Not only do I want to share some of the tips and tricks I've acquired over the years, but I'm hoping some of the vet Realms Beyond players will reply and add their own tips. I'm not only looking for in-game tricks, but also anything to do with interface, .INI settings, etc. Most of my tips are mainly curios, but I hope somebody finds a useful nugget of info below.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not claiming that I am the 'creator' of any of these tips. After years of reading SGs, game reports, and strategy threads, it's impossible for me to give credit where it's due.

DISCLAIMER #2: Some of the below might seem basic and obvious - but it's all subjective, so no need to comment on that in a negative way. There's a chance that a vet player may be unaware of a trick that others have been using since the start.
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• 99999 Gold Trick: Allows you to view the Total Income of any computer opponent whom you have contact with. Total income means the gold per turn earned from all cities, taxmen, interest, and other civs BEFORE deductions like science, corruption, etc. To view it, enter the Diplomacy screen with your opponent of choice, click on their 'Gold Per Turn' and enter 99999. Hit 'Enter', and it will display their Total Income in the negotiation window. You can also view your own Total Income by doing this on your side of the Diplomacy window, but of course a much easier way is to just look in the F1 screen. Can be a nice tool at times.
  
• Tech-Steal Window: When you are in the F6 screen after successfully stealing a tech h34r:, you may note that one of the tech names is in bold facetype. That tech is the one that the AI is currently researching.
  
• 'ESCape from Diplomacy, now!: You can press ESC to instantaneously exit a diplomacy negotiation with another civ, saving yourself from annoying mouse clicks. Best feature of this interface trick is that anything that is currently 'on the table' is preserved if you resume diplomacy later on. This really helps during massive trade sessions - for example, you can find out the max GPT offer, hit escape, compare with other civs, and then come back later and still have the GPT offer and the tech on the table. Also useful for those annoying map trade offers that pop up all the time - I don't want your *&$%( Territory map! :axe:
  
• City-View Scrolling: When micromanaging, a convenient way to rapidly move through the main city-view screens is by clicking the right and left arrows next to the city name at the top of the screen. However, the fastest way to do this is to use the 'Right' and 'Left' arrows on your keyboard to rapidly move through the screens while your mouse makes all of the necessary adjustments.
  
• Upgrading without losing Movement Points: Let's say you have just researched Military Tradition, and have tons of knights ready to upgrade. Too bad you have to upgrade the knights, waste their movement points, and wait until the next turn to use your Cav, right? Wrong. When you see the 'We have researched Military Tradition' popup at the beginning of your turn, click on 'What's the Big Picture?', then access the F1 Domestic advisor, and double click on a city with knights. Once in the main city view screen, right click and upgrade as many Knights as you want. Then, scroll through the cities by clicking on the arrows (or pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard) and upgrade to your heart's content. These freshly upgraded Cav will have all of their movement points and can then be used on that turn. NOTE: I'm pretty sure this is illegal for Epic games - there is a section in the exploit lists banning 'scroll ahead' moves like this one.
  
• Re-Negotiate Peace Trick: SG vets will know this one well. Have lots of military but are behind in tech? Don't want to risk a prolonged war with 'traditional' ( :war: ) pointy-stick research? Re-negotiate peace and include the tech/resources/luxury that you want from your opponent. If you're strong enough you can usually get a pretty nice discount. Of course, if you're weak you'll have to pay even more <_<
  
• Click and Drag Windows: You can click and drag any game pop up window (Advisor windows, etc . . ) just like you can click and drag Windows windows. Handy for taking nice screenshots of freshly popped Scientifc Great Leaders, since that damn Science Advisor window always obscures your capital!
  
• Transport Unload Trick: Another common one, but a fave of mine. If you move a transport into a city controlled by you and awake the transported units (either by clicking 'Unload All,' 'Wake All', or manually right clicking each one), those units will have all of their movement points. Very handy during amphibious assaults - take an enemy city with a marine, unload armor transports and blitz inland cities with your tanks on the same turn.
  

In the Epic 39 thread, Dark Savant and Griselda wrote:

"if an AI cannot quite offer market value for a tech I am selling, I often simply give the AI money, which I will get back anyway once I sell the tech."

You're saying that instead of selling a tech for below market value, you give the AI gold, then sell the tech to them at full price? Outside of Wall Street, I can't see the advantage to that over simply selling the tech at below-market price if you are going to sell it. Sure, giving the money away helps your reputation, but so does selling tech at low prices.

Selling tech at low prices helps your rival's attitude (that's different from your reputation) only very slightly. Also, the attitude is the same regardless of how cheap the deal is, if the deal is already 10% better than market value for the AI. Gifting makes a much larger difference - if you haven't already gifted them anything recently, a large enough gift will always boost Annoyed to Polite or Polite to Gracious.

However, the attitude of your rivals doesn't much matter. It makes a near-trivial difference (1 to 2 percent) in the prices they'll give in trade, but if you're far enough ahead that you're using this tactic anyway, that won't matter. And the only other effect it has is in diplomatic voting. No real link between AI attitude and their actions otherwise has ever really been established.

