After that I'm mainly just teching up and building ships.

This would be part of your problem. The ship building, I mean. In this game it's best not to pump out ships unless you have a decent enough tech base and an economy to support them. Lots of ships = lots of maintainance cost = shitty economy. Especially early on in the game where you really don't have much of an economy to speak of.

During early game, try to build just a few ships. I prefer to keep 2 at every planet (or 3 at important ones) and upgrade them once you've made sufficient technological process. Only start pumping out ships like crazy when you're planning to go to war, which will most likely not happen in early or even early mid-game.

Also, instead of a military starbase, try putting an economic starbase at a place where there are lots of trade routes. These starbases tax these routes, especially if you add a taxing module. They can also help to increase the manufacturing points of a planet. And ofcourse, create your own trade routes by sending freighters to alien planets.

Also, get the resources! They are a humongous asset to your empire if you manage to build a mining station to claim them. Don't wait too long with this because alien empires don't shy away from building a mining base right smack in the middle of your empire if you don't claim it for yourself.

And one final piece of advice, if it's really still too hard, try playing a game on a lower difficulty setting. there is no shame in this. Hell, my first game was also below normal. It gives you a good feel of the game and allows you to try out different things at your on pace. Once you get the hang of it, move up one level.

if the tax rate is 10 points or more behind yours.. wouldn't that means they get a lower tax?

high tax means people aren't happy.
low tax means people will be happy.

Each planet has its own research/manufacturing points. You would need a star port in the manufacturing planet.

One thing I've also noticed in the post-mortem screens is that the AI players have a tax rate 10 points or more behind mine, yet they seem to keep high approval ratings. How do they do that?

This can be for several reasons;

- Entertainment centers; build 1 on every planet and you add 25+% of morale and thus approval.
- High influence; also adds approval.
- Low fleet upkeep; Too high a fleet upkeep makes people unhappy as they think all your money goes to the military and not to the people. Keeping your fleet upkeep balanced keeps the approval rate from dropping.
- Economic strength; Good economy = happy people. Depression = unhappy people.
- Few wars; Lots of wars tend to get in the way of morale. (Not sure about this one, but when i'm at war and it takes a while, approval tends to drop)

Also, do I need to build a starport above my manufacturing planet, or do manufacturing points carry over from planet to planet?

I don't really get what you're asking here, but manufacturing points don't carry over between planets as far as i know. Each planet has it's own manufacturing rating based on the amount of factories and economic starbases within range. Starports merely serve to build and launch ships from that planet IIRC.

i didn't know economic starbases boosted production.... i'll have to build a couple near my home world sometime...(i always use my home world as my first manufacturing base)

Also, farms, what are they good for, and under what circumstances should they be built?

Farms = people and people = taxes/money. Just be careful to not get to many people as they are harder to keep happy as they increase in number. A developer said don't even bother with farms on size 6 or lower planets.

Tony

As a general rule, for equivalent tech level of buildings of farms and moral, you need about 1.5 moral per farm to keep a balance (given that all other factors averages themselves out) on a normal (10-15) planet.

Just remember the basic rule of economy :

Each production point = 1 BC spent

that means if your planet is producing 15 "shield" and 15 "hammers" then you're spending 30 BC per turn.
That's why it is -not- a good idea to have every single one of your planet building ships - it really makes your economy take a dump (unless you have massive bonuses coming from else where).

also, remember that civic production is ALWAYS ON - unlike military production which is just "wasted" an doesn't cost a thing when you're not building, civic production will always drain your money away. To try and "fix" this, set your civic spending to 15-25% and simply use the "concentrate" option when you need to build civic buildings on a planet. Rest of the time, either have it to military (no upkeep) or research (upkeep but at least you're getting something out of it)

In general, a good economic bonus will help you tremendously - look for green galactic ressources.

For trade, select the strongest AI around and send all your freighters to his planets - build economy star bases in the trading lane's path and upgrade the freighter's revenue (I tend to get around 1200-2000 B-credits per turn on large maps, just from trade)

When it comes to planets, don't try to jack-of-all-trades all your planets. I.E.:
High-quality (13+) planets with no bonuses (or only moral bonus) should be your money planets - lots of farm, moral buildings and economy buildings. If you happen to find a level 18+ make it your economical capital.

