BlueTemplar wrote:
IMHO there's way too much room in exploiting the AI without fighting by using trades : you can easily trade away all the resources they need, and take all their money by selling them resources they don't.

Indeed, it still works, but has become better(in my opinion)!

BlueTemplar wrote:
Because this is a new player asking for help, so the discussion is about the most effective ways to win the game.

Not attacking a player when you would profit from it because you want to play "peacefully" and trying to play without expanding are certainly not the most effective ways to play any 4X game. (Though an experienced player might pull that off using very specific strategies.)



One City Challenge in Civ isn't a challenge game?

Well you said not expanding was a sure way to lose the game. It is not, especially in endless space. Not expanding allows you to focus much more on building your planets and you dont have to deal with excessive expansion disapproval. Using diplomacy and gaining trade and allies is a great way to win the game. Attacking people causes a needless drain on resources from my point of view.





(In civilization, I dont play the one city challenge. I just use one city cause its the best way to get a cultural victory. Takes around 300 turns. Similar deal in endless space. Small amount of colonies, focus on them, win in 150 turns)

Thanks again for all your varied advice - I'm currently trying it all and using the tips to finetune my transhuman-ish post-Singularity race The Farsight. So far, the jury is out; I'm still having issues staying ahead in the research games (I still lose my lead around turn 120 and never claw it back, no matter how careful I try to be with selecting my research goals and keeping the science level nice and high with low taxation, planet perks, etc.), and I still have issues with particular planets that never seem to develop healthy populations and remain miserable FOREVER, but I am doing better. Slowly. But it's baby steps, right?



As for the X for eXtermination, it's my least favorite one. I want to win through means I find morally-agreeable, and require more thought than building a bigger gun (or fleet) than the other guy. The military route bores me to tears, and has against AIs way back in Command and Conquer days - the biggest stick wins and there's no joy for me in it. There are three other Xs there that need more from me than masses of capital ships and a stellar converter on every one of them And in multiplayer I'm guessing that most people will go for the brute force win every damn time because it's simple and often successful and allows a victory dance over another human as opposed to a respectful chess handshake (you can guess my opinion of multiplayer is not filled with hope, can't you?)... I'd just rather match wits with a group of diplomats.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
Thanks again for all your varied advice - I'm currently trying it all and using the tips to finetune my transhuman-ish post-Singularity race The Farsight. So far, the jury is out; I'm still having issues staying ahead in the research games (I still lose my lead around turn 120 and never claw it back, no matter how careful I try to be with selecting my research goals and keeping the science level nice and high with low taxation, planet perks, etc.), and I still have issues with particular planets that never seem to develop healthy populations and remain miserable FOREVER, but I am doing better. Slowly. But it's baby steps, right?



As for the X for eXtermination, it's my least favorite one. I want to win through means I find morally-agreeable, and require more thought than building a bigger gun (or fleet) than the other guy. The military route bores me to tears, and has against AIs way back in Command and Conquer days - the biggest stick wins and there's no joy for me in it. There are three other Xs there that need more from me than masses of capital ships and a stellar converter on every one of them And in multiplayer I'm guessing that most people will go for the brute force win every damn time because it's simple and often successful and allows a victory dance over another human as opposed to a respectful chess handshake (you can guess my opinion of multiplayer is not filled with hope, can't you?)... I'd just rather match wits with a group of diplomats.

I like you, you play similar to me D:

That and genocide leaves me with a scummy feeling I can't get off when I shower - even when it's not real.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
That and genocide leaves me with a scummy feeling I can't get off when I shower - even when it's not real.

Luckily you didn't play Armada 2526 - there it is even worse, when you "overtake" an planet / kill the locals, etc.



I prefer a scientific/expanding victory

Having the biggest stick is the most stupid way to win a military victory, and is far from being the only one. Even with the simplistic Endless Space combat, if your enemy counters your weapons and defenses, you'll need a LOT more ships than him to win.



Combat can be a very refined and complex affair in 4X games, if you're not trying this way, you're missing a big part of the game.

The issue I've had with combat Templar is I've had no choice in it thus far - the only way I've been able to claw back any semblance of a victory (save in one game) is through battering other races into extinction. I do not want to do that - it's an entirely personal thing, but subjugating my way to victory seems a very hollow way of winning anything. If it's the only way I seem able to get anywhere, then this game evidently is too smart for me and I'd be better off spending my time elsewhere - I'll end up not enjoying myself.



Granted, as I've said already, I'm playing at a pretty low difficulty level, so combat is a bit of a walkover perhaps because of that. My questions here come mainly from my inability to win in any other way; if I develop my primary systems and don't expand, I lose to whichever empire expands the most; if I expand to hold a good half of the available galaxy, one of the smaller empires manages to outpace me via a higher FIDS score, taxation or scientific victory. It seems as though the balance required to win the game is so fine I'm missing it every time... I've just had yet another game force me into hammering a smaller empire just to hold them back. Whatever the case, I'm not enjoying myself very much because I can't see where my strategy is failing because changing it just has the same end result - coming third.



I could forgive it somewhat if the game at least told me I'd done my best... instead it just tells me I'm a massive failure. Unless I keep bombing people into the stone age. I'm thinking that I'm expecting too much from the game's diplomatic system, or I'm just monumentally stupid. Either way, I don't like the way this game is making me feel the more I play it.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
... and a stellar converter ...

Is that a Battle Beyond The Stars reference?

IMHO there's way too much room in exploiting the AI without fighting by using trades : you can easily trade away all the resources they need, and take all their money by selling them resources they don't.

Because this is a new player asking for help, so the discussion is about the most effective ways to win the game.

