how can the ai colonize this fast?

Because they're buying things quickly, to get production out fast.

Also, it wasn't "no reason", you were weak, so they attacked you. If you can't win, they know that, and will crush you like a bug. Don't worry, happened to me a lot at first. Rush buy some colony ships, and some factories, to kick things off. Watch what the AI does, it plays a good game.

Also, in the journals section is a beginners play guide, have a look through that

I'll suggest you lower difficulty first
this game AI is quite good, it knows how to play & is not scripted
it has no advantage over the player until "Intelligent / Rough"

one good idea is to cheat your way through one game with Intelligent AIs or better
(if you cheat you won't be destroyed)
try not to influence AIs too much by your actions and watch it and take notes

Play smaller maps too. Start out on small, subnormal difficulty, 3-4 opponents. It'll give you a nice challenge for your first couple of games. And make sure you buy your first few factories and/or colony ships. Don't bother building scouts because your colony ships can scout as they look for planets. But don't overdo it if you play 1.1 or your population growth will collapse and you'll be even mroe screwed than if you undercolnized instead of overcolonizing.

Colonisation is one of the AI's weakest areas, (it has more affect on smaller maps/planet numbers in my opinion) they frequently build movement two ships and often take ages to get impulse drive and overload on range modules which means there ships are even slower.

It's not the AI's which are colonising fast (unless u have a freak game) it that your slow piekillerman 5-8 planets in a year seems like a shockingly low number, how many colonisable planets are there within 5 sectors of your homeworld.

Quick colonisation tips:

Sensors bonuses are great!!!!
Pop growth and homeworld morale are important. You dont want to be settling planets with 30 colonists like the AI does.
5000 creds should buy u 3/4 colony ships with speed of 4 do this while your building industry up.
Get your homworld industry so that you are building top of the range fast colony ships every 2 turns
Colonise outside in - leave crappy planets that aliens cant get too easily to last.
Dont colonise planets until u have to - keeping morale high eg 100 on homeworld (low taxes) means early planets will cost u money ie 12pt only colonise if u need range or an AI can get to that planet that turn, also means that AI will waste time moving colonys ships to planets that you will get (sensors can spot danger). Once you have enough colony ships in range of planets colonise everything left and whack up taxes.
Use 100% spending on military.

Lenius.

As I have found out the Ai plays like a human sometimes. If you and a race are friends and you are weak they will crush you as you are easy pickens and will increase their domain.

As I have found out the Ai plays like a human sometimes. If you and a race are friends and you are weak they will crush you as you are easy pickens and will increase their domain.

Like civ4 multiplayer, without the tyrades of hysterical abuse at your "cheating"

1st turn, you BUY a factory on home planet and build 2nd factory.
Goto shipyard and design fast colonyship (I think, you can design
colonyship with 1colony pod, 1basic support and 2 hyperdrives).
You PURCHASE the fast colonyship on home planet.
Spending rate should be 100%, never mind if the balance is deficit.
Raise tax to about 40%.

Flagship tends only to survey anomalies, 2500/1000/750bc bonus is valuable.
Given colonyship (normal one) go to another planet in the home starsystem
(eg. Mars, if you are human) , there buy a starport and a scout ship, then build
factory and another scout (in gigantic map at least 3scouts are required).
Scouts are used to discover habitable plantes.

On every colonized plantes, BUY a starport and build 2 factories (unless low PQ
planet) and fast colonyship.

Propultion techs are important in gigantic map. You should research
impulsdrive quickly and replace 2hyperdrives colonyship with 2impulsdrives one.

I hope, you can colonize twice as much as opponents now.

that all makes sence i just lost the disk and didn't know you didn't need it until last night so i didn't play for like a month so im a restarter not a beginner. oh and i was playing with nomarl as the difficulty seting witch i used to be good on. and the 5-8 planets in one year was due to the fact that everycolonizable planet i found after the 5-8 was already taken by the korx (i checked the save it was the korx)

Yup if you don't "buy" colony ships (which are 5speed) and some industries early you are sol bud. Also if you check the AI data tabs you will find they also take out "loans" early in the game, they live in a deficit and plow ahead of you faster than a Texas Jack Rabbit jumps. I myself have no problem staying ahead of nearly all of them every game basically since game one I played. I figured out early the "economics" of the game is the key to success, if you have no economics savy you'll probably lose a lot of games because you'll fall behind in everything.

