A Bad Situation

How to expand quickly...

Well its pretty simple really.

Step one. Send your slow initial colony to the planet in your system, unless there is another planet so close you can get it in 3 turns, or there are multilpe high PQs around (unlikely that you'll see them unless you took sensors as a race pick).

Step two. Design a faster colony ship, nominally it will be speed3 out of the gate.

Step three. Buy the faster colony ship (usually costs ~1k BC) Buy a factory on your home system, set to build another factory.

Step four. Crank up your spending to 100%, crank down your taxes to where you have 100% approval (morale) to max pop growth. Set your research to 100% and research engine techs until you get the one that gives +1 speed (this will take about 4 or 5 turns to research the techs, depending on what starting techs you chose).

Step five. Use your flagship to hunt anomolies, but along the way be sure to send it through other star systems to see where you want/need to send your colonies.

Step six. Continue to build colonies until you have ~1k BC left (nominally this will let you build 3) after that, and after you've finished your research, set your spending to 100% military and continue to crank out the colony ships (which will be speed4 or 5 depending on your design). You can also buy some starports on new colonies to let you get a jump on building more colony ships or constructors.

Step seven. As you meet new empires trade with them appropriately to allow you to continue your (likely high) deficiet spending and pick up a few techs along the way. DO NOT trade them engine techs other than the first two.

Step eight. If you did the above you should have out expanded everyone locally unless you got an unlucky starting position. At the time you realize you are running out of planets to colonize you will need to drop your military to 0 and crank your social up to 100% if you are going for TGs or wonders. During this time you will also want to turn on research again, either by swaping 100% between research and social, or just being lazy and setting them both somewhere reasonable.

Notes: If you play with abundant anomolies you will likely hit a few of the +BC ones which will let you continue your deficeit spending even longer. Resist the temptation to buy ships after the first few turns though, you can (and should) buy starports and 1 factory for some planets to help speed up your ship construction frenzy. If you are playing with few habitable planets your system grab will be finished pretty quickly (depending on map size and layout, but generally) and you will be switching back to 100% social pretty quickly, so its important to keep your techs growing so that you always have something to build/upgrade.

If you have alot of neighbors try to settle into them first, then backfill. Your colony ships should be faster than theirs, so you should win most of the races. And even if you don't if they settle in your hinterland you should be able to culture flip them naturally later on anyway. It won't matter much if they nab a few PQ < 10 planets in the background, just be sure you prioritize the higher PQ planets.

You may also want to prioitize a constructor or two to nab any resources which are near to other empires. Especially important are economy and morale, with military being the least important (for the early game anyway). It is *KEY* that you keep your morale at 100% for as long as sustainable to keep your population growth curve going up and up, eventually your economy will turn around as your population skyrockets. At some point you will not want to afford the tax rate to keep your high pop planets at 100%, so jack your taxes so that the rest of your worlds stay at 100%, but your high pop worlds stay above 75%, obviously if you've maxed pop anywhere (before you get around to building farms) then the morale on those worlds doesn't matter as much.

It helps alot to chase some diplo techs (and build the DTs) to keep close races off your back early on. It also helps to pick your ethos depending on who your nearest neighbors are. Its not strictly necessary, but the longer you can put off building *any* military ships the faster you will become the population and production giant of the galaxy. If you start with evils next to you you will have to appease them at some point. Keep an eye on their techs, and so long as they don't have planetary invasion you don't have to worry a whole lot about them, but once PI starts showing up (anywhere) start thinking about building some warships to disuade them from declaring on you.

Pretty long, hope it helps. Feel free to debate any of it, or add to it, or whatever

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Now you see my starting strategy is slightly different. First thing though is I play a custom race with +50 to luck (ability and political party) and Ion engine starting tech.

Like Ubertaco one of my main goals is to make that starting stipend last as long as possible. To that end however I do not buy any colony ships. Those things are more than 1k a pop when you put your best engines on them. You don't get out the door quite as fast using my method but you can really stretch that money out and be pushing hard on the galaxy long after the rest of the empires are deep in the red.

I almost always send my first colony ship to the tiny planet in my first system and make that a military production world. It never actually produces war ships all it ever does is punch out constructors. Handy for grabing resources while your other planets are colonizing.