Not attacking a player when you would profit from it because you want to play "peacefully" and trying to play without expanding are certainly not the most effective ways to play any 4X game. (Though an experienced player might pull that off using very specific strategies.)



One City Challenge in Civ isn't a challenge game?

Exploits are boring, why would you want to play like that :/

Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

BlueTemplar wrote:
Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

Ah i thought you were saying you use it as a regular strategy.

Strudo76 wrote:
Is that a Battle Beyond The Stars reference?

It was the first sci-fi movie I clearly remember seeing at a cinema, with my pops and I was a wee lil' scamp



The stellar converter also was the top of the offensive weapon tech tree in Masters of Orion II, but you never forget your first big gun.



I was initially thinking of having my signature quote as "I am Pinkemena of the Equestriori. I am in possession of a stellar party-cannon, the funnest weapon in the ponyverse. You cannot resist the urge to PARTY!" but it's a bit much, ain't it?

BlueTemplar wrote:
Actually, because it's the first game I try to do so much tech/res trading, and I'm trying to find how it all works. Consider it like mini-maxing not the economy, but your relations with the AI.

If you play the UE, there is a tech that doubles your quantity of strat resources. Before the patch, you could use that to keep an abundance of everything, and still be trading away a lot of units. Ended up earning around 4000-5000 dust per turn, per race. Haven't tried post patch cos it was a bit bland in the end. Also before the patch there was no notification of broken deals, so each turn you'd need to check your trades to see which were still running.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
It was the first sci-fi movie I clearly remember seeing at a cinema, with my pops and I was a wee lil' scamp

I actually watched it about 2-3 weeks ago. Sadly, it didn't age well, so hang on to those memories and don't be tempted to watch it again. Still a good movie, just seems a bit corny in many places now.

Broken deals are still not shown if they were broken because the only item on one side is dust per turn and that player ran out of money. Btw it's annoying that if it isn't the only item in the list, the dust per turn just gets deactivated forever and the other player gets stuck with an unfair deal.

I'm very new to the game myself, and my first game I won on a military victory because the new Automoton race apparently thought it was fun to conquer more than half the galaxy and then declare war on my Sophon allies (I declared war also to maintain an alliance.... YAY! I'm a good guy for clubbering somebody over the head! ), however I kept going at it until I owned something like 95% of the systems in the galaxie... now thinking about going back to the last save and seeing how those Sophon ships look in combat when they meet my 50K+ MP capital ship fleets >_>.... anyway... I had a point there somewhere... oh, right! I had so many systems by the end of the game, and I had already won, that I went and put them all on AI controls to initially pruduce research at a faster rate, and later to Dust once I had researched everything.



I know I'm still a complete noob, but maybe changing some colonies to AI control to see what they do once they are told to reach a higher research output? You still have to make the right choices on what you research, however at that point you can at least let the AI build and teraform to get the optimal output of research.



I don't think the AI is perfect, however they seemed to select the right things to produce by late-game, with a few exceptions being extremely constly upgrades that primarily served the funtion of winning the game (which I had already won anyway).



One thing is that the Automotons I faced were extremely expantionist, and had no trouble bringing huge Dread fleets into my systems at around the time I only had Destroyers researched, of course followed by curb-stomping ME into the ground. They even went so far as to DEMAND a system I managed to snag on their side of the wormhole (for free, of course), which ultimately lead to their demise because it had a HUGE population and great production and research values.... basically pumping-out missile Dreads every turn once I had the needed tech, which easily fought back and dominated their side of the system with the aid of my main Hero (which somehow managed to fight back with suicide missile Destroyer fleets long enough to get behind the wheel of a Dread).



Oh, the other point in the above story is that the Automotons managed to get about 75% of the way to an economic victory before I started aggressively pushing back and taking their planets... and the fact that I had no idea how system upgrades worked (I somehow thought you could only build one per system... and later I thought they had a one-time cost <_<).



So the summary is: Try AI control of your systems and focus on the most viable research path. If that does not work, then try something else! \^_^/



EDIT: I just realized I necroed this thread >_>... damn, I have to get used to the font color and placement of post dates on this forum. Sowy.

EmpressPinkemina wrote:
The stellar converter also was the top of the offensive weapon tech tree in Masters of Orion II, but you never forget your first big gun.

it was also in moo1

Planets do make a difference. It's the difference between 8 and 10 systems without approval problems. But you've got to be aware :



Over-expansion is a thing. dun dun dahhh!

The more you expand, the trickier it gets to keep everyone happy. As Nosferatiel said, expansion disapproval only hits full colonies, 30 turns after being settled. You might realize too late that you over-expanded, and you get stuck with unhappiness as a result. There's a limit to how much you can compensate with lower tax rates without going bankrupt.

You then have to research (and build) new approval system improvements as soon as possible, and research expansion disapproval mitigation techs, and stop colonizing new systems until you stabilize, and stop colonizing new planets in-system unless the system itself is in good shape approval-wise. It might also help to fix bad anomalies, but the industry cost is rather high and system improvements are faster to set up.



The danger with expansion disapproval is that 1 new system can lower the approval of ALL your systems by a significant amount, 4% at easy and up to 7% at endless (according to the wiki). The problem isn't localized and fixed with a hero giving approval, it is widespread and requires big investments. Better see the problem before it hits. Try to colonize new systems over many turns instead of all at the same time, that way you can better see the transition from happy to strike.





Also, I do believe that expansion disapproval depends on the number of systems you control, not the number of full colonies you have. When you colonize a new system, it is a simple outpost, yet you can see right away the drop in approval on your older colonies.







Keep enjoying the game!