Nonviolence, what MLK can do for you

Super-culture isn't that dangerous.  Culture takes so long to actually a kill a planet that its owner has plenty of time to raise a fleet and launch an offensive.  You need to have strong defenses to be able to defend your culture centers for a long period of time to successfully bring down planets with culture.  However, it is a great way to be passive-aggressive and pressure the enemy into attacking you.  Culture on its own doesn't win games.  Culture is used as a tool to enhance the rest of your strategy.  I've never seen anyone win with culture alone.

Super-economy, on the other hand, is quite dangerous.  You can rack up huge amounts of money which can then be sent to your allies to spend on their fleets.  Or you can spend the money spamming starbases.  Or, yet again, you can build up a wicked economy then build a fleet the likes of which no one has ever seen.  Especially in team games, super-economy is definitely a powerful strategy, but you have to scout before you commit to it to ensure you're in a safe position.

That's pretty much what you have to do against someone with a very strong economy.  Superweapons would absolutely be the wrong move.  Very rarely is it worth your time to build a superweapon; your cash is almost always better spent making your fleet larger.  Moreover, if your enemy has the stronger economy it's unlikely you'll be able to afford the damn thing anyways and will need to spend every penny just to survive.

I don't actually play all the much with the normal Entrenchment, I prefer to play with mods (my favorite is Dolynicks latest edition of Stargate races), but if the other person goes super-culture, it is relatively easy to counter it in either version. You can easily build culture centers to counter, or at least slow the spread of enemy culture, long enough to build up your defenses and fleets enough to attack deep into the enemies empire.

True, super culture=no problem, but an annoyance...

Super Eco=BAD!  You will die if your opponent goes super-eco.  He will outproduce you and will have ships rolling off the line faster than you could possibly hope to do, and its like being invaded by the Chinese, the wall of soldiers will never stop.  Simply put, they will make more ships than you, they will make ships faster than you, and their ships will be upgraded farther than yours.  If someone goes super-eco, try to get on their good side as they might just give some of that limitless income to you.  (Or they might spam starbases/superweapons.)

Lol, imagine spamming Nova's on a huge map.

For all intents and purposes building a stronger fleet is a better use of your cash.  In any case, novaliths are overrated.  If your opponent's economy is anywhere near as strong as your's, then replacing a planet killed by a nova isn't a big deal.  If your opponent's economy isn't anywhere near as strong as your's, a conventional fleet will get the job done much sooner anyways.

True, but it is hilarious to watch a dozen Nova shots rain home within 10 seconds.  Just target their capital, desert, and terran planets with 2 shots each and you will kill all of them, destroy their tax income and prevent them from recolonizing for a couple minutes during which you can run through them without having enemy forces increasing, while yours are an endless wave.  (Besides, Nova's don't suck up 75% of your income)

Novas don't affect extractors, refineries, trade ports, or frigate factories.  Yes, you'll take out their tax income, but worst-case scenario in the late game is that this is 25% of their total credit income, and you didn't even touch their extractor income or ability to make units. 

True, I meant that their ship production would be down.  Sure, all tha stuff is still around, but the point was that it is cool to watch...

"Culture is used as a tool to enhance the rest of your strategy.  I've never seen anyone win with culture alone." -Darvin3

That is an excellent point.  Superculture itself will only annoy ones opponent, but will give you mitigation and repair bonuses to your fleet, making it stronger in battle.

I've recently started playing as Advent, and have played some rather interesting games.  Advent can pull off a culture-only win late game if circumstances are right.  I was in a multiplayer game, my ally and I had beated back 3 of our 4 opponents (Unfair AIs).  I had accumalated about 12-15 'culture cannons' in the process.  As we were cleaning up a few remaining worlds left over from our last campaign, I set these to autocast.  The last AI had only about 15 planets (about one shot per planet).  By the time our fleets finished cleaning up, and entered his territory, only half his planets remained.  The remaining planets were 10%-25% alliengece, with all but 2 of them continueing to decrease.  I did note that the AI increased the number of media hubs at each planet too as a counter, but still wasn't enough.

This game was only an exception, but it does demonstrate that winning with super culture as a possibility, at least for advent players.  It could be usefull against a particulary prickly defensive player, or as a counture to fast-avancing agressor (destablize his empire back home).  Super-culture for other races is probably best left as a defensive measure to counter this tactic.

you HIPPIES!!!!

THE NOVALITH IS ULTIMATE!!!! NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION FROM AFAR!!!!

The only use I have for culture (spits at saying 'culture') is for countering the ANNOYING tendencies of the AI to spam it. PARTICULARLY Advent (spits at saying 'Advent'). The Advent (spits again) are a bunch of HIPPIE ELITISTS (spits again) THAT WILL FALL TO THE NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION OF NOVALITHS.

A super-economy player is really just boosting their income to increase defense spending. THAT'S IT.

like I said, YOU HIPPIES!! NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION GAINS YOU SALVATION BY THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR ENEMIES!!!!

SO WHAT!!! I like my Novalith cannons. I've got a game that's been going for around 8 hrs against 9 AIs, and I've got almost max fleet research, credit income of ~30 net (after fleet tax, which is ~56/65% (it's the 2nd level), and I've got THREE NOVALITHS. I've already nuked the 'Adjun Imperials' home world FROM ACROSS THE STAR CLUSTER (I'm playing the Random Multistar huge map). The shells took SUPER LONG to get there, but get there they did. THREE shells, one of which was redundant. That's a Novalith Cannon for ya.