Any planet with lots of production or research bonus will become your ship-building planets and research planets, respectively. Build lots of factoris on one, lots of research centers on the other. Don't bother with building more than one farm and one moral building on those. If there's a food bonus, don't use it - you'll make too much food for the moral buildings.

Also, nothing should stop you from using a high quality planet to spam factory centers on it - that can be quite productive, if you have the economy to back it up.

With a good manufacturing capital, surrounded by economy starbases pumping its production, I've seen a base production of 400 shields with Research production focused - I'd go well over 800 when I focused on military. It cost a LOT of money to keep it up but then, I can pump out a 800 bc-worth ship each turn.

Depending on your race, and your starting bonuses, your taxing rate will vary - you want to keep your overall approval rating around 60%. Higher is a waste, lower gets dangerous. Look at individual planets and destroy farms or build moral as needed to keep it around that level.

Phew. Long post.


At any rate, I found that the easiest way to win this game is with your race set-up as an economic powerhouse.
In one of my game, I'm playing as the Yor and my economy in ratings is 3 times stronger than my closest competitor, I have thousands of surplus credits coming in each turn, my spending is at a 100% and my tax rate is at 65%, my approval hovers around 80% and with all my extra money, my invasion tactic usually involves sending in a small strike force to capture a few planets and just buy warships on-the-spot, adapting my designs to the ennemy's tactics on the fly while my manufacturing capital pumps out battleships each turn sending them to a way point near the front. And while it's not at the hardest difficulty level, I'm at "tough" level. Sorry, I guess I look as if I was boasting

At any rate, for this, as the Yor, I took the Federalist governement (+20% economics)
Master economists (5 points, forgot the bonus, i think it's 40% economics)
Trader bonus
Military production bonus

In the end, a strong economy will let you produce more cheap ships to swarm your ennemy
Oh yeah, and economy starbases. Grape them around your manufacturing planets. As many as you can. They'll cost a lot but you can't beat the amount of bonus production they get you. (Remember, 800+ shields per turn!)

Also, should I be building my own ships all the time or using the prefab designs? I usually build my own and then upgrade the design every time I research a new component, starting over every time I get a bigger hull. Is that what I should be doing?

Yep thats what you should be doing. They're good for starters. Like colony, scout, defender .. those are good to use at start but I say after a few techs you can build better ones. Some of the other default ones may not take into account miniturization bonuses or the latest versions of techs you have so you could put together a better ship.

I never ever use the prebuilt ships. Even right off the bat you can usually design a colony ship that is faster, and thus can outrace the computers. I've found the custom built ships less than adequate, cause they never use the top tech in everything you've researched.

Oh, and 90% of the time, low morale has to do with over-population.

-Dewar

That was an interesting read! I'm one of those struggling with the game and I'm sure I can put some of the advice to good use.

As for initial strategy right off the bat; do you find purchasing ships and factories a viable tactic? I tend to go bankrupt real fast and never seem to get a surplus going fast enough.

Everyone has a different formula. Here's what works for me....

Phase I: The land-grab.

Set your research (whatever you want). I usually go for the ones that improve my economy first, like planetary improvements, or something with a diplomacy bonus).
Set your tax rate to as high as you can go and keep your overall approval rate at about 50%. Don't worry, the colonists can't vote yet, so you won't get overthrown. Since you are buying your ships right now, and research isn't all that critical the first few turns, put social procuction to 40% and the others at whatever suits you.
I pump out colony ships one-per turn until I am out of money. Get the good worlds. If the AI takes a cheesy little planet (MARS) it will eventually defect to your superior culture. It is real important, though, that you don't get too many quality alien planets within your borders.

