I think I've found my level of play

I've found the Torians to be an especial nuisance when it comes to mid-late game wonders, I've lost quite a few over the games I've played to them because I waited to long to go for them.

Those triple alliances are rough, especially if an event or just normal gameplay starts a war up with one of the members.

Don't build wonders and trade goods, always buy them as soon as you can. You don't want them tying up production on your good planets and hindering development of normal infrastructure.

Or I should say, don't build wonders and trade goods until you have a super planet and a significant tech lead. This is nearly impossible to achieve on higher difficulty levels, so it's often better to just buy them instead of worrying about who will build them first.

Za H, I was still researching the techs! I've *NEVER* lost the Terraformer before this game

If I hadn't been tired of the war, I would have only made peace with two of them, let them redeclare war, then settle again a year later or so, catching up on tech completely. But no, I had to be nice (saintly, actually).

Hi all

ZA H i might diagree a little with you. I usually try to get gravity accelorators early on and also the diplomatic translators. It helps me survive certain challenges. I buy them rather than building them. But i also micromanage almost all my planets until i hit the end game. And Gravity Accelorators has let me beat the a.i. to a class 26 planet :))))

se ya around the forums

the_cat
irc.stardock.com #glaciv

Actually, my last two games, an AI has beat me to Gravity Accels. So I buy them off of him. And so far, it has been cheaper then rush building it myself.

midnight_louie:

So where exactly do we disagree? LOL

I also always buy wonders. Take e.g. the Galactic Stock Exchange. You buy it through Mitrosoft and the economic increase outweighs the 15 or so BC which you have to pay monthly.

Well I'm at all brights AI now and it always starts well - Im in the lead for the first part. Then all of a sudden one or two alien civs jump up and leave me far behind. This happens when I'm far ahead economically, technologically, production wise... And since the upping of the minor diplomacy - I dont trade with minors anymore (they'll only accept ridiculously low offers) - so the other majors cant be getting techs from them can they ? I'm starting to find the whole thing tedious. So much so that I rarely go beyond a couple hundred turns anymore.

Don't know what's wrong with them...or me.


MG

On all bright, I feel that once you gain the lead, you should never lose it (except for maybe some horribly bad luck with the random events). I don't know your play style (it's amazing how many "right" ways there are in this game), but I'd say you need to analyze your mid-game strategy.

IMO, others passing you up in mid-game or later means you are not doing something as efficiently as you could be. (Are you building near-useless structures that cost too much, or not changing your tax levels appropriately to heat up your production/expansion?)

~SDC~

This happens to me as well, although I think I´m doing something wrong with the spending sliders in the midgame.
But when I see that I´m going to be overtaken by an unfriendly alien race soon, I usually start a war as long as I am still superior.

GxR

Hmm, I've been playing will all bright AI, and I've found the minor civs to be a major cash cow, at least until all the other civs bleed them dry with blackmail. First thing I do when I meet one is blackmail them for hundereds of bc, then I sell them a bunch of tech for oodles of tribute. I almost feel guilty about it.

One thing you can do, which may or may not be cheesey, is sell them one tech at a time instead of all of them at once. Making each tech you sell a seperate deal will get more money out of them than if you sell them for one lump sum.

Of course, I also make sure I have high diplomacy skill.

I played several games on all bright, and yes, once I got the lead, I kept it. But this game has been something different.

FYI, the Arceans declared war *AGAIN*. Hero's up to level 10 or so, with a defense of 134, and it still got the snot kicked out of it by waves of overlords. Wound up offering peace (they accepted and offered some tribute, but not all their tech, which is what I needed) just as the AI was about to take out both Hero and my fully upgraded starbase on a military resource (the two didn't have 30 HP between them).

It's 2207, I'm behind the Altarians in tech, they're about 4 techs ahead of me in the 4D chain, so Excaliburs are on the horizon. I think next time a war starts, it's going to have to be the final war. All I need is time to let hero and the star bases recover some HP, and park a few of my own overlords on the critical starbases, and then I'll be ready, I'm already in first place militarily, but the loss of that starbase plus hero would have crippled me. I don't have the manufacturing capacity to outproduce all three of the AI, so my ships *HAVE* to be better.

Wow, is this fun!

Actually, since this is the first game I've played on a reasonable-sized map with any of the AIs set to intelligent, it could be a fluke. In fact, the most powerful civ is one of the two AIs I left set to bright (the Altarians, the Drengin were the other, but they're out of the game).

I played one game on Tiny with the same intelligence settings, but tiny was too easy militarily, at least for me.

MGagne, my guess is that you are an infrastructure person like myself. I'll often see the pattern you describe, the reason for it is that all the AIs tend to beeline for dreadnaught tech, at which point they switch most all their planets to producing dreadnaughts. When these start rolling out their military power graph spikes very high very quickly. If you've been spending your time on infrastructure tech (trade, tech for infrastructure buildings like transporters and such, government improvements, etc.) then likely at this stage you'll fall behind militarily.

At this point you need to crank out a low-cost defensive ship (like starfighters, big military strength bang for your buck here) and start travelling up the military route yourself. The advantage you'll have is that you built a better infrastructure first, so you'll be researching the same techs from a stronger position then they AI did (just later in the game). You'll end up eventually with the same tech and a much stronger economy, then you can sprint towards whatever game ending condition you prefer.

If you focus on infrastructure you'll have a tricky passage through the mid-game area, the advantage you'll have is that you'll be far more powerful in the late-game phase. The key is to build just enough military to bluff the AI into giving you time to let your superior economy kick in.