Opening strats, and empire traits question.,

I've had great success recently with the populists (+20morale/+20diplo) and the following picks:

+50% diplo
+10% influence
+10% pop growth
+10% morale
+5% pq

I've also used +1 speed in the past, that's a very nice pick to have early game. I almost always play with +50% diplomacy though, otherwise no one wants to trade anything.

To keep your economy increasing late game it helps to have the +5%pq pick and to get to the terraformer first, This is usually easy as the AI is more interested in the tech for dreadnoughts and avatars than a rockin' economy. The extra 15% pq boost lets you turn those lowly pq11's into pq17s hell, you can colonize anything in the double digits and get reasonable results at that point.

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Cool, thanks. Especially on that PQ idea.

Seems like after i meet the AI they are easily able to overpower me tech wise, and on the graph as well, even on normal. Any strat ideas?

I run into the same problem. Some people cope with it by trading for techs or whatnot. I cope by having spent all military resources on colony ships for almost the first half of the game. I colonize low and get alot of colonies with between 30 and 500 mil people. I also have started to trade alot to compensate for the fact that most of my economy is invested in long term returns (pop growth). Since everything dependsI'm slightly behind in the beginning and making a subsistence due to trade. Once I get to the point where my colonizing has settled a bit and I stop building colony ships and let the pop grow the economy grows and can quickly overtake the AI. Once you have the strongest economy people don't like to attack you (but not as much as having the strongest military) and you can quickly catch up on the techs.

Don't forget to keep a little espionage going on each of the major civs, after a significant ammount of turns you'll start picking up a few techs for free. This is great if the tech is neat but you didn't really want to invest the actual time into researching it.

i am wondering wtf the AI does. It seems to do completely better than me. I do basically what you say you do yet right now altarians AND drengens are at war with me and i have nothing even close as far as their military and am not even on the graph.


EDIT: rofl seems everyone but 1 race is at war with me now.
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Tech-wise, I try to trade for it instead of researching it if I'm behind. Usually the AI likes to go for certain techs (military), and if you research enough of the other techs, you should be able to trade the techs with each of them. Supplement with a bit of cash, or try to squeeze some money out of them if possible. I also have a printout from Java Scout's site of all the research costs of tech, and when possible, I try to to give them techs with a lower total research cost than the techs I'm getting from them. This means they have to spend more time researching.

If possible, trade with minors first, since they tend to give better deals (especially with the military techs). Also, try to hold off giving them diplomatic techs if possible so you can get better deals.

However, in general, if you can get a higher population graph, you will do fine in the long-run. Build corvettes, and later, Anti-matter missiles if you need to boost your military rating and stay around the middle. It's a paper army, but they'll still keep away. You can also incite the strongest race to go to war with several other races. This will help slow them down. It might also help them be less aggressive towards you.

Later, when you do get enough tech, you can buy off those starbases. But it'll cost a lot (especially those with like 20+% mining). Something like thousands of gc and a bunch of techs.