Phase II: Social projects

The Idea here is to build your economy. You will probably need to tone down social production a little, but it should still be a priority over research and military spending. Keep making colony ships until there aren't any more planets to get. When there aren't, convert your colony ships to constructors. The first few things to build on any good planet are a couple of factories and a starport. Low quality colonies you should specialize in something. I prefer using them for research worlds. Once no more planets are available for colonization, switch all of your starports to make constructors. Grab every resource in your territory, then any outside your territory that you know of. Keep pumping the constructors out until you have defended all of your resource starbases with three upgrades: (Basic weapons (+1 each type), the +7 beam one, and the +5 defense of your choice). Once you've done that then strategically choose to upgrade the mining to get what you need. During this time, you will want to start down a weapons branch of research and get to the top of a first tier (Lasers V, the top miniballs, the top stingers). I don't mess with engines or defenses yet, because my first ships are defense-only anyway. Once you have a design, switch about 1/2 of your starports to make these ships. Your first goal should be to get one in orbit over all of your planets, then eventually 2 or 3 at every planet and starbase. I also like (although this is not required) to make a probe (just a hull with sensors) and put a bunch of them around my 'borders' and even park one near all of the planets outside of my borders. It sure is nice to know when the Drengin are emassing a fleet of transports. Alternatively, if they aren't being too sneaky about it you can take a hint that thngs are about to get violent when your probes stop responding. After your resource starbases are topped off, build some economic and military bases. At this point, only mess with influence bases if you are in danger of losing a colony to an alien. Oh, I forgot trade route. You have to get them up and running, and fast, and especially with the bullies. That will make them leave you alone and pick on someone else for a while (hopefull). If someone does declare war on you you should be able to hold your own. You might have to research invasion, and you might have to switch some constructor production to your fighters, and build more military bases than economy. Basically everyone is wimpy at this stage, so just send a few task forces out to blow up the other guy's starbases and then camp his planets with a fleet of fighters so as soon as he builds something you shoot them down one-by-one. Don't worry about crushing them right now. The ones not involved in the fight will overtake you developmentally and you'll be in trouble later. Research should more or less be completed on the cheaper non-military techs in trade, diplomacy, and production. Of course, get the research upgrades first, so the rest of the research goes faster.

Phase III: Choose you win strategy

By now you are sitting pretty. You probably have the best economy in the game, your research is way ahead, your military is at least competitive. If your lucky eveyone else is at war with someone. If one alien starts losing to another pay it a visit and give it some juicy weapons tech, a few ships, or some cash to help balance the scales. You want them to all stay in a destablized state. If one gets the upper hand, you'll be next. Now is the time to research your way further up the weapons tree, the defense tree, the engines tree, miniturization, and fleet size. Once you have some goodies, build your first medium range corvette class ship. You want something that you COULD use to whack an alien if you wanted to, so the no-engine fighter won't really do. Crank out about 6 transports too, even if you don't need them right now. At this point, you can take your pick- Build up an awesome military and take out your enemies one-by-one (starting with the minors), carry a big stick but build influence bases like crazy and go for the cultural victory, or carry a really big stick and go for the long and lonesome tech win. This part of the game is a lot more unpredictable, but the key is to keep those aliens killling each other instead of you. Again, when one starts losing throw it a bone. Oh, be sure to ally yourself with aliens you usually get along with. I like the Alatarans and Torians because they generally aren't treacherous. Just watch out for the Altarans, as they will build influence bases right next to your homeworld and start distributing porn to all of your kids.

That's my formula. It usually gets me an influence win, although I could go with just about any type I suppose.

Good Luck!

Specializing planets to do one thing is generally not a good way to balance your functions. I build one of each structure atleast, depending on the size of the planet, and its bonuses. If I want a planet to be more research or industry, I build more of those structures. Once you get to mid game you don't need to worry about stuff like industry. You can layer starbases to provide the industry. Build 2 or 3 economic bases per system and you got 70 to 105 extra industry right there. That does kill the chance of building any more starbases, military or influence in that system though.

Thing with building your colony ships is that, while your spending is a 100% at military, you're not getting any research or home improvement done, which, so early in the game, can be a hard thing to catch up to...though it doesn't last too long.

Although, of course, it all depends on your game style

This is probably just the more "generic" strategy. There are so many different ways to get started that it's up to the player to find them out for themselves. What I wanted to do is help a new player get a good start in one game so that they can learn the game while being on top and not constantly struggling to stay alive because of a slow start