Hmm maybe that's why I have difficulty keeping up with the AI at the start, yet if I try that I find it very difficult to stay afloat which puts me further behind...how can I prevent that? (I play Normal and Tough difficulties)

Why would you want to quick buy a farm??? Your initial colony alone can support 6 billion population, and you're nowhere near that in the game beginning.

Somewhere around here you will see an explanation for an all factory strategy. This is the strategy I currently use in my suicidal games. I will not be going back. I know Magnumaniac has also been using it in his recent games as well. Wyndstar also has an AAR with an all research building strategy that is worth the read.

Basically, with the all factory strategy, you never build or research any of the research techs or buildings. Instead you build extra factories and do all of your research by clicking on the research focus button (usually after you get a couple of factories down). In addition, you always want to keep at least 1% spending on the military slider (known as 1/99) so that any planets that do not have any social buildings to build, will default to spending all of their build strength on military ships. It's a touch more complicated than this explanation lends itself to, but this will get you started.

The big reason for doing this, is that you always get 100% utilization out of your buildings. This, of course, means that there will be a lot more pressure on your economy since you are using your buildings so much more efficiently.

Tagging onto the above with a few more specifics...
Approval:
At 50% you get no pop growth bonuses.
At 75% you get a 25% pop growth bonus.
At 100% you get a 100% pop growth bonus.

This tends to lead people into the 75% trap. 75% is not too hard to reach and offers a reasonable bonus. Do not do this! Always go to 50% approval for most of your planets, or go to 100%. There is no penalty for whipsawing your approval. So feel free to change it every turn. I will often run at 100% for a few turns. Whipsaw down to 50% while running out new colonies/collecting cash, and then whipsaw back up to 100%. The key number seem to be ~3Billion people on a planet. At that stage your planets start to break even. You absolutely need to do a lot of this the first year or two.

I agree, don't do this when you're Super Breeder, but I've had fairly good luck doing this as something else. What I'll do is get approval to a level where most of my smaller planets (< 2.5B) are at 100%, but my bigger planets are somewhere above 75%. Often you'll be talking ~2/3 of your planets at 100% and maybe 1 or 2 below 75%; the rest are somewhere between 75-99%. And even the planets below 75%, they'll be hitting the 6mt food limit, so I really don't care what their approval is.

What I've found is that you really have to jack your taxes down low to get ALL your planets at 100%. But you can raise the tax quite a bit and still have most of your planets at 100%, but you'll be losing a lot less money. There's a good middle ground there. If you're Super Breeder, though, sure--whipsaw it--the 75% bonus is useless.

I noticed an interesting trick with Super Breeder: don't even bother researching Interstellar Republic. If you're still Imperial government, the magic number becomes 20%, not 50%. You only get a 10% boost from switching to Republic. You can make more than that just by boosting your taxes to 20% approval instead of 50%.

Excellent tips in these posts - read carefully they have helped me a lot. Recently had my first normal win (huge galaxy with 3 opponents, which I felt more comfortable with due to my Star Trekkie youth).

During play I developed a startegy of building each colony to be self sufficient re: income and approval. Then if I lost one to the rush of attacking transports in mid-game I wasn't hurt quite so badly that my economy did a terminal downward spin afterwards. I didn't build any farms at all till the end game when I had about 36 self-sufficient colonies.

Approval-wise I aimed at a slow steady growth (65%+) while adjusting each individual colony's building on every turn to achieve self-sufficiency, while researching like a maniac.

Politically, I paid tribute to the biggest and kept my head down, while building influence starbases in strategic locations. Started taking over the ones in my backyard and got away with it while the others were fighting.

Militarily I planned a coordinated screening defense while designing small and medium ships according to the defense attributes of the biggest opponent (gotta love it when they demonstrate their weapons and defenses for you 'in advance'). When war came finally between me and the Krynn, I did a crash 100% military buildup to supplement the minimum of 1 defender on EVERY colony. In 1-2 weeks I had extremely effective and speedy small ships I could afford to maintain in fleets of 1-3 kicking the K-boys right off the map and out-maneuvering all the attacking transports with their superior speed. EG - my fleet of 3 custom designed small ships took on fleets of several larger enemy ships, up to Battleships, quite handily. My mediums (Altarian Dragons) in fleets of 3-4 turned out to be so superior I didn't need anything else for the rest of the game, except to upgrade when the enemy changed weapons in an effort to do more than scratch the paint. Phasers and Shields FTW. The Krynn sued for peace about 20 times, but there was no real hope for them against the inventiveness and superior quality of the Altarian Resistance!

PS- oH yeah, forgot to mention tax target level 60%, production target level 100% all-the-time. Had to make minute adjustments on every turn to try and maintain positive income.

Thanks for all the good tips. I finally set up an account on Metaverse so I can keep track of my scores and move up the ranks. I actually started on beginner, not easy (which is lower), so I'll do a few experiments and see what works and then graduate to the higher difficulties. Also, it's nice to see the different stategies can be effective and it doesn't all come down to one way in the end.

