20B for class 10 and above, 18B for clas 8/9, 13B for less IIRC.  HWs should be 19B because 21B is too much.

5 morale resources, all morale techs, 10 starting morale, all morale trade goods.  No VRCs.  Any racial morale/resources/etc above that is excess as you can only achieve 100% after depreciation by population (the numbers listed give us 98 for 20B, which is close enough).

That's for DA.

Numbers are a little different for TA particularly if you play without a Terran tree AI in your game to get the trade goods from, but since you also get more from the galactic resources it evens out in the end; it's just tougher initially.  And the calculations are unchanged from DA, at least.

As for DL I don't recall quite how things were working there last, just that the floor is 20% instead of 10%.

Neilo, as far as I'm concerned, what's left of the community is all on the same side.

Empire secrets aside, of course.

Ya, couldn't agree more SS, hence my time spent in the Kzin thread of late. A little pulling of the old strings ofcompute competitiveness from time to time can't hurt though!

The types of games I'm looking to play now, are short games, no more than a few days, and with all kinds of victory conditions, I enjoyebony fun game, no worry about doing things by the book to max out score, I don't even care if every game I play is less than a 4min long 100K ZYW. 

@mottii and mumble, if we are playing again for a while, do we want to keep the games in toe, orperhaps create a new empire, just for shits and giggles really though.

Oh and I saw u mention Da somewhere mumble. He went without net for many months and came back online in November, but he is engrossed in Starcraft II and I haven't spoke to him since late Nov. hopefully we can get him back and talk him into some GC2 and maybe even some DG (3v3 with dj, u motti and myself on voice would be great!)

A bit offtopic, but while I've never actually played DemiGod, I do own it (still in the box!)

If it's half as much fun as everyone seems to think it is, I could go for some games with you guys.

Ohh cool, didn't know that SS. Yeah it's great fun, I was part of the beta and played competitively for a long time, but the community died away, after never realizing its full potential, but I've come back to it now that it's on steam. Im up for games mate, it does have a steep learning curve if you want to be serious about it, but a few games is enough to let you play and enjoy it. You on Skype at all mate? Much better playing, even against AI when the whole team is on voice. 

I've always stuck with 79% tax rate as 80% always seemed to cost more approval than I felt but then I usually felt uncomfortable going into the endgame with less than an 80% approval rating but that was because I typically did a massive endgame upgrade the value of which required about 3 years to extract all the time I would be suffering the gradual but substantial loss of approval such that I was down to the 20% level with 79% taxes but the time I ended the game.

With a different strategy I suppose you could go into the endgame with 20% or 21% (I forget which one actually loses you money). It sounds like this is what you're implying if you have 20B planets with no VRC's even with all the techs, trade goods, wonders and morale resources in the galaxy.

Also why PQ10's instead of PQ11's. If I'm not mistaken PQ11's and above get the 10% straight approval bonus that makes them easier to control at a higher pop. Is this correct? Then if so how do you get by with PQ10's with a 10% approval deficit at the same level of PQ11's?

I also understand about state secrets and I've had plenty of my own in my own time but after some point about 4 years ago I made a point of telling pretty much everyone essentially everything I knew simply because I felt that we were all in the same boat and it was the right thing to do. I regret that people still feel the need for such secrets but I acknowledge their right to do so.

It was your bankruptcy that required you to have higher morale, yes.

20% doesn't lose pop, 19% does.

The stated morale is sufficient for 20% approval at 20B pop with no morale structures, running at 79% taxrate.

I suspect you're correct on the point about PQ10s, in which case only 18B pop for them.  I'd honestly forgotten that.

That applies for just about everything in this game for me!!! LOL
When i started the game, i took about 20mins just relearning the UI!

Hi Mumble and SS!  

Ditto for me.  

My timing is off too.  My SCC purchase came too soon.  My economy went way negative and was losing over 1k per turn.  I saw no option other than to go to war and take everyone's homeworlds.  I also took out the 3 minors that I met.  I'm still down to the tune of about -5k, but climbing out at about 1.5k per turn.  Having hit a low of -14k, I've spent the 2nd half of year 0 at a standstill and am still not out of the hole at Jan 15 year 1.  Meeting two new minor races along the way has helped.

If I was playing for score, I'd dump this game and start over, but that's not the case.  I'll take my lumps and press on.  

Yeah, the competition ended a while back.  I see no reason for secrets any more.  Any new players should be given a level playing field with us if possible IMO.  Our only real hope to revive the game is to enjoy it and forget about trying to outscore another empire.  

