Hi!

I'd say they tax their pop skyhigh. To check that, save a game and resign. This way you'll see in the after-game report also an average taxation level of all players.

If they're really doing that: colonizing with 100M pop and taxing them high, they're slowly killing themself, as high taxes mean less growth, and less growth means less new pop, what means less taxes in long run, and less troops defending their planets. Despite your colonizing system and current economy seems weak, you're doing right. If you don't belive me, just increase taxes to 49%-59% and check your econ position again.

BR, Iztok

I have some trouble on Tough too. I resigned my last game after some sort of event caused the Torians and the Iconians to declare war on me (no one has super manipulator) and I was already at war with the Yor and the Altarians. I am pretty good on challenging though. Anyone know what event makes your friends decide to turn on you?

One important screen to monitor is the Foreign Relations screen. It not only lists the attitudes of all the other races but the reasons why they like or dislike you. Close borders. They don't like your alignment. You have powerful influence. Or most damning of all, your military is weak and your diplomats have BO.

A good Colony Rush - even with DA's special planets - is important, and can "make or break" the game early. Don't only colonize the habitables; make a list of the nice (like Class 10 or above) planets around you, and either research, or better yet, trade for those technologies. Got more really big toxic planets near you than heavy gravity worlds? Send colony ships after them - even if you can't colonize them yet - and do what you must to obtain the technology early.

In the early game (Colony Rush + beginning development) don't worry about "matching" the other civilizations - you'll probably fail - your objective is to survive, stay out of wars, and develop your economy and infrastructure. The key to keeping other civilizations friendly (or at least non-hostile) is military might + diplomacy.

Share a border with a militaristic neighbor like the Drengin? Send them a few extra
freighters for a trade route. Buy some fighters from the Korath while you research Advanced Diplomacy. Don't research weapons tech yourself (in the beginning), focus on morale and economy and buy them from another race. For really troublesome foes, bribe their neighbors into going to war on them.

Generally when I am in the colony rush phase, I don't think about getting all the planets I can. I usually survey the map, figure out who my neighbors are, and try to set up trade routes. The whole point being to set myself up for either a massive military campaign or diplomatic campaign.

Basically, I've found that I can do more with fewer worlds that are happy, moderately well built up, have a higher population, and an empire with a stronger economy. Its not hard to conquer the AIs' planets when they only have 1 billion on them and are struggling to even put up some basic defenders.

Thats my two cents, focus on a smaller empire and turn yourself into a power house early game... after that, the planets will follow. (One way or another)

I agree with Teancum's point that it's not necessary to always keep pace with the AI's colonization rate. Not much point in having more colonies than the AI if they're so weak you can't defend yourself. However it's also good to not fall too far behind either.

One thing you can do is when you colonize a new planet, instead of building a factory first try building an economic building first. While it's true that the economic building won't help much with such a small population, the economic building doesn't require any maintenance and gives you something useful to do with the planet while waiting for your population to grow.

In this same light one of the most useful things to build on a new planet can often be *nothing*. Besides the issue of colony maintenance, spending is based on production. If you're producing nothing on the planet then it's not costing you that much. Once the planets pop builds up and it's in the green then you can start producing buildings.

Like everything else in this game it's a matter of balance. If you use either of these ideas you need to take care that your development doesn't lag too far behind otherwise you're no better off than being significantly out-colonized.

To add to what Iztok Bitenc said, don't look at the economic tab, look at the population tab. If your tax rate is lower, your economy will look weaker on the tab, but (all things being equal) your economy will actually be stronger if you have more population.



Sounds like the Altarians' super-ability kicking in. Their "Super Organizer" trait makes anybody with the same alignment join their side when they're attacked, so if you declared war on the Altarians, the Torians and Iconians would be dragged into fighting you whether they liked it or not.

I've said it before and will say it again: your economy is the most important thing in this game. The way the AI tends to get ahead of you is because they are sacrificing their future economy for conquest gains now. The strategy works well and will win the game in the near term if done right but it will sink you just as quickly if you are unable to win before the economic crash.

As others have said your goal in the first 50-100 turns is to get a stable economy and keep from being someone else's slave. A stable economy means you've got to temper your expansion and planetary upgrades. If you can afford another 12bc to colonize a planet by all means. If you can afford to pay 1bc on all your factories then by all means upgrade them. But if you can't you should wait till your tax or trade revenue increases.

Try this: build an economic building before your first factory on every new planet. That 8% may not sound like much but it gives you a head start on overcoming that -12bc the new colony just hit you with. Its going to be a few turns before the planet is useful anyway. Might as well get more taxes out of it while you wait.

Trade routes early help. Especially if you manage to get them with an empire that is normally aggressive. If you are funding their war machine they don't usually start taking pot shots at your ships.

