The Xeno Farm 3 only needs one Virtual Reality Center and probably a couple stock exchanges to go along with it to keep the morale high enough. I usually try to get as many of the morale boosting trade goods as well, to help out in that regard. And a morale resource nearby is nice, too.

As long as it is on a normal tile and not a bonus tile.
And as long as it is limited to one per planet.

And by not building farms you limit your tax income way too much, as well as limit the defense if you are ground invaded. You are also limited to a very few troop transports from that planet if you are invading another race's planets.

It is not that hard to keep a moderately high population happy.

sounds like you've got most of your bases covered there. but, Moosetek13's also right. you're kind of pushing your income level for that galaxy-wide invasion of yours.

Hey, interesting idea! I've never tried it. let us know how it works out. I suspect if it does work it will be the factories that do it - population doesnt get too big till later in the game anyway, and it looks like your strategy is designed to kill them before that. Also, if giving away industrial sector works as planned, they might never get around to building the farms!

good luck!

I think that for the strategy to work it will have to be on large or above galaxies... where the AI does spend a long time colonizing rather than getting their planets up and running properly.

I will push my espionage right up to make sure I see what effect it has on the different civs.

I think the farms will only really work in helping me invade. I tend to race up the invasion techs... often leading to 7-1 tech advantage... If I'm getting 2000 of their troups too it will mean capturing planets on one or two small transports.

@AngleWyrm - I've never experienced that. However, it is a great tech to give away a few months before you invade (before they've had chance to exploit it)... as they spend their time doing something that you will want to do anyway.

Great analogy shirt145... I'll keep you posted as to my success.

Rush the research of Huge ships. and planet invasion. Create about 20 huge ships with nothing on them. push them out the fastest planet you have producing. Now create a huge troop transport ship. Take those 20 huges useless ships and create a fleet(s) move them into your enemy's territory preferably at their high PQ planets then mass upgrade. and invade. They wont see you massing a fleet of warships and wont build up defensive ships on the planet. At most they will have 1 defender. So make sure your transport has a few beam weapons but must have 5 adv. troop modules. Now invade and start again..

Just an update.

Tried it on Masocistic (version 1.2b2) Large Universe and it sort of worked but it sort of didn't.
I was really unlucky and didn't get a single bonus square (apart from influence) on any of my 6 planets.

It took a long time (too long) for me to research up the factory tree (I'd forgotten how expensive some of these techs are - I usually research them late in the game when I only need 2-3 turns for anything). Given that I needed to do enough econ research to get profitable as well. I reckon I was about 100 turns in by the time I could give the tech away. (Maybe I should have traded for econ/gov techs rather than doing them myself... but the AI is so slow in researching them).

As a result I was too far behind militarily (I was way ahead in tech (with trading) with the exception of weapons and my economy was fine +250bc per week).

Had my ass handed to me by the nearby Dregnim on about turn 150. They had multiple squads of 10 small ships each with 28 missile against my 6 defenders (my entire fleet) with attacks of 12 mass drivers. Everyone (well about 4 civs) gave me battleships but I could see they had enough "good planets" to actually sustain their attack so I left it.

On the good side the effects were as predicted. Many of the AI's planets (using espionage) were completely messed up. Generally the home worlds and the first 2-3 planets colonized looked usable the rest would have taken forever to get off the ground. So I will try again.

I need to find a way to reorder my early game to advance the factory tech earlier. Maybe needs a huge Universe to give myself a bit more time. Maybe go sensors straight away and design loads of survey ships... with the hope of a 25% bonus on tech being researched. (Although it is beginning to feel a bit too cheesy).

I will try on crippling tonight and see whether I can tweak the order of reseach to get a fast path through. Alternatively a bit of luck on bonus tiles maybe all I need. A 300% manufacturing tile somewhere would have meant I could have produced a more significant navy. A 300% research would have had obvious benefits in cutting the time to do the research.

MarshallONeil
Already did exactly the choices you suggested (they are the obvious ones).

You are also right about the farms and the colony governor. That way I get the best of both worlds. I just have to micro manage upgrades a bit more.

I hope I do find a way to get it to work because it may be a way to get back up to suicidal and huge.
Prior to 1.2 I could win on suicidal and huge but the AI has improved enough to ram home its huge bonuses. This may be a way to hamstring the AI enough to be competative again

Damn... it just takes too long.

The problem with strategy is that occassionally tactics get in the way. Before I could get anywhere near industrial sector the Drath and Torians came steaming in. "Your just too evil... blah de blah...".
"I was minding my own business in a corner of the galaxy mate. Just cost I metal...and different... you shouldn't be so predjudist"

I managed to beat them off but by this time everone elses worlds were up and running. I won the game quite easily in the end but still not had any luck testing the strategy properly.