i was surprised by the new weapons tho, finally a reason to have more than just a handful of armor plates on a ship design

carriers defiantly fill that gap the ai had in the larger ships category as well, which is nice.
From my expirience higher agressiveness make the game not more difficult.ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube
However, if that's still too easy, I recommend starting on a higher galaxy age and turning up the agressiveness. For both of those you will definitely see some new challenges.
if by using game setup to make it more difficult for the player is what you mean by on purpose than that's just idiotic.ORIGINAL: Astax
I think making things more difficult on yourself on purpose does not make fore a more enjoyable game.I wish the game had Multilayer so that real hardships can be experienced
ORIGINAL: the1sean
4. Leave taxation automated.
6. Play to your weakness, try playing a race that doesn't suit your normal play style.
The last one can be lots of fun. One of my favorite games in ROTS was when I played as the Atuuk. They are complete morons and have horrifically crappy troops!
ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube
3.) Taxes. AI doesn't do taxes right. At all. I remember the first game where I used manual taxes, and it hit me: The AI is really bad at this. By keeping your people happy and taxes low you can have worlds of 2000-3000M after only a decade or two at most. By that time, you can begin to tax them heavily in order to pay for all the new worlds that you AREN'T taxing. In order to avoid over-taxation, you decrease the load on your older worlds and spread out the tax-load with time. With revisions only every couple of game years, I can manage my taxes infinitely better than the AI, apparently, and I don't think I'm doing anything all that special.
ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
How would multiplayer even work? First of all, the speed would have to be constant. That will be really boring if you are just sitting around waiting for a colony ship to build. On the other extreme, if everyone is attacking you and you can't pause, well, good luck with that. And then the sheer length of the games at just NORMAL speed is an issue. I guess people managed to play MOO2 multiplayer... somehow, but I don't see how this game will ever catch on as multiplayer. It would be a nice add-on for college kids and their weekend-long lan parties, but I agree with everyone else who thinks time is best invested in improving the AI for single-player.
ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan
Right. And correct me if I am wrong, but the reason those tax-havens grow so rapidly is because their population is taken from the rival AI opponents' tax-heavy colonies.
ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
All good points. Hopefully 1) will be resolved soon...
2) and 6) are easy to modify yourself. The settings are in the policy files. Either start a game as that race, adjust and save the policy file or modify directly the text file. You might want to make a copy first for the sake of posterity.