I need help. I can't seem to get into a mid-late game.

Mess with the ship building.  Seriously.  It's the best way to keep your fleet relevant as the turns go by.

Stick to researching one line of weapons techs, unless your opponents start developing strong defences.

Bigger and better ships means you need to head down the road of Advanced Hulls, Medium Scale Building and so on.  You also need to look at Logistics and Miniaturisation techs so that you can fit more ships in a fleet and fit more components on each individual ship.

Some pointers to help your economy:

1) When choosing your race and political party, spend some points on economic bonuses, morale bonuses, potentially population growth and definitely also on research. The political party that gives you an economic bonus is a good choice.

2) At the start of the game, lower your taxes so your approval reaches 76% or 100% (thresholds to get a boost to your population growth). Note that this is taken into account for individual planets. For example: if your average approval is 90% but your homeworld is at 74% you won't get a boost to pop. growth on your homeworld, only on the planets that are at 76% or above.
I typically keep my approval up until I can only afford my current spending deficit for another 40 weeks or so, then I start increasing taxes.

3) Research some of the basic morale techs (yellow branch) as that will allow you to raise taxes while maintaining morale. Also research more advanced government types (yellow branch) as that will give you access to your political party's bonus - as long as your approval is sufficiently high so you win the elections. Approval in the high 50's or low 60's should be sufficient.

4) Early on, don't build on all your colonized planets. I typically develop my homeworld to get early production running and then build an economic capital quite soon; in addition I dedicate 1 planet to ship production, another to research. The others I colonize but don't build on yet until they become self-sufficient or my economy is in the green. With self-sufficient I mean that the additional income from an economic building would offset the maintenance cost of that building.
For large galaxies I sometimes add a second ship building planet so I can keep up with the colonization pace.

5) As MarvinKosh already said, be early in researching at least medium hulls (and later on the same applies for large hulls). Check what weapons the other races have researched and make sure you keep up. You can see that by either looking at the details of their ships or by looking at their technologies in the trading screen.

6) Trade technologies with the AI to keep up with the overall research pace, they're doing the same. Never trade diplomatic techs or your best military techs. The others you can give up in return for useful technologies, especially race-specific technologies that you cannot research yourself, as long as you're getting something decent in return.
You can also throw in up to 999 influence points or even small amounts of cash to help close a deal.

Thanks for the responses. I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. I can see myself each game getting better and lasting longer, just a matter of ironing out the details.

 

Question about planets - Do guys usually designate a planet type to be purely one focus? For example, a planet of quality 7 or lower would be designated just for research buildings, or do you mix them up

I've never been the type of player to care about "all-X" strategies and never will be. But I do tend to designate most planets with a specific purpose, although more based on what (if any) bonus tiles they have then on planet quality.

My rule of thumb for planets is that if the tooltip says they give 11 or more base influence, then I designate them as influence generators.  Lower and they get economy buildings.  As for research and manufacturing, I concentrate those on planets which have good bonus tiles.

Incidentally, this would almost certainly be the "mega pirates" - a mega event, which is intentionally designed to destabilize the game. You might want to turn those off at first.

My home planet will be a mix at first since I both want to get some ship construction and some early research going. Once I'm past those few weeks I'll dedicate it mostly to economy (getting an economic & political capital combined with the high population works miracles for my economy)
Other planets will be dedicated to 1 purpose; like Qrtxian this is heavily driven by which bonus tiles are available. The advantage of dedication is also that buildings that provide an X% increase to economy / military / social production on that planet will maximize their impact.
In addition, when it comes to military production I prefer to have a few planets capable of producing ships fast, rather than many planets that take ages to produce those ships. The same goes for social production: concentrated social production on a few planets allows you to build wonders / galactic achievements much faster.

Re the tech race getting ahead of you, I quite like disabling Tech Brokering in the main game options.

That's still the only way I feel like I'm on roughly even footing with the computer players when it comes to tech trading. (The option means that players can only trade away techs that they researched or found themselves, not ones they traded for.)

