I'm more of a missle man personally, although I'm sure I can be Doom Ray converted (it does make an awesome sound when it fires!).

Thanx for the welcome Meglo! Go the Orcas!

Oh and I have found the hints & tips to be very handy!

Hey Mega if you do get a chance to post some more hints and tips, could you give us a couple focusing on the financial side of things - how to get a fat and happy economy ticking over as fast as possible?

Ok, tip 21 to follow.  

Hope it helps u with yr economy.  

It did, thanx Meglo, I am hoping that 1.4 helps out with the financial hiccoughs that can happen early game. Should make the game a little less frustrating over-all. Just finishing up my first Gigantic Maso level game, should post tommorrow - Stupid U.P voted to change all governments to Imperial for 2 years...Grrrr!

Will kick off my first 1.4 sometime next week.

Will kick off my first 1.4 sometime next week.

1.4 sounds a whole lot better than 1.31 which I disliked, so I need to summon the willpower to finish my gigantic 1.31 game, then I can have fun with 1.4, hopefully it will go some way to being as good as 1.2.

That's one of the best events on a larger map !! Just leave the UP, and go back to federal or whatever. You lose trade, but gain the econ and influence bonuses. (and they can't get it either) On a gigantic map, trade is a joke so it's really a no brainer... (check out your economy page, I can garantee that the bonuses you get will out weight the loss of trade.)

That's a good one, gallagher118. U will gain a huge economic advantage over the AI's, if they r stuck with imperial and u have democracy. Alot of UP and random events can give u a considerable edge if used correctly. The MegaEvents in DA will be interesting...

Now that gigantic 1.31 game...where was I...oh yes a huge galactic war with the Drengin...

Woo Hoo, just noticed I am now a Senator for the Orca's...what are my Senately duties? Do I have to attract more voters? Do we hold council from time to time? We will go on a quest to drop the Diplomats into Mount Doom? Will we have to side with Green Peace in an effort to stop 'experimental space whaling'?

I hope you guys don't mind if I share my recent problems with GalCiv2 and whinge a bit. On Monday, I finished off my most recent game with my primary character, and tried to post it to the Metaverse. It didn't work. For some reason, that game had been reclassed as 'normal'. It was one of my most enjoyable games, and my highest score to date, but I can't get credit for it or keep a record of it on the Metaverse. Last night, I was finishing off my most recent game with my secondary character. I got to 9 weeks of an Influence Victory to go, hit Turn -- the Thalans apparently declared war on me, and the game froze. I say apparently because my trade routes were ended and the relations table shows us at war, but I don't know what happened, because the game refuses to start my turn. I can access all the screens, at least I think so, but the turn button is just gone. I presume that the game was trying to hit me with the Vengeance event yet again, and overloaded itself. Mega-events will be optional in Dark Avatar; I wish they were optional now. I would never use them. Anyway, I will go back to a previous save and try and play on from that point. I doubt it will work, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got cheat flagged for loading a previous game.

Do u start this game pre 1.4x then upgrade to 1.4x?

This can cause those types of problems. Always complete yr games before upgrading or start new ones when upgraded.

Ras try stepping up the difficulty of the games you play. I normally only set one or two races at the higher CPU difficulty setting and leave teh others low, so that they become mop-up canon fodder for me once I have nailed the big guys (I usually choose the Iconians and the Drengin as my major bad guys and the rest I normally leave at around 'bright' or 'intelligent'. This is probably why my scores aren't quite the 90000 that most people playing Gigantic Obscene games are getting, but I can normaly get through a game a week and my ego doesn't suffer from all getting constantly defeated!

Stepping up the difficulty and beating the PC I find is very rewarding, and indeed it has helped me keep my interest!

P.s. Meglo - posted another win today, and am now sitting on the door step of the top 100 (was hoping I would slip into the 100 d'oh!) U better finish that game man!

Personally won't be getting DA for a long while. I don't care to be an alpha tester.

It annoys me to no end that they're doing a huge expansion, when the basic AI still has so many simple shortcomings. (which Brad finally admitted to the one of planetary management. Which he said will be completely rewritten for DA. What about GC2 ?

Is it so hard to use fleets to protect resource bases ?

Is it so hard to use speed ?

Is it so hard to research a different weapon ?

Is it so hard to redesign ships when I attack you ?


Worse, I don't want to be a beta tester for the 1st 6 drops of DA after the "beta" is done. Seriuosly read the journals. They're not even close to having a product and they've started beta. That's called alpha testing.

There's still interesting stuff around if you look -- although I admit that I find a lot of the DA beta stuff interesting, so that doesn't help you much, gallagher.

thagee, a late thanks for trying to give me tips to make the game more fun. I haven't checked this thread in a while. If it matters, I played some games on Painful level a while ago and found it a bit too much effort in the beginning phases. Tough is the right level for me. Plus, I have been having a lot of fun playing as the Korx and otherwise changing my routine.

Checking the alt-meta listing, I noticed that Sibuna recently got to fifty posted games and became our first Vice Admiral and "50 games won" medal holder. Congratulations.

My duel doom ray fighters can survive.

How do you join anyway?