On my home world on turn 1 I buy the first factory. I also turn my taxes down till I get 100% approval. I crank my industrial capacity up to 100%. Now I usually crank my research to 40-50% and push my social spending up to 35%ish. I then focus the home world on social work. What this does for me is dramitcally reduce the cost of the next factory I build. I usually build 5 of them to start on the homeworld. After I have bought all five of my factories then I switch the homeworld to a military focus and change my military spending till I am punching out a colony ship every turn.

I also usually don't develop most of my worlds until after my economy has started to recover due to population growth. I usually just focus them all on research until I am ready to deal with them.

The high luck value for my race seems to give me a lot better results when finding anomolies which means I can keep this up for a long time. Usually just about the time I have finished my colony rush is when the money is about to run out and my economy starts to turn around due to population.

This method is particularly effective when on larger or more abundent maps when you really need to strech that money as far as it will go.

Felk the Pennypincher

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This method is particularly effective when on larger or more abundent maps when you really need to strech that money as far as it will go.

This is one of the keys you need to balance. How long you can run deficeit spending while cranking out colonies and constructors. I've been playing with +70% pop growth, +20% moral, and +(something) sensors (to use up the extra points). The pop growth really means you get your econ running fast, and the moral lets you run slightly higher taxes longer to keep your pop growth booming. The sensors are nice in that you can find anomolies a little more easilly, but especially in that your colony ships can scout the entire system before plunking down a turn or two faster, which plays right back into your pop growth.

In one of my games I found I never needed any trade and I was still making well over 200BC a turn after I finished my colony settlement, just due to my insane pop (you need to build farms early though, especially if you have bonus farming tiles).

Alot of how you do things depends on how you want to do it, and what your situation is, but the early colony grab is not too difficult to basically script so that you can beat the AI to if not all the planets in your area, at least the high PQ ones.

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The other bonuses I take for my custom race includes the full econ bonus and a +50% diplomacy. I never seemed to notice much effect for the morale so I took the diplomacy bonuses to get better deals and keep all the other races off my back longer. The +50 to luck usually compenstates me for the slower growth speeds in extra money in anomolies and it keeps on helping out for the rest of the game, which is why I chose that over trying to get +population bonus. That being said I am NOT playing the 1.1 beta so this may very well change when I switch over because of the population changes to 1.1.

And to be clear on smaller maps I end up buying the colony ships outright because there just isnt the time to do it the other way. It really is a balancing act to tailor your starting method to the galaxy your playing in.

On the farms though my populations are just begining to reach the 5 billion cap when I finish my colony rush and my economy is turning around, which is when I start my massive social works to develop all of my planets so the timing works out for me. With such a huge +population bonus I can see that you would need to build farms early Ubertaco

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Felk the Tightfisted

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With such a huge +population bonus I can see that you would need to build farms early Ubertaco

Yep

In fact on some big maps where I don't turn up social spending for a long time, I'm buying a farm here and there, especially on +300% tiles, just so that I'll have a better economy faster.

One problem you might have (at least I think the AI has it sometimes...) is that if you don't get your colony ships out fast, and expand your range that way, you can get blocked off from some systems further out. I know I do this to the AI when I can, at least it forces them to research the range techs sooner than I think is reasonable.

Those techs are pretty cheap to buy off them anyway if you find yourself needing them. And unless you run up your logistics earlyish the cost for building extra SBs to extend your range gets to be a problem for my economy once I run out of anomolies, but before I've finished the colony push.

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On the truly large maps I do a similar method to you when you say you head for other empires and back fill.

I will send them all out to the max range in the direction of the other empires, colonize and hop scotch my way to the thier territory. This usually means sending the ships out blind (and this has on occasion bitten me in the but

) but the fast speed of my colony ships usually compensates for the lack of any ship production for the first 5 turns of the game. And I of course prioritize the PQ10 or greater planets as those can cultur flip anything else.

On the smaller maps I do as you do and just buy a few (though I still save money to buy everything on my home world. I can do all of that for the price of just one colony ship! And if you act now we will throw in this colonly ship maitinance kit FREE!!! Just call our toll free number...).

That being said Starting Postion > all.

