Latest Update WTF

*sigh* another one...

Might I ask, what difficulty are you playing at? What settings did you choose?

One of the great things about this game is that you can play it tons of different ways. Unfortunately, you suck at playing the game. Sorry, but its true. To have an economy so poor (especially with the humans) that can't handle a few star furys, you have to really do something wrong. Mayhaps you should look at your strategy in the new expansion (which kinda expands the options and such for some reason) before blaming it for being different from what you are used to.

If you visit the wiki, you'll find that the AI only gets bonuses at very high difficulty levels, and actually gets penalties at lower levels. Approval ratings are very subject to civ bonuses, mining resources, buildings built, tech researched, and so on. The fact that they are "at 60% on every planet through the whole game" means that you haven't found the end turn button yet, you can't read, or you have your settings just right to get such results.

Technology research speed is set when you first start a game. There are many settings, including a random one. You perhaps should have chosen differently. Stupid game for not finding the right option for you!

I am not aware of any civ that can colonize class 0 planets with the exception of the rare minor race that is created during game play and a few rare in game events. These can actually be disabled for the most part by (again) an option before starting the game.

I'm sorry you don't like the new female leader of the Terrans. You can easily mod it out (even being metaverse safe!) by switching the images with the old ones and using a custom race to replace the Terran's leader's name.

If you don't like the expansion, play the old one, pick settings you like, or ask the freindly forum community what options/mods/etc can be used to make it the way you like.

LOL

I'm going with "can't read," because everything he wrote is addressed in the manual, the search feature, and the post above this one.

Seriously uofadave, if you're doing that bad, you need to lower the difficulty to "tough" or lower (which means the ai gets no bonus or penalties) and read some guides on how to play.

I mean, seriously, WTF?

One thing that does deserve a WTF, aside from the op I mean, is this forum. I can't edit my post despite being logged in. To clarify the contents of my parentheses, in "tough" (aka 'intelligent'), the ai gets no bonus. Everything below that level it actually receives a penalty.

They totally jack up the game and a 12 year old is doing the usual "Oh yea you just suck at the game that most be it HO HO HO HA HA HA" and the backup monkey chorus chimes in right on que.

Go have some more Kool Aid, chumps.

It's a simple no BS "NORMAL" difficulty game. I've put up nothing but market centers/banks on half my planets, using up all my trade routes, and I am constantly broke throughout the entire game. I have been updating the game weekly for the last 6 months and never had this problem until running the update yesterday. All of a sudden it takes a half hour of turns to research the MOST BASIC of skills, the AI is sending me dumbass message after dumbass message.

Krynn consulate is spreading like AIDS across the map able to colonize any planet even the class 0s.

Total crock. You cheerleader sheeple are not doing Stardock any favors by toting the water for them every time they F-up the game.

If you follow the story campaign you'll find why Jena is there.

Research times can be adjusted as with so many other options. This is an expansion pack with some of the options and techniques reworked. If you can't adjust to them then I suggest you lower the difficulty even more until you do, or go back to Dark Avatar. Nobody is forcing you to play the game.

Also the fact that the AI is telling you what is doing, I find it better, because it's taunting you with its technologies and it's a way for you to know which line of research they are following. This way you don't have to invest in espionage so much and you don't have to go into the reports to find out what they are researching. It's fun, at least for me. The tell me: "Behold, we are researching Lasers III! Tremble at our might", while I line up my Disruptor ships to their planets. Pulls a snigger off my face

So, I suggest you calm down, and stop insulting and yelling at people who try to help you, and try some new strategies. Venting off here will get you nowhere, and the result is that people will not help you in the future. Take the Dark Avatar preconceptions and shelve them if you want to play Twilight, because it's almost a whole new game.

If you've been updating the game weekly, then you've been playing the Beta. The new harder economy is by no means anything that got changed in the last patch.

If you don't want computer players colonising extreme planets from the start, disable Super Abilities. Then again, I assume you knew that.
I also assume you know how to set the tech research speed and that it scales with the mapsize.
Of course, you know that the predesigned Star Furies aren't any help anyway, because any self-designed ship is going to do better.

And perhaps researching morale techs, setting the proper tax rate and spending instead of mindlessly poppling down markets might do something to alleviate your situation. But you knew that already.

Oh, and don't bother reading the gazillion of threads about strategies to cope with the 'new' economy in TA either. They most likely won't tell you anything you didn't know before.