Beside morale boosting structures, is there another way to maintain a decent Approval rating on planets that are farther away than your home planet? I found some nice quality planets in various games and it just seems my rating drops so much its about useless to have them.

 

Also, I'll be able to keep my planets >90% but my home world is a mess as well with approval

Approval doesn't depend on the distance to your home planet. However, higher quality planets get a boost to approval. On the other hand, as of a certain population size you get a penalty to approval which is mainly the issue that you have on your home world.
There are also technologies in the yellow tree that boost morale. On your home world one of the best buildings is a political capital (50% bonus to morale) though some races have even better unique buildings.
Also, there's no issue in running with 100% approval on your smaller planets and at least 76% on your home world as that already gives you a boost to population growth.

Oh ok, when I had hovered over the approval on the planet it said something about distance, I may have read it wrong. Thanks for the info.

One thing to consider is your overall racial strategy.  High PQ planets can be critical for pumping out warships later in the game, if you put lots of factories there.  Esp if there are bonus tiles for manufacturing, etc.  If you seek the conqueror route, that's the way to go.

Planets, esp high PQ ones, with bonus tiles for happiness can also support a high population when those bonus tiles get happiness improvements built on them.  Such planets become great cash flow generators with stock markets, etc.  When such planets have research bonus tiles, they can become huge research points generators, etc.

A PQ7 planet (with no additional convertible tiles) and those smaller represent challenges.  They are too small for building expensive later game ships, and too small for much else.  I oft put just enough factories on them to build invasion ships fairly quickly and add one farm and one happiness improvement, all with the intent to let them be skimmed for troops over and over again.

You might take a look at your playing style, when selecting your race, and ensure the racial bonuses and picks are consistent with your approach.  I like the Yor (in DA) because I want the ion engine right off to help colonization and surveying, etc.

I got to assume U R playing twilight of the Arnor since it is the latest one your using. Since U R talking about war this will help it at least give u breathing room In the beginning Dark Avatar is not a bad idea though. If your plauing Dark avatar I would try the Altarians they r the most powerful on the game to my opinion. I sill back a stradegy of as many colonies as possible I would pick creativity at the beginning of the game. I would also trade for research and economic treaties as soon as possible

If your post was to me, I play only DA.  I do not have TA.

On the larger maps, having ion engine at the start is a big bonus.  On smaller maps, having super breeder is great.

In large maps with abundant habitable planets, races that start with the ability to colonize non-standard planets have a big advantage.

Being able to get others into wars more easily, or to have others declare war on those that declare war on you is most helpful when there are lots of AIs in the game.

I have gone to playing all random settings in the galaxy setup so that I am forced to use a race that does not maximize its advantages to a tailored setup.  It changes everything and every game!

I was actually talking to Kanij actually but my responce actually did include what u said. Mainly because Fsrk avatar is the easiest of the games because of a lack of a challenging Ai. Why r u not playing the more challenging Dread lords or why do u not go to Twilight of the Arnor many of the Aspects r the same for most of the races what u lack in ability can be made up in Tech, but in Twilight of the Arnor the Techs are different so it would be alittle harder with different Techs with the Thalans and the Torians suped up it is a more challenging game.

You're a bit late in that case. The OP is almost two years old, and Kanij hasn't posted anything since then.

Gaunathor -

That's why I thought be might have meant moi.

