Sorry , been kinda busy.
LemmyM asked "How do the spies work and assasin, what can you do with them, and how do you get tech's of the church's "black list"?
Spies and assassins can be used anywhere,not just on emperial world.The plus to using them is that they directly attack any nobles in a stack of opponents, where as normal units attack in a set order from first unit to Last of the stack,the spies and assassins ignore all other units til they have killed the nobles or been killed themselves.Doppleganger Assassins are deadly.
Now there are many great things about killling your opponents nobles.Such as:
A: Nobles are required in order to use relics-relics are very good to have.
B: if you kill all of your opponenets nobles, they are out of the game AND all thier units become rebels.
C:If you kill all of your opponents nobles on the emperial world,they cannnot vote in elections til they get another noble there.
You can ask the church to proscibe "forbidden techs" for your use .This is the best way to get the more powerful techs,becuase if you get the church to proscibe the tech for you, they dont get mad at you when you research it.
However the church is both greedy and hard to convince,so be ready to really work on them with bribes, future favors,world maps,etc...(just dont sign the writ<that is the one thing you dont want to give them.It really hurts your score).
It can take a while but sooner or later they will say yes.
This will also put you in a great position to ask them to excomunicate your foes.The church will then attack thier worlds and systematically destroy thier labs,which will take away ALL their techs and make them start researching all over again from scratch.(When an opponent is reduced so, drop some plague bombs on his worlds,then sit back and watch them struggle just to survive).
The most important techs to research are the ones tied to space ships.The faster you can field a serious fleet the more trouble your opponents will be in.Plus most of the techs required for dreads and cruisers are also the techs required for the good tanks and troops.
Also when the merchant league guild declares for itself and attacks all the houses,you will be crushed if you cant meet and defeat their fleet.Be warned,they have a huge fleet consisting of many dreads and cruisers.And they start out with it.They declare the imperium when they have reached a certain amount of money in thier vaults.It has happens in about 70% of the games Ive played with human opponents.BUT you can delay it by simply making sure you sell the league as much as you can,this keeps thier bank account low longer.
You mention the game is crashing on you, make sure you have installed the 1.4 patch, it will do wonders.
Also again, the nova mod is by far the best Version.It eliminates almost all of the problems with unit balance and stupid AI that exist in the normal Version.
Fading suns noble armada has a demo out.Its been out for over 2 years.The game however is quite dead at the moment due to a severe disagreement with the parties involved in the game.
The demo is rather buggy but good.Its a mission based space sim that is heavy on trade and combat.
You can build a serious Armada even in the demo.
The combat is quite fun as things in space ships in the fading suns universe are easily destroyed and 1/3 of the combat is spent trying to keep your systems working by either reppairing them or replacing them as the battle rages.You tend to keep real busy in battles
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