If you find a green or yellow space resource early rush build a constructor to grab it. Both allow you to increase your tax revenue.

Very rarely will you be the top dog on the list by the time the colonization phase ends. I normally aim to be tops in two categories: economic might and technology. Being tops in population helps too but can be tough if you don't have a lot of colonies.

I don't play on Tough, I'm just cutting my teeth on Normal with a couple Intelligent opponents mixed in, but I have to agree with this. I colonize the highest PQ I can find early, send out colonizers blind and colonize what I can when they get wherever they're going, and then I'll colonize all the low PQ planets that the AI doesn't. I've found a few 1 PQ planets that are really 20+ PQ planets after Soil Enrichment, Habitat Improvment and Terraforming, so don't overlook those either if you're looking for a place to set some colonists down.

Trade routes help keep ppl friendly, and military helps keep them from thinking they can just walk all over you. I would never build any military until I had 'good' weapons techs, but higher difficulty levels showed me the folly of this. Even a couple tinies with particle beams or space cannons are better than nothing.

In my current game I ignored the special tech planets (high gravity, etc), only in part due to early wars. Of course, already colonized special planets can be invaded and captured even if you don't have the right tech, and that's how I got most of those worlds.

Try Super Diplomat, it is definitely the most powerful ability IMHO, especially with Galactic Bazaar and Diplomatic Translators - you can buy off most of your more warlike neighbours, and if someone is getting too powerful you can tie up multiple empires by getting them to war with each other.

You might want to buy some economy ability when starting a game ... this can be pretty powerful.

Although the colony rush can be expensive, you can stop some of the spurting by just squatting on planets, i.e. not building anything until you can afford to. It still costs you money to hold the planet, but not nearly as much as trying to build it up. You will need some well developed planets to pursue this squatter strategy.

Hope this helps

Dano

I have won every game at crippling I have tried so far, so maybe I can help a little. IMO, the colony rush is by far the most critical portion of the game. If you don't carve out a competitive empire in terms of number of planets, then you have a very difficult struggle ahead of you. This is especially true if the dominant empire turns out to be one that is aggressive, like the Drengin.

The first choice you have to make is in the game setup when you choose your abilities. All of them offer things you want to have, but some are much more critical than others. Miliatary bonuses sound nice, but they won't help you in the all important first two years. Possibly the single most powerful bonus is population growth. Maxing population growth will allow you to replace your population quickly when you are producing colony ships and transports. New planets will grow quickly and start paying for themselves much sooner

Next come morale and econ bonuses. Use your points on the best or second best bonuses in these categories. Do you notice a pattern here? Everything is geared toward making economics as painless as possible. High morale allows higher taxes. The higher your population, the more taxes you bring in. Choose Federalists for your political party for obvious reasons. For whatever points remain, think research and diplomacy in that order. As a luxury, I like using a point or two for extra hit points.

In the early game military is irrelevant, because planetary invasion won't come into play until the colony rush is nearly over. But other than military tech, I find a balanced approach to tech research to make the most sense. One big reason for this is that the introductory techs of a given branch usually contain critical advancements or good bonuses. Read through them and you will see what I mean. However, engines should be researched to impulse drive fairly soon, and you should research sensors so that you can build new survey ships at about the start of the second year.

Set spending to 100% and raise taxes to about 49% on turn one. This will give you > 50% approval, which is all you really need in the beginning. Lower the tax rate a little if your approval drops below ~53%. I set military spending to 25%, social to 25% and research to 50% for starters. This formula can be used for 98% of the game, but you may want to consider a higher percentage for military in the very beginning since this builds your colony ships. The need is situational, but you probably won't go wrong with a 40/20/40 ratio if you want to really boost the colony rush.

Rush buy a factory on your home world on turn one. A lot of people recommend doing this for every planet, but that only makes sense on smaller maps with few total planets to colonize. In any case, it will deplete your starting cash rapidly and you need that to pay for deficit spending. And you will have deficit spending. For build order, I like:

Factory x 3
Starport
Econ
Research x 2
Entertainment

I never build more than one farm per planet. Only build them and upgrade them when you need them. Never use the 300% bonus food tiles. Build your farm on a normal tile or on a 100% food bonus tile with the basic farm only. At the higher levels micromanagement becomes a necessity, but if you are struggling at any difficulty, use it. My micromanagement takes the form of turning off the governor on every planet. I uncheck both boxes immediately. There is never more than one improvement in the build queue, but I suppose I could be more flexible here. You don't always want upgrades just because you have the tech, but even if you do want them, you can increase your effectiveness by choosing what to build and when. With the governor on, you may have three labs in the queue when what you really need is a trade center.

