Bruce Hake

I never have money problems. I always have plenty of money for a big military. And I never put my production more than about 15% into money. What is the secret? Spam farms and hospitals. High population directly equals raw production (times bonuses). Also, don't overlook the government techs, which give huge bonuses to raw production. Incidentally, I never build markets except on special resource tiles (like gems). Farms are more valuable.

joeball123, awesome response, thanks. I have just one question. In your final equation, where does the "* 3" term at the end come from?

Well, mining starbases are better than military ones for extending fleet range, but only if there are worthwhile resources in the right place. Military ones are better for optimal range-extension in most cases, in my experience. I've experimented with cultural starbases for the same purpose, but I don't care that much about grabbing more of the map that way. I never play for a cultural victory. I always go for conquest (with research also enabled if a game gets boring). No doubt I'm mis

Why?

Interesting responses. mortili, thanks for the equation. Haven't checked the math yet, but that looks right. Very helpful. I don't think my game is glitched. I just don't get the approval arithmetic. As you can see, I've already built lots of approval improvements and I'm still stuck (on that planet) with negative approval. Maybe some races are really pissed to get conquered and there's an unseen negative modifier? But I conquered the Drengi capital of Drengi and it's at 100% appro

Gosh, I don't have anywhere near 1600 (!) hours into this game, maybe 400, which is a lot. But I've run into the Dreadlords quite a few times. If they spawn in your area very early, you're toast. But if you have time to build up, they're toast. Their ships all have beam + gun weapons + gun defenses. My biggest ships now have missile weapons plus a fair amount of beam and gun defenses. In my current game I'm at about turn 400 and they've been building up for 250 turns. I've now conquered

The most important use of military starbases is to extend one's range on very large maps. I'll sometimes have a series of six or more set up to let me get my fleets to remote corners of the galaxy. I rarely invest in all of the military starbase upgrades, because even at the absolute very highest level on everything, they're no match for a medium-sized enemy fleet. So I protect them with ships where necessary. It can be a problem if one is

I'm playing on an excessive map with currently 124 planets. My overall approval rating is 43, so many of my planets are at 100% approval. But many of the conquered planets are stuck at 0% approval. On the diplomatic screen, as usual, I'm first in everything except I'm last on approval. How can one boost the approval of a planet really stuck on 0% approval? I don't understand how the arithmetic works. Here ar

naselus, Thanks for the interesting analysis, which I'll have to study carefully. Incidentally, I don't go for a "farms + approval" approach. After my first 10 planets or so, I almost completely ignore approval. In the diplomacy screen in almost all of my games by turn 50 I'm rated #1 in everything except approval, and I'm usually last in approval. That doesn't matter very much, since my raw production is always extremely high. In my current game, my overall approval is only 43, althoug

Somebody said in this thread that he routinely builds one farm per 3-5 factories. My own research indicates it's wiser to build just one factory as the first building, either next to the capitol or on a manufacturing bonus tile. Then I never build any more factories. On a big planet I'll have one hospital and as many farms as possible. For the last two weeks I've been playing on an excessive map. I'm now up to turn 360 and I have 125 plane

Your problem is almost certainly low population. In other words, you haven't built enough farms and hospitals, and you haven't researched enough farming techs. Population is directly equal to raw production (times bonuses). If your population is too low, your production is just too low, and no amount of tweaking will fix it in a reasonable time. Better to start a new game and spam farms. Some people say spam farms and markets, but I never build markets (except on resource bonus tiles) a

I agree with the OP. Constructor spam is a real pain in the neck. It's a design defect. In my current game, at turn 300 on an excessive map with 80 planets, a typical turn takes 10 minutes, even though I've gotten to be about as efficient as possible with the constructors (although I haven't yet tried the trick of using big ships with many modules). I keep telling my wife that the game is much, much more tedious than my office job. It's a tribute

I love the OP's idea. Constructor spam is the worst feature of this game. Naturally I try to have 3 or 4 maxed out starbases around every planet or pair of planets. That's an incredible number of constructors! I now have about 60 planets on an excessive map, and every turn takes about 10 minutes, mainly to move constructors about. And that's even with being knowledgeable about the game controls. I know there's some way to have a starbase request constructors, but I never use that.

I've experimented with this, and I think farms are BY FAR the most important improvement, because population directly equals Raw Production (times any bonuses). My standard build-out is like this: 1. One factory (and only one) next to the capitol or on a manufacturing bonus square if there is one. 2. Faction building (e.g., Missionary Center for benevolent civs). 3. Then spam farms like crazy, ideally having a hospital surrounded by farms. And concentrate on farm and growth upgrades

Er, that thread was posted after my question, and it doesn't contain an easy fix.

In ver. 1.3 I created three custom factions. For each I was able to pick small leader pictures (and I'm not sure what that is for) plus matching leader foreground/leader background images, which is what you see every time there is a diplomatic contact. Today I made six new custom factions, so I could play with 18 factions on the Mappack DLC snowflake map, which makes for a very wild game. But now, in ver. 1.4, I can pick custom small lea

This is probably obvious to the hardcore players here, but it was a revelation for me. I'm in a long, long, long game on an Immense map where I'm pushing back the fully developed Dread Lords. It's turn 300 and they appeared about turn 100 at a great distance from me. Although I'm steadily pushing them back, several times they've had fleets swoop in out of the FOW and kill my fleets with transports. So I made a ship called the Super Survey that is very fast and has huge sensor range (30).

For the record I've played hundreds of hours and I haven't observed the problems cited by the OP, except only that the dreaded Dread Lords always attack.

Is there a way to mass-eject all ships in orbit around a starbase or planet? I'm playing an Excessive map in which I'm slowly pushing back the fully developed Dread Lords. I have some advance military starbases that I'm keeping garrisoned with fleets, but I often need to eject the fleet to attack enemy ships or shipyards. It would be great to have an option to eject a fleet with one command, just as one can land a fleet with one motion. &

I'm glad to see the local wheel gone. I'm kind of an OCD minimaxer, and I'm certainly one of the 20% of players with more than 100 hours logged. I always felt like I HAD to use the local wheel. Now I prefer the focus system. It makes it more of a sim and less of a spreadsheet. I was a bit afraid to install it, but I'm delighted with the change. It would be great to have a line in prefs.ini that lets one set social/military spending per planet, as several have said.

Well, they've now added an option to instruct a planet to focus on Manufacturing, Income, or Research. That gives most of the functionality of the local wheel with MUCH less time and trouble.

With some trepidation, last night I installed the 1.4 patch. I was pleasantly surprised that it was very quick even though I have a crappy satellite connection. I was worried I'd hate the removal of the local wheel. So I'm writing to express strong support for the change. Without all the blasted planetary minimax, the game is MUCH faster and more fluid. I doubt if I'll ever use the governors, unless I masochistly play

After playing a ridiculous amount of time, I finally figured out a little trick that vastly increases my power in every game. There comes a time in most midgames where you want to mass-produce fully loaded starbases. That requires huge numbers of constructor ships. But by that time the default constructor ship is up to Mark 5 or even much higher, so they're very expensive to build. You need a few high-end constructors for things like seizing distant precursor relics. But for starship

Everybody has his own style. 1. I rush colony ships and send them automatically towards the nearest stars. 2. Depends on the map. In general, I'll immediately colonize any planet of size 8 or higher. 3. The most important thing is FOOD, because population directly equals Raw Production, which you can allocate as you with. My standard build-out is: (1) factory, usually next to capital; (2) ideology building, such as Missionary Center for Benevolent civs; (3) one or two factories or la

Thanks!