However again, the effect of Wall Street giving them extra per-turn income if you gift them cash never occurred to me before. That's tremendously clever! A great way to get more cash off your rivals to fund your research towards space. I'll definitely use that one in the future.

I post this in the general forum just because I know many of you have never played
Master of Orion, and had not considered doing so. But if you like strategy games at
all, whether you currently have the game or not, I would like you invite you to join
in the MOO Imperium games -- get in on the ground floor.

Here's a post I made in the MOO forum specifically aimed at the utter newbie (like me)
Top Ten Reasons for Utter News to TRY Master of Orion

Now, back to our regularly scheduled non-game off-topic discussion! (And may I give a big
wave to my RB friends - I hope you like the new boards! :D )

Charis

I'm a total, 100%, absolutely newb in MOO. And I would like to give my strongest encouragement
for all lurkers, Realms Beyond friends, MOO fans of the past, and most of all, utter newbies,
to give Master of Orion a try, and specifically... play the first Imperium!

Here's my top ten reasons to play list --

10. Installation is painless and does not threaten your system in any way.
I had it up and going on Win2K in minutes. No special programs, just click on compatibility mode and go
9. If you hated MOO3, don't let that stop you. I loathe MOO3 and can confirm the
games only share a common name and the most superficial of elements.
8. The interface is highly intuitive and not hard to master, not a gazillion levels of subscreens
7. If you've played Civilization (I/II/III) before and understand the concepts of rapid expansion
and of emphasizing growth and production early on, you are already a better than average
MOO player and will not be lost in this Imperium.
6. The game is 'simple' enough that 'cause and effect' is evident. This sounds small but is a huge
factor in improving the user experience for the newbie. (Yet it's complex enough that is has some
of the best strategy gamers around coming back after a decade. Now that's longevity!!
5. I am not one prone to like space games and yet my initial try with this game shows it to have
more potential that I might like it than any other I've tried. I've been told it makes no sense, but
I loved Warcraft and hated Starcraft. If you're also averse to space-based games but like a good
strategy game, I encourage you to try it for yourself.
4. Check out Sirian's web pages. He goes into painstaking detail and has tons of screenshots
AND solid strategic advice. Specially, if you're as rank as newbie as I am, do not miss his tutorial!!
Sirian's Tutorial at - http://sirian.warpcore.org/moo1/tutorial.html
I played through this, diverged on my own once I understood what I was doing, and won
a diplomatic victory at almost exactly the point in time where I felt, "Hmmm, I think I'm actually going
to win this game". MOO is FAR nicer in giving up the win at the point you have a won game.
3. A game can be completed, even by a newbie, in far less time than you might be used to in
other games. I'm one of the worlds slowest strategy game players, as I pore over all decisions,
but I was able to start, finish, and win my first game, all while reading the tutorial and learning
the interface in just one night. Sure the more difficult games will take longer, but if you're
on the fence wondering whether to try this or not -- there's nothing to lose
2. Cost is low, it doesn't take much time, and if you've not played in a Realms Beyond Epic before,
there is absolutely no better way to learn than to see a dozen or so other players report on
their experiences on the exact same map and with the same goals. It's nothing short of an epiphany!

1. Last but not least... when did Charis ever steer you wrong?!?! B)

I've got so much going on it's with mixed emotion I try something new, but here's what I'm going to
do -- play the first two Imperia and take it from there. Will you join me?? :war:

Pardon for this thread spam, but I felt the newbie's voice needed to be heard!
Charis

One of the top things that makes this game frustrating is the lack of a good way to look up the techs. I love Civ3 and the science screens. From there I can see every tech, what is brings in buildings / units, and requirements to get there.

I have never found a screen like that in GalCiv. I found one spreadsheet to download, but the CanBuild column was blank. Does anyone have an idea where a good reference for the game is. I suspect I need something that I can print, as alt-tabbing out of the game is slow.

I've posted an analysis of MOO technologies at My Webpage. Rather than examine each tech one at a time, I sort by field and then by function, which is in my view the best way to think of the technologies.

In most cases, we're looking at a handful of concepts with multiple upgrades, where later versions work the same as earlier versions, but cheaper, faster, or better. My analysis deals with the core concepts in a package I hope players both new and old will find insightful. I also hope this will ease the learning curve for new players making the jump from "learning how to play" into "figuring out strategy", perhaps even give folks enough information to be able to make choices in the first Imperium game with at least some confidence, and a place to refer back to (in addition to the game's manual, which is actually quite helpful) for some guidance.

I've also posted a reference for keyboard commands.


- Sirian

Epic Forty: The Hittite Cosmonauts has been announced, and will open Monday, April 5. Epic Forty will feature a new Conquests civ, but will be revisiting an older variant to see how things play out in Conquests. Please note that this Epic will be played in Conquests version 1.15 (the beta patch), although a newer patch is available. This is a small-map Epic, and I hope that will give players an opportunity to complete the game before patching if they choose.

