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[motorbitch]

ah, yeah, i found some more convinient ways to retrofit

gaaawd. i hate to get into  the ui of complicated 4x games. sadly, i love complicated 4x games XD

[motorbitch]

played on normal with a large map. extremely borring, passive ai got roflstomped. annoying pirate pings 4 per second, to many to even zoom there, they overridden each other in light speed.
abborted the game when it was so very clear the ai would not give me a fight.

tried like 4 times on hard, with smaller maps but more colonizable planets.
no idea. ai gets 10 times my income, nothing but my home world is generating any. when i get colonization, the ai has 20 war ships with 2000 shield that seem to one hit my ships.
despite being outteched and outgunned, i managed to take over quite a few planets last game. still, as i had only 10% of my income, the 10 ships and the troop transport i owned caused me to go broke as i could not pay all the upkeep.
yeah... dunno. maby just not my game.

[Xardalas]

Sounds like you have a crapton of corruption going. Or maybe your Civ leader died. I've noticed that tends to make your income go to shit and back. Did you have a ton of pirate bases and such on your planets? That'll make the corruption go up and force your income to shrink a bit. Give it a few more tries. It's pretty damn fun honestly, The mechanics are just a little hard to get the first few times you play.

[LoSboccacc]

got this and all expansions.

I feel old, and stupid.

[jhxmt]

got this and all expansions.

I feel old, and stupid.

Don't worry - you're probably just old! 

I kid.  The learning curve's a bit of a pain at first - there's a lot of different aspects to the game, all working at once.  This is where the automation comes in handy - try to leave as much as possible automated at first, and just semi-ignore it.  Focus on one bit at a time (e.g. learn how to order ships around first, then how to send them places to explore/colonise, then how to build them at your bases, then how to design your own, etc etc).  Baby steps.  It helps that the in-game help is actually quite extensive. 

[snelg]

I liked that you can use suggestions instead of automating it as well, helps a lot when learning the game.

[Zangi]

I liked that you can use suggestions instead of automating it as well, helps a lot when learning the game.

Oh yea, I totally forgot there was an awesome suggestion thing.  (When I think about it, I have it on, but ignore it most of the time.)

[jhxmt]

Started playing again recently - really getting into it again. 

What's the best (/most efficient/most successful/most fun) way to start up as a pirate in the Age of Shadows?  I've done it before, but floundered a little bit.  Should I be focussing on mining and smuggling (if I'm a smuggler), with a bit of planetary control and limited planetary raiding?  Go all-out on the raiding?  Other?  Thoughts?

I quite like the idea of being a scavenging locust fleet, burning my way from world to world, but the maintenance costs would be punitive for that kind of strategy!  Boarding a lot of ships is tricky for the same reason.

[snelg]

I liked that you can use suggestions instead of automating it as well, helps a lot when learning the game.

Oh yea, I totally forgot there was an awesome suggestion thing.  (When I think about it, I have it on, but ignore it most of the time.)

I usually have parts of it on even if I'm not using it much. It's good at reminding you of things you might miss and it's amusing to see what the ai comes up with from time to time. It does have a tendency of taking up a lot of the top right messages part of the screen but it's not that much of a problem.

[forsaken1111]

I especially enjoy when it suggests I declare war on my ally and trading partner of 12 years.

[muwahahaha]

I liked that you can use suggestions instead of automating it as well, helps a lot when learning the game.

Oh yea, I totally forgot there was an awesome suggestion thing.  (When I think about it, I have it on, but ignore it most of the time.)

I usually have parts of it on even if I'm not using it much. It's good at reminding you of things you might miss and it's amusing to see what the ai comes up with from time to time. It does have a tendency of taking up a lot of the top right messages part of the screen but it's not that much of a problem.

