AramisX

Oh come on. The odds of the US lasting a decade in its current form aren't good, and the odds of them seeing out the century are virtually non-existent. America's only saving grace is its extraordinary incompetence. Describing them as having an 'empire' is a bit of a stretch, and at best can only be used in the context of a franchise style of 'empire'. While Americans make much of the penetration of their popular culture into foreign countries, it really is limited to movies, music, jeans and ba

Imo, super weapons are gravy. Don't tech-rush to them. Planets first, then better ships, armour upgrades, weapon upgrades, and gravy for flavour. Don't research all of the available ships or weapons - just the ones you're going to use. Same with culture. Start with planet upgrades, then trade and culture. Add gravy at your leisure. Start with a strategy, then settle for trying to save your arse. It works for me - sometimes :)

I'm a newb at this - just AI only so far, but fighter survivability is a bit low for my tastes. I don't use hangars anymore - I find my tactical slots and resources are better used elsewhere - mostly ships, repairers, jump inhibitors and a few turrets if I have the slots to spare. By late game, culture dissemination is rather nice. On my cap ships I go with 100% bombers for good damage and survivability and use flak frigates for dealing with strikecraft. I'd rather have flak frigates over fighte

I don't know if it will be any help, but I had the same problem with my ATI card. It turned out that I had it set to override AA and AF settings for other games. Checking the boxes to let the application control them fixed the problem for me. Prior to that I couldn't finish a game, since after an hour or perhaps a few it would start to flicker and then crash. I haven't had any problems since changing the driver settings.