xpyre

Surely the USA is a good example of an evil democracy Choice of 2 equally evil parties. Both bent on the destruction of the environment and domination of the rest of the planet.

play gigantic, everything abundent with one other opponent and you generally get a full complement of minors.

It was the last game I played... I posted the full story in game talk forum cos no one ever seems to post on here.

Trade is not worth the effort IMHO... I've tried, I really have, to make more than 10,000 per turn. I've had 100M planet in one corner maxed out distance to the opposite corner of the map, used all my bonuses etc on trade enhancers and routes, built starports boosting trade everywhere. It takes too long, uses too many resources, is too fragile in times of war etc... I can build a galaxy that has 40,000 bc income without any trade so why would I go anywhere near it. Those early

Certainly it is a task that needs doing. I would prefer Stardock to be the ones doing it though... Why they fix the complex bugs but not the simple xml is a mystery to me.

As a regular evil-doer its always beams first and the rest a long way behind... You can play most games with just psi beams... it certainly frees your research up for a long while. Which together with the mind control centre is just way to powerful to turn down. But I agree with the OP esp about planetarty def... so much dev effort has gone into something so useless. Id also liek to see something to boost the hp of starbases... Right now they just can't stand up to a bashing.

Master U I was wondering how you kept all those people happy on your MV games... But planets with 1000% moral will work... Just come clean now, you're not being honest are you?

@uglycow... Ever thought of researching planetary invasion really early and taking the homeworlds of those around you. If you can take a homeworld the AI has usually so few tax payers on their other colonized planets that they cannot recover. Then it is just a matter of building transports rather than colony ships and all the best planets can be yours (together with a few enhancements prebuilt). Seriously in a corner is my fav starting position, but my strategy is war,

As an aside - I always give away planetary improvements especially soil enhancement etc. to anyone I'm going to invade soon. Has two effects 1) stops them building useful stuff and 2) I get a higher PQ planet to take over.

If you are winning it doesn't matter... If you are losing against a common foe then then give them away. That way as a group you'll research much quicker. At present your allies are prob researching something you have. If they have the same techs as you then they will research something you haven't got. At least it works that way in the campaign... I personally only use alliances to "take people out of the equation" while I kill someone else <img src="http://images.stardock.com/sd_com/smiles/

I know AAR’s are about the story, but I thought some maybe interested in my analysis of this particular game. I’d chose the Altarian’s because generally they are hopeless and I’d been meaning to give trade another go (something which I find equally useless). I was going to try to colonise, trade, ally with the other non-evil races, get a stable Universe and then push for gaining planets by flipping them with influence. This pre-game plan went out the window as soon as I saw the star

Fall from grace a gameplay example (Originally posted in parts on the AAR forum - posted here for wider reading) (Large Map – everything abundant - Masochistic – no Ctl +N – no tech trading). This is the story of how the Altarians conquered the galaxy but lost their soul. Part 1 – The Crossroads of Fate. The election had been a landslide, our Popularist policies of free love and understanding (which we knew would boost our population and morale beyond

@V1m... something I've never looked at is whether anything other than HPs go up with experience. Do you know?

Part 5 – An unexpected turn I’ve never met a Terran, and since they are all dead now I guess I never will. I’d like to think we were similar to us so that some of their sacrifice would be carried forward. However their role was pivotal to our history. The Drengin were not really pressed by our feeble attempts at resistance. So much so that they declared war on the Terrans just as our Empire lay helpless before them. The transports stopped coming. We can only guess they w

Part 4 – Descent into darkness Nothing could stop the Drengin. The week after Alteria fell, another planet was subsumed into the Drengin culture. Their awesome soldiering prowess meant defence was almost impossible. Our ships were still hopelessly out classed even with the new shielding techniques stolen from the Yor. The one remaining pocket of strength we had was around Sauron. Ironically we had been winning the battle against the Yor, but it was impossible to fight on two

Part 3 – Rearguard Action The first sightings of enemy ships on our southern borders caused panic. We sent an emissary to the Iconians to ask for peace. They gratefully accepted. They had just two minor planets left and their civilization was in ruins, brought to them by their trusted “friend”. We counted the Yor and Drengin worlds. We had 10 planets the Yor had 7 and the Drengin 11. Sensors scanned the incoming fleets. The Yor had similar ships to our fleet (just many m

(Large Map – everything abundant - Masochistic – no Ctl +N – no tech trading). This is the story of how the Altarians conquered the galaxy but lost their soul. Part 1 – The Crossroads of Fate. The election had been a landslide, our Popularist policies of free love and understanding (which we knew would boost our population and morale beyond all previous levels) had found almost unanimous approval with a cynical electorate. Our first day in office was a swirling

There is no scale involved in the pictures. Drengim may be less than 1 mm tall... Anyone who has read Douglas Adams will know that one race's entire invasion fleet can be swallowed by one small dog on another planet

I used to think that Drath and Yor were really overpowered... However morale is so key to the game I find the Torian and Drengin bonuses in this area to be adequate compensation.

I stick to mediums. Cos anything bigger just takes too long on my laptop... In terms of scoring then the bigger the better the overall score. You can NEVER get into the top 10 with mediums no matter how many or how well you play.

Stop looking for realism. 500M of your troups land on a strange alien planet and then a few weeks later there are 5B of them. I know all the guff about taxpayers evading taxes... Apparently you only need to feed the taxpayers the indigenous population (all those non taxpayers) seem to live on ice or rocks.

When I have a dilemma about a certain tactic I often think if I was on the opposite end of this would I like it. Applying this logic I will never pre-emptively have defence only ships. (Maybe I might rush build one to protect an outlying colony but never have them just sitting there eating up resources). The AI does it all the time and it shows how poor this tactic is. They often have 3 times the military strength but they are spread across 20 planets doing effectively not

DreadArchon Even on big maps it allows an immediate heading for planetary invasion and taking out any near neighbours capitol about 15-20 turns in. This is huge... as it is impossible for a civ to recover from this even on suicidal... and you have the bonus of a developed planet with no cost!!! It also give you growing room, as your neighbour is transformed into an impotent weakling in one turn. It actually protects you from a early war which would damage your long term growt

Each century has had its own version of "reality". Only for the next one to expose their reality as naive. I've no proof that this century is any different than those before it. Our problem is we work with models to help understanding. But a model of something is not the thing itself.

Reading the title I thought it sounded a good name for a rock group.