Dominico

Join Date 03/2006

Rush to Colonise Not the best strategy?

Basically my first game of GC i won, i didnt really know what i was doing but i started to pick it up as i played. Expanding slowly i began to take over the whole map and stayed friends with some, enemies with others.

Since then however i seem to lose a lot!! My tactics now are to planet rush, and try to get as many planets initially as i can, the thing is i think this actually stunts your growth. I end up making very little money, or making a loss. Then not being able to research and falling behind. Also because i have grabbed so much land i seem to have a lot of enemies.

Do you guys think it is better to start with just a core few systems, then expand? Or to go for the landgrab and build up slowly? In my current game i managed to turn it around and survive but now there are only 3 of us left, the Drengin who are about 10 times more powerfull then me and my allies the Arceans who are puny like me. We are slowly going to be decimated i can tell!

So what advice would you all give for starting? I play as Terrens by the way.

strategies

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What size map and what difficulty? I recently played a medium sized map... so... having 3 planets was better than average in my game against 9 opponents, so I didn't really have an option to over expand. Theorycrafting, I think it's still better to grab worlds, even with a population of 1, since it's still better than the AI having them. Make them research or production worlds (whichever you have more bonuses in).

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i think landgrab is good.. but its SLOW.. you must keep peace with the AI's... or else you wont get it...

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If you have the colony ships/cash and there are planets available in your area, grab. The only time you don't want to grab is when planets are on the other side of the galaxy, because dividing your empire like that means more close borders and thus more potential enemies. If you are running low on cash, just don't build anything on your new planet, leave it empty and focus into military so that you spend less into research (and more importantly halves social if you're not using the beta). Once your population grows enough, start building. Once you run out of planets, switch to building a defensive military force and constructors. Grab any nearby resources first, then lay down military bases to cover all of your worlds. With military bases and some basic ships for defense, you litterally never have to worry until you are ready to invade people.

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Well like anything, it depends. Colony rushes will always leave you weak at the start as you try to populate and build up so many planets with a pitiful income. Survive long enough without being attacked and get your economy into full force, and you'll be in a very strong position. It's just weakening yourself short term for long term gains.

Of course, if there's someone within spitting distance that's going to take advantage of your weakened state, you're done for. This applies to your empire as a whole as well as individual planets.

It's basic strategy when dealing with such things. If you're in a safe little hole, live weak and expand. Otherwise start strong and small and fond some other sucker that decided to try the quick expand tactic and take all of his stuff.

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Think of the Colony Rush as a long-term investment. The more you colonize, the more you spread out your people but eventually it pays off big time. Just remember to keep building farms and entertainment complexes. Another thing that can help you is if you tweak your race so that they reproduce faster in the race setup screen.

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Yeah i think thats my problem, the civs near me took advantage of me. They were basically seeing how weak i was technologically and militarily and so attacked me. Even saying as much as they attacked, things like "We feel you are very weak and will be conquered soon so we thought we would make it easy on you by being first" that sort of attitude lol.

I think i will have to do a sensible expansion in future as this seemed to work best for me.

As for difficulty levels i have all the races on intelligent, i have 9 races selected and i play on I think its like tough as the difficulty level. Map size is large i think. Its pretty roomy

Will try to survive this last game and then hopefully win my next one and try out slow expansion if its not safe!!

Cool ideas everyone, thanks.

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Will try to survive this last game and then hopefully win my next one and try out slow expansion if its not safe!!

Cool ideas everyone, thanks.

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There are very few times Ive not found colony rush to be effective. But I also play with a strong economy on a custom race, so I don't have much of a problem bouncing back.

Because the computer is, well, a computer, it can be relied on to follow certain behavior. I've found that skipping a marginal planet for a really good one is sometimes a good strategy. By leapfrogging a planets you end up with a few AI planets surrounded by your better ones. The AI will work hard to not lose those planets and will build factories and embassies on it, as well as influence starbases. This ties its resources up from producing more threatening things. First time we go to war these planets are easy pickings.

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It also depends on if you are playing with the beta patch or not. With the beta patch, you need to expand fairly quickly, but also need to let your planets repopulate between colonizers. The new population growth (3% instead of 20%) really hurts if you expand too fast.

At least, I need to expand more slowly now. The first thing I do with every new colony is buy a factory. After that, I let the colony build it's own stuff. But without that first factory, it's 25+ turns just to start producing your second improvement. Between the cost of buying the factories, and the maintence cost of all those hammers, I need to keep my initial planet over 5 billion to keep enough money coming in to keep my spending at 100%. If I expand too fast, I end up having to drop my spending to 60% or under and fall way behind on everything for a while.

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I think colony rush is overall still the best strategy : the trick is to grab them but *not* develop them too soon, or you'll be short of cash soon. Keep for a time some/most of them as population center only, or only build 1 factory, 1 farm or lab, and let pop grow so they actually give you more income than they spend.
Only after you have developed trade, starbases and other income-boosting tech you can develop them properly.

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Your strategy has to take into account your racial abilities as well as your research plan. If you plan on colony rushing, everything in your overall strategy has to support that, from having high economics to begin with(bonus + federalist), along with researching the economic and diplomatic technologies, along with including markets in your early build strategy. If you don't focus on that, what you stated will happen and you will go broke trying to support that kind of infrastructure on not enough economy or population.

Economic strategy is strong though, I just finished up a gigantic game on challenging and it was not that tough. Some of the 1.1 changes will directly affect my strategy though, so I will be interested to see how this changes the game.

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My key strategy is, unless I have at least 500% bonuses for my home world, it will always be an economy world. If I have one 300% manufacturing tile, it won't be my manufacturing capital, it'll just let me build my economy quicker. By doing that, I end up making +100bc from that planet, which is more than enough to keep about 4 planets running, till hoperfully I get a tile-less 20 which becomes my econ capital
Doing that, you can survive the colony rush, expand quick, get research and military planets, and you don't rely on trade as much, making military strategies much easier

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It's the same old dilemma in all these games.

It's always a crap shoot. But I choose to expand quickly and stablize afterwards. If you do not, the AI will grab the good planets and you will have to fight for them.

It's not actually that bad to planet grab: just build a couple of military ships so they see you compare to them militarily and they will leave you be at the outset.

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The first thing I do with every new colony is buy a factory. After that, I let the colony build it's own stuff

Have I missed a big feature, or are you referring to specialising your planets after the initial factory?

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

No doubt in my mind, expand asap. With 60% military and 20 each on social and tech you can grow fast enough to stay ahead if you get t to space weapons early.

I have found that by building defenders early you can keep a high power rating and keep the AI off of you until you can get your economy rolling. If you let yourself get too far behind in military they will pick you apart even before they have invasion tech. You will be so busy fighting petty wars you will not be able to get your economy established.

The end of the second year is judgement day on the small maps. If at that point you have the most planets and have the strongest or next to strongest military you should win.

I love the new population rates, I am winding up with more population, better moral and much higher income in the long run.

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Lol I planet rush every game and am always in 1st on economy and technology. You're just not working with your economics and taxes and research settings correctly. And to keep the AI from attacking all you have to do is keep at least 1 ship at every planet and keep your military growing when you spot the AI's start to make their first warships. Also rush the diplomacy techs, it's one more plus to keep the AI off of you when they see you have a diplomatic advantage, plus you get better trade deals if you are still playing with trading on.

You got to know how to build them, know how to thrill them, know when to talk away, know when to run. You never count your blessings till the last race's been decimated, there will be time enough for counting when your evils done.

(The Gambler song)

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