Re: This is a SWEET game!!
That was me playing the demo as well. Fortunately, I have set alarms and such to make sure I always know what time it is. Everytime you get into a rhythm, some neat new thing pops up. In my Last game I was going defensive. Concentrating on expansion and such before amassing a military. Searching around I found the cool discovery for massive planetary shielding. My most important planets went right to work on it, but not after they already have a junkload of planetary defense machines in place. Anyway, as my luck happens I get a visit from that warlike red-lizard race. (Why in the demo I always seem to be placed near those guys) For some reason they seem to have this small force theory. That is, they build destroyers early but they always seem to send only 1 at a time.
First contact and I already see he's veering for my largest colony (Oportune). I don't even have destroyer class ships yet because I was simultaneously researching my next 3 mineral/organics/radiation tech levels with ship design, so it was taking a little longer than usual with equally divided research. (However, I was accelerating due to the speed I was producing more and more research facilities).
Anyway, those lizards were humorous. They came in (I know) expecting to pillage this defenseless planet. I only had escorts at the time, simply to reveal different systems and to sit around pinging active radar to alert me on any presence that entered them. Ignoring the escort, that Destroyer simply went for the planet, stopped outside of it, looked at all those planetary guns guarranteed to vaporize it in 1 single round of combat, backed off towards the warp point. It reconsidered one more time, going back to the planet and thought the better of it and retreated back to the warp point.
Then the war mongers asked for a trade alliance. Being that they didn't ask for something as rediculous as a military alliance (no way I'm sharing my skies with those guys), the trade alliance seems like a short-term win-win situation. Heck, a few extra resources to help me build my nearly imminent force of heavy expansion, wouldn't hurt, not to mention it kept those lizards on their side of the galaxy. After the aggreement, they kind of left me alone for the time being. (Pretty much all I wanted, really) Figures, since I was ranked higher than them. The ships they have may be powerful, but the amount they had was rediculous if they thought they would launch an offensive. (Maybe they were there to test whether I had planetary defense systems) Now with the destroyers researched, I could pump out more than their total task force in 2 turns.
Yep, this is addicting. The queues make the idea of micromanagement a rather non-daunting task. Heck, when I have a plan for a low-maintenance planet (stuff used just for resource gathering, or small planets), I simply queue in all the facilities I want it to have in the same turn I colonize it, throw a couple of planetary defenses and I leave it alone until I decide to make upgrades in the future. It certainly isn't a, must go to every colony each turn, kind of thing, unless I'm curious enough to simply want to view how much they have left in the queue. But once done, I just note its purpose and hardly look at it. This is much better than all the previous games I played where they didn't nearly have queues as convenient.
I guess ministers could be set to automatically upgrade facilities as soon as I research them? Like rip out my Mineral Mining Facility(MMF) I for a MMFII?
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