then I play with the focus buttons of the other planets to minimize waste, and decide which ship to build depending on waste, etc. It's a time consuming practice but it makes a big difference.

Thanks for all the advice above. Have since kept a close eye on that military graph. Cranked out those defenders like mad when AI started building up. Alterians didn't like the evil little humans, so they declared war first. The yors came to the rescue and became an ally. So the Alterians get wiped out. The Torians then decided to play galactic police and declared war. They became the next victim.

Guess what the grateful evil little human did after that...they broke the alliance with the Yors, and backstabbed them. So there you are, a backstabbing victory on the tough level

Congrats, log future ones on the MV!

Good Hunting, Until we meet that is.
W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large