-Griselda

My sporadic Diablo II addiction has finally resulted in my first (yes, really) solo Patriarch. Woot!

Wolf the Werewolf

Jaffa

4:42 EST, Friday April 2nd. I make a Hell game with the idea of just wasting ten minutes, and I get "Diablo Walks the Earth". I'll give it a shot, but I doubt this char can handle it. Anyone care to join RBD9 to lend a hand?

-- CH

Engaging Rantmode.

Flee now as this is bound to be inflamatory.

Just go... I about to say things that are terrible... If you don't any part of the flames, exit.

The economy is in the toilet and the white folks who live where I live are lazy as hell, not to mention they seem to have this strange idea that they are better then everybody else and deserve better.

Ahhhh... Much better. Allow me to explain. And no, there will be no apologies.

The economy where I live is in the toilet. A lot of business are suffering. A lot of folks have gone to war and closed up shop. It's hard to find a good job. There is a massive influx of migrant workers that have pretty much taken over the simple jobs, like roofing and labour. It's tough all over.

What I have been dealing with over the past few weeks is total hell... Complete breakdown. I have so many people coming to my agencies looking for work that it's not funny... Yet I am having a damned hard time actually filling jobs... I have LOTS of jobs lined up. LOTS. I have spots in bakeries, dairies, ag work, LOTS of jobs. I am practically tearing out my damned hair trying to keep up with open spots and filling them.

Every frigging bloody day I am getting reports of white folks coming in, asking for jobs, and when they are told what jobs are available, almost with out fail, will say something to the effect of "***damn that's n****r work and I wont do it."

Here's how it works... Everybody starts at the bottom. In the dairy jobs, everybody starts washing milk crates. Stacking crates, washing crates, loading crates into the distro centre warehouse so they can be filled with milk and sent to stores. Crates are brought back and they are covered in grocery store filth. You get the picture. Now, the dairy uses this as their hiring pool for all their truck drivers and such. At the bakeries, it's working in the flour room... Which is brutal I am told. It's hotter then hell, flour dust is in the air, and you spend the whole day moving 50 pound flour sacks off of a truck and on to a pallet. Other folks toss bags on to hand dollies and move them to the prep and mix rooms. It is hard back breaking work... But it's honest and at the end of the day you get to take home lots of bread or dairy products to feed your family. Pay is minimum, but, it's a foot in the door and people that serve their time are promised better jobs as soon as they are open. It's not a good job, but, it's money and food. Beggars can't be choosers.

Ignorant Redneck comes in and the very idea of scrubbing crates or getting off his fat ass and tossing sacks is offensive to him. He wants a truck driving job with the business. He seems to be under the impression that he is owed a better job... Because he is white. He curses, complains, threatens lawsuits over "unfair treatment" and generally makes a real jackass of himself. He disrupts the whole procedure, takes up time and resources by coming in, wastes the time of my workers, (Who are on MY dime) and his profane and racist behaviour leaves everybody in said agency feeling uneasy and worried. I have had death threats, threats of violence and or damage, and general mayhem. The police have had to be called at least 8 times that I know about in the past 3 weeks to remove misbehaving applicants. Said applicants who think they are to good to work go down the street and talk to United Way or one of the welfare agencies and get the free hand out they now feel they are entitled to, being the victim of "Cruel and racist hiring practices that make it impossible for decent white folks to get work." And I am quoting my friend and comrade in arms that heads up the United Way.

I am going frigging crazy. Every frigging day, it's more and more reports. Stacks of paper work. People emailing me and calling me wanting to know why I am not keeping them supplied with workers and keeping up with my end of the many contracts that rule my life. Exchanging goods for labour is really biting me in my frigging ass right now. I would like nothing more then to pay a visit to where these lazy jerks live and go and have a chat with their wife about why the whole family is eating government cheese and peanut butter. I can find out where they live... They put their address on the application... I sure as hell bet the Missus would have something to say. What stops me? Common decency? I dunno. I worry about the unemployment rate, I don't need to fiddle with the damn divorce rates.

I will the first to say that hard work is for chumps. I hated hard back breaking work. I am sure most folks do. But busting your ass is a part of life. You keep doing it till you can afford to be lazy. You work your damn ass off till you can make a grab and make something of your self in life. That crack in my ass? I nearly finished breaking it trying to make my way in the world. And now when I should be enjoying my retirement I am busy busting my ass trying to make sure that other folks get a fair shake in life. And these bozos go and screw everything sideways to Sundays.

I can't fix this. I am nearly at the end of my rope. My wit's end. I can't throw money at it. I can't threaten it. I can't strong arm it, barter with it, or reason with it. I can not apply a bigger hammer. This is one of those occasions in my life where I am completely powerless to fix or otherwise change a situation that I strongly dislike. Hate even. I have nothing but bad mean hateful spiteful things to say now.

I think I am in need of a vacation. I am tired of all this CRAP. I am old and I have better things I could be doing with my time. Like playing games. Having long and in depth chats with my goats. Go chasing after my wife who is usually out chasing butterflies. There are so many better things I could be doing.

I am burnt out.