 

As for why I do not play DL, the game is not quite complex enough, compared to DA to keep my interest.  I do not own TA because it needs a patch to be enjoyable w/o trying player mods.  That is, too many AIs are broken, among other things.  If they won't patch it; I won't buy it.

since i am bored, i have decided to NECRO this post. sort of bored, not completely. speaking from my experience when it comes to galactic civilization, i usually find trading tech enabled to be broken and unchallenging because if you build a sufficiently high relationship with a civilization that is relatively high in ranking it will almost guarantee to win you the game. with that said. it all depend on your playstyle. if usually like to put ton of research on a top quality planet like planet with quality level of 16+, if you couple that with research % enhancing buildings, it would generate some insane amount of research early on which woud in term let you get some hard to get techs that A.I is unwilling to trade with you at that moment of the game, but that would require a lot of upkeep and you have to make sure you get enough billions of credit to get the thing rolling, or you will run out of fund and be stuck with a limited empire. so if you can solve your economic problem, you can get your research up, but before all those you have to make sure you have enough production to keep your empire growing fast. so i usually specialize my planets. here is my formula, research planet gets the highest quality planet, preferably planet quality level of 16+, factory planet get the medium quality planet, and the lowest quality planet gets the economic buildings(because population isn't dependent on the planet quality level). you would want to have some econ building in your factory planet to pay for the bills, but don't put any on the research planet because you want that to be for research only to maximize your output. if you do all that and research hull techs earlier on, and grab A.I's weapon tech(if you can, but you probably have to pay an arm or a leg for it, because A.I doesn't like to trade arm tech with civi they intend to invade or they know will invade, i am sure you can fit through a crack of that with some civi) you will be good for quite a while. with weapon tech out of the way, A.I doesn't like to research defense tech, so you will try to get defense tech that directly counters the A.I's weapon tech that is obviously going after you(you can tell that they want you! just look up their attidude in trade!) don't forget to get planetary invasion tech, the earlier you research that, the better, because you will need less tech point and that will make your research a lot more effective, but don't do it, if there are other more urgent problems in your empire, you don't want to be cripped by the economy or you are going to be in a world of pain, because A.I doesn't like a bankrupt empire, and even trading with them will not mitigate that. so stay a float and build up infrastructure you don't really need any warships earlier on, but get techs that will let you be prepared to make better warships and counter attack them if they invade you. then everything is just like dominos, once the war get started, you milk A.I's planet and take their planets, slowly you will probably have an empire that is stronger than every other A.I and your fleet will also improve too! at that point, everything becomes easy. then you win! tried that on abscene and won. A.I's fleet is dumb, but some A.I has sick production and reinforcement to mitigate that, thus the only way sometimes is to take over ther planet to keep them down, otherwise, you will have to make peace with them or crumble under their constant reinforcement, like in the highest suicidal and obscene mode. don't worry about Yor though, they are as dumb as a rock, a worthless warmongering race that is bound to be destroyed once the game drag on... they just don't possess the sufficient mean to oppose anyone later on the game, they suck. came across them so many times, they fail everytime.

You're too late. Somebody already beat you to it.


In that case, maybe you should try my mod? I have limited tech trading quite a bit. Government techs, morale techs, economy, lab, and factory techs, and all race-specific techs can neither be traded nor stolen. All other techs are still freely available. However, you need to get your infrastructure and economy going all by yourself. This, along with all my other changes, should provide a nice little challenge. 


That won't happen in my mod. Well, at least it is extremely less likely. The Yor don't rule supreme just yet, but they're getting there.