I maintain a lead in economics and technology from the very start of the game everytime. I sacrifice military build up till I see the AI start to produce a chitload of scouts. Once those start appearing then I start deploying just simple 1 weapon no speed ships at every planet, makes me at least look like i have a military even though in power it's very weak, but,t he AI doesn't see weakness it only sees number of ships. (hope they fix this in a patch really makes the game too easy on any level of play for me).

Think your strat is very flawed h13coplus. Many of your planets will be low population planets which will mean your economy will take ages to get going. If you use sensor bonuses you wont need scouts at all saving a lot of time. Buying all those factories is waste you could build them while buying colony ships. Using non homeworld to build colony ships is prob not a good idea unless you are on a second colony phase and they have at least 1000 colonists.

What i do usually...

Pick max sensor bonus and 20% pop growth (assume 5000 creds)

Buy 3/4 speed 4+ colony ships over 3/4 first turns while 100% social on factories build enough factorys so can build colonys in 2 turns. Keep homeworld morale at 100 (max growth, low taxes). Spam out colony ships every 2 turns with 500 colonists on board. Research impulse at appropriate time upgrade colony ship design to about movement 7ish. Only colonise planets at this time if you need range or opp will take that turn (you will run out of money otherwise 'cos of maintenance). Once you have enough colonys in space to prevent opp's from getting to planets colonise all those in range max out taxes. Congratulations 1st(poss last) colony phase is over.

That strat should net u 16-20 planets very quickly. If homeworld gets to below 2600 i believe it will repopulate at slower rate thats why i max growth (100 morale). With 20% pop growth should grow 360 every 2 turns while yout taking out 500 every two turns.


Lenius.

Lenius,

I don't understand how you can execute your strategy. If you buy 4 colony ships and run 100% industry, by the end of turn 4 you should have less than 800 bc left. You aren't making much because of low taxes and you gutted your homeworld population in the first 4 turns. Getting enough production to build a colony ship every other turn will set you back another 300bc or so. Another 12-16 colony ships built will cost you 1300-1700 bc plus you are researching up to impulse which is also not free (both infrastructure and actual research cost).

Basically, unless you happen upon some significant money anomalies, you are going to have to slow down due to lack of funds because you blew 80-90% of your reserve in the first 4 turns.

I usually buy the first factory on homeworld and the first two coloniy ships...I'll go ahead and buy a third if I find a third empty planet nearby with hi PQ to colonize. I ignore the second planet in home system for quite a while, it's not worth it if you have other choices. Build a couple markets early on your planets if you can, it won't take long before they start paying off as they get upgraded. Embassies, while very important later, are not so important at first and you can wait until you have a market/lab/entertainment built. Where your empire meets another, build multiple embassies on each planet and use influence starbase. You can also get a lot of help from economy starbases, though it takes a little while to get to the point where you can start turning out lots of constructors to send to them. If you build 3-4 warships, even low level ones, the other civilizations will generally not pick on you. And remember: what looks like a huge military advantage on paper could really amount to only a few ships--in other words, if you've properly built up your economy early you can often catch up quickly by just spitting out a half dozen ships or less.

I don't understand how you can execute your strategy.

The trick is not to colonise planets when the colony ship gets to them. This this saves money which you would otherwise lose in maintenance i.e 12pt per colony. You should only colonise when an enemy colony vessel can reach that planet in 1 turn or if you need the planet for range to get at other planets.

Trust me your money will last esp if you only buy 3 colony ships dont worry bout going in red a bit. I extremely rarely get an anomaly in the colony phase because i play rare anomalies and i use the anomaly ship to scout planets during this phase.

Pop isn't a prob esp with pop growth rate and keeping 100 morale, impulse will take u 2 turns to research if done at the right time.

Abilities i use:

+3 sensors
30% econ
20% pop growth
federalists


Lenius.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned: The AI's will send colony ships with 50, instead of 500, on them. This allows them to keep most of their population for tax purposes and since you need population to have good population growth, maxes out the pop growth too.

The only time this hurts them is if they find a planet near one you've had established for a while...you'll probably end up having it flip to you because there'll be enough of a population difference for your culture to subvert it.

The AI-strategy seems to differ from game to game (which is really cool).
The first two games I have played on gigantic maps I was rushed pretty badly.
The third game I was able to build my colonies without any interference.

