Ancient galaxy: keeping up with the shakturi

[Xistance]

Ok, so on my latest playthrough of ancient galaxy I'm doing mind blowingly well, so I figured that I'd share what I did.

1: Scrap every millitary ship you have right away
2: retrofit your research bonus bases until they alone meet your empires max research
3: retrofit your stations so they have no research labs
4: retrofit all your mining stations to be decent
5: bribe your way to getting mining rights in all the good races terrirory
6: Get really fast warp drives on your construction ships ASAP
7: build highly armed starbases on planets of any freindly who has tech you want
8: trade the starbases for loads of advanced and racial tech
9: build ships with the awesome tech
10: profit

Though you get kind of forced into the freedom alliance I'd leave it as soon as possible as all it does is force you into full scale war before you are ready. I tend to leave just after I accept the help request from my neigbours then proceed to instantly buy my way out of all the wars (a good 2 of the wars you can end instantly by trading end war for end war with)

its fun to leave one war going just so you can hammer one of the insect races, thus weakening the shakturi axis a bit in teh process. All my other playthroughs I struggled with ancient galaxy but this time because of all teh money I had from not paying for all those millitary ships I actually managed to get a fair few of teh wonders build before the shakturi could. In some areas I'm stil behind teh shakturi technologically but not by far at all (I'm even in front in some)

The cool thing about building starbases on freindly planets then selling the bases to them is that it makes conquering them a huge pain for teh shakturi axis as well as providing you with loads of tech early on. The more massive and heavily armed the starbases, the better

[Rystar]

This is very similar to how my current game is going, I just wish I had the Shakturi events turned on. I have not tried the station giveaway yet, but the only other thing I do that you have not mentioned is I like to build tons of exploration ships- I like to get around 50 of them by the time I get Gerax drives, which is very quickly. I make them fast enough to evade pirates so they just go crazy exploring the universe for me.

Doing that has allowed me to get a ton of the early bonuses like 2 well fortified suplies of zentabia fluid, korrabian spice and "Way of the Ancients" government. I also have access to Loros Fruit, but I have not claimed it yet. Only down side is that I had to deal with silver mist very early on, but that's not a problem as I already had star fighters and ion weapons researched.

[Quantum Optimist]

yeah well tech trading is a very well known CHEAT because the ai is a dumbass and will trade you his best tek for a bottle of water, while he is on a water world, with an aquatic race, that has replicator technology! If you go trading tek, you can beat the game on any difficulty.

Most good players restraint themselves from doing that so that the game doesn't become too easy to play.

[Long Plays]

I think the trading system is wonky anyway. It seems the valuation of a lot of stuff are way out of proportion to the rest. I have a pirate faction campaign series here and the only way I can make money is by selling captured mining stations, etc. back to the empire (I have tech trading disabled). They would value a station in the millions, while it costs only thousands to build. Research stations are even worse.

[Nikiforos V Fokas]

Naw, probably too gamey for some. Avoiding tech trading altogether is kind of mandatory if you're going to want to enjoy the sheer loony imbalance of this game. (Dozens of free capital ships in early game being the epitome of imbalance, whilst we're at it, but you're not going to turn -those- down are you?) Tbh I never saw DW as a win/lose game but as Das, Larry Monte and others note, it's rather a space opera of hundreds of little individual stories.

But yea, too gamey.

[Cypher]

Originally posted by Mudcrab:

Naw, probably too gamey for some. Avoiding tech trading altogether is kind of mandatory if you're going to want to enjoy the sheer loony imbalance of this game. (Dozens of free capital ships in early game being the epitome of imbalance, whilst we're at it, but you're not going to turn -those- down are you?) Tbh I never saw DW as a win/lose game but as Das, Larry Monte and others note, it's rather a space opera of hundreds of little individual stories.

But yea, too gamey.

This!

[Xistance]

Originally posted by Bob Star:

This is very similar to how my current game is going, I just wish I had the Shakturi events turned on. I have not tried the station giveaway yet, but the only other thing I do that you have not mentioned is I like to build tons of exploration ships- I like to get around 50 of them by the time I get Gerax drives, which is very quickly. I make them fast enough to evade pirates so they just go crazy exploring the universe for me.

Doing that has allowed me to get a ton of the early bonuses like 2 well fortified suplies of zentabia fluid, korrabian spice and "Way of the Ancients" government. I also have access to Loros Fruit, but I have not claimed it yet. Only down side is that I had to deal with silver mist very early on, but that's not a problem as I already had star fighters and ion weapons researched.

