: D
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, there are so many different factors to consider, so its hard to even talk about strats unless I include the game setup...
I like games on the big maps, either Huge or Gigantic, and I tend to play with uncommon stars and uncommon planets but abundant habitable ones (so fewer stars, with only a few planets, but with the majority of those being habitable). I like the opportunities for "key systems" that way...
When I'm sucessful (as I was after posting this last evening - but back down to Challenging for me), I
Social Builds:
* rush build my first factory, queue 1 more, plus a lab and a market and a few more factories
* when I settle a world, I'll buy its first factory (if i can afford it), set it to focus on social production, and set it to build:
* 2 factories, then a shipyard, then a lab, a market, and more factories...
Military Builds:
* rush build a scout
* the following turn, I rush build a colony ship
Economy:
* crank my tax rate up until I have only about 55% approval (while I've only got my one homeworld, to pump cash initially) - and set spending to 100% (or close, using up some of my cash reserves to help jump-start my economy)
* crank my research to 70% and social to 30% (I just buy ships initially, since only my homeworld even has anything to apply military spending to - feels like a waste to set my global sliders to include military spending)
* reverse those roles (30/70) as time goes forward, and I've aquired all of the +10 social / military / economy basic techs
Research:
* focus research on production-economy items (whatever the one that gives +10 to all three is my first target)
* next I focus on the yellow ones - communications & basic govt, xeno business, trade...
* next I focus on engines (gotta love impulse drive)
Fleet Orders:
* Send my flagship scouting a few nearby worlds then switch to "A" - auto find anomalies - and try to snarf up those sometime game-changing morsels... mmm, 2500 cash!
* Once I start settling worlds, I make sure I keep their morale at a minimum of 75% (but I allow my homeworld to suffer a bit, as it tends to due to larger pop pressures).
* keep my scout exploring stars to find the best planets between me and my nearest / most likely competitor
The thing is, I expand a bit, buying a colony ship here and there, and eventually changing my economy to have about equal military spending (once I have another world or two that has a shipyard), but I'm left in the dust on tough (even challenging, I'm doing a bit of a scramble to try to keep up with the AI's rate of colonization!)
I look at the various graphs, and I can see that my econ sucks, my pop sucks, my production sucks, everything but my research is heavily outclassed!
In games where I intentionally alter my strat so that I focus more on military spending, I still lag horribly behend.
One thing that is obvious, is that the computer has these production graphs where they'll climb in a good 45% angle in production for a while (easily doubling or tripling my output), and then drop to zero for a turn, then climb back up to an insane height again, and they continue this saw-tooth pattern going forward. Does anyone know what they're doing that makes a pattern like that? Whatever it is, it gives them way better production output (more colony ships & the ability to sustain military production) than any of my strats do. If I could figgure out how to keep up with the colony ship production in the initial phase (or even just keep within throwing distance), then I think I would win every game!
Thanks for all those who respond - I appreciate the feedback : D