Obviously, set your home planet to build a colony ship and keep building them there until you are quite certain you don't need any more. As new planets develop, have them build colony ships as well if you know of enough planets to use them. Also very important is controlling your share of the bonuse resources. Therefore, you can't put off building constructors forever. Same with the extra survey ships already mentioned. Build at least one survey ship on a cargo hull with as much speed and range as you can fit. Similarly, go into the shipyard and build custom colony ships and constructors with extra speed. Usually you can substantially improve the core designs for not much extra cost. Use your survey ships to find planets and grab anomalies in that order. Send your colony ships toward star systems with planets. They aren't great explorers, but they will find something eventually. Use the mini map so you know where planets are and to verify that you have checked them all out.

I could say a lot more, but I'm out of time and this should get you started.

I have found that leaving the governer on for the planets works, so long as I go in and rearrange the order of the build que.

My build order on a new planet is factory, (buy if possible), econ, starport, factory, research....then I speciallize that planet.

Also, I have found grabbing groups of planet, regardless of size is a better stratagy, as I can build starbases that cover the entire group of planets to increase manufacturing, and since starbase bonus manufacturing does not cost as much as the factory bases manufacturing, it improves ones economy greatly.

There is always the point of leaving a colony ship sitting right beside a planet, so that I can grab it just before someone else does, while I wait for my economy to grow. This is the way I hold a planet without it costing me.

I play on tough as such (it may sound crazy, but I'm used to it):

-Whatever race I'm playing with, I always pick +2 speed, and more sensor range if I can. I know, I should be picking more useful stuff like econ and morale and production, but I'm used to the speed and the sensor range (and tbh, with this setup, that initial anomaly flagship is much more useful).

-My initial colony will build all out factories and 1 entertainment building, I may also reserve 1 tile for a manufacturing capital. This is because I use 1% military 99% social 0% research with focus on research (at the beginning its 50% 50% 0% though) and never build research centers (as I said, it may sound crazy, feel free to shoot me).

-If I am playing with a race that has ion drive as a starting tech, I usually design new colony etc ships. If not, I reload that first colony ship with 500million people from my home planet and set out. I set the miner on automate and flagship on auto survey.

-I do not buy out my colony ships, but I will buy out every factory I can (depends on how my cash is doing). I also try to keep my home planet at 100% approval when setting tax (don't care about the newly colonized worlds). When my economy seems like it will drain my cash in 10 turns or something, I'll increase the tax until my home planet is 75-80% happy.

-I don't build anything at my new worlds until I have a positive cashflow at 75% approval. Because, if I start developing one of them with factories, they will starting draining more bcs with the new factory, and I need that bc to build colony ships on my homeplanet.

-I usually prioritize diplomatic research. I aim to get Total Majesty and build a spin control center so I don't have to exhaust myself trying to out-militarize that stupid Drengin/Korath (I mean, starting to build fleets without having researched troop transports yet, THAT'S commitment to aggressive and evil..)

-I will setup trade routes with aggressive civilizations after the starbase phase of the early game (I see early game as, colonization phase, starbase phase, and diplomacy phase, the last one is when you increase diplomacy/military to prevent other AIs from warring with you). If some Drengin/Korath has started making threats, I'll start building some small ships filled with weapons (and nothing else).

-When I have some positive cashflow, I slowly start building up all of my planets, virtually every planets gets a packet program (2 factories, 1 entertainment, 1 farm, 2 economies). I do not develop planets one at a time because that is silly.

-I usually set 1 big planet to be my economical planet. This planet is preferably away from my borders, if its not, I will make sure it's the best defended. This planet gets economy buildings beyond the packet program (if it is really big, another farm and entertainment).

-Depending on my military production vs economy, I setup some number of big planets with starports to produce my military (or constructors if I'm going for an influence conquest).

I try to stave off the early game economic crash by exploiting the hell out of anomolies.

I'll tech rush to sensors, before I switch over to colony ship spamming, and forgo a couple planets I could have probably gotten to in exchange for getting 3-4 survey ships out there sucking up anomolies for me, and denying them to the AI. There are plenty of 500 and 1000 bc anomolies out there (as well as any number of other benefits) that let me run my production at 100% much longer without crashing while my economy stabilizes, and the AI rarely ever produces survey ships (in time). Afterwords, those ships can be inexpensively upgraded to tradeships.


As you said, you cant outcolonize the AI on any map that has greater than default planetary numbers (you can outcolonize them on maps with sparse planets with luck and good decisions). You cant do it on tough, and you certainly cant do it on suicidal. Know when you have a good enough starting footprint, when to wrap up colonization phase, bunker in and start reseaching planetary invasion.

Don't deplete your Home World pop too much at the start - it is the only planet that will make you some money. I only send out 100 colonist per ship too start with. Orbit the initial Colony ship to unload it - then launch it with only 100 Colonists.