Do be careful with teh exploration ships early on. Dont get me wrong they are great for getting those early bonuses quickly, however on hard + settings they can seriously cripple your economy early game. Early game I try to keep my tax rate on my planet as close to 0 as I can get away with (on none scenario map) That way you end up having a HUGE advantage over the AI empires mid game as your population is huge compared to theirs. When my planets hit max population I make up for that lost tax pretty quickly as I just extort the populance of the planet for as much as I can squeeze out of them without full scale revolution.

[Xistance]

Originally posted by PathOfPain:

yeah well tech trading is a very well known CHEAT because the ai is a dumbass and will trade you his best tek for a bottle of water, while he is on a water world, with an aquatic race, that has replicator technology! If you go trading tek, you can beat the game on any difficulty.

Most good players restraint themselves from doing that so that the game doesn't become too easy to play.

not true.. though it can be exploited by agreeing to trade sanctions against X empire, or war declarations that can easily be retracted. Realistyically trading tech for heavily armed stations at their prime planets is pretty much a fair and realistic trade that fits quite well with RP. You have made a large time and material investment in building those stations for them so the recompense is fair. If the AI build gaint war bases over my planets then I'd be likely to trade to. Also the AI has a distinct advantage in that your allies can effectively attack and occupy your planets without automatic war. The kadiens nicked one of mine.

[Xistance]

Originally posted by johanwanderer:

I think the trading system is wonky anyway. It seems the valuation of a lot of stuff are way out of proportion to the rest. I have a pirate faction campaign series here and the only way I can make money is by selling captured mining stations, etc. back to the empire (I have tech trading disabled). They would value a station in the millions, while it costs only thousands to build. Research stations are even worse.

yes and no. Liek I previously stated teh time investment in building them was quite significant and the AI quite rightly takes into account that strategic value to them of said structure. My stations were valued around 6.5 million points and that was literally as big as I could build them at the time. I'd already gone one or two up on build size in the ancient galaxy scenario

[Xistance]

Originally posted by Mudcrab:

Naw, probably too gamey for some. Avoiding tech trading altogether is kind of mandatory if you're going to want to enjoy the sheer loony imbalance of this game. (Dozens of free capital ships in early game being the epitome of imbalance, whilst we're at it, but you're not going to turn -those- down are you?) Tbh I never saw DW as a win/lose game but as Das, Larry Monte and others note, it's rather a space opera of hundreds of little individual stories.

But yea, too gamey.

Kind of agree with this, though the purpose of the post was mainly so thouse being frustrated with the scenario could get a bit of an edge and make it more playable. I loved teh scenario but it did previously frustrate me because it seemed impossible to get any of the wonders and also get the other races on side because of gross inefficiency of the default setup. I'm having much more fun with this game because it feels like I'm at least in with a chance, though wether I'll manage to hold out against the inevitable shakturi assault is yet to be seen.


other note: I actually only just worked out that you can use agents to destroy the shakturi planet destroyer builds LOL

[Met A Demon Once]

I just finished playing this game.

I put all my research into getting the virus, Mechanoids, and Kaltors and bought my weapons I needed on the open market. It worked the Shaktari passed into history and we had the anti-virus drug and I won the game but the fighting was not done.

With that said it was the worst game I have ever played and do not plan on going back and playing another one.

Since the galaxy was not destroyed by the virus the war went on indefinitely. My empire broke into three parts and the last time it split into Civil War it killed me since my capital went with another faction and left me broke. You lose your capital you lose the game.

[Xistance]

meh I never got that far. Tech wise I was pretty well up there but I still hadnt milliratised enough to counter the planet destroyers. I was trying to keep my empire as lean as possible until absolutely nessecary :(

[Met A Demon Once]

I lost probably a dozen systems to the Planet Destroyer. When I let lose the virus I hadn't completed the anti-virus drugs yet nor destroyed the Planet Destroyer and hoped I would complete it before it got to me. I did so the Galaxy got rid of the Shaktari and their Planet Destroyer and almost all were saved from the virus.

I found that I was getting stuck into a cycle of war I could not get out of. While I became diabolical so were most of the other major powers. I could not figure out why I was having so much trouble with them so I started checking their complaints.

I found one system where I had a fleet which no longer existed in my inventory but to my enemies it was alien ships that should not be there. I was able to split off a couple of ships from it and send them home but the others belong to one of the civil war factions. I found a problem of one fleet in a system and using it as a home colony. But that colony belonged to someone else. And some I found nothing.

I found it very frustrating and quit the game. I thought I would play it through the shadow times into the classical era but once I lost my capital (how can your capital go with another faction?) left me little choice but to leave the game. My cash flow then dropped from positive to negative 1 million credits.