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Hi Folks!

I've been playing Ascendancy since it came out, and came to the same conclusion most of you have: the AI sucks!

NEVER play in a peaceful environment because your enemies' ships won't be destroyed regularyly by each other!
Why is that bad?
- You will never notice any technological advancement in your enemies fleets, since they are unable to abandon their ships or to refit them!
So, if their ships don't get destroyed they will still have tiny frames even in the endgame

-> It's imperative to kill off all ships smaller than 'big' to slowly get a challenge

I abandoned this game 5 ago, but reading this thread, i realised that i never got a different ending than the 2/3 one.
I think I'll try it again.. with the patches of course.
(with knowlege of automated management ('m' key) and fractured empire this time)
Thanks for the tips to prolong gameplay!

2 handicaps to get a bit more of a 'fair' game:
- don't colonize large planets (conquering is allowed of course ^^)
- only build metroplexes instead of industrail megafacilities - by far the biggest handicap

otherwise its easy to build planets which can churn out a gigantic ship with nothing but nano-technologie in 1-2 days
(cover the whole planets surface with automated industrial megafacilities (now you will realise a big flaw in the games graphics: you can't visually discern automated plants from manual ones))

flaws: same goes for the lush growth bomb.. have you ever tried to build it on all planets in a game with 150+ planets under your control?

last thing:
since i didn't know about the alternative endings i tried to achieve other things, e.g. biggest fleet (while not colonising or attacking)
-> my biggest fleet so far: 80 gigantic ships (60 fighters, 10 colonizers, 10 invaders; never needed more classes)
gamefaqs suggest to build gateships and supporters, but if you have anything in that game it's time.
(once in the endgame i set all my planets to party and left the computer alone, i hadn't lost a single system when i came back 4 hours later (but i think it was peaceful env))

-> fastest victory was on day 932 (small universe, max enemies)

-> most planets: 350+ (don't remember exactly, but less than 500 (was the goal, but won to fast))

ok, back to setting up dosbox..