Darn you monkeys

if you happen to find extra money, you can also get more ships out by rush-building a starport on new planets and rush-building a colony ship, same turn. so colonize iconia V, rush build starport, rush build a colony ship on both worlds, bam 2 colony ships second turn.

you can also turn your taxes up early for a little extra cash. as your homeworld population starts to dwindle approval will go up a bit, depending on how high your taxes are.

Nah, the AIs buy colony ships until they are broke. Have you ever looked at how far in debt some of them are at the end of the colony rush? No wonder thay can't build their planets, they must need to turn production almost off until they repay that debt. The Torians are particularly good at this part of the game.


No doubt dystopic has it about right except he forgot about the first colony ship they bought on the first turn so by turn 3 they can have 5 colony ships from 2 planets. If they find a good anomoly they can have 2 more ships the next turn. If you are playing on Masochistic or above they also are getting those ships cheaper and so can keep buying them for another turn or two depending on degree of difficulty.

Just because you haven't figured out how to compete, don't assume that the AI is cheating.

The game I am playing now I tried that exact strategy, just bought colony ships till I almost went broke. Still had quite a few turns whilst nothing got built.

However, it got me some prime real estate and a boost ahead of the others that they haven't caught up with. It does work IF you can get some prime planets and can keep them all off your backs until you turn your economy around.

It will slow down production and research, so it is a trade off. If you could predict, eg the Torians, were going to use the tactic. Research Invasions and rush buy transports to take them out after the colony rush has happened. You still get the planets for somewhat more risk. Might try that one next, to see how it goes...

Personally i play at suicidal, gigantic map, 9 opponents. The colony rush by the comp AI is very aggressive but I don't think they are cheating. My own strategy works well enough that i usually get my fair share of about 18-22 worlds by the time everything is colonized.

I am pretty hard on the developers on a lot of issues, however I have never found any indication that they have an AI that cheats at all. Definitely one of the strongest points for this game in my opinion.

The closest thing to an AI cheat I've noticed is the maps they generate for the suicidal level seem tweaked to give the comp players an advantage -- better worlds and world location for the colony rush -- and a lack of resources close to the human player.

I've tried to counter this by building and expanding with my own colony ships and trying to build up my military and economic strength with the peace through strength ideology.

What are your galaxy settings? What researchs are your doing? What do you build/rushbuy on your starting planet? How fast are your crancking colony ships? What are the morale level of your starting planet?

I say there cheating! Thats's my opinion.

Wow, guess you showed us eh? Try this for size: When a person gives an opinion without any validation whatsoever (and no! the evil smiley does not count) the opinion becomes useless, like a fart in high wind, possibly.

But it doesn't seem to work as by around about turn 30 or so, the biggest AI has already amassed a power rating of 230 plus. How do I counter this?

The military power value is meaningless in real terms. if you build decent fleets with the best available weapons your ships will beat theirs, end of.

As for why you are in that situation?

Do you try to keep your spending at 100%? If not do so. its the only way forward? Sell tech, if you have to early on, to keep this at max.

Your planets: Do you use specialist worlds? do so, you will not beleive the difference it makes.eg

One or two production worlds: factories and factories and a morale and starport. Make the best one your industrial capital

one or two research worlds: same as above, but no need for starport. the best should have a research capital

A handfull of money worlds: a couple of farms and lots of banking buildings and a couple of morale buildings, again the best one should be your finance capital

the rest ( if there is any) a good mix is good as you can use these to churn out constructors and start building a serious network of economic starbases)

You should be able to match the Ai with this setup, they are really poor at Planetary management.

Good luck and DONT PANIC!

one of the things you can also try is building a planet without a starport at all. This makes it easy for you to invade should the other civs ever grab it from you. All you have to do is send ships to orbit it. and possibly build a starbase to protect it.

The AI never seems to dismantle anything on a world and wihtout a starport they can't suddenly have ships in orbit protecting it. Now all you have to do is find their planets and invade and dismantle their Starports soon they will only have 1 planet with a port and they can't build fleets any longer..

Works like a Charm..