First of all hey to everyone here. Everytime i buy a new 4x strategy game i play it through once or twice them come to the forums with alot of unanswered questions

so, i hope the vets here can bear with me and hopefully shed some light on my issues
here goes :

- my first play through was a medium galaxy, with all parameters set to uncommon except for the number of planets which was common. played with 5 minor races and 7 major, i was the drath. Normal difficulty. I found the game to be pretty easy, i seem to find that military victory is easy on this difficulty, or did i just get lucky? I started the game by getting universal translators so i could get a leg up on the tech trading, and for the rest of the game i was set for cash by selling off everyones techs to each other and the minor races. Anyhow, i focused my research on military techs and walked over the a.i. around me then allied with the rest. Should i move up to challenging diff?

- second concern, how will the game experience change if i turn off tech trading? i get tired of making sure im on top of the tech trading game, and a.i in these games tend to be all over it/abuse it. i could raise the research rate to make up for this possibly? what do you all think

- and lastly, on my second playthrough(still going) i thought i'd go for a cultural domination victory. I have 3 fully upgraded diplo starbases sitting around an enemy galaxy consisting of just their starting planet and size 4 planet. All 3 influence starbases have all influence upgrades up to the ones that give 25 percent(so 5, 7, 10, 20, 25 all stacked, and i have 3 of them ). The planet just dont seem to want to swap to my side. i also have a planet in the next sector over with the restauarant of eternity and some other influencing things on it. Im the Krynn and i cranked up my influence bonus before the game start. Argh i just dont get it, do i suck at this gameplay style or what? The race that owns this galaxy are the iconians, and they are rated as not doing so hot on the stats page.


alright that was alot of info, sorry for the wall of text, be great if some vets could take a minute or two to share their experiences with me though