Then bluntly put you need to change your strategy. The AIs in fact recieve (as I recall) a 25% PENALTY to numerous abilities at that level. It's the simple truth that the economy in TA is tighter than in DL and DA, and as such strategies will need to be adapted.



Fix your economic strategy and/or adjust the tech speed at game start and that shouldn't be an issue.

Hey bozo the clown - Nice sarcasm! You are so clever; all of your boyfriends on here think you are so hilarious.

Tax rate set to 33%
Super abilities ARE DISABLED
Takes 50 turns to research 3rd level entertainment
The ship builder doesn't do you much good when it takes 50 turns to research the lower miniaturization levels' you can't create ships that are any better than the default crap ships.

I'm playing on 'tough,' uofadave, and am not having any problems with economy. I'm not doing as well as the AI, and it can sometimes be challenging to keep it going up rather than down, but I am not broke by any means. And I'm certainly no expert at this game.

My research is set to "very slow" because I prefer the longer research time. What is yours set at? Your above post doesn't say.

If you find a lot of people having the same problems you're having, then I can see that there are problems that need fixing (ie. colonizing of class 0 planets, etc.) but I haven't seen anyone complaining/exaggerating quite like you have in this post. If you think we're being fanboys/sheep/chumps and not helping Stardock by being so, your being rude/moronic/clueless would be just as helpful. But being that no one here is having as hard a time with the game as you are, I'd say that something is either seriously wrong with your install or you just suck really bad.

Sorry if the truth hurts.

Looks like you had a beta version before updating ToA.

As Frogboy postet somewhere, you should delete any beta Version before downloading the final version. May cause some issues.

And btw. you can change your tax rates...

Judging by your attitude so far in, I can only offer the following advice:

"You're doing it wrong."

Let's see...

>Tax rate set to 33%

Crank it to 39% or 49%. You do still have 8 million people on most of your planets, right? Didn't build any farms? With 49% taxes and a single entertainment tile of whatever type, you'll be just fine. If you are building farms, stop until you understand the game better.

>Takes 50 turns to research 3rd level entertainment

With your economy production cranked to 100%, xeno labs going up across multiple planets, and at least 40% of your production focused on research you're still seeing this? If you're doing all that and still seeing 50 turn requirements for mid-grade technologies, please upload your savegame to a file share server and link it here. I bet you'd get a horde of curious and confused GalCiv players downloading it to find out what's going on. If you're NOT doing all that, start.

Actually, please upload a saved game to Rapidshare or something so others can take a look at it. You sound like you're having a lot of trouble with the basics of this game and could use a few pointers.

The campaign is also a great place to start. You get bonuses like lots of money, victory conditions that don't require you to kill everyone else, 1-3 tough endgame ships premade for you, and allies to help you kill your enemies. With no previous experience I've played the first four of those scenarios on tough difficulty and found it a great intro to the game.

Well done Hunter. I wish I had had the patience to respond as kindly as you have. An excellent suggestion.

Agreed. Kudos to you! :congrats:

I can't win. Must be the games fault. Stupid game that forces you to think ahead to win. What a stupid idea, they should have just made a overpowered unit so I can win with it.

Oh, it was?
Do i really need to scan a bit further up this very thread to find some of your own?

I mean, WTF (also)... since you're so mad about SD changing it so much that you no longer can adapt your playing style to FIND what it takes to win the economic rush as it morphs up right before your eyes.

Just try somethin' else, bozo minus-1.
Figure it out... it's a game.

Heck, WTF (again) - maybe i too should revise my strategy until i can determine the proper easy settings.
Challenging, isn't it?

Check this out while you're at it; multiple tech trees are adding a stupendous amount of variations which we must all adapt to, also.
Complex and yet, interesting enough to prevent many of us from using vitriolic opinions unless - backed up by solid evidence.

But, WTF (last one)... i'm only a gamer. Who can actually win. At times. Without being such a bozo minus-2 in public.

Theres no way you 'll take 50 turns for the most basic of all techs unless your production is set to 10% or your research rate is way too low or zero. Or you picked a Very Slow tech game. Please do upload a save game!

Perhaps this is a little too obvious but when you're running short on credits, you should stop spending. Unless of course the money is going toward things you need to improve your bottom line.

With maintenance of facilities being higher than in DA or DL, you should only build what you can afford to run, and demolish it when it's no longer useful. Keeping all your tiles full doesn't help if your income is being almost entirely sucked into maintenance. Newer buildings can be more cost-efficient and this means you need fewer of them to get the same result so again, demolish some of the old ones if you're looking for ways to trim costs, and upgrade the rest.

