Universal Translator is useless until you have something to talk about and something to trade.

Use the treasury in the beginning to expand as fast and as long as you can until you can't anymore. From my post on another thread regarding economy,

There is a multitude of things that can be suggested, changed, done better etc etc.

I will try with a competly different proposal - based on my own very recent experiences:



What about trying a medium map and maybe research on slow/very slow and/or common/accassional habitable planets?

Why I suggest this is following: So far I *always* played medium (and once small I think). Just now I'm playing my very first game on "huge"...and that's quite tough as I find I need to be planning much more ahead (like when warships take 5+ weeks to get from the production planets to the front (or where the front once has been)

I usually also prefer research at slow/very slow as this achieves 2 things:
The frequency with which you got to design/change/update/scrap your ships gets noticeably lower. Furthermore combined with the 1-point-Creativity ability pick it's probably the most powerful ability you can pick (imagine getting that 50-turn research project finished after 3 or 4 turns with some luck). esp. when you say "I'm really just lost in the vastness of the tech tree" I'd say: pick the slowest research setting so you can slowly get used to the techs.

Last but not least, it's completly personal taste, but a Huge galaxy AND abundant settings for stars/planets/habitable planets would probably be my personal hell
I can easil see somebody getting overwhelmed by the number of stars/planets such a galaxy holds.

That's why either put the amount of planets (esp. habitable planets) much lower in a Huge galaxy or play on a smaller galaxy (medium?) with abundant/common settings.

There's enough to learn even without having to manage 500 planets

I'm a newbie too, and not too good yet (only played challenging twice) but I have gotten more than 500 on just medium maps. So I wonder why you haven't passed that much. Did you put more than one stock market or racial equivalent on each planet, or designate any as an economic capital?

Here are some other newbie thoughts:

Do you keep your slider very high on ships much? That will cripple your initial momentum, it seems to me. I like that productivity directed to my initial entertainment center, factory, and market. Once I get those three on the starting planet, I am usually running a minor deficit or even turning a profit. Since I let my planets develop their own economies without buying much of anything besides the very occasional colony ship, my econ is generally pretty solid throughout the game.

Also, feeding people from your initial half-populated planet to your unpopulated ones in the very early game will mean you're only sending 250 million at a time. That's a lot of space ship/productivity credits to eat up for such a small number of people transferred, and at the same time, it's harder to get an economy going when you're depleting your only population capable of turning a profit. At least at first, I would prefer an extra constructor here and there to nab a morale or influence anomaly.

And "I try to get a few Adv. Marketplaces up once i have enough people paying taxes they can cover the 1bc maintainence." seems to be putting the cart before the horse. These buildings will pay for themselves, and other stuff too. If you have to eat a 1 bc loss for a good while, it shouldn't matter. You do start with thousands, after all. At first, when population is low, they won't do all that much. But that's why you let them build themselves, rather than paying for them outright. No hurry.

Another thing -- I extract a lot of value by checking, when something has one turn to go, how much it would cost to complete it. Be that a ship or a building. Say you are trying to spam out something that costs 1600 and would take you 8 turns to complete. That's a bit less than 200 per turn. At the last turn you see that buying it outright would cost only 58 bc. That means if you let it ride and don't buy, you're effectively losing 142 bc in production. PLUS whatever that thing would be doing for you by getting out earlier. That's a big loss right up front, and if you repeat it throughout the game, you will lose out on a ton of your production value.

You could be using that income, etc., but I have a special fondness for buying out projects that are morale boosters, to keep my population growing. Sometimes the hasty completion gets you get a big morale boost that can let you slide up your taxes a good bit more while still maintaining 100% or 75% morale an extra turn early, and that can pay for itself in lots of ways.

It's especially good on very low pop planets that are slowly earning their initial buildings. Likewise, if it is going to take 18 more turns to complete a factory on an empty planet to finally get some production going, but only cost 114 bc to buy it outright, you will often be much better off pocketing those 18 extra turns or production -- with a first factory yet! -- for the cost of those 114 bc. Getting a planet strong enough in morale or production to actually do more than sit there like a lump is a big deal.

play evil (like all decent folk ) and make them your buddies who take out everyone who is in your way for a few breadcrumbs.



well..turn settings to faster research, or:
- find Research ressources and build starbases on them
- build more labs
- turn research slider higher (put more money into research)
- or if you want to go to extremes ONLY build labs (no factories) and set research slider to 100%
- build econ starbases around your research planets

time to pump up the difficulty level then