How has the patch changed your building priorities?

I always start with a factory, entertainment, starport, market market, farm. Turn down my taxes so that all newly colnized planets have a 100% approval and pray for anomalies

People have been talking about a double factory purchase for each new colony, to get things moving quickly. I plan on trying that during my next game.

-Brian

If I have the money I buy the first factory. Otherwise I set the planet priority to Social and wait. Next I build a starport. I figure I might as well use the manufacturing capacity for something. If it's a big planet then I build another factory, then entertainment if I need to raise the approval, then start working on research and banks. A small planet (4-6) might only get a factory to start and then nothing but banks. Of course this all depends on bonus'. I used to let approval get down to 60% but now I try to keep it around 80%. Later on, when I get rolling I can work on getting the approval higher.

On a world that can support it, I will set priority to Social, build 3 factories, a starport, farm, research, bank, entertainment, diplomacy. The early planet populations don't grow all that fast to start with, so I don't put a high priority on taxes, research, or entertainment until there is a significant population base to work with.

If a planet can't support all of that and the three factories, then I don't build a starport, and I will build a banking world or research world.

Hmm I tend to specialise worlds.

I focus more on getting my economy going now than before.

What's the best way to get your economy going? I guess population increase. I have never have
thought that the commerce centers helped that much.

I think alot of it depends on several different factors, not strictly population levels. Planet quality, bonus nodes, colonization stage (early rush, middle, late), political climate (war, peace), cash flow. I like to start with a mini-rush: on homeworld buy first factory and colony ship outright, minimize Military and Social spending to concentrate on engine techs so I can redesign faster colony and constructor ships.

On new colonies, if I still have over 1000bc (I try not to go too far below this early on) , I buy a starport first and then on the next turn, if fiscally possible, buy the first factory. Buying the starport first ensures that in a blitz-defense I have defensive ship capabilities, even if I couldn't afford to buy the factory as well.

Early on, I tend to generalize a planet's tiles until I find some big ones that I can focus capitals on, or until I am sufficiently spread out from my core planets. During the initial colonization phase, I tend to not fill up all the tiles with future construction. I wait to see if the fluidity of the game dictates any needs.

On every PQ8+ planet I build at least one factory to expedite Social growth. Once all the other slots are filled I consider going back and changing the factory(ies) to suit the planet's needs.

On smaller planets, esp. those in a system with a bigger planet, I may forego the starport and just concentrate the planet on Research or Finance buildings, focusing them on one or the other.

One thing I have noticed in the very few games that I have played is that the initial colony "rush" phase has lull wherein I have let my populations recover. In this interlude I tend to concentrate on building other ships, like planetary defenders and starbase constructors.

Perhaps since early game sessions are spending my time learning the game, I have not really seen a dramatic shift in my strategies with the new patch. I have instead been formulating my strategies throughout/with the beta cycles. Version 1.1 certainly (as it was designed to do) made the "Rush To Victory" a more problematic. I also see that it makes me work my tax and spending sliders alot more. I have also taken a page from the Human AI and built ISB's next to my homeworld (not sure how much it helps), in addition to replacing structures with approval structures.

Sorry for the Ramble.

Cheers,
Reaver

I have never have thought that the commerce centers helped that much.

They do, you just have to research tech and build them a few stages. If you do that and build a couple commerce buildings on your planets (especially if you turn them into banks) you will be rolling in dough before long...but of course, you need population for it to really shine.

While it varies depending on what bonus tiles the planet might have, the basic cuurently is

Factory, Starport, Factory, Research, Farm, Commerce

and buying the initial factory. Beyond that initial list, it varies depending on available tiles, bonuses, and what I need. I'm only on my second game since 1.1 so that might get changed but it's what I'm currently using.

Playing through the beta evolution has "fixed" my starting strategy as well. Absolutely needing a population....or rather needing to moderate your expansion to maintain your population is an effective throttle. I live and die by those 2500bc anomalies during the beginning game. If it weren't for them I'd probably go bankrupt.

I always play on gigantic maps so I'm not sure if you can notice this on smaller maps.... the AI's never build a second survey ship. I'll try to research better engines and support modules fairly soon so I can send extra survey ships and collect an inordinate amount of the anomalies. 3 extra survey ships can rake in a lot of extra money and scout the galaxy at the same time.

By time my neighbors start building a military, my economy is almost even...that is not running as negative and it's only a few more turns before I start running a surplus.

Yeah, on getting your economy going, keep the people as happy as your budget can tolerate, get your pop. up, and research up the econ branch. All my decent quality planets get one happiness buiilding and one econ building and one farm.

i would say that on low PQ planets, we can't gain much profit from them. i.e., the cost of building entertainment centers and commerce centers give less bang for the buck compared to when they are built on higher PQ (like 10+) planets, what with the lower pop cap and all. Thus, I tend to let the low PQ planets to be my research outposts, since RP accumulate over the whole empire, unlike the localized MP generations. If I find the research buildings to take too long to build, i may build a factory first, and then the labs, switching between building the two accordingly, until no more tiles are left. at that point, i convert my factories to labs. of course, if i can afford it, i would by the labs outright and save me the extra step. I also ignore their happiness level unless if it goes really bad (something more likely when i set my tax rate to 80% )

I may still build a starport on the low PQ planets, but since they will take much longer to crank out ships, I would assign them to build low priority ships, e.g. ships that i plan to sell/give to another civ.

Also, for the starting home planet itself, i find the initial 24 MPs given by the civ capital is sufficient enough for the first few rounds (equivalent to having 3 factories and 3 xeno labs), and thus i would withhold factories and labs until a little bit later. My first building would be the entertainment center, which would allow me to crank the tax higher, and then probably the commerce center, taking advantage of the homeworld's high pop.

My first building would be the entertainment center, which would allow me to crank the tax higher, and then probably the commerce center, taking advantage of the homeworld's high pop.

Heh, my homeworld *starts* with a high pop, but after colonization it's usually pretty depleted, even with the new patch version.

Heh, my homeworld *starts* with a high pop, but after colonization it's usually pretty depleted, even with the new patch version.

i guess it's a balancing thing... one one hand, we can fully load our colony ships and give the new planets a good headstart at pop growth... on the other hand, we can partially load them, and have enough pop in the home planet to generate enuff income to offset the maintenance costs of the new colonies...

anybody wanna experiment with this?: save a game at the beginning, load 1 colonist each for a couple of colony ships, and colonize, take notes... and reload, do it with full capacity instead.

or perhaps pure math calculations would suffice... lets check out the formulae at galciv wiki.