What difficulty level are you playing?

[Lemmy]

I'm currently playing on Sub-Normal in a small galaxy. It's my third game, the first game was on Fool, won that with a cultural victory, 2nd was on beginner, also owned that one with my culture.

Now i'm in my 3rd game, on Sub-Normal. It's an even game after a somewhat unlucky start for me, i was 1 turn to late for 2 really good systems.

Along with the Drengin i dominate the game technologically, and my diplomacy ability is pretty high. Everything else is average.
The Arceans are the strongest, but not by far. I got the Torians and Drengin to declare war on the Arceans to wear them down a bit. I'm also surrounded by these 3 civs, and the Torian and Drengin are also fighting each other. So all my neighbouring civs are fighting each other, now i'm just waiting to pick the weakest and take 'm over completely.
The Altarians and Yor are also fighting each other, but those 2 are a bit away from me. At the moment i'm the only major civ that is not fighting a war .

I was about to make a poll....but i don't know all the difficulty levels

[MarkG]

first game, cakewalk
second game, simple...


you can see all the levels by increasing the ai ability little by little, one-by-one

[Lemmy]

you can see all the levels by increasing the ai ability little by little, one-by-one

Yes, i know, but i'm at work, so i don't have the game here to look....if i had the game here, do you think i'd be posting this

[Nirvana_CN]

I Started on Normal, lost my 1st 6 games, but managed to scrape a win on my last 2 and i *do* mean scrape :P

[Lemmy]

Originally posted by Nirvana_CN
I Started on Normal, lost my 1st 6 games, but managed to scrape a win on my last 2 and i *do* mean scrape :P

Wow, nice . At what map size are you playing that, and how did you win (cultural,military etc...)

[yin26]

About to win my first try on 'Challenging' Lost first 2 on 'Normal' (learning the game, after all!) Won the next try (cultural) on 'Normal'. After mopping up (I hope!) my challenging victory tonight, I'll move up to 'Tough.'

I should say that I'm only about to win on Challenging so easily primarily because the other evil civ (Yor) got a horrible starting position, so it was easy for me to get the good and neutral guys to gang up on the pure-evil dudes. I'll write about this game in my review in progress thread, if you are interested.

[Xerxes2]

Took me 4 or 5 games to just figure out how to get anything done. Next 6 tried to buy everything right away. Then I discovered I could build things without buying them and managed to last for awhile. But no matter what I do I usually find something which happens, some random event, which causes me to go down in flames. Sigh!

[Nirvana_CN]

Lemmy,

One win was on a medium map, that was a culture Victory, it basically came down to mass defending my Culture star bases i was plopping down everywhere, the AI was great at realising what i was doing, and took out some starbases before i realised it. Luckily i had decent trade, and forced all my allies to declare war on the Yor, who were my main opposition. My military was pathetic, and if he had took out one of my star bases in any sector..i doubt i could have held him off :P

I also got one win on Bright level on a tiny map..that was 100% luck, i had 5 systems with a few 18+ planets in each..the AI's were struggling with 2 systems. I bribed the drengin and yor into attacking everyone, whilst i teched up and eventually started attacking, the Yor submitted to me, giving me more worlds, eventually the others did too, leaving only the drengin, who had a great army, couldnt pump ships out too fast from 3 worlds, whereas i had 15ish at this point, they surrended after i took out their main fleet of 10 corvettes.

Dont get me wrong, both games were flukes :P they are my only 2 wins at present, i have lost about 11 now.

Only wish i could submit to the Metaverse...anyone know why its not working?

[Jon Shafer]

I've played 3 "games" which were just used to learn, so I only spent about 5 minutes on each before I figured out I'd screwed up.

The AI had covered the place by the time I had colonized 4 planets, and it was only on the second lowest difficulty.

[Eric S]

I'm up to Normal. My first Normal game I quit, I was having a blast until the Draginol appeared with an Overlord (best ship in the game other than an Excalibur), and the best I could make at the time were Frigates. The new patch nerfs this event a little (makes it happen later in the game, I believe).

I'm having a blast, though I must admit I had thoughts of uninstalling it when I lost that game through to sheer arbitraryness.

[Trifna]

Going for normal. Played easy twice (to lurn), then once sub-normal so it's time to be a normal guy now. And then I'll be a grown-up

All won culturally yet.

[CiverDan]

Tassadar..Here is one tip. Do not lease ships. Pump up your mil production. Leasing will cause you to go broke. For example, if you lease 6 ships from Mitrosoft, you will be paying 78 bc/turn is lease. Even with trade racial bonuses, you will almost always do broke doing this withough crippling your production, which really hurts in the long run.

Btw, I am still on fool,gettin game feel for the different maps.

[Harry Seldon]

I'm playing subnormal and getting whooped. I think I finally figured out what I'm doing wrong though. Too many social projects and not enough military production. It's hard to switch that because I get frantic when my moral starts slipping under 40%. I guess I'll just have to be a little more callous.

[Didymus]

Well, I've won once on bright -- went for goodness, allied with the Altarians who were kicking butt, got an allied victory. But I was holding my own before we were allied, so it doesn't count as cheese. Of course, I've also been creamed on bright and normal.

But I'm still learning how to play. My early games, I had WAY too many social projects. Next game I need to use several governors -- one generic, one military. Still a good idea to micromanage your very good (25+ quality) planets, tho. Those can actually benefit from more infrastructure.

Since the military/social/research slider is global, it's probably a good idea to build manufacturing bonus starbases in the sector with your best planets and use those for starship/wonder production.

Another caveat: build structures to make better warships on those planets which build them! My ships sucked compared the Drengin ships because I hadn't even a basic shipyard (+25% hitpoint, possible bonus to att/def). I was lucky I had twice as many planets as they did, or I might've been toast.

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Didymus

Another caveat: build structures to make better warships on those planets which build them! My ships sucked compared the Drengin ships because I hadn't even a basic shipyard (+25% hitpoint, possible bonus to att/def). I was lucky I had twice as many planets as they did, or I might've been toast.

Definitely. But only build them on your high-production planets, because you generally won't be cranking out combat ships from every planet.

It's fun having the tech and ship bonuses so that even without taking the War party, my dreadnoughts can usually wallop the AIs Avatars, and have enough left to limp home relatively safely.