Originally posted by Beth
What do you mean by countries? What science should I be investing into to luanch my colony ship? Can I just send one?
From the map screen, if you click on each player, you will get some info about that player (e.g. culture and science level, player level (only goes up with battle and then a small interest increment daily after that). One of the lines says "plays from" and then should have a flag from their country. In the rankings screen, at the bottom under various stats, you can find a listing and percentages of players from different countries. If you put your mouse over the appropriate flag, the two letter international symbol shows up to help identify where they player is coming from.
Someone just sieged the planet that I am launching for in the hostile Non-Nemo system. (Most likely it is either a french or a swiss player.) When free planets are starting to run out it is often a good idea to send destroyers to those planets to decrease the probability of someone else being to use up a planet before you get there yourself. (a single destroyer will kill many colony ships).
Beth - I would keep your science on social till at least 6 as your growth is likely to stop in the 6-8 range. Population growth is what will give you points to improve your rank(as well as PPs and science). It is controversial but some players think that econ is worthless so they leave it on 0 for the entire game. IMO, it is not worthwhile until you are buying large enough fleets. Higher Math scores will pay off more than a high econ right away in your first battle. (It is better to have a destroyer live another day than to buy new ones after every battle). Once you get your science accumulation rates high enough, it will be a snap to get a low econ up. Later in the game, you will often be buying hundreds of destroyers. I agree with everything that StacyT said.
It sounds like you are in a great system. You may be able to dominate the other weak players. You have no need for bio as that will only let you look outside your system and you will need to consolidate your power in this system so that other people don't come launching in and invade your system.
Belothsurf - if you can get an non-aggresssion pact with the frenchman, you may want to accept it. Google has a language translator that you may use to convert your message from english to french if you trust it. (The translator is not good at slang and it has a problem with tense - there is a big difference between being attacked and attacking.) Then perhaps kill off the other two players together. The french often tend to stick together (the same way that US and english players do) so watch out! In the forums under international support, you can sometimes find threads about your opponents from their perspective. From last beta, I guessed that "Grillez les poissons" is translated to mean "Kill the Nemos".