Get to the first tow or three Engine techs as fast as possible - that 1 or 2 speed increase is critical in the early game if you want to compete in the Colony rush.

Don't rush buy factories on your new worlds right off. Rush an econ building right off the bat instead - much cheaper. Decide on 2 or 3 worlds besides your Home World to be factory planets - and only rush buy factories on these. When rush buying, wait a turn or two - the cost will come way down.

As your pop grows, rush buy 1 entertainemnt building as needed to be able to keep your tax rate high.

Set your approval rating to 100% the first 20-30 turns at least to get your pop to re-grow - keep it there as long as possible.

Set your production slider to 100% - again keep it there as long as possible - You will not lose too much early in the game compared to when your planets really start costing something.

Don't be afraid of deficit spending - I will run it as close to -$500 Credits as I can - just make sure you have rush bought all needed improvements and ships before you drop below 0. Once I get below -450, I will take several turns with my production slider turned off - to bring me back up above O so I can rush buy stuff I need. Rinse and repeat.

Don't build Starports on every world - only those with Production Bonuses, and only enough to let you rush out a few cheap Survey ships to farm anomolies. You can build them later once you are ready to start up your Military.

I keep my Reseach spending at minimum 90% the first 20-30 turns. I never drop it below 70% for the first two years. I put all but 1% of the rest into social - and 1% for Military so I can rush buy ships. (If threatened, I'll switch the Mil/Social sliders to 1% Social and the rest mil.)I'll focus on Social or Miltary on each individual planet as needed.

After getting upgraded speed and the Survy Module, I usually research techs that will help me build my economy at the start. This includes happiness techs to allow me to keep my tax slider as high as possible. I go down the Advanced Government path as early as possible - the increased economic bonus of Republic etc allows you to compete with the aI.

I don't research any really expensive Military techs the first year or so- if needed I will trade for them. The aI tends not to focus on the Econ/Happiness/Non-Military tech paths early on - so if you research these you can usually trade your way back to tech parity quickly.

I'll only build constructors if there is an Econ or Morale Resource nearby. Research resources come third, and Military last. I never go for Influence resources at all. If an econ starbase can help 2 or more planets in different systems at the same time, I may build one of those - but never waste a constructor to put defense on it. Otherwise I don't build starbases until the mid-game, if at all.

I never build military ships the first year. I may put a few defensive hulls in orbit if needed the second.

Trade comes later - if I decide to do it. I don't like depending on it as it is too volatile. But if I can tech trade for those tech, then I will build a few freighters. If I get them, I will trade them away - I want the aI to trade with me - I'll almost guive them away.

When tech trading, I will trade away or sell techs that if used by the aI will help me also, such as the trading techs. I'll try to form symbiotic trading relations with several aI's - I'll let them research my military and defense techs, and all other tech paths while I concentrate on those with Economic benefits.

Always ask for a ship or something in addition ot credits for a tech - it usually will not decrease the money they give you that much. Never trade more than one tech at a time. I will milk the aI for as much as possilbe by making many trades in one session, but always trade the most expensive tech first - the aI will only give you a percentage of it's total credits. It may give you 250 Credits for a tech if it has 600 Credits - but if it only has 300 credits it will only give you around 150 for that same tech, not the full 250. Learn which techs are most valued - save the ones the aI will only give you 20 or 30 credits for the end of the session- they will give you those 30 credits if the have 600 or 100 credits available.

Hi!

Sorry, but that's a bad advice for ANY race but Super Breeder. The tax revenue is calculated from sqare root of the population, so additiona 0.5B on your 8B Home world will give you 1 more BC revenue, while on the new planet they'll give you 5BC. Lifting 3B from your HW will result in ~5B lower revenue form it, but spreading that pop to 6 0.5B planets will give you 6 * 5BC = 30BC. Also, at 100% approval a 100M planet will need ~58 turns to grow pop to 3B where it will generate enough revenue to pay for itself, while 500M pop will grow to that number in 31 turns!


With 100M pop and 4BC revenue from the planet that's just riduculous. You build first econ building when its effect shows, and that's when that planst produces ~10BC.


That would be good advice if you'd be swimming in money, and you wouldn't have better ways to spend it. In all other cases that's a recipie for bankrupcy, as every entertainment building needs maintenance, that only adds to 14BC manitenance for the Initial colony.

A smart player only rush-buys anything on colonies if his income is positive (or very close to), and he has enough money in treasury. In all other cases the initiall money serves as the bridge from big deficit spending (colony drive runing full speed) to positive cash flow, where your coloniest start contributing money to your empire. Each rush-buying can shorten that bridge for 5-10 turns. Just a few of them, and AI on though will serve you your butt on a silver plate.

BR, Iztok