and another one:
when your flagship flies from anomaly to anomaly watch every turn to what anomaly it will fly next.
If it is a "Civilization Graveyard" switch research to something insanly expensive fly the ship manually to that anomaly ...and with some luck it's a 25%-research-database-anomaly. Afterwards you can switch back to your normal research.

Of course, you can use it also for your current research, but if it's something relatively cheap it's quite a waste.

That's how I usually get "Planetary invasion" relatively fast (or in my current game the Spore-Tech...that was well over 100 turns of normal research at the start...3x25%-anomalies allowed me to have it before Year Zero was over)

Thanks for that one
Playing a Obscene-game as Korath atm and I got a cluster of planets around my starting position and part of that were 2 class 4-planets.
I had only colonized 1 ...and let an AI colonize the other...got it soon anyway.

Now I always trade 1 away for some (minor) techs. The first one I gave away I got back as a class 8 as the Altarians had Soil enhancement already. The other one goes from AI to AI and most give me some techs for it. Nothing impressive in singles cases but in sum it adds up quite massively

I admit, I never got the idea to give away my planets until I read that one. Always felt "unnatural" to me....but I guess I'm more desperate now for "dirty tricks" than I was during DA

How do you see them complete it?

@LedZerggelin

In DL/DA (but apparently not in TA, unless I've toggled some option that I didn't know existed) you are informed when a race completes their tech/economic/manu cap, etc (as well as some other things like trade goods and galactic wonders, but that's not relevant for this dicussion).



Admittedly, it's not WORTH it to get an eco treaty from an AI (minors notwithstanding, as they can sometimes be just gullible enough to offer it) in the first year-or even the second, in fact-but it is by no means impossible. It just takes about 30-50k.

As far as TA and research treaties...haven't tried it yet. I'll get to that in a bit.

Check your toggles, then. You ARE informed of such events in TA - even for races you haven't met yet.

You happen to be correct-in more ways than one.

First of all, to my knowledge, there is not such a toggle.

Secondly, I wasn't paying complete attention, and it is not other races' special improvements that I am not being informed of: it is my own.

I don't know if this is a bug or some artifact of some setting or combination of settings I'm using or just my luck, but in any case, it's not really a big deal, though it does annoy me.

How do you launch a ship in a different direction? In which expansion was this included first?

Thanks for your answers.

Sounds like a real Ferengi argument. Still your enemies will become wealthier and therefore stronger. So it's not only good for yourself.

I'm not sure when this came in, but when you click on a planet there is a button near the ships in orbit area. Once clicked it'll allow you to pick one of the 8 exit directions for that planet.

AFAIK, it was first included in Dark Avatar; I think around 1.6.x but I'm probably wrong on that part. In any case, the toggle for the "icon" to actually -show- the direction you were choosing wasn't added until at least 1.7.x.

I honestly never used the button; wasn't even aware of it, but the L key works as well (and IMO is more convenient).

I find you have to zoom in to get it to be accurate. Since I play the game mostly zoomed out to icon level view, its a bit annoying.

Sentient species taste better...

Firstly, you can change the tactical zoom distance KP, so you can be in closer and still not have the graphics hit.

Secondly, it seems to be hit and miss for it to light up the parsec for the exit point. Some games/planets it will do that and make things easier, others it'll be a PITA and make you guess, making you redo the exit point a few more times.

You can see the exit point for a planet by clicking on it and looking for an arrow pointing to one of the 8 parsec around it.

So the option is not available in DL?

Sorry for disturbing this cool thread with this question. Continue please!

If you would have never asked the question here, another may have done it if they didn't know. So in asking a question, you have contributed to this thread's knowledge.

See? I never knew that you couldn't pick the launch direction in DL.


This can be called a trick or maybe an exploit but its still probably too much of a pain to do anyway. Personally I haven't done this, but...

I once took an AI planet that had noting but factory type buildings on it. It was fully developed but didn't have a starport or any other buildings, just factories. So the AI was spending a lot to build nothing. My trick would be to sell / give the AI a planet(s) full of industrial sectors and nothing else just to damage its economy. Since the AI never over builds existing structures it won't ever get anything useful out of that planet except costs.

Also, because of the way the AI queues up its improvements, if you give it a tech like Neutrality Learning Centers before it gets stock exchanges or industrial sectors, it will be stuck building the NLC for a long time before it will ever get to build anything else that it might need more. I used NLC as an example because they have such a huge build time. You might be able to do the same with industrial sectors but then after each is built the next will be done a bit faster. If the AI gets industrial sectors befoe it has built manufacturing centers it will take it a long time before its done updating.

I guess that brings up another "trick", I always build manufacturing centers first, even on empty tiles because of the MP to cost ratio. A quick build will cost you something like 1400 bc or a full build that takes about half the time as an industrial sector from scratch. You get almost the ability of industrial sectors for a lot less in build time and maintenance cost.

Just make sure in TA that the AI you are selling the planet to has the Industrial Sector tech in their tree or given/sold it to know it...otherwise they just got all of them bulldozed.

Always make sure you have constructors near bonus resource starbases of other races. In the event of a war between two races it's very common to get the resource as the starbases are destroyed in the war.

War strategy for Thalans in ToA:

Hyperion Starbase tech is wonderful thing. Among many things it gives is Singularity Armor, which adds +24 to all 3 defenses.

That, plus some attack module (like Battle Stations), makes pretty much invulnerable space station (at least until late game weaponry is discovered).

The great thing about that is that AI likes throwing their ships on those bases. Waves and waves of them, while your base doesn't lose a single hit point.

Good thing to place near enemies with lots of ships.

3 Constructors, plus some money needed (500 for armor, 200 for battle station).


P.S.
If enemy has good shields, some extra weaponry is required (additional level of battlestations or similar).

I'm not sure if this has been posted here or not.

Since the center of the galaxy can be a strong strategic location, build a cargo hull ship with three life supports and as many engines as you can very early. Send it toward the center of the map. When it gets there, upgrade it to a colony ship with three life supports and no engines. 1 million colonists will automatically appear and you can grab one of the center planets.

Build a starport and you can reach anywhere on the map from there. A nice side effect is that your survey ships will be able to reach more anomalies too.

REALLY !??! I had no idea that upgrading to a colony ship gave it colonists.

Must be the crew of the ship

Or all the stow-aways they find in the holds while upgrading. Then they get kicked out and dropped on the new planet.

Sentient species taste better...

How do you think ships get more speed in heavy battles? They carry a ballast of slaves.

Good god, rename this thread to "Treasure Trove". I played a game last night with the goal of influence flipping as many enemy planets as I could. From stuff I've read here, it was happening so frequently that it almost felt like a joke. I never liked doing that, I thought it contributed to influence victory. But hot damn does it take a lot of invasion micromanagement out of it. On this all abundant medium galaxy, I finished the game with 1.25 trillion people.

And stupid me, I was evil and had all the techs, and waited almost a year before remembering to build an MCC. 3 turns after building it, I won the game rofl.


One thing though, the "give trade tech to a minor civ and they will make econ capital", I found that to be deliciously brilliant. However, my obscene game last night, out of the 5 minors, the only one that actually built the econ capital is the only one I didn't trade Trade to.

Seen as this thread holds a lot of tips a new player would find useful i hereby give it a large bump