@ Neilo. well said.

Eh, I prefer girls who are younger (2 years being the limit) or at least my age.

@ Neilo

what now?

Hey I said I also liked girls who are my age too!

sorry Seth, you got caught in some friendly fire,

any girl close to your age, that you like, is OK....years are sand pebbles, as you grow older.

@ everyone....

I can't say too much. My wife is 5 years younger than me. She was 18 when we started dating though so not so bad.

You hear 11 and you think young......But of course when i was 15, the 11 year old girls looked like 11 year old girls.

These days its dangerous to even think about glancing at a girl, who knows what age they are anymore.....

my girlfriends my age pretty much. besides, when your 18+ it really doesn't matter what age you are.

Alot of the girls in the 7th and 8th grade aswell as 6th grade at my school wear shirts that show their cleavege so it doesn't help.

I think that would be part of his point. If you're still in school with them, it's not that bad for you to look even if you're a few years older. Doing the same to girls out in public when you're 25 (and you mistakenly think they are 18) makes you feel rather like a perv. I guess that's a point in favor of girls smoking, you can be fairly sure she's not jailbait. Same with working at a university, even the freshmen are legal.

I remember school fairly well. There was *no* cleavage showing in 7th or 8th grade, the most you might get is a fairly see-through phys ed uniform. High school didn't have a whole lot either. Maybe I went to school in a conservative town, but it was also a more conservative time. Not in behavior, of course - at one point there was enough girls pregnant at the same time to need their own subsection of a phys ed class (4, out of a school of 320).

The bottom line is, the older you get, the harder it is to judge the age of young people, and that was true even when grade school girls *weren't* dressing like hookers.

I dated a 19-yr old when I was 33.  That was....fun.  She was the initial  pursuer though, so I didnt feel like a dirty old man.   The age difference did cause some problems though.

I know what you mean Neilo.  When I went to my cousin's High School graduation a few years back, I was surprised to see how a lot of the girls dressed sort of like hookers.  Defintely didnt see that back in my HS days.  Not that I have anything against eye-candy, but it was just quite different from my school experience.

Yeah, the numbers themselves shouldnt be that inportant.  Maturity level though can be a problem, which was an issue for me when I was dating that one girl I mentioned above.

Definitely have had some experiences like that, which is always disconcerting, realizing you've been admiring the "attributes" of someone just too young.

Sentient species taste better...

Alot has to do with the mainstream rap culture.

Sorry mate but im lost as to what you mean by Rap culture in this context.

It's not just that the times have changed since it seems to be socially acceptable for teenage girls to be dreesing as i see many of them do, but i also blame steroids.

Seriously, girls are maturing faster these days and it's the steroids i think do it. Not that girls take them but its in just about every meat product on the market these days. The racks 12-14 yr old girls are sporting these days would have made the bustiest chick in my senior year jealous.

Why it affects girls more so, i don't know, maybe us guys are just that slow at that age, but i swear to you i was looking at a girl in school uniform....who hasn't, and was admiring her when i saw her friend and realized that i knew her. Assuming the girl was in the same year as the girl i knew, that made her 13-14.

This girl looked like she would waltz into any niteclub and buy herself a scotch. She looked and acted about 19.I know, not the typical age to be in a school uniform but all the same....

From that day i felt it was safer to just assume if she is in uniform she is far to young.....

Oh to be 15 again...........I think the girls i went to school with were the equivalent of the school librarian....

I must confess though...that as much as i like, as any hetro male, an 18yr old in a nice skimpy school uiniform, i have become more partial to the mid to late 30's super fit MILF.

sigh.......

BTW, when your in HS and the girls are wearing clothes showing cleavage...that's always helpful.....

Hrm, my 2bc on this.  Chase after the good looking ones now, w/in the age range you're willing to be seen dating.  After you are 18 though, start thinking about how mature they are.  Back in HS they are going to immature, thus the root of the word.  After they are out of HS though, HS mentalities get real old...fast.

I know a couple women my wife (1 grade behind me back then) went to school with that are still stuck back in HS's drama clicks, HS for us was 9-10 years ago.  They still think so and so is out to 'ruin their life' or so and so still hates them for blah...  People grow up and mature...most people at least.  Find the ones that left HS behind them and talk with them...at least when you start thinking about who you want as a keeper.  If you still want to be playing the feild, find the girl dancing on the table after 1 Zima...who knows, maybe she'll grow up mentally and still keep that party-thought like my wife...

For what it's worth, when I was in 5th grade, there was this one chick...who put the chicks I met in high school to shame.

But hers didn't wind up massive or anything, she was just an early bloomer.

Although that's obviously an isolated incident.

I actually still talk with her, too.

A Hekuva way to start a game:

I switched my home planet to Korx III. First time out I get a 7X research tile on the homeworld and an 8x manufacturing on Korx. 

What galaxy settings?

Immense in ToA, Suicidal difficulty vs 7 major and 8 minor races. As far as I know, there are only one of each of these bonuses in the 500+ planet galaxy. The odds of this happening are just staggering.

Awesome start though it's also extremely risky to plunge into debt.

Not that I speak from experience, the largest galaxies I play are huge and then any +300% bonus tile is already rare though in those galaxies at least 1 or 2 planets get the benefit of some +700% tile. Though I still have to have the luck to get one of those nearby my home planet so I can grab it in the early colony stage.

Nice....kick ass

my exalted leader, with all respect, there seems to be some dog in you're cat

I play a swindle, so I only have to worry about the 3 planets for the first year. After that, I kick in the War Profiteering and my economic problems are over. Well, except for:

It's 2231, I have over 400 planets, and am generating massive amounts of income at a 40% tax rate. I have been over the 20K limit for a very long time. Would it help the econ score to stay under 20K BCs until the end of 2236 (when I will try to end the game), or am I irreversably stuck with the econ penalty?

Snarkotamous,

seek better advice than mine, but stay under 20 every turn, its worth about 25%

It would help the econ score more if you upped your tax rate, rather than trying to avoid the penalty.  It's a racial penalty, for what that's worth, so it's not 20% less score (probably-someone should check on this, but Mumble'd be the best candidate for it).

As an additional caveat, of course if you're spending your money you're increasing your score in some fashion, so a direct comparison between spending down and not spending down is not possible, but the econ portion alone will not be even 20% of the econ's portion of your score due to the 20k threshold, assuming you have any kind of decent bonuses, which in a large or larger galaxy you should.

I could up the rate to 44%, still maintain 80% approval (I have almost 9 Trillion Citizens), and rake in about 160K BCs (160 TCs) per turn with the production slider at zero.  This way I could rush-buy 5 35-TC massive warships per turn.

I have more planets than the previous estimate. the actual number is 517. I also have all of the economic, military, and influence resources maxed out to +49 each, thanks to a Drengin starbase tech that I was able to buy before they perished to my influence. In future games, I will be sure to "give" the Drengins the Discovery Sphere early in the game so that I can get this tech again.

Edit: The tech is called Industrial Starbase Construction. It enables a +10 resourse module and a +8 production assist module. My planet with the x8 manufacturing tile now has a +310 bonus from econ starbases, and I am still building. I ought to be able to get 12 starbases in range of this planet with +32 each.

Before I start another new game, I'll make a shopping list of tradeable Drengin techs and post it here.