I've got to manage my planets better which is what I'm working on now. In mid-game, with conquering new worlds and having a large fleet, my income usually get hits pretty bad.

I was questioning myself on this a bit. In the final stages of my last game, population didn't seem to max out until I was down to 37% approval. Which seems like a very odd number.

Hi!

You probably had one turn of growth at ~41% approval, and the amount of grown population was big enough to bring down approval from 41% to 37%. That fast drop grom one turn growth is pretty typical for a very large population.

BR, Iztok

I am playing DA at Crippling difficulty/Medium maps now.

I don't worry too much about deficit spending until I get my Planets going. I'll deficit spend almost every turn for the first few years.

The sliders are key. I keep my research slider high, my social low, and my military set to 0 - I'll rush buy ships as needed.

I never drop my production slider below 100% unless I need to climb out of debt. I keep my taxes set so I get 100% approval at all times during the initial Colony rush. Need to get that pop growing quickly. I'll only take Colonists from my Home world - 500 at a clip - any smaller pop grows too slowly on a new world- and only plan to start with building 5 new Colonizers plus the initial one you get at the start.

The key is to either not get too many planets going at once - i.e. don't build factories on every single planet you colonize at first. I'll build a Stock Market first. (I will rush buy one factory on my home world.) I'll be frugal with my initial 3000 BC - I build small hulled Colonizers that cost 1/2 as much as ones on Cargo hulls.

Not every new planet needs a Starport. If there is no Starport, or if no ship is building in one - then Social Production is a bit more efficient.

On a Medium Map, I don't over extend - I try to get 5 good planets to start - no more -that is enough for me to build up quickly without over extending myself financially. Once I have my infrastructure built on those planets, then I'll start researching military stuff, or try to get a few extra planets through Influence.

I will ignore any Special Environment worlds at the start. Techs are too expensive to research then. I'll also ignore wasting a Colony ship on a class 1 world - I know the aI will never colonize them, so I can get it later once I can afford to reseach the Terraforming techs.

I am definitely not a great player. But here's my two cents worth. I play DA on normal mode. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose. Although I always play the game to the (sometimes bitter ) end, I am at the point where I can recognize when I'm in trouble. As you experiment and develop your play style keep the settings as easy and as constant as possible.
In the very beginning social production is my priority, research second and military last. I work to get my planets out of the red as quickly as possible. As planets complete their structures I shift the planetary focus to military or research. I don't mess with the sliders until later phases of the game. I set espionage to 1%, production to 100% and keep taxes to have the lowest morale planet still be in the green. I have my planets build the basic structures, starports, factories, research centers, entertainment networks and markets. I flood those new colonies with markets. I leave that class four world next to mine alone until I can afford it.
I don't like the basic colony ship design. I have a few of my own designs on small and tiny hulls that I can produce quickly, they carry only 500 million people and for economy some move a little slower than the basic design. They let me spread out faster by their numbers. Depending on the board, I frequently absorb that initial 1 billion people in the first colony ship into my original population and send it off later. This will make a big difference on tax revenues and population growth, but also on morale. I may also build another space miner and four constructors (you max out the modules quickly in the early game) to put one economy base to cover as many of my initial planets as possible.
During the colony rush I concentrate research on infrastructure enhancing technologies. I try to trade as many techs that give me the upper hand as much as possible; this improves my relations with other civilizations and keeps me abreast in the arms race. I use the symptom without the cure system, for example, trading all races a defense tech for weapons I wont use, or trading toxic world colonization when I control them all (easy on the colonization techs with the evil civilizations).
As soon as the colony rush is over, well someone’s going to want what I’ve got, so it’s military build up time. My main threat has always been evil and neutral civilizations. I check the nearest military threat and how much they like me, if it doesn’t look good I drop all my spies on them to cripple their economy (econ structures) and build up my military to above their level. Research will also shift to military techs. At this point I specialize my worlds for my capitals: tech, industrial, econ, political and a world to put trade goods and galactic achievements. If I get to this point, I’ve already won. I avoid war, but if someone attacks me I absorb that civilization and change their worlds to fit my plan (it’s okay to rebuild, or demolish everything, or destroy the colony and start over). I watch the treaties and I stand ready to take advantage. I like to park constructor fleets near the mining starbases of warring civilizations, and invasion fleets near minor races.
Each turn I review every aspect of my civilization. I learned to not click away at the turn button.
Eventually all planetary improvements are researched and or my economy is strong enough to buy buildings out right on all my planets. At this point, or as necessary, I shift focus from social to military and research. I might even adjust the sliders, when I feel like doing the math to tweak it just right.
And one last thing the AI has a big weakness, military. A mobile force is always more effective than a garrisoned one. I try to control and deny access to space, this takes less ships, while the AI gets locked into controlling access to orbits, this takes more ships and is a greater expense. It is not cost effective to get “garrisoned.” Even when the enemy has hyperion defense and an orbit full of defenders I can still bring in a superior force.

As to morale once more, does the average morale rating of your empire count for each individual planet's population growth rate. Or does the specific morale rating for a particular planet determine its growth rate?

Thanks for your answers in advance!