In my latest game on challenging difficulty I have managed to pull a little stunt
on the AI:

I scouted very quickly and starterd sending colony-ships to excellent planets
building a perimeter around my future "core systems". I was able to set it
blocking almost a quarter of a map in one corner. Strangely enough, although
scouting, the AI doesn't send any colony ships past these outer colonies. It
really acts like a barrier. I took a very long time for on civ (Korx) to just take some
PQ5 planets on my "outer rim". Needless to say, that they lost them very quickly
due to uprisings. To fortify my border I built overlapping military starbases around
the perimeter. I can now calmly colonize the remaing planets in my "core". I
managed to seal off more than 70 planets (abundant inhab. planets).

I will have to test this strategty yet again as the AI has reacted very passively and
I am not sure if that is normal.

~S!~

Dioscur

it has no advantage over the player until "Intelligent / Rough"

Actually, it's Gifted/Painful where the AI first gains an advantage. Intelligent/Tough is the best, fair game the AI has.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned: The AI's will send colony ships with 50, instead of 500, on them.

Check out my first post... (i said 30odd which i often see sadly).

This actually affects them massively. It means the AI economy takes a lot longer to grow, their influence per turn is lower and planets are easier to invade as well as not having enough pop to invade early as well. All MASSIVE FLAWS. Brad really needs to address this in future patch.

New colony ships should nearly always take up half a planets pop or 500 colonists which ever is more in my opinion to prevent the previous mentioned flaw from happening or at least being so long term crippling.

New colony ships should nearly always take up half a planets pop or 500 colonists which ever is more in my opinion to prevent the previous mentioned flaw from happening or at least being so long term crippling.

First, I went back and found your first post...you did mention AI's sending 30 out on a colony ship.

I didn't notice this until the population growth was tweaked in one of the earlier 1.1 betas. If your suggestion was followed...having to max out a colony ship... it would severly limit colonization across the board.

I play on larger maps where it makes sense to send out low population colony ships because it's going to be a long time before anyone shows up...let alone able to invade. I can understand how the practice could backfire on a smaller map.

Hmmm... since the human player knows what the game settings are, are the AI players given the info so they can evaluate an opening strategy?

One thing I haven't seen mentioned: The AI's will send colony ships with 50, instead of 500, on them. This allows them to keep most of their population for tax purposes and since you need population to have good population growth, maxes out the pop growth too.

That's generally how I colonize planets, I only take 100 colonists with me while keeping morale at 100%. After the first few turns I'll I'll go for %76 morale to lower the initial burn rate of cash. Unless I've found a high PQ planet I intend to be my economic capital, then I'll take more to get it running.

1 - 100% Research for 3-4 turns depending (Impulse) - Buy Lab - Buy Colony Ship
2 - Buy Entertainment Centre - Raise taxes while keeping morale at 100% - Large+ universe, buy Sensor ship
3 - Buy Factory - Redesign and buy a fast colony ship (if I've found planets and impulse research complete)

Really only my first turn is scripted, the rest is dependant on universe size and settings. If it's large+ I will research Sensor I and put out 2 high speed+range anomaly hunters reallying a cash anomalies to slow the burn rate while I expand.

If the map is small, and I have neighbours with no place to expand to. I rush planetary invasion and grab someones homeworld as soon as possible. This hurts and I usually end up behind tech/economy but required to survive in the long run.

This is at the tough difficulty and a custom race. The custom race points are usually setup well balanced so I can shift my strategy to whatever looks to be most effective.

I think although it may be less that a planet with 2600 on it will produce the max amount of colonists it can each turn. If you have no pop growth bonus then you will add 75 people to that planet every turn assuming 41-75 morale. If a colony ship takes 2 turns you can keep the planet at 2600 (max growth and ship colony out with 150 pop every two turns).

100 morale would be 2 turn colony ship with 300 pop and staying at 2600 (max growth population)

Colonising 20 planets at 500 pop per colony ship should be fine esp with pop growth rate bonus, if your homeworld gets to 2600 you can just start shipping out 300 pop ships.

While typing this just realised that buying an entertaiment center on homeworld would mean that you wouldn't have to have v. low taxes to keep morale up!!!!! Gonna try this next game colony phase should be ridiculously fast now.


Lenius.