60% was the amount that gave me the highest possible return (as you all know, you slide it higher and your income can actually go down).

To be honest it's not the minor races that bother me - in fact I like them to get rich as it makes it great fun to bully them further down the line and get some good cash in... I played a huge game last week where I started a war with all the minor races and then gave them a Peace Treaty for disgusting amounts of cash. I was getting 288000 bc every turn from the collective minors - great fun. Still only managed a 12000 score at the end though

Can someone tell me hot to get 1st in Popularity? At first I thought it must be popularity with your subjects, but I was on 100% and nobody else was, and I was still 2nd... as a test I allied myself with everybody except the last Major race (who I remained as 'Close' with), and my popularity was still 2nd. What exactly does Popularity relate to?

The 'highest possible return' might cause low morale and slow population growth and so lower productivity.

I don't know what popularity means. The number of seats you won in the last election?


~SDC~

Yeah, that was my (latest) guess

Okay, first off: if you want to change your nickname to something more fun than stupid_nickname_page, go to http://www.wincustomize.com then login using your email and password you use to login here. Click on Edit Account, then select Change Nickname. Voila!

Next, as far as the AI cheating. Have you set your AI to Intelligent or above? If so, they get bonuses to most of their abilities. This isn't cheating, it's making the game more difficult. At Incredible, for example, they get tremendous amounts of bonuses.

Popularity can be a tricky thing. You can be at 100% morale with your systems and not be 1st. I'm guessing that it has to do with how many systems you control. Do you have more systems than the 1st place AI? Either way, 1st in Popularity doesn't necessarily do anything special. I don't ever worry about it.

Finally, please don't think your use of profanity helped you get answers. Everyone here on this forum is willing to help you, but if you start out using profanity, you automatically get a bad reputation. Thank you for keeping your profanity at a minimum and I'm glad you are enjoying the game.

Also it has to do with your cultural influence in the galaxy and the level of taxes at your empire level, higher taxes to your people less popular you become, develop techs that will help you build social buildings and your popularity will rise.

I knew Theoden wasn't as bad as Tolkien made out...

Bad reputation? Moi? Don't tell my mum.

Welcome to the Metaverse!

Actually, my Popularity was better than the rest of the Majors, (the remaining majors were 4th and 3rd, so I assume 1st was one of the minors?) and because I was bullying the Minors into giving me huge amounts of dosh I had my tax rate at 5% and everyone in my empire loved me - even the Minors, for some reason - all 56 of my star systems were at 100% and every social was built on every planet.

Just in case anyone is interested, I managed to manipulate my last game to the point where I was Zero months away from full cultural victory, i had the very last research item just completed that turn, and I had my Terror Stars (6 of them) positioned at each of the remaining planets of the majors - so basically I blasted them all on my last turn (before I won on Cultural Victory) in the hope that I would get super-points for getting all three victories in my very last turn (am I making sense here?)... I still only got a 12,210 score! Darn! Thought I'd bin really smart there.

Actually 12,000 points is pretty good for a Challenging level map. I'd say if that was a Maso, it would be at the 60,000 point cap.

When you start your next game uncheck the cultural victory box and go for military conquest, I always leave the alliance box checked just in case I get in troubles. Try to go thru the whole tech tree before conquering the last major civilization and then get all your tech develop and build and then blast the last one out. It will give you more points.

Hey thx Theoden, I've gone a little weepy now so I'm going off to have me dinner.

Thanks for all your help chaps... and please note I have now posted half a dozen messages without a single profanity!

Cheers all

I think the soap therapy worked, at least that is what mom used to do with me, I used a profanity and she will get the ugliest toothbrush we had home and filled it up with soap and made wash my mouth until she felt that I learned my lesson, not telling you that I didn't say another profanity until I was 18.

[edit: posted at the end of the first page instead of spotting the second page of posts. Oops!]
[Message Edited]

Sure, that would be great if the game was actually won mostly by fighting, but most of the time it is usually a culture flipper disguising the win as a military victory. I guess honest culture flippers are hard to come by in the Meta, but I got to try to save someone from being corrupted by the Dark Side of cheese...

Why would you want to culture flip? I enjoy sending waves of Combat Transports against my enemy too much.

Even better, I enjoy trading the AI for his own Transports and invading him with his own troops!

:SINISTERGRIN:

Hehehehehe...

Yes Gerraken I agree.
I use the culture flip model but I also battle along the way.Its too boring just minding constructors all day long.When one ai is being beaten down by the others I usually join in to get some spoils of war so as not to be to far behind.It also makes the flipping easier near end of game when you have planets scattered thruout universe.
[Message Edited]

Hehe... OK "stupid nickname page" (I was going to shorten it up, but did not want to add insult to self inflicted injury). I thought perhaps you left for good. Not being my board, I usually am not so forward, but that name just burned itself through my retinas and into the back of my skull. I understand those days with technology... they bring out the not so great in people. Allow me to begin again:

Welcome to the metaverse.. you know for someone who was on about the AI cheating, you certainly did fair pretty well in one of those games, at least compared to me! I need to start playing larger maps again now that I have the hang of the higher level. Maso pasted me to the wall though on a tiny map... I blinked and it was all over in 30 minutes!

LOL, I tried Maso as I thought "I'm not bad at this, lets give myself a little challenge this time..."

...Famous last words, and back to Painful for me I think.

And you can all shorten it to Stupid if you like... everyone I know does.

LOL

Maso is a whole different game. There's plenty of Maso advice out there, though. Check out the Strategy forum for starters. There's also some discussion in some of the Empire threads, which you may want to look at anyway just for fun.

Well just wanted to say hi erm... stupid.

At least if you say something really intelligent we can all say "I'm with stupid" .

Welcome mate... though now having called you stupid twice I feel really bad. :notsure:

~SDC~

I read it's better if one of the minor do build the specials..... "you can buy it cheaper from them than building it yourself".

And diplo-T is not something I would sell if I did build it anyway.

But the minor might sell it to all the other empires. Anyone know how often they do this?
I once threw all my resources into building a fleet to take out the Scottlingas just because they had built Diplomatic Translators and I wanted to stop them giving it to anyone else.

~SDC~

of course. buy the translators, then conquer them. mwahahaha

I don't see it happen very often with gravity accelerators--the speed boost would be noticable.

Not sure about other trade goods though.

OK then you lot, explain this one away with your pretty words:

I have the Arceans attacking me. Amongst other things I have a fleet of 20 corvettes (i know, weedy, but I found them) who all attack a crippled Dreadnought... guess who wins? My 20 attack this Dreadnought, who recieved NO damage, and yet annihilates my 20 Corvettes with 1 strike.

Then another of their Dreadnoughts (just 1) attacks one of my star systems. This system has 2 of my own Dreadnoughts in orbit, along with a handful of smaller craft. Their Dreadnought (despite having lower defense, lower attack AND lower HP) manages to destroy every craft I have in the star system! Then I see one of their Combat Transports heading my way, so I send a PreCursor Ranger at it... lo-and-behold, their Combat Transport (apparently with ZERO attack) kills my Ranger. WTF???

This is just 3 examples... this is happening all over.

Now, COME ON! If that ain't cheating, what is? Why the hell are their inferior ships taking my massive fleets out so easily?