Early on you should build a colony ship with at least two colonist modules and use it to move people off your homeworld and out to your colonies. This is a cheap way to keep the population on the homeworld at a manageable level so you can tax them a bit more, and build up the number of taxable citizens throughout your empire. The recruiting centre is also helpful in speeding up population growth and is worth the tile.

Tourism can bring in big money if you have influential planets. On the bigger maps with lots of highly-populated worlds, the income from this can make your tax money look like pocket change.

If you don't need to build so many ships anymore, you can choose to leave some starports idle (build Nothing). You still lose money on maintenance, but any military spending allocated by the sliders is unspent.

The reason its taking 50 turns is because you are not generating enough Research points. There is a whole host of reasons why that happens, and it usually does when you first start getting used to the game. It takes time and practice to get used to balancing off the pro's and con's of each resource you have - Factories, Research Structures, use of Natural Resources, generating a sound economy etc. From the responses you gave you really do need to go back to basics and wrap your head around the different factors involved.

The game is meant to make you think and mull over the best way to achieve ... whatever... Its not a turnkey shoot-em-up with point and click options. If you are really game to learn it, and get rid of the frustrations, I would suggest starting a new thread, and work your way through it step by step, with other forums members posting to help you, and pointing out all the various alternatives.

For that to work, it will need to be with the mindset "guys I'm having issues here, I am getting slaughtered, would appreciate some help". The biggest obstacle to learning this game, is the player themselves - acknowledging they are doing something wrong, and not just blaming the game (and wow is the latter tempting when you first start ... we've all been there   ). Of the hundreds of thousands who play this game it is exceding rare to find someone who became a living godlike expert from the Get Go. We all needed to get help from others, and pointers on how to get going when we first started, and it takes time to learn it, weeks sometimes months.... Frankly without the help from this Forum I would never have got going in the first place.

Now when I look back at what I was doing when I first started, its embarassing to think of what I did get up to - boy was I being dumb at the time  , and had lots to learn - even though at the time I never appreciated how much I did have to learn. Post specific things that you have problems with - and at the start, with most of us, thats pretty much everything  :LOL:.

Regards
Zy

!!!In my day I had to walk up hill both ways eight miles each ways In a Snow strom to get to !!!!

I haven't bought TotA yet, cause I'm awaiting a reply from support, but if it's taking you 50 turns to research techs like that, you might wanna develop an "academy planet", or two. No clue what to suggest with the economy.

Good lord!

I know how to change tax rates and how to adjust the spending! WTF!

I went ahead and started a whole new game just to prove to myself that I am not insane. I placed Neutrality Learning Centers on every tile of Mars + a Tech Capital. I also had 2 other planets with research bonuses and built learning centers on those.

I set spending 100% in research and it's taking 15 turns to research STINGER and 12 turns for BASIC RAILGUNS. Planetary Invasion 60 TURNS! LOL! What a crock.

The game speed is set to NORMAL. Research speed NORMAL.

In the meantime Thalan Empire is has turned the entire map pink, colonizing every class 0 out there and FLUSH with cash and doing the usual PAY ME I HAVE A BIGGER ARMY WOOOOOO!!!!

L-A-M-E

..Neutrality learning centers? As in, the thing you learn after researching good & evil? You've obviously been playing that game for a number of turns. And yet you picked Mars of all places for your research capital. How many tiles did Mars get in your game? 10? 12? 16?

Try this:
1. Go to http://rapidshare.com/
2. Browse to your last savegame file using the button on your screen
3. Upload it and paste the link here for everyone else.

Within 24 hours you'll probably get a complete breakdown of what you need to do to make your gaming experience more pleasant. My first guess, if you understand the mechanics of the game, is to break away from the SimCity mold and go do stuff. But in order to make more than a guess we need to actually see what's going on.

uofadave, I'm not inviting your scorn by this question, but sincerely wish to know, as you've not indicated if you did so... someone else asked earlier if you had played the beta before the full version came out, and if so did you delete it as recommended prior to installing the full version?

If that's not the case, and even if it is, would you please upload a savegame as per HunterADA's recommendation above so that we can see why your games are screwed up like they are?

Huh, uofadave--I'm playing a fresh install of TA and I'm playing Terran Empire with the level above Tough as my difficulty. No, I'm not winning (I've never been one of the amazing players), but I have had no trouble getting my economy up and running. And while I'm still using Xeno Labs, I can research most simple techs in 1-5 turns. I honestly don't know if you are seeing a weird bug caused by a messed up install or if you just really, really, really don't get it...