/cry

why you cryin' man? You aren't a HIPPY are you? (begins laughing in extremely low voice in a maniacal fashion)

He's crying because of this:

This is actually very little for eight hours into the game.  In my massive game against lots of AI's, I had a 2000 size fleet with 16 capital ships, income over 100 credits per second (net, after my 75% upkeep), and ten deliverance engines, all by the four hour mark. 

well, I should clarify what advances I've got.

My research- FULLY COMPLETED ALL MILITARY RESEARCH; almost all the defense, and working on the civilian.

Fleet- I had the 5th/6th fleet supply research; 7th cap ship research.

And I had an SB on almost all worlds, plus a couple of neutrals. And 3 Novaliths whips 10 Deliverance Engines easy.

Actually, since he had more, he could target multiple worlds, while you could target and kill one at a time, he could launch at 10 different worlds. While he might not take them, He could definitely advance his goals easier then you. Not only that, but he had 10 at 4 hours, while you had your 3 at 8 hours. Assuming an equal production rate, he would have 20, or perhaps more, at 8 hours, and he would be striking at you well before you even began production of your Novaliths.His economy is kicking the shit out of yours, and his fleet is either larger, or has the capability to be larger, then yours, and yet again, this is 4 hours before yours.

To sum up, he would probably have destroyed your empire many hours before you attempted to attack him, or had the defenses to stop him.

Honestly, for an 8 hour game, I'm not surprised you were starbase massing.  Fact remains that 30 credits per second is absolutely pathetic for the 8-hour mark, regardless of your upkeep level.  By that late in the game, you should have had the time to build dozens of trade ports and build a significantly long chain.  Heck, if the map was large enough (I'd be shocked if it wasn't for a game that dragged on for 8 hours) you should have over a hundred trade ports that late.

Bingo.  Anyone with enough time on their hands can build just about anything they want, and the AI is stupid enough to sit around and let you do it.  What matters is how well you manage resources and how quickly you can field these things.

Presuming I'm not just sitting there and twiddling my thumbs while the novaliths destroy my worlds (like the AI does) they're not a serious threat.  It takes two novaliths to destroy a world, and they recharge at a snail's pace.  It may take you hours for those novaliths to start having an impact on my mature late-game economy, and they will not offer your fleet any meaningful help in a combat situation.  On the other hand, deliverance engines enable me to spread my own culture, which gives my fleet friendly culture advantage in battle.

To actually kill an enemy off with superweapons alone, you need 2 novas per enemy world and you need to synchronize your barrage.  Provided how many tactical slots they consume, this essentially requires you to have twice as many worlds as the enemy.  On the other hand, one deliverance engine per enemy world constantly bombarding will easily cause their entire empire to revolt.  This is made easier by the fact that Advent are the only faction that can put two superweapons on one planet.  So if you want to kill with superweapons alone, the deliverance is by far the most effective.

I don't expand very fast, and a great deal of my economy got funnelled into R&D, so please don't criticize me, as I have only once played with other people, and it was in a comp-stomp. Even then, I had to quit before I could finish due to dinner. And if a planet is fully upgraded in terms of tactical capacity, and also has a High Security Protocol resource on it, then you can actually put 2 Novaliths or Kosturas onto the world. You'll really only be able to put like 1-4 other things there, plus 150 space mines if it's Entrenchment, so it's best if that is a rear-line world.

You also forget that the Novalith is on the MILITARY tree, not the CIVIC tree. The Advent's power is culture. Sure, they do have access to some cool weapons tech, but culture is their strongpoint. The TEC's strongpoint is in economics, military, and defense. Keep in mind also that I am fighting 9 AIs, and I tend to ignore their requests, unless it suits my purposes.

I'm not criticizing you, I'm well aware that you're primarily a singleplayer gamer.  What I'm pointing out is that the economic position you're talking about is exceptionally weak by the 8-hour mark, which is why n3rull said "/cry".

You can talk about R&D expenditures all you like, the fact remains a mature economy should generate enough cash to complete the entire tech tree in under an hour.  By the 8-hour mark, you've had all the time in the world to expand and consolidate to your heart's content, and your tech tree should have been completed hours ago. 

Yes, high security protocol and weapon's test facility can enable two novaliths, but these are exceptions and will not allow you to systematically build two superweapons per world.  Most of the time in 8 or 9 hour games superweapons are built in bulk, like 40 or 50 of them. 

So?  This isn't a big deal.  The only faction that has a significant advantage in reaching its superweapon is Vasari, due to not requiring any prerequisite technologies.  By the 2-hour mark, putting up a few extra labs is a very minor cost.  If anything, Advent will want to bring out allure of the unity (an awesome 8-lab level technology on the civic tree), whereas TEC has few worthwhile technologies requiring 6 or more military labs.

In practice, this isn't quite true.  Advent turn out to be the game's strongest military faction in huge fleet battles; in fact, I'd never fight an Advent fleet head-on without a numerical or tech advantage.  Fortunately, Advent is also the weakest faction when it comes to small battles without their capital ships or support cruisers.  Moreover, any faction can be strong at anything, the variations between them aren't as absolute as they first appear.  I was spamming trade and culture as Vasari the other day.  My start location and strategy easily outweighed the fact that my faction wasn't very good for this.

In any case, back to the topic at hand:  in a realistic scenario a novalith isn't actually that big of an asset.  10 or 20 of them is fearsome, but that's rarely if ever seen.