So to start off U feal that a challenging game is less important that a complex game. I've played both games a lot before I found the ultimate edition. The first game I played was Dark avatar. Then the game degradaded until my Dark avatar couldn't work anymore. I had lost the Cd; so I couldn't reload the game. I didn't have the internet at the time, so I never registered the game I efectively lost the game. The only other option I had is to find the Dread lords expansion vs the Dark avatar the Terrans were producing levels of research the Krynn could never obtain. So when I finally had a chance to buy the game again I had a choice between Dark avatar and Dread lords. I took the more challenging game Dread lords and bought it. Even if the game have some problems it is still more challenging than Dark avatar. I would still recommend Twilight of the Arnor. If u want a challenge take off the Arceans and the Dominion of Korx, I would recommend replacing the Korath Ai with a generic Ai the Drengin Ai And probably the Altarians wouldn't be bad I will admit that U can't dp much with the Yor. Even with a broken Ai with the Thalans and the Torians and the Korath with the settings I am about to mention there is no way Dark avatar is better U do have to remember that the Tech trees r a first draft Dark avatars have its own set of problems no game is perfect and U can always improve 'on it U will also that the customising is better but one Ai I know that is not broken is the Generic not to mention I heard the Torian or Terran is a good Ai Twilight of the arnor is not a perfect game but neither is Dark avatar. The only one that doesn't seem to have issues is Dread lords From what I can see Gunathor mod fixes the issues that the game is having O yeah this is my recommendation for the Korath a generic Ai put all the points in economics and morale with the rest in population growth this will keep the Thalans on there toes. Even though this post is old this may be of good use to some other new comer. Toa is better than Da even with its own problems U will find the game has a more challenging Ai u will enjoy having different techs with different people with different stats U can change around the Ais for the most part this is kind of futile with the Yor or the Drath the Ais will not play theur races good modding is better the generic Ai is better U also have a custom tech tree minor race tech tree tweaaking will fix the problems but Gunathor mod does seem to be better Dark avatar is really not a challenging game Twilight of the Arnor is more challenging with my suggestions it is eaven more challenging the Torians and the Krynn are good ones to use I wouldn't use the Torians because the Ai needs them.

The only way of getting Dark Avatar without internet-access is the retail Gold Edition. Which means, that you also had Dread Lords. Still, without the ability to patch the game, you were missing out on a lot of improvements. Especially to the AI.


Dark Avatar is the expansion to Dread Lords. I think, you are confusing the two with each other.


As I explained to you here, that is a bad idea. The Korath AI is the only one capable of using Spore ships. If you switch it to a different one, the Korath won't be able to use their biggest advantage.


That highly depends on the player. The AI, while not perfect, generally does a decent enough job. Well, as long as it gets enough planets.


That's quite subjective. TotA is more fun to me, but DA has less bugs and the AI performs much better in general, meaning it's more challenging.


Which tech trees are a first draft? The one in DA is based on the original from DL, with only some small differences (mainly a couple new techs). The ones in TotA saw several changes during the beta. Some even saw a couple adjustments after the beta ended. None of those would fall under "first draft".


All AIs in TotA have some sort of problem. The one of the Generic AI is, that it is especially keen on increasing the tax rate when money is low, sometimes even beyond 100%.


I give you the Terrans, but the Torian/Iconian AI is the one most people mention when they talk about broken AIs in TotA (which I also did in the post I linked to above). It expands quite well, which is great, but at some point it stops building anything on the new colonies (except for the Starport). That means, that, the longer the game goes on, the weaker the Torians and Iconians get, because they fall more and more behind in research, economy, and manufacturing.


So? DA is still less buggy and more balanced (I don't mean that in the competitive sense) than TotA. I like TotA a lot (which is why I kept working so hard on my mod), but it doesn't hold a candle to DA when it comes to polishing.


I tried my best, but there are still some issues left. However, I can't do anything about them, because I lack access to the source code. Not that access would help me any. I'm not a programmer. Still, my mod is not the only one fixing those bugs. As I mentioned here, when you were asking about mods for the first time, there are three more.


If you are playing my mod, I would advise against using that tech tree (and the ones of the Dark Yor, Snathi, and Dread Lords). I made several changes to it, in order to prevent some problems for the minors, and removed a couple techs, that are useless to them (like the influence techs and the whole Tech Victory-line).

michaelwhittaker -

The campaigns never interested me and I have beaten both games in sandbox a great many times on the hardest levels by now.

So, why not play only the one I find more interesting?

Thanks for the advice I was actually talking about the Vanilla game as far as custumising the Game put them for that reason right U r using them for the Ai thanks for the advice on the mods I have downloaded them the only ones I knew about were in the library My computer is restrictive and makes it hard to search the internet for mods I have also had problems downloading mods lately I tried my best I can't make the Hylians and other stardock mod races work can U help. U have actually been helpful this sort of social networking for the most part.