AI Research

Well, it's hard to know what you're doing wrong without knowing what you're doing.
What did you build? (ships, improvements)
How did you set your tax and spending sliders?

Hi Linky.

It is very hard to figure out what's wrong in your specific case but try some of these:

1. Buy colony ships once they are half built. Grab as many colonies as you can. Use up all of your initial cash on this if you have to.
2. At first, research those techs that increase your research points. Don't ignore the rest, you must remain competitive. Pick a couple of tech areas to specialize in, and trade for the rest with your friends.
3. Population is important. More peeps = more science. However, don't overpopulate or you'll have a bunch of unhappy people living in tunnels underground.
4. Tax the crap out of your people. Slide that tax slide as high as you can go without morale falling below 50%. Adjust it every few turns. Crank research up if you aren't competitive (short term solution). Build improvements to crank up research (long term solution).
5. Here's some stuff that I haven't tried, but have heard works... Using some of your not-so-great colonies, focus their buildings on labs. Don't build other stuff. In other words, make a planet or two that specializes in research.

At normal AI, the computer isn't doing anything that you can't do. Keep at it and soon you should be able to keep up with them. However, to beat them requires savvy and strategic vision. You won't ever be more efficent at colony management then the AI.

Good Luck!

Some further tips...

1) During the initial colonization race, I always keep the spending on 100% military to build colony ships and constructors as fast as possible. I usually wait until I hav 3-6 colony ships and 2-4 constructors (depending on map size) before spending any money on research or planet improvements.

2) Tech Trade! Tech Trade! Tech Trade!
I can't say this often enough!

Yup, that's likely how they're so much farther ahead. They're trading with each other. So while you were prob stuck researching everything you've got, the AI researched different things from each other and shared.

Like yellow sign aptly points out, you should be trading tech too

I am playing the first campaign mode and I seem to be WAY ahead of the Altarians and Drengin in almost everything (although I can't figure out what techs I need to make heavy fighters, which are kicking my baby fighters' asses). I concentrated on economy and morale and am pretty much taxing my population at 50%, have a 79% approval rate, my production set at 100% and still have a positive cash flow.

My problem is trying to figure out how to get some decent warships. I have researched the tech trees halfway to the end already (lots of disposable income), have access to medium, small, and tiny hulls and up to Laser V, but I can't seem to make anything more dangerous than a Star Fury.

Trading tech is a great way to catch up/get ahead, if you don't mind giving the AI that extra tech.

In my current game, I was straining ym economy early on due to many manufacturing bonus tiles amplifying my spending; this in turn forced me to slash my research budget.

Once I had met all the AIs, though, I spent several minutes doing round-robin tech trades. Sell any techs the AI doesn't have to him for cash or other techs, then trade whatever you gained to other AIs and profit enough to buy even more tech. Picking techs one by one that not all the AIs had, I bought then from one for cash, then made double that amount back selling the tech to AIs that didn't have it. At the end of a very long trading session (thank god for the next/previous race buttons they added on the diplomacy screen), I was not only even but ahead of all the AIs, and had tons of cash to boot!

(FYI, this was on 'Tough' difficulty with 9 Majors)

have access to medium, small, and tiny hulls and up to Laser V

That's your problem. Get Plasma or Phaser weapons (if they're available in that mission) and you'll be able to design much better attack ships. Miniturization helps a lot too. I generally stick with tinies and smalls myself--with a little miniturization and Plasma or Phaser beams, you can have tiny hulls with 4 or even 8 attack, with room to spare for speed, range, or armor.

weird, posted in a different thread and it showed up here
(edit - post content removed since it doesn't apply here)

My problem is trying to figure out how to get some decent warships. I have researched the tech trees halfway to the end already (lots of disposable income), have access to medium, small, and tiny hulls and up to Laser V, but I can't seem to make anything more dangerous than a Star Fury.

If you have medium hulls and Laser V, you can build nice things, but you'll have to design them yourself

hmm, first my post shows up in the wrong thread, and now i can't edit.
ignore the above post plz, wasn't meant for this thread

Also, normal is already a pretty strong difficulty level. I'm playing my third game right now and moved up to normal and, well, I can hold myself alright, but mostly because I got a PQ26 planet very early.

So, maybe you should start a couple of difficulty levels lower and work your way up, learning on the way?

Don't forget to modify your economic spending in times of peace to give a research or social production bonus. 40 turns running at 60% research spending can give you quite a boost early game.

This game is soo much different than basic Civ - so practically I'm forced to buy ships and buildings very often and forced to tech trade with the AI to remain competitive. Also an unfortunate thing seems to be the lack of exploration in the game, since at around turn 50 most of the galaxy is owned by some race or another.

Okay, I think the biggest issue was that I haven't found the slider yet so most of my taxes went into the treasury instead of research. Still, the research speed was way too fast, tho I believe that was adjustable in the game creation.

I guess I need to play with a huge galaxy and few stars so the distances between planets makes colonization take a bit longer.

I guess I need to play with a huge galaxy and few stars so the distances between planets makes colonization take a bit longer.

My favourite style of playing. Yeah, it's quite different in this regard than Civ4 - I like both.

And, if you haven't found the sliders so far, maybe you should read the manual and watch the tutorials...?

Well, now I played a second game, with a gigantic galaxy / rare stars and things played well. With normal difficulty I'm now the dominant species in this game. I guess a big map suits me better.

I didn't really pay attention to the sliders before, as in Civilization you don't have to mess with them that much yourself and the buttons to adjust spending are displayed in the main UI instead of a Domestic Advisor tab. Now that I found it, raising spending really helped things out.

Oh and I put research to very slow. I guess slow would've been better but this is a better pace than normal in my opinion.