Yes, leavng the UP is a very good option on larger maps now. All you miss out on is trade revenue, which probably makes up a small portion of your income anyway. As soon as a law is passed that is negative for me as the player, I immediately leave the UP. It was a tougher decision when trade routes were worth more. Now, it is a no brainer.

yes but you don't get income from trade. So leaving the UP is easy once you have no trading partners left and wan't to finish off that last enemy or two.

Trade doesn't bring in enough to warrant the effort. Sure, you can build starbases and upgrade it with a dozen constructors, but... bah! I think economic treaties are more valuable. I'm guessing you can't have treaties outside the UP? Or am I wrong...

You would, but you'd lose the ability to trade with other races.

If you leave the UP you lose the ability to trade. Oooooh scaaaary.

Yeah, lowering the value of trade in DA really made the UP kind of a joke, in my opinion. This was exacerbated by the fact that they either added or increased the frequency of UP laws that only hurt the player. I have played probably close to 200 games between DL and DA... and never ONCE would "Neutral Ground" (the no sneak attack law) have helped me, it only hinders me. It is just an example of one of many laws that restrict the player through the UP. Sure, sometimes you get a free planet or free 50% production bonus, but on average I've found that UP laws are a net negative throughout a game to the player.

Solution - Bye bye UP.

TURN OFF YOUR FRAKKING MEGA-EVENTS YOU WHINY FRAKKERS!!!

yea hey why not, if it don't work properly, get rid of it! I mean if your car gets a flat tyre, don't fix it, take Matthew Girard's genious advice and get rid of it!

If you injure your foot, don't fix the problem, take Matthew Girard's advice and get rid of your leg!

I mean it's all so simple people, why don't you 'whiny frakkers' get it???

Funny thing is, I have never played a game with Mega Events turned on. Mega Events has nothing to do with it. There are still events that screw me, though.

Currently I am considering uninstalling the game. I've played through 7 games now, the odds are rarely in my favor, and even if they are the game finds some way to ruin it for me. My biggest problems are a) the AI colonizes planets next to mine and then gets miffed at me for having close borders, the AI will colonize all the planets surrounding a class 26 planet that I've colonized in an attempt to culturaly flip it, c) the economy in this game is a broken piece of sad garbage; I colonize at least 10 planets devoted entirely to making money and it's still not enough to support 4 other planets devoted to production or research. Do I need to colonize 50 planets with stock markets just to support 10 planets devoted to research and ship building? Give me a damn break.

At the moment I am finding this game less and less appealing. Tonight may be my last game, but you can't say I didn't give it a fair chance.

If those 4 planets have the highest tech factories and labs, then yeah, that takes a lot of money. A planet like that might spit out a large hull super star destroyer in 3 turns. I don't care how good your economy is: spitting out a super star destroyer in 3 turns is going to take $$$$$$. Also, researching black hole eruptors and winning the tech victory in 2 turns of research is research that is going to take a crap load of $$$$$.

What was the population on your money making worlds? You built a few farms right to increase the pop cap? A 6.0 B population planet with all stock markets on the tiles may not be all that great when you could have a 9-12 B pop planet with a couple of farms and all tiles stock markets except the tiles used for the few farms you have. Can you tell us if you had excellent population also on your money making worlds??

I must say you are an oddball in your critizisms of the game. The majority of us here do not share your complaints. Maybe there is something we can do to help that you have overlooked so we can make the game more enjoyable for you??

I agree with the OP's criticism to some extent. Up until the last DL patch before DA came out, it didn't take five planets solely devoted to income to make one factory planet work. In fact, you didn't need to have such heavy specialization because individual factory improvements gave more production points.

I don't mind the fact that the game changes every so often, but I do think the current economy/production model is a bit out of whack. Who in their right mind would go to settle on a new planet when they are told "Your world is going to be nothing but a gigantic bank. You won't build any starships there at all. We know those nasty Drengin are only a few parsecs away, but we are building ships on a planet on the other side of the empire that will protect you. Trust us."?

Maybe the devs felt the pace of the game was too fast and furious before, but I think they've overdone it a bit.

