Excaliburs

Excalibur requires lots of technology.

To get Excalibur you have to be late in the game, with most technoligies researched.

Excaliburs come too late in the game. Unless you are playing abundant on gigantic and going for military domination (the long haul), you will probably not see too many Excaliburs.

If you play it right you won't see any except your own

Excal requires one of the last tier techology, I believe it comes off Omnipotent, the 3rd series of Omni tech. It is very late in the game, where the technological victory is only two researches away.

i never saw excaliburs and i won by tech victory...

Latelly I've been seeing excaliburs, but my games tend to last for a long time. Usually I'm not the one to reach that tech first, so for some time, my whole fleet is at risk: in one game I had an Arcean excalibur take out 3 or 4 overlords in orbit and be barelly scrached. And it had 15 move points, so impossible to ran away from it. 3 to 5 antimater missiles to destroy it, and these were some big AMM (400 att.). But once they're gone, I was free to invade and terror-starize star systems: it takes a long time to build them.

I absolutely love them, I tend to colonize low and rely heavily on my economy. By the time I build my first dreadnought or death knight (which is usually my first attack ship) I've gotten atleast to 4D phasing or simmilarly up the research spire for Excal tech. In fact, I usually skip Overlord tech and just shoot for Excal anyway, not to mention the nice affects alot of the nessicary techs give along the way. It is pretty close to the top of the tree, but you can get there and have a large ammount of unresearched tech, so if you really try you can get there fast.

As for how useful they are, well, they do cost alot, but by the time you start putting them out you'll love them. When one can clear out a sector a turn, just imagine how pleased I was last game with over 50 (I turn research all but off when I get to final frontier).

P.S. a bit off topic, but are there bonuses to different victories? I am under the impression that military victory scores higher, I hope I'm not wrong

You are correct. But military victory can be achieved in multiple ways. For example, you can make a culture into a military victory by unchecking all the types of victories, leaving only military victory. Thus, when you take over the last planet, how ever you do it, it counts as a military victory. You can, of course, win culturally until the last planet and then terrorstar them into oblivion LOL LOL

That's a pretty lame way to win by military means. I'll have you know I turn my cultural victories into military victories, by at least destroying the last sector with a military!

everyone has so many medals!

Feel better now?