I may have to play around with the +pop stuff that you do though Ubertaco. With the new pop changes to 1.1 that was honestly the approach I was considering. I will have to sacrafice some of my econ and diplomacy to get it but it might just be worth it (nothing will make me give up my +25 to luck ability

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Felk the Farmer?

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You can get luck from one of the goverment parties, actually I think I use that one since they also give a morale boost. For me early game is all about morale boosts.

I try to get the diplo translators to give me the diplo boost, then I just punch up +morale techs until I need something else.

Ususally along the way you can trade to fill in some gaps, but the AI seems to highly value logistics now, which was annoying in my last game.

There are alot of different ways to approach the start though, the similarity is always in getting your colony ships out faster, and having them move faster than the AI. It'd be a peach if the AI did something similary actually, as it stands right now the 'race' isn't so much a race as it is just a routine.

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I hate spending a colony ship on the second planet in the home system. I usually just let another civilization grab it then have it rebel.

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True. The start is always the same few steps with the only variation being the map itself. This is pretty standard for TBS games though.

My total luck bonus is actually +50 with the ability and the party (Universalists I believe). But the luck ability is all of 1 point so I usually keep it because of the reward/cost trade off. Having a +50 to luck always seems to make the anomolies better, I get an influx of lucky rangers, and (this may just be me seeing things) but the moral decisions always seem to have better options for nuetral with it. Thats just my personal preferance though.

I would love to see the AI use better engines. As it is they aren't too bad about pumping out colony ships they are just slow as all get out. If I recall correctly the AI is supposed to be using its engine techs better in 1.1. Again that is all rumor to me as I am not using it.

Of course if they did that then I would be cursing at my computer far more often then I already do

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I have also found that one other thing that does effect my starting game is the star density. I usually play with 'tight clusters' which on larger maps tends to form natural bottlenecks and borders to empires. I will often times deliberatly stop at these bottle neck instead of pursuing further colonization just due to the defensability of the position. But then I tend to like to be able to turtle under my military starbase sooo

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Felk the Defender

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I hate spending a colony ship on the second planet in the home system. I usually just let another civilization grab it then have it rebel.

I do that sometimes, though really that first colony ship is so slow that for it to get anywhere useful isn't really worth wasting the pop growth right off the bat. It does depend somewhat on your starting position and panetary abundancies.

I would love to see the AI use better engines. As it is they aren't too bad about pumping out colony ships they are just slow as all get out.

They also don't seem to grab the 'best' planets either. I'm not sure why they do this, skipping a PQ 11 and landing on a PQ 6 first. They also don't push out so much, prefering to colonize concentrically out, rather than backfilling. That's not necessarilly a terrible idea depending on whom your neighbors are, but its not nearly optimal either when you have lots of planets floating around.

I guess I'm glad that the AI needs to use scouts, but I *never* build them, essentially a fast colony ship (especially with a racial sensors pick) lets you scout out systems pretty easilly. Though that also depends on abundancy settings. If you are playing on common or abundant I don't think there is any point in building scouts early (at least not at your main colony pumper), if oyu have planets on rare it might make a little more sense since you need to prioritize your destinations more.

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They also don't seem to grab the 'best' planets either. I'm not sure why they do this, skipping a PQ 11 and landing on a PQ 6 first. They also don't push out so much, prefering to colonize concentrically out, rather than backfilling.

Well as far as grabbing the 'best' planets I believe that possibly due to two things 1) sending out a colonly ship blind (which they do) and simply grabbing the first planet they see or 2) the sensor ship not fully exploring the whole system.

And you are right about them colonizing concentrically, but I again think that may have to do with the fact that they don't make good use of engines. With slow ships you almost have to colonize from your homeworld out. I'm no expert on the AIs but hopefully it will be able to come up with backfilling its colonies when it starts using better engines.

Of course that begs the 'realisitic' question as well. Why would any civilization in thier right minds send a colony ship out to the farthest reaches of its life support capacity, to a completely unexplored system?

Like one of the evil decisions says in a moral choice "How many times do I have to say it. People are a RENEWABLE resource..."

I also believe the AI has a tendancy to rapidly develop his worlds as he colonizes them and turn them into colony producers as wellwhich accounts for his exponential ability to produce the stupid things. If they ever learn to put engines on those things I might be in some serious trouble

Felk the Uncertain

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A Bad Situation

Just need some advice...