Newb question alert!

1. YES (ALSO transports will dissapear but nto all of em, if you attack weith a fleet and don't loose so many people in ground combat, you may only loose one of the whole fleet)

2. Depends on what you like, I would not put too many famrs to start with thou. On a gigantic map I tend to queue a lot, unless its the begining of the game.

3. Don't, you should try to go more balanced because early techs are cheaper. Also tailor your research to your strategy. You might want to for example research the next level of factories before you build a new fleet. And upgradign factories before upgrading labs is a good idea too.

4. Not that I know of.

5. Practice and civilization manager.

6. Depends at the point of the game. Sometimes I migh hit the next turn right away too. If there's nothign going on, no need ot make work for yourself. But other turns can take 20 minutes.

1)Yes
2)Your planet will automatically build down the list of stuff you told it to build, as well as automatically upgrade your old buildings with new tech. So technically after you set the build list you don't need to visit it again, but you should to make sure everything is running smoothly.
3)There are a lot of techs.. but really there a very few lines that you really need to know about.
For example, there is a single line of tech that will upgrade your factories, another for farms, and so on. Same with weapon tech, one for beams, one for mass drivers, and one for missiles.
So basically once you learn which lines are which you only need to know what area you want to work towards.
4)I don't think so.... but if your to slow your enemies always could claim victory first
5)It is. While planets are pretty self surfactant, ships on the other hand can be bothersome. One thing that helps is after you've used up the movement one ship it will automatically select the next ship with extra movement. Other then that the best you can do is try to concentrate on only one thing at a time, that is fight only one war at a time, or at least try to keep the fighting in one area so you don't have to keep track of what's happening in lots of different areas.
6)While at war I can spend a long time on one turn, while at peace I too some times just spam the turn button till something happens

I dunno.. I found beelining all the way through the diplomatic techs gave me some nice tech sale prices.

4) The game ends if one of the four victory requirements are done. No time limit.
5) Play at smaller maps first to get the grip of the game.
6) It depends how you play. I always keep an eye on the graphs, how the others are evolving and checking their science.

1) Colony ships and constructor ships are used up in the colonization/construction process. Colony ships provide the base material for the original colony and constructors also provide the base material for their projects.

2) Setting the build queue and leaving things alone works well, but as the others have said, you should check in from time to time. Especially after you've researched soil and habitat improvements.

3) What they said, research things more balanced. If you are playing the game on a lower difficulty you will start to see the benifits of a balanced approach once you start the harder settings.

4) no time limit. Whoever can claim a tech victory, influence victory, kill everyone, etc first wins. At the beginning you choose what victory conditions you will allow.

5) Practice. The more you play, the more you will get a feel of how to organize things.

6) I'f I've nothing moving, then I'll do the same. If I've ships approaching an enemy, or am expecting an invasion, etc, I'll look around and check things out before hitting that turn button. If you really want to be surprised, ignore the enemy completely. They'll get your attention when they start landing troops.

1. We turn the constructors into dinner plates and silverware and the colonists into lunch meats.
2. Please build as many farms as possible to make the colonists plump and juicy.
3. Every tech you develop should be made with one goal in mind: how can I grow fat colonists?
4. Don't worry about that, just grow your colony population.
5. Just build farms and keep it simple.
6. Spend as little time as possible except for strategerizing on how to make tasty colonists.

---The Dregin

I dunno.. I found beelining all the way through the diplomatic techs gave me some nice tech sale prices.

yeah, but shouldn't getting some research tech speed up that bee?

and some manufacturing techs speed up building of the research facilities?

and some econ techs to keep all that production and research from bankrupting the treasury?

and some drive techs to help win the early-game land-grab rush, providing the places to build the research facilities and the tax base (population) to pay for them?

all that said, yep, i completely ignore weapons and defense tech until somebody picks a fight with me, then i trade for something to hold them off with, while i rush research whatever weapons and defense i'll use for the counterstrike.

... and bigger hulls, and miniaturization, when they completion times drop low enough compared to what ever else is left.

and at that point having built up production facilites on a lot of planets, producing enough ships fast enough isn't too hard.

i'll find out next game if that still works when my enemies are "Intelligent".

Ok, I have a question. Can you make fleets for planetary defense (so if AI attacks your planet, it fights a fleet and not just one ship at a time)?

build an Orbital Fleet Manager.

thanks

Wow thank you all for your quick replies. This is a great community and very helpfull. Off to play some more of my new addiction. I am playing at beginner level for now.

I keep hearing about having ships orbiting a planet. How do you do that?

Also if you research technologies i.e. propulsion do all your ships get upgraded automatically or do you have to manually upgrade each one of them?

Sorry to bombard you with all these questions but I am very excited with this new great game. I have been a long time player of the Total War series and now I have ventured into the unknown

Can you make fleets for planetary defense (so if AI attacks your planet, it fights a fleet and not just one ship at a time)?

As stated, you need an Orbital Fleet Manager. But don't bother.

You should never, never let your ships at a planet actually fight on the defensive. If someone comes within range of you, launch your ships and attack them. The attacker has a significant advantage in any conflict.

Question
Doesn't the orbital fleet manager let ALL the ships in orbit fight as one?

If so, you can easily exceed your natural logistic limits and grant you a big advantage.
But truthfuly I've never had that come up, I always fly out to meet the challenge