Of course, trying for a high personal score is good if you have that kind of patience.  For me, score has to become secondary to having fun with the game.

The desire for score can be a sickness but it's a sickness for those of us with a serious perfectionist streak that is very difficult if not impossible to overcome.

As I mentioned above I can't even guarantee if I'll ever finish another game. It's like you start out with these great ideas and then you get so far into a game and realize wait a minute I could have done this or that or whatever and it can get to be a never ending trial of starting over. I probably went through 6 months of that over a year ago. In the meantime work and other activities have gotten in the way.

It's really going to be retirement that finally gives me all the time I want to just play but it's so hard to quit even if you can afford to retire when they keep throwing tons of money at you to stay. I guess that's a problem many people would kill for but my health has not been all that good and without health you really don't have much no matter how much money you have.

Well, they say that money can't buy happiness.  But I wouldn't mind trying to rent it for a while. 

I wonder if I'll have enough time to play games when I retire.  There seems to be so much hunting and fishing to do.

Maybe by then, they'll have a direct brain interface so we can play while we fish.  Or maybe the brain implant will just make us think we're playing and fishing.  Yeah, that would be good enough as well.

Digressing.
My new PC is up and running! with all my cpu cooler size issues, i ended up going with water, no size issue there.
And with water comes..EXTREME OC!!! hehe (saying that in my head was like the voice over guy in Attack of the Show)
So, im running at 4.0GHz with 16GB ram at 2133 and this thing is as stable as it was at default settings. 12 hours of prime95 testing and it didnt miss a beat. the GPU is factory OC'd so i left it be.
Thought now, i'm paranoid about the waterblock or some other part springing a leak! i keep looking in and checking....somewhat irrational, since millions use water cooling without issue, but its my first forae into it and its gonna take some trusting i guess.

I've plenty of reinstalling to do, i'll make skype next on the list then DG and GC2.

As for money buying happiness, well i guess you need the money first to know if your then happy. I'm pretty happy without any (or any significant amount) but i've been comfortable and accepting of my station in life for many years.

A good kid and a good wife (and the odd bottle of vodka ) sure do make the difference.

Or like a baby, maybe i'm just easily pleased!!

Really, That sounds cool! 

I was trying to figure out why in some of games the scores were really different, like one would be 147350 then 90650 then 94500 then 100450 but they would be played the same way 1 lab and 6 opponents in my Super Diplomat ZYW.

@Neilo, What kind of video card are you using?  I am looking at getting a different CPU.

We are looking for players to join to become aggressive Admirals to lead your fleets across the Galaxy!

Empress Saint Mina of Ophelia VII of Order of the Bloody Rose of Orders Militant of Adepta Sororitas

@Neilo - Awesome!  I like the idea of water cooling, but haven't ventured that way yet.  The heat pipes are still working well enough for me but I don't oc except for the factory oc that came with my old GTS250.  

@SaintMina - I'm only guessing, but I'd say it would be a combination of timing and the natural randomization that goes with the game.  Even small differences in timing or resources, especially early in the game can make disproportionate differences in score.  ZYWs magnify that effect since you're ending it before the turn of the year.  For instance, you might rush buy a fighter or tile 1 week early if you came across a good anomaly early on.  Since everything is randomized at the start, no 2 games are identical.  Also, ending the game 1 week late in a classic ZYW will drop the score a lot.  Ending it 1 week early or 1 week late in a late year (giga) ZYW will also drop the score.

As far as my first game attempt since reinstall, that SCC will turn out to be the one decision that killed any chance at a decent score.  Once my economy recovered from that, my tech was back to overheated and my economy was soaring.  I'm converting scouts that I traded for into constructors and colonizers wherever they lie.  I've found several resources and some juicy planets just sitting there.  I think I weakened the AI too much in the negotiations so some of them aren't expanding so well.  

I now have the MCC and am about ready to build a military.  Once I get a few more techs, it's on.    

@mina, i got a GTX 560ti from gigabyte, it's factory overclocked but also has plenty of room to push the shader clock more if i want to. I would have liked to have spent a little more on the graphics card, but $300 seemed enough, considering that there was a lack of 570's and 580's about.

@motti, yeah ive thought of water before, but always got great results with a fan cooler. i cna't say im not impressed by this setup though, its summer here and i have not seen the cpu go above 27 degress C.

ill have gc2 back on here this weekend, going to do DG first.

Oh and btw, i never did mention this before, but i never thought the full year ZYW was a true zyw, hence i never have done one.

the ZYW was always about finishing the game at the earliest time you can, April 8.