Winning without tech trading

What is blind exploration suppose to do? I keep it turned on, but I can still see stars on the minimap...

BTW, beef up your military early with cheap ships. The AIs will all declare war on you if you sit around being peaceful with no navy. Having a navy, even a small one, will make them stop hating you so much. A tiny hull with a single weapon orbiting each planet will make everyone happy.

"Good walls make good neighbors."

Blind exploration get rid of seeing where everyone is on the minimap.

"Good walls make good neighbors."

Robert Frost?

Mmmmmmmm...... I forget. Something some English teacher rammed into my brain sometime.

Good fences make good neighbors

There, NOW it's a Robert Frost quote.

I win all the time while using my own no tech trading (which is I never trade)

You need to build up a decent military to ward off early attacks. Eventually someone will get mad at you and declare war. So just take their planets. Dunno what else to tell you except have a few heavy industry planets and utilize your bonuses as much as possible. Should be a piece of cake at Tough.

You MUST have a very strong research and economy base, so you become the top at tech, and get decent cash. Then you build some big ships early on, maybe a couple small fighters with early laser tech for example. Being massively powerful is a great way to make the AI like you

Hi!

AI always attacks pretty early on and I seem to be unable to make them happy enough with me to slide there disposition much past "neutral"

Send a freighter to them to establish a trade route. You can also try to get some bonuses from diplomacy. If your diplo ability is highter then theirs, they'll like you more.
Anyway, check the Report tab in a window where you see other players, and you'll see how each of them evaluates your race. To get better relations you need to get rid of "minuses", or get more "pluses", but preferably both.
BR, Iztok

I believe the 'no tech trade' is slightly flawed. You should be able to bully others for tech.

Anyhow, has anyone won a tech victory with the 'no tech trade' option?

I believe the 'no tech trade' is slightly flawed. You should be able to bully others for tech.

Anyhow, has anyone won a tech victory with the 'no tech trade' option?

Duplicate - sorry having forum connection troubles

Keep your eyes on that military grapg. As soon as ithe enemy graph starts to climb, you start building defenders.

I recently just finished a 10 player game on a large galaxy at the tough level (abundant planets, stars, etc). Anyway I used a civ that had significant boosts to economy and research. No tech trading. I seemed to actually stay ahead of my opponents technologically most of the game. I actually ended up winning via Tech in the end. Arcean empire got too big and their culture was at about 55-60 so that was out. There was no way I could take them militarily, not enough pop to conqueor their 80 or so planets!

My military was out numbered but a pair of my Devastator class large ships could take on fleets of 8 of their heavy fighters almost unscathed. My fighters and medium ships could even take on 3 to 1 odds and come out relatively unhurt. They sent wave after wave...I just stayed in my borders and fought them off.

So I went for 100%/100% spending/research using excess funds to buy more and more research buildings and just played the stall game for 80 turns, lol. I had a decent chuck of my armada still in tack, probably about 2/5's of it by the end game.

Devastator by the way was 9 beam, 6 missle with 4 in point defense and 13 speed on a large hull (lots of miniturization) and they had a good amount of experience from the Yor and Drengin wars where they first saw battle.