Initial colonization rush a bit annoying

Yeah, the expansion rush at the beginning is kinda disappointing. Master of Orion 2 alleviated this by not giving you a jackpot amount to start with, allowing you to buy out a ton of colony ships.

maybe an option to set how much money you start with would be better?

Even if colony ships cost more or you had less starting cash you would still start out the same way - in a rush to colonize the best worlds around you asap to beat the AIs to it.

It's a core feature to this game and pretty much every space-based 4x game. Expand is the 2nd of the 4 X's, ya know.

Yeah, the expansion rush at the beginning is kinda disappointing. Master of Orion 2 alleviated this by not giving you a jackpot amount to start with, allowing you to buy out a ton of colony ships.

I would completely disagree and you are wrong - because even in MOO2 you would colonize every good planet as fast as you could build and reach them. The only limiting factor was production speed and range - there were no other priorities except maybe fending off an early rush.

The dealio is - if you give EVERYONE a decent sized lump sum of starting cash then everyone is on even ground and has a much more equal chance at fast expansion. If you only give out a tiny amount of starting cash then those races with significant econ or production bonuses expand faster EVERY time and it's never remotely fair. Races with such benefits still get a nice boost from those abilities throughout the game, but they don't enjoy an unfair advantage at the start of the game where it's much more critical that all races be on somewhat even ground.

No matter how you slice it, in a space based 4X game colonizing everything in sight asap is critical and there will always be a "land rush".

only to try to prevent AI colonization rush.

The AIs are simply playing smart - planets are the backbone of your empire. The more planets you have the better. The earlier you acquire raw planets the earlier you can develop them to make them useful If you choose not to compete you may as well surrender early since you're basically saying you're not playing to win.

it is a bit like civ3 where more settler u build the better it is but there should be some counterbalancement.CIV4 in that has done an exceptional job.It is a 4x game so expansion is the ultimate objective of the game but at least let's add some mainteinance to planets based on distance from civilization capital, there should be a balancement between expansion and consolidation

It's generally not so bad on a Huge or Gigantic map, unless you start off near a major race.
I've been on map where I was the only one around with plenty of habitable planets. I took my time, and it was cool because it gave me something to do while building starbases and such.

If they introduced a "max colony" factor that accounted for tech/income/etc., it could be interesting... but I can see a lot more people complaining about that, as opposed to complaining about how the game currently works.

If they introduced a "max colony" factor that accounted for tech/income/etc., it could be interesting...

You mean like a "colony logistics" tech that limited how many colonies you could manage at one time? That's an interesting idea. I wonder if it would be moddable.

It would be nifty to be able to start with all suitable planets already colonized, or at least 5 worlds a piece or something. I don't mind the land rush too much, but it does start to get old.

-Dewar

Hmmm, yeah, colony logistics is a really good idea for an addition to the game. Start with a max number of planets based on map size (4 on Medium, 6 on large, etc...). It makes early colonization still important, but it reduces the impact of a slow start.

And really, it makes sense in a "lore" kind of way. Your race is just starting to colonize worlds. The central government has a hard time coordinating interstellar governance at first, but as it grows and learns, it can handle more planets.

It also opens up the opportunity for a new racial ability. 3 points, +1 max planets, or something along those lines.

If they introduced a "max colony" factor that accounted for tech/income/etc., it could be interesting...

I would be against this "max colony factor", but i would that colonizing would be more costly than it is at this stage.I heard that Brad was going to link population to production in a future patch, it could be a first step to balance colonization rush, i would also the introduction of mainteinance based on distance from capital, this shouldn't prevent fast colonization but would at least counterbalance income and losses

it is a bit like civ3 where more settler u build the better it is but there should be some counterbalancement.CIV4 in that has done an exceptional job.It is a 4x game so expansion is the ultimate objective of the game but at least let's add some mainteinance to planets based on distance from civilization capital, there should be a balancement between expansion and consolidation

Alpha Centauri tried to balance it, too, by having each base past a certain number lose some energy produced per turn to "inefficiency". Unfortunately, although you could lessen it with various base upgrades and social engineering choices, there was no option to adjust it or just turn it off. (Energy was used for both research and money.)

maybe an option to set how much money you start with would be better?

And this is an excellent idea. =^.^=

Nah. Keep it the way it is.

I wonder.....

Shadow mentioned Alpha Centauri above. In that game I got good enough that I could win without establishing a single colony other than home base. One I got air power I would just go out and get what I wanted.

Have any of the power players around here evre won without a planet rush ? I seem to recall that some did in GC1.

I like rushing out to get colonies at the start. It's fun to gamble at how close your enemies are by pushing that colony ship out just a little further, maybe there's a lvl 12 instead of this 8 you just approached? etc.
The first game had alot of little logistics challenges to the colony rush. You had more limited range so you would have to chain your ships out so that you colonized the back planets just as your front ships hit their frontier on range and could then go further. Nice little challenges like that are fun.

I really prefer the cheaper constructors in GC2. The first game took years before you could get your first constructor and it always seemed like the enemies started with at least one.

I would completely disagree and you are wrong - because even in MOO2 you would colonize every good planet as fast as you could build and reach them. The only limiting factor was production speed and range - there were no other priorities except maybe fending off an early rush. The dealio is - if you give EVERYONE a decent sized lump sum of starting cash then everyone is on even ground and has a much more equal chance at fast expansion. If you only give out a tiny amount of starting cash then those races with significant econ or production bonuses expand faster EVERY time and it's never remotely fair. Races with such benefits still get a nice boost from those abilities throughout the game, but they don't enjoy an unfair advantage at the start of the game where it's much more critical that all races be on somewhat even ground. No matter how you slice it, in a space based 4X game colonizing everything in sight asap is critical and there will always be a "land rush".

I've been playing 4X games for over a decade now and have never experienced an initial expansion rush like GalCiv 2 has, easily going twice or three times as fast as the faster MOO2 games I've played and faster than even the original MOO.

While you could buy out production of ships to ensure their quick completion in MOO2, you simply didn't have the money for it starting out and it wasn't until the latter stages of the game that you could 'finish out' one more than one ship concurrently. GalCiv2 encourages you to do this and gives you plenty of money early on.

Sure, it's beating the AI to the gates, but the game does it too quick. I won't list it as a fault of the game, but it is disappointing to have to pour all your resources into scouting and expanding quickly in the early stages of the game.

I actually liked how MOO2 did the balancing of the colony rush. Basically if you started in the "pre-warp" tech age you had poor production capabilities + the colony ships were very expensive to make. The player is then faced with 2 choices, tech up the industry/research and then industrialize your main world, being able to only colonize the planets in your own system OR you could research colony ships + engines so that you can go out and try to explore the stars early (but the problem was you had poor industrial base and actually built the colony ships slower). The reason i liked this system over the one that GC currently has for teh sandbox game becuase it made sense to actually make scout ships. in GC2 i find that scout ships are basically worthless and therefore never make any ( i just build colony ships that travel 2 par/week (same mobility as scout) and use that to explore. Eventually as i start to trade with other civs i just trade them for their scout ships (if you do it right trading techs in GC2 is the uber money maker early in the game.)

anywayz there's my 2 cents worth and hope someone out there enjoys what i wrote!