www.gamesover.com Destiny Here's where you'll find all the tips and strategies you need to conquer Destiny. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GAME SETTINGS If you are having difficulty handling all your COHs, Discoveries, and Forces, use the Pause button. You can still order construction and production and adjust Idea Points although nothing will be activated until you remove Pause. (Remember you can not Pause if you are playing Networked.) Sometimes when you start a New Game, the speed setting is at Fast and then other times, it's Medium. This happens because when you Quit a game, it remembers the settings you had and starts the next game with the same settings. When playing the game you have the chance to either win by military victories or by discovery victories. Once you choose this path, you can not change. Sometimes the computer will tell you that you have lost when you have the highest score, under the settings, game status menu. The score table is totally unconnected to winning. The score depends on what you have built, winning depends on the victory conditions set at the beginning of the game. A higher score does not imply that you have been closer to winning in a given game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DISCOVERIES For more discovery point clarification, take a look at this page. When you are allocating discovery points you can allocate more than the number of new ideas being generated. The new ideas will be allocated in the order in which you entered them. Any points allocated in excess of the number of new ideas are put in a queue which moves forward as something is discovered. Ex. If I have three new ideas available and one I allocate one to Domestication of Livestock, one to Flint Knapping, one to Adobe/Clay Bricks, and one to Herbal Lore (in that order), each turn one will be allocated to Domestication of Livestock, Flint Knapping, and Adobe/Clay Bricks and only once one of these has been discovered will Herbal Lore begin to receive points. If you want to know what you have already Discovered, look at the Chart, within the Discovery Window. Previous Discoveries are marked **. Alternatively you have a look in the Trade Window, located under the COH menu. The Discoveries you have available to trade are the ones you have already discovered. If there are no discoveries listed under the Discovery menu, one of two things has happened. One, you have made all the discoveries that can be made without increasing your tribe's education level. Or two, you are playing under Military Victory conditions, you have an Education Level of 6 ,and have made all discoveries, but you have not wiped out all opposition. To increase your education level, build Athenaeums (level 1), Academies (level 2), Monasteries (level 3), Schools (level 4), High Schools (level 5), and Primary Schools (level 6) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TERRAIN When you play without Omni-Resource Terrain, you will find it difficult to find and exploit the resources you need. Try playing with a high Land Ratio (slider bar to extreme left) and High Resources (slider bar to extreme right) until you are ready for the greater challenge. Remember to look in Rain Forest and Jungle for Resources. Hills are not the only Land type to contain useful things. Remember that many Facilities which increase your Sphere of Influence require resources, particularly Stone, to continue operating. Try not to rely on a location of this resource to provide that operating cost that can only be reached by Operating the facility it is maintaining. When you are playing with the "limited resources" box checked you have a chance of "using up" resources. Ex., if you remove some of the timber in a Deciduous Forest it will become a Deciduous Wood, and on depleting all the wood it becomes Cleared Land. Similarly when you scrape for coal it will become depleted but you will be able to dig for coal once a diggings has been constructed (this can be done by "upgrading" the scrape site in the production page). Performing tasks in the Influence window can change the land type. Ex., if you clear Deciduous Forest it becomes Deciduous Wood, which has less timber available but contains arable land. Remember that grazing land is a general term, so when you upgrade your cattle farm to livestock, it may not produce. Check Available Tasks in the Influence window before building or upgrading. If you have built Major Road Constructors, started operating them, and go to the Influence Window, you'll only see 9 squares under influence, then this means you do not have enough stone to maintain your MRCs and they will cease working. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FORCES Use the On-Line Manual to check the strengths and weaknesses of the Units that make up your Forces. Also check their Size when planning to move them by Sea to ensure they will fit on the Merchant Force you intend to use. Remember it is possible to build forces with less then ten units which allow the inclusion of some escort ships and still allow you to move by sea. Each land unit has a size rating and each navy unit has a cargo capacity. If the Land force is too big you can not load it on the naval force. Remember that when you build merchant fleets they default with some escort ships so you may have less capacity than you think unless you customize your navy. If you are wondering about your attacking strength of your units, go under the Units' Table, in the on-line manual. The bombard numbers refer to the campaign map attack and range strengths, whereas the missile numbers refer to the battle field attack and range strengths. If you are playing at hard or extreme level the loss of all your Military Headquarters also results in the loss of all units depending upon them. The same sort of thing applies to air units with airfields, and naval units with harbors or ports. Because Destiny allows troops from different historical eras to fight one another, units will not always use period tactics. When in the Battlefield Mode, the terrain shows a black area at the edges. This area designates the retreat zone. If any units move in to it, they have left the battle and cannot return. Attacking strength will vary because the numbers printed are based on a logarithmic process. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GOVERNMENT To stop riots and revolts you might want to implement Largesse. (Handing out Money always cheers people up). Do this by going into the COH menu and clicking on the "administration" tab. Look under the "local control" section and find the down arrow which will allow you to implement a type of control. Under the National Government window you can keep an eye on your expenditure and income. Ideally your income should be greater than the amount budgeted (spent). You can increase your incoming revenue by mining gold/silver veins or gems, raising taxes or increasing your control over the people (the greater control you have the more efficient your tax collection is). When you're making an Offer of Resources in order to boost your chances of success in Diplomacy or when you're putting together a Trade Deal, the Resources you're allocating are not being immediately deducted from the available list. This is because both the Diplomacy and Trade windows are nt updated in real-time. When you make an Offer of Resources in order to boost your chances of succession Diplomacy, it can get rejected and your resources are gone. Rejected resources are not placed back in the COH they come from, but in the COH that shows when you first click on the COH icon. Not all the Local Control options appear. The policies that can be carried out vary with your government. You may not have enough Revenue to conduct the task. Some policies may not be carried out until after the effects of a previous option have expired. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TECHNICAL ISSUES The manual, the on-line manual, and in-game text sometimes contradict each other because changes were made to the game, particularly the Costs of construction and effects of Discoveries after the Manual had to go for printing. The on-line manual was "frozen" later and the in-game text even later. The in-game text therefore has the latest changes. The "Enter" key does not seem to work on certain menu selections because some menu items are selected and used with the "space" bar. If you have been playing the game and you can not move your forces, this usually means that your Pause Mode is turned on. If your forces refuse to follow your instructions, this means you probably have Auto play Mode turned on. If your force did not enter the COH you sent it to, you probably chose "Report" Order instead of "Join" Order. The Status Bar records the location of the camera, so if you are in Follow Mode watching a force which is over land, the status bar may read Shallow Sea. Sometimes you have to click on the map when changing views and other times you don't. If you are zooming out the view remains centered on your current location, but if you are zooming in you have to choose a location. You can modify which messages (Ex.: Notify Message) you receive during the game, and change these options during the game. The notifications option appears under the settings menu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SAVED GAMES If you like the place where you have started a game, save the game immediately. This will allow you to go back to that place at any time, giving you a chance to start over and improve your score in a known environment.