Management help

Well, my first suggestion would be trying to keep up with those in the reverse order. If your economy crumbles you're essentially screwed. The biggest mistake most players make is spending their 5000bc right off the bat by buying colony ships and then immediately raising taxes till morale is almost red. Instead, build all your stuff from scratch in the beginning (save for like 1 or 2 factories on your home planet). Increase you're spending slider to max out from the getgo. People have different opinions on what you should do first (research speed? start pumping out colony ships and catch up later?), it's really you're call. The biggest part is that you need to keep your taxes DOWN from the start. 100% morale is ideal, though you'll most likely have to deal with 0% taxes from the start. If you don't want to achieve this you at least need 75%. Why these two numbers? They're the key for population growth bonuses. More people = higher tax base. So, over time, taxing a large number a small amount makes more money than taxing a few people a large amount.

With military, I always mass produce. I find a point where my relations are getting hostile cuz I never pay attention to military till someone disrespects mine, then I switch "modes" to 100% military production and build the best ship i can design at every planet (governor really helps). Either one of two things happen, my military becomes respectful, so people start to back down, or they declare war beforehand, but my economy is so staggering that I can use what I have to back down their first wave, and by wave 3 or so I've overtaken them. Once they're military is lower, or beginning to match mine, it's planet stomping time. All that lack of research you did in war will make up for itself when you start stealing techs from taking over planets. Sometimes you'll even be able to skip a tech or 10.

cpu-intensive algorithms are like a smart computer for chess. It can take time to "think" more moves in advance. If you want a challenge, it really helps.

It's very difficult to answer such an open ended question. I could probably write a ten page paper on it and barely scratch the surface but I don't really have the time at the moment.

The biggest key in keeping up with the AI is to keep up with them colonizing, or better still to out colonize them. I usually try to make my home planet my manufacturing capital so that I can spit out a transport every other turn. This is more important on larger maps. On smaller maps most folks rush research up to impulse drives to beat the AI out of a few extra planets. When the galaxy is tight a few extra planets are critical.

It probably would help if you concentrated your questions on a smaller aspect of the game and then move on from there. You'll probably get more responses that way.

As far as CPU intensive algorithms, I think all they do at this point is allow the AI to redesign it's ships more frequently. You should probably leave this on.

A couple of quickies.

Trade. You can get all kinds of tech through trading.

Check whether you are going to lose production on research. If there is only one turn left to receive a technology, work the slider down until it says two, then tick it up once. It's true that with most techs the leftovers will carry forward into the next tech in the same branch if there is one, but if there isn't or you are going to change lines of research it's better to use that production elsewhere.

Check tech before you attack someone. Ideally you want to attack someone who has tech you are currently missing and who is yet soft enough to blow through.

Galactic resources are the biggest prizes in the game. I often use this for war criteria as well...If your economy needs a boost, pop that economic galactic resource in the opening attack and hit it with a constructor...

Use cpu-intensive algorithms affects how often the computer redesigns it ships. If checked it does it more frequently.

Wiki is our friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

Basically the computational/mathematical routine used to determine what kind of ship the computer is going to build in this case.

Talk about lots of responses fast...

Don't worry about military at first. If they go hostile toward you give them a few tech and they will be happy again.

Focus on colonizing. use that 5000bc to get a few colony ships in the air. use your survey ship on auto survey to start collecting anomolies.

In the begining set spending to 100%. Taxes to somewhere that will give you ~70% approval. Research engines up to impulse for faster ships. then get sensors. Build a few survey ships of your own for faster anomoly gathering.

finally consider joining an empire. They are many about. most have there own websites where they keep the really good stuff hidden for higher levels of play.

happy gaming

Well, thanks for the info you all. Ok, since it is to 'open ended'{thanks for the advice there}, i'll just go ahead and narrow it down to the part that bugs me the most- How do you keep up in technology under tough? Same game settings as post-starting post.

