Every planet producss some influenc. Increase by buildings, and influence stargaze. 

Hi,

Thanks for the answers so far. Been playing and learning more and more over the past week.

Couple of questions:

1. I've heard that the original Dread Lords campaign is near impossible to beat because it was designed around an old combat system that was changed. Does anyone know if this was ever fixed? For the record, I am using the 'Autumn Twilight' mod and the creator has included versions of the campaigns compatible with his mod, but not sure if it fixes the combat issues.

2. I've been reading more about advanced strategies and specifically about the 'All-X' strategy where you build almost exclusively research or production buildings (with some eco support) and set your sliders to 0/0/100 or 0/100/0 using planetary focus to gain whatever you've neglected.

I've not tried it myself yet but I find it a bit off-putting as it seems quite cheesy. I have been playing with a fairly equal balance of sliders and occasionally microing them when I require one type of resource over another, but is this All-X strategy just plainly better? 

I'm hoping there are obvious flaws I'm missing, but going 100% research and taking production bonuses with your ability points and flying through the tech tree picking up all the other production bonuses does just seem far stronger than going with something like 33/33/34 and tweaking it every few turns.

I really enjoy the balanced, tweaking approach and see it as a core mechanic of the game, so the idea of the All-X trumping it puts me off as I say.

EDIT: 

I think I may have been using old information on the All-X strategy, it seems Focus was changed later to nerf this strategy. Focus is poorly explained in the wiki though, could someone give me a better idea of how it works?

From the wiki:

'When a player sets a focus on social or military production, that field takes 1/4 of base research and 1/2 from base production of the other production field, and adds that amount to whatever it already has. After that it adds to the new amount all bonuses the planet and race has in that field, including 50% bonus to mil production from the Artificial Slave Center. Focus does not transfer any production or research points generated with bonuses.'

The last two sentences appear to contradict themselves.

Thanks for the replies so far, DW.

I agree on the All-X strat. Like I say it does seem that changes to focus have made it far weaker. Focus apparently used to have no wastage at all, but now you lose quite a significant amount of production/research when you use it. Not sure if it's still overall more effective, but it's unrealistic and uninteresting so I won't be using it either.

Can I ask how often you tend to tweak sliders and if you have any examples of when it's good to change from the even split and lean more heavily towards one resource? I tend to lean slightly more to research when possible, but not by a large amount (maybe 30/30/40).

In my current game as the Drath, I'm 100 turns in and my economy is starting to become quite solid and so I went for a split of 10/30/60 for a while and was just buying the odd ship I needed (mostly constructors as I'd already maxed out my trade routes by then).

I'm not sure what type of victory I'll go for yet, but I'm enjoying making use of war profiteering, it seems quite strong. I have a strong relationship with my Torian neighbours (all trade sent to them, both treaties) and I've got most of the galaxy fighting it out amongst themselves. The Thalans seem to be coming out on top though, so I may have to fight them personally at some point. 

But yeah, just experimenting really. Was thinking I'd try and jump forward in research for a while and then change heavily to military production when I have some decent tech (med hulls etc). I've lowered my research and bumped up social a bit more currently since I just unlocked research centres and I have a couple of dedicated research planets that need to spend some time upgrading to them.

If anyone has any good examples of when to adjust sliders and the kind of values they like to use, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

I tend to use 20/20/60 in favor of research. I find that having a tech advantage pays off in the long run. It might take a while to build ships, but they tend to be high quality when they're built. Having a few military resources also helps.

I don't deviate from that spending rate very often. I might favor military spending early in the game to win the colony rush, or I might wind up in a war with too few ships. A large fleet size can even the odds in ways that tech isn't fast enough. Sometimes I try something different just to practice.

I should note that if a planet has social spending but nothing to spend it on, it'll go to military spending (if not military spending is not 0). So often times my spending is more like 40/0/60. I try to avoid teching up in the planet improvements fields so I'm not spending so much of my social spending on planets. There is a time and place for mass upgrades for my planets, and thats often when I'm willing to put near 100% spending to social. Or I have a lot of money that needs spending.

I also set my tax rate to x9% percent, such as 39% or 49%. There is a larger morale hit when you push that 9 to double digits then there is when you increase 0-8 by 1 point. There are other morale hits for taxes, but I don't know them off-hand.

I use 0% taxes at the beginning of the game so I can get that 100% population growth you get with 100% morale. With anything less, you should tax your population to whatever extent that they can handle. 25% growth with 75% or more morale isn't worth it.

War profiteering is a powerful ability. It gives you a money equal to a percent of another civ's total budget, but only if they are at war. Each civ is only taxed once. No money is actually removed from a civ's budget; its more like the money they spend makes its way to you. With this bonus income and super manipulators, it should be easy to keep everyone in the galaxy at war. Except you, unless you are ready to prey on someone who is losing a war.