Brand new beginner with all the obvious confusion and questions

Link

is a quite beginners guide, eventhough some of it refers to 1.0/1.1 methods that might not be relevant any longer.

Just remember that the game has many ways to play.

Most people agree that tech victory is too easy so you may want to disable that as you improve.

Basically get a feel for diplomacy and finance as these are crucial in the game. With an excellent diplomacy ability (research the diplomacy areas) you can trade for many techs and then trade the techs for cash.

My recommendation is to start a game at an easy level and then work your way up. At the beginning if you play on a smaller map size you should redesign your colony ships in the starport to add more speed and then buy the first one and buy your first factory.

If you play on a bigger galaxy then it is more important to buy your factories then build your colony ships.

Tax and growth. To grow you want to keep a colony at 100% happy. To do this you need to lower the tax and then make or buy social improvements.

good luck!

Link

Hope i've done the link right...

anyway, this is a good newbie guide, cant say I agree with everthing in here, but if we all agreed on what was good strategy we'd be robots!

many of the most important points are in here (or in comments), but just use it as a guide and figure out what works best for you - everyone will develop their own individual style with experience

Have fun!

edit: another thread with a few tips... Link

Well, I have more questions.

I started a new game in a slightly larger universe, after downloading and installling 1.1.

My old ships I designed don't appear in the game.

No core ships except the beginning ships, the freighter, and the first offensive ship show up, even though I am at least 3 deep and mostly 4 deep in every tech tree.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Might be just one tech that you have missed, thats needed to build .

Nope, I've check using a downloaded this morning edition of the Galactapedia. I have all the tech researched, that it says, for at least half of the core ships, but they aren't showing. I"m afraid you may be right though, and I have no idea what to do about it anyway, since there is no way to know what 'off beat' techs might be needed to get the ships to 'appear'. For sure though, all my techs are at least 5 deep now, no new core ships yet.

you shouldnt be using Core ships anyway. so it shouldn't really be a problem

For anyone beside a rank beginner, you are correct, I probably shouldn't be using core ships anyway. But I'm afraid not being able to see the core ships may mean that something has been hosed up in the installation from having installed 1.1 then 1.11 in the last 2 day.

Another abnormality I've seen is that when ship to ship battles are fought, I'm not getting the screen that should show up and displays the battles.

So is anyone else have 'things aren't working like they should be' moments since the 1.1/1.11 patches?

If you chose a different races ship design scheme, the ships won't show up. I.E. If you had Yor ships in the first game they won't show up if you are now playing with Terran ships. For the most part though, it is usually better to build ships as you go every game (although it is nice to reuse the same hulls sometimes, because you have them all awesome looking and such)

One thing that would help is allowing the AI to design ships more than once a year. That's the current limit as far as I know, and it can make it very hard for the AI to respond. Personally, I would favor allowing the AI to design new ships every 3 months.

I realize what he is saying, mostly because there are races that slide into that pitfall --not adapting their ships-- and lose because of this.

Ok.

A few things...

1) If you are not patched to at LEAST 1.2, or even 1.3(beta), you should NOT POST about AI shortcomings. The AI has been upgraded in each and every patch, and at this point, can whip my butt in about 5 out of 7 games.

2) If you DO NOT turn on Intensive AI (Allow AI to use extra CPU option somewheres on a beginning screen), then please understand that the AI is limited to updating ships once a year (52 turns)! I agree, that was ridiculous. But it was quickly(!) changed. Now, the Drengin will attack me with Missile with no defenses against my beam weapons/missile defense combo. The VERY next fleet to enter my sphere-of-influence has beam defense, with the SAME missile attack. This is within 3 turns, not 50! Of course, they may have just updated the AI to upgrade more often or based on need with one of the patches; but it was at the same time as when the intensive CPU was added.

3) If you DO NOT individually set each AI's intelligence from version 1.2 on back to the release version, there is a bug that will set an AI to completely dumb, or some other lower setting. Repeat: If you use the overall difficulty drop down, the game will set some AI to high intelligence, and some to low, to reach the level of difficulty you've set. Ever since 1.2 came out, and I read that from one of the devs, I manually set each AI player, and now I can barely win a game @ Painful. Not unless I get some resource bonuses and a mining resource or two.

I hope this helps.

-thefinkster

WTH, this was a post for a COMPLETELY different topic, and when I click "post", whammo, wrong forum message. BLAH!

Sorry for the OT post.

-thefinkster

One tip I found very useful when beginning on a larger map was to use population growth +70 as a bonus.

When you expand too quickly, and your population doesn't grow fast enough your economy and industry stagnate quickly. By having a huge growth bonus, you get tax bonuses and the ability to stock lots of colony ships early.

It helps me because I like to rush as many colony ships as I can and get all the good planets nearby.

Beginner tips;

Play your first couple games on one of the smaller universe sizes at a low difficulty setting.

Set your flagship to auto-survey first thing.

Build your own ships.

Jockey your your tax rates in Domestic Stats right from the start. Lower taxes increase reproduction rate (higher approval), higher taxes increase income (lower approval). Run spending at 100% as soon as you can you can afford it. Approval builders allow you to run higher tax rates.

Don't over-populate. Approval falls exponentially with population. I initially run one farm and two entertainment buildings per planet. However, there are different approaches and lots of debate on this aspect of the game.

The key objective in the beginning of the game is to claim as many planets as possible. Galactic resources are important too. Use your initial cash to quickly build your home world and get it producing colony ships. Factories increase building and ship production rates. Start with at least 4 of them. Galactic resources can be claimed by sending a ship with a constructor module to them.

Trade with the other races by setting up trade routes and by using the "Speak To" panels in Foreign Stats. You need to "discover" other races before you can access them. Trade routes are established by sending a ship with a trade module to a foreign planet. You need the "trade" tech first.

Watch your relations from Foreign Stats. Relations will turn hostile prior to a race declaring war. Trade and diplomatic techs help maintain good relations. Also maintain a level of military strength. Races will pick on you when you appear weak.

There are various ways to win. Military Conquest is the most involved and takes the longest. Try Military Conquest after you've played a couple games.

Ok, have fun.