A fair amount of spending directed at research ahould keep you up with them. A research resource base or two should keep you ahead if you have about 60% of your spending in research. Economic star bases will help as well when you upgrade them with more modules. Trade with the AI as well. They will tend to follow the same tech path. Research what they arn't and trade them for what you want.

keep up with those in the reverse order

It probably would help if you concentrated your questions on a smaller aspect of the game

I'll second both these. "It's the economy, stupid" applies very much to GCII, but the latter is probably inevitable if you both keep playing and keep reading the forums. Read around the forums, pay close attention to folks who seem to play like you and to folks who just plain startle you. Cross-match that stuff, and you should be able to make your learning curve both steep and rapid.

There are three ways to aquire tech:

1) Research it yourself.

2) Use diplomacy talking to the other races and get it from them.

3) Steal it,,either by spies (ineffective but possible) or by invading the other races' planets.

Personly,,I have never managed to finish a game using only one of the above methods.
First of all,,you need to know what you need.

Sure,,Zero-point armour is nifty,,but if none of your opponents are using massdriver weapons,,that is not something to prioritize.
Once you have determined what you have to get,,you will have to decide if you can barter for it in case someone else has researched it already,,or if you should focus your own efforts inventing it.
Be aware that the latter might require you to dedicate not only cashflow on the Tax screen,,but also building the necessary facilities for effective research.
You might even have to trade/research factory/science techs before you can head for the real goal.

0110100:


Something else I’ve noticed, as a beginner, in a couple of my games – one on challenging, one on tough. I’ve seen the research rate of an opponent AI sudden jump through the roof. For example, in my latest game I was playing a custom race with 15% research bonus plus technologist political affiliation (for a starting tech rate bonus of 35%, I think). During the entire build-up phase of the game I remained comfortably in the lead, tech-wise. Suddenly, though, I noticed the Terran tech rate shoot through the roof (on the timeline screen). In short order the Terrans were researching at double my rate, despite my bonuses, and catching up to me very rapidly. I was flabbergasted, given my research bonuses, but I think I solved the mystery…

I checked a couple of the other timeline screens. For the Terrans, tech was up, as was manufacturing – but social production had entirely collapsed. Hmmm… must mean they’ve fully developed their planets and have run out of things to build (except ships). So they must have simply dropped their Social slider to zero and pushed up their research slider to something ungodly (like 80%). So … what if I give the Terrans a new Planetary Improvement to work on? I traded them Xeno Entertainment for a few bc. Sure enough, their tech level quickly decreased while their Social Production level shot up again – reflecting the fact that the AI was readjusting the sliders in order to build Multimedia Centers.

This leads me to suspect that one would be wise not to develop technologies involving expensive Planetary Improvements too early in the game. In fact, in this particular game I discovered Research Centers rather early, and it seems to have virtually crippled my research rate. That’s because I can no longer build cheaper Xeno Labs anymore, and by contrast Research Centers take a hell of a lot longer to come on line.

Anyway, as a beginner (I’ve been playing for a couple of weeks so far), I’ve become a big believer in the Tech bonus. But this may reflect a lack of experience on my part when it comes to setting the sliders right. Fuels Chief suggests a tech rate of 60%, but I virtually never let my research run that high, since I lose so much in production as a result.

I'm always curious about the dramatic spikes in AI timelines, not least b/c I tend to keep even curves and wonder what that might mean about my strategic weaknesses.

I've seen some research and manufacturing spikes that appeared to be a "cooincidence" of an improvement on a %700 tile with overlapping econ starbases in the sector. If you don't see some corresponding dramatic drop like no social spending, you might be seeing good AI use of bonus tiles.

Before DA, deciding when to build what improvement was something I wanted to improve a lot in my play. The option to build older improvements is one of my favorite things in DA--especially for influence strategies where you often get barely-developed planets after your core worlds are pretty much finsihed developing. In DL, I was having a hard time remembering *not* to research Tech X until I was ready to do that social spending.

Yeah, I wish it was possible to build cheaper, previously researched improvements first, even if you have already researched more advanced improvements. I doesn't make sense to me that just because I've figured out how to build Research Centers that I suddenly forget how to build Xeno Labs, for example.


And this problem makes progress through the research tree all that more complicated.