Bad combination of tech cost and mid/late game years?

[SirAlexius]

So I wanted to try something different and set the tech cost in my latest game to 50% with the mid game year of 2350. It didn't seem like a bad idea at first but I just got to 2350 and I have terraformed all my planets to machine worlds, started spamming habitats, and finally got strong enough to take out the marauders.

It seems like it is barely the mid game and there is nothing left to do? I joined a federation with a couple of neighbors just so I can help them eat the rest of the empires since my empire is already as big as I am comfortable with.

What else is there to do? I have never played into the late game, usually stopping somewhere in the mid game. But this time I just got to the mid game and it is already getting boring.

Does anyone have any tips or was this just a bad combo of tech cost and mid game year?

 

[Alastor]

Funny thing regarding tech cost. Just like the unity rollover bug, which is still there, that is that when your unity gets high(I believe around 2M it rolls over to 0). This version not only has the same issue with the relative power modifier in diplomacy but also tech cost.

So get your tech cost high enough and it becomes 0. Free. You get your techs researched in an in-game day. Granted of course that at this stage in the game one in-game day takes about 3 hours to pass due to the game's horrible performance issues... but still.

 

[MK1980]

if you feel that there's nothing left to do, you may as well start a new campaign. not much point forcing yourself through another century of boredom until maybe an endgame crisis pops up.

in my opinion, it's really not worthwhile to keep playing just to get the "official" victory screen. you know that you have won already. you don't *really* need the games official confirmation that you won.

delaying the midgame startdate to 2350 is probably too late. i've had the rise of the great khan thingy in my game around 2320 and i had just enough fleet power between my private imperial fleet and the federation fleet of the fed i had started earlier to fend them off. it was tense, i did not know in advance that they'd be a pushover and it felt great to defeat their multiple 10-20k fleets and then finally also the khans personal ~30k fleet (twice) with the hastily repaired and constantly reinforced ragtag collection of about 15-20k fleet power i could muster. if the spawn had been delayed by another 50 years, they would have been a pushover, really.

hint: their fleet power is exaggerated - half (or more) of it is from those big galleons that are nowhere near as powerful as their inflated power score suggests.

 

[SirAlexius]

in my opinion, it's really not worthwhile to keep playing just to get the "official" victory screen. you know that you have won already. you don't *really* need the games official confirmation that you won.

I agree. I usually end up quitting my campaigns in the mid game after I begin to dominate the galaxy because it is not very fun to stomp on "pathetic" neighbors. I kinda wanted to rush some higher techs this time just to experience more of the game's late game features and maybe take on a fallen empire. I might stop soon and start a new save.

 

[MK1980]

well you can always just attack a fallen empire right away before you wrap up the campaign. if you could defeat the khan, you may also be able to defeat an FE. they aren't that hard to kill when they haven't awoken yet. they only have the ships they started weith and every ship you kill is a permanent loss with no way for them to reinforce. so you can win by attrition if you can't overwhelm them.

it gets much harder once they awaken and get the ability to build new ships.

 

[Red-XIII]

well you can always just attack a fallen empire right away before you wrap up the campaign. if you could defeat the khan, you may also be able to defeat an FE. they aren't that hard to kill when they haven't awoken yet. they only have the ships they started weith and every ship you kill is a permanent loss with no way for them to reinforce. so you can win by attrition if you can't overwhelm them.

it gets much harder once they awaken and get the ability to build new ships.

AFAIK Sleeping FE's are stronger than khan when it comes to winning wars against them. They have good protection in the form of their star bases. Doesn't make them much of a threat (what are they going to do with them? tower rush you?), but they still hurt your war score unless you overwhelm 'em, making it harder to eat a FE in one bite. And IIRC you only get ONE bite before they awake. You can buzz around them though and come back later. That is - start a war, get some wrecks, stop a war, get their tech, start the second war where you have their tech on your ships but they are still asleep. But that's beside the point.

 

[MK1980]

yeah FEs are harder than the khan, but they have exploitable ship designs and they have jump drives which do more harm than good in the hands of the AI.
they tend to divide their fleets and jump out of their pocket of space even when they are supposed to defend. if you get a bit lucky you can catch their scattered fleets with their pants down (ie. jump drive debuff still active) and kill them one by one.

after the fleets are deleted, it's game over for them. their starbases aren't going to stop you. fortresses are only dangerous if there's a garrison fleet that provides the firepower and distracts attackers. a fortress without a fleet is just a glorified sandbag with tons of hitpoints but very little firepower.

the ground invasion of their planets can be tricky, though. that can cost you a lot of war exhaustion. if you get lucky they launch their elite armies into space and you can just slaughter them. but if they keep them on their planets, prepare for an epic bloodbath.