I like to have the ship construction and colony suggestions on even though I control everything manually. Colony suggestions is especially great when you've got a whole load of other things you need to do and don't have the time or patience to review the handful of colonisable planets your scouts have found and from my experience tends to be relatively intelligent with planet selection. My main use for the ship suggestions though is just to get some insight into what sort of fleet size the AI thinks I should have. I very rarely accept ship construction suggestions straight up though since I've noticed the AI sometimes likes to run your economy into the ground by building a crapton of military vessels.

I especially enjoy when it suggests I declare war on my ally and trading partner of 12 years.

This is the main reason I've turned off all the other suggestions. I got well and truly sick of my advisors recommending I initiate trade sanctions on absolutely everyone or telling me I should send all my spies on year long missions to steal operational maps that will expire before being of any use. Not to mention the ship suggestions alone get spammy by midgame and tend to consume my notification bar thing.

[snelg]

I especially enjoy when it suggests I declare war on my ally and trading partner of 12 years.

Or when it decides it's suddenly time for trade trade sanctions and blockades. Sometimes it gets pretty aggressive.

I liked that you can use suggestions instead of automating it as well, helps a lot when learning the game.

Oh yea, I totally forgot there was an awesome suggestion thing.  (When I think about it, I have it on, but ignore it most of the time.)

I usually have parts of it on even if I'm not using it much. It's good at reminding you of things you might miss and it's amusing to see what the ai comes up with from time to time. It does have a tendency of taking up a lot of the top right messages part of the screen but it's not that much of a problem.

I like to have the ship construction and colony suggestions on even though I control everything manually. Colony suggestions is especially great when you've got a whole load of other things you need to do and don't have the time or patience to review the handful of colonisable planets your scouts have found and from my experience tends to be relatively intelligent with planet selection. My main use for the ship suggestions though is just to get some insight into what sort of fleet size the AI thinks I should have. I very rarely accept ship construction suggestions straight up though since I've noticed the AI sometimes likes to run your economy into the ground by building a crapton of military vessels.

I especially enjoy when it suggests I declare war on my ally and trading partner of 12 years.

This is the main reason I've turned off all the other suggestions. I got well and truly sick of my advisors recommending I initiate trade sanctions on absolutely everyone or telling me I should send all my spies on year long missions to steal operational maps that will expire before being of any use. Not to mention the ship suggestions alone get spammy by midgame and tend to consume my notification bar thing.

I'm also getting the most actual use out of the various building stuff suggestions. There's a lot of settings you can do in the policies to make it more useful though because it tries to follow them. For instance the fleet compositions or how much it wants to trade with or attack others

[muwahahaha]

I'm also getting the most actual use out of the various building stuff suggestions. There's a lot of settings you can do in the policies to make it more useful though because it tries to follow them.

Yeah I've set up my navy composition policy thing to how I like it (fleets of capital / cruiser core with destroyer screens, frigates / escorts as AI controlled escorting freighters and stuff) and it's nice that the AI will take that into account with suggestions so I don't end up with hundreds of worthless frigates not doing anything.

[Zangi]

I especially enjoy when it suggests I declare war on my ally and trading partner of 12 years.

Or when it decides it's suddenly time for trade trade sanctions and blockades. Sometimes it gets pretty aggressive.

From what I understand... diplomacy is a 2 way street.  Your people/administration/AI does not have a blank diplomatic rating with X empire, unlike in just about every other game.  (Aurora is the same way too I believe.)

If your people/administration/AI hate X empire, they will call for war/sanctions/breaking of treaties if you leave suggestion or auto diplomacy on, despite the fact that you, player/overlord like X empire and have been lavishing them with the presence of your diplomats and expensive gifts.
The AI of X empire also needs to give back gifts to your kingdom for a positive relationship... and not be dicks to you.

[snelg]

Indeed, most of the time it's possible to see where they come from since you do get a negative relation with everyone when you first find them due to their "strange alien ways". Often it's enough to get the ai trigger happy with trade sanctions. It just cracks me up everytime I see the message for having met another species and then see the ai throw out the suggestions. Although I tend to play on more aggressive ai settings so maybe that plays into it.