You know, maybe 1.5X would be enough...

[Arkcon]

Imperator Fyron said:
Never tabulated data in a spreadsheet, never calculated how many ships I could have available in 20 turns if I followed plan A as opposed to plan B, or anything else like that.

Umm... me either. It's just that's how some people criticize 4X games, like Civilization, or MoO. It was posted on this board years ago -- how the author thought the distribution of "points" -- be it crystals, gold, research points, etc. to achieve a goal was over-simplistic. A galactic overload should be able to demand a ship, or a technological development, or heads would roll.

When we get threads from new players who can't afford ships, or can't keep up with research, I consider the possibility that they have never checked the empire tab to see how they're growing.

I got a friend. He works in the financial markets. I gave him my SE4 Classic CD. But he can't figure the game out against the A.I. I was sure that if he monitored his growth, he'd see an improvement. But he likes twitchy, puzzle solving games better. Next year I'll loan him my Diablo disks -- they're useless to me under Linux.