My economy planets always had 15-20 billion people, depending on my farming tech. Two farms, always. This usually requires 3 morale buildings at the very least. But that is the end result, which takes a long time. It's the getting there that bites. With Altarians, I have no real serious problems with economy with this method. This is because I start with a +60% Economics bonus, though. And a +40% Morale bonus. The problem with the Altarians is that things take forever to build. I recently gave up on them for the Thalans. They build fast, but their Economy sucks. If I don't devote my first two planets to economy, the money goes down the toilet pretty damn fast. And their Research is the worst, but building a Tech planet early is not an option as your economy will, of course, spiral down the toilet. *shrug* And I don't think these games are too quick, it takes me three days to find out I've lost.

Man what gives??? I am always hearing about how trading is stupid because people are making like 20K + a turn, etc. What size galaxies are you playing on, jwburks? Anyway, in my own experience playing on medium, abundant maps, I have no problems having factory worlds and research worlds (maybe because I don't research too far up the factory and research building tech tree). Normally only in the beginning stages of the game, do I have production capacity at less than 100% while I wait for my population to catch up. Then again, as I always play evil civs, being able to upgrade your starbases for free is nice. When I play, I usually have 100% capacity, but hardley anything in my treasury. I'll admit that I am not having a huge treasury, but why have a huge treasury, when you can have fleets of spore ships and warships to purge the galaxy?

In my games, when I feel I am far enough ahead technologically and production wise, I decide to go for the kill. I will go 100% military and produce ultimate ships with a spore module. Yes, those spore ships cost alot to make and have lots of upkeep, but after I take a planet, they dissapear and my costs to maintain the ship dissapear with it. When I spore a planet, I usually demolish every building so that each world only costs me 12 BC so I can afford to wipe the galazy clean as soon as possible. If the AI take back their planets, they are left with buildingless planets that are toxic atmosphere and hardley any pop. That keeps them away from my vaualble mega-industry planets that pump out my super defense / offense / spore huge ships. Perhaps this strategy wouldn't work on higher difficulties. Then again, I don't know, I think the AI would go right to trying to take back the stupid worlds I spored that now have no buildings!!!

I play on Huge galaxies with 5 random opponents. And trading is stupid. Out of everything in this game, economy and tech are the tightest. In the tech tree you can get +30% to social and military production, but only 15% to economy and 10% to tech. But economy is always the toughest thing for me. Like I said, without a great many planets devoted entirely to stock markets, it's hard to stay afloat (and by a great many, I mean 10 for every 1 production or tech planet), much less actually make money to spend on upgrading ships, espionage, etc. It needs to be tweaked up a little. And from what I've been reading lately, the morale buildings need to be fixed as well. I am guessing that they tweaked the game to prevent the colony rush = sure win strategy by damaging population growth, morale and economy, but didn't foresee the consequences of a broken game.

In my last game, I was at war with the Dominion of Korx, and this is only my second time at war in all my games, but just like the last time it seems the AI refuses to believe it's losing. They never destroyed any of my ships or even got one of their transports to one of my planets, yet I destroyed every ship of theirs, even the ones on their planets, and conquered about 10 of their planets, and they still were convinced that they were winning, and trying to bully me out of things for peace. Maybe I'm missing something here, but if I lost 10 planets and all of my ships were destroyed, and I haven't even touched my opponent yet, I think I'd be considering bribery for peace, not bullying. Are the Korx roleplaying a deluded megalomaniac civilization?

Are you maxing out your factory and research techs? As your factories and research buildings become more high tech, they cost more and more to operate. A huge world devoted to production is going to cost a crap load if it is filled with industrial sectors.

I research the economy tree first to get stock markets, then I do manufacturing and tech equally.

I guess you just can't have a world that is filled with industrial sectors unless you have 10 planets supporting it. No one was meant to wield such industrial might.....

I can have a good ratio of production/research planets to economy planets through the entire game with the Krynn. But no other race has anything remotely resembling their intrinsic +50 Morale (plus I research Xeno Entertainment and Xeno Ethics for Neutrality very early)...

IMO, neutral is not the best choice for Krynn, because of the square rooting of population and the declining base morale. That eats into the neutral morale bonus more than it does for other races. Evil has a nice +50 Defense + Artificial Slave Center combo you can take advantage of. On small maps the free maintenance bonus from Good helps a lot more; so does Krynn's Super Spy bonus. And you get to apply the +50 defense to Good's special defenses.