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Jim48

Join Date 05/2006

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slider control - please flame me

I've noticed that I seem to start the game out pretty equally with the AI, but after awhile, they really out distance me in tech. Not sure why this is, but I'm hoping it's my sliders settings.

At the beggining I usually have social at 15, research at 25-30, military at 55-60, to pump out colony ships as fast as possilbe.

Later in the game I usually have social at 20-25 and the research and military equal. Before the shooting starts should I be putting my military much lower and pumping more into research?

Or should I be putting more resource units in tiles and not nursing my economy to full or what? Thanks for any mid-game to late game suggestions.

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I find it more useful to set the sliders to 22-23% Military / 26-27% Social / 50% Reasearch for the 1st year (maybe 2). Since you're mainly going to be building colony ships and building colonies, this can actually get very expensive too early in the game. Setting the slider more towards the research in the early game not only gives you a big head-start in the tech race, it actually SAVES money from being spent (at a higher cost) on the industrial side. Social is also key in the beginning, because planets need to be built up to a certain point before they start earning more money than they spend. It does no good to build 15 colony ships if you can't afford to build anything when they finally reach their destinations.

Once your first few worlds are up and running, and your economy is going strong, then you might consider switching more money to the military/ social sectors. Only when you're ready, (research, economy and industrial-wise) should you then switch the majority of the economy over to the military.

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I always set my military slider to 0%, especially at the beginning where I buy colony ships so that I can pump them out really quickly.

My research bar is also almost always around 50%, if I need to upgrade my infrastructure i'll go all social for 3 turns or so.

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I just keep the bars almost always at 33-33-34. I find this very usefull and ill be able to buy colony ships and it makes me alot of money.

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This advice is for difficulty up to Masochistic and galaxies up to Large.

My basic strategy is to buy 2-3 factories, turn the military up to 90% and make a colony ship on Earth on turn 3, 5, 7, 9, ... You only pay 104bc for each ship you build, instead of 1000 for each one you buy.

When I have built all the colony ships I need, then I go back and research stuff. Researching, say, Planetary Improvements is nice, but it can't let you build your colony ships any faster than one every two turns, and it doesn't do much to your research when the slider is at 10%. So it can wait.

Once you own all the planets within your reach, you can turn your sliders to a mix, build factories, constructors, research trade, but I think you have to go heavy military right in the beginning. 'Fraid I can't tell you exact numbers because when I research I research 100% unless I'm going to overshoot. When I'm done researching (eg Trade) I turn research off entirely and switch to military to build those freighters. I fiddle with the sliders all the time.

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I start with a high setting on my Research and I use cash to by my colony ships and the first factory on each new colony. I also buy starports too, as they are pretty cheap. also pump up the spending slider and tax slider as high as I can and not go into the red.

Don't forget to use the planetary focus control as well, so you can colonize a planet and set it for social building focus to start with.

Cheers,
Reaver

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Research at 50% (100% spending level) will get a player the first propulsion tech on turn one. With that a player can design a four-move colony ship. Planetary improvements gives +10 all bonus and is a high priority and is only three or four turns at 50% research. Another tech gives +10 to military production, another to social, another to economy. All of these techs early will help a lot more than a few more early buildings so keep research high until all these early bonus techs are gotten (about ten turns with normal research speed game option).

High morale, and a large economy with lots of research buildings are also needed to keep up.

Don't worry that much about the early colony grab. Fast colony ships are generally more useful than a bunch of slow ones. With a tech edge any enemy planets close to you will be yours very soon. A troop transport only costs a bit more than a colony ship...

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1. What does high morale do besides grow population fast?

2. If research is at 50% at beginning, what do you put military at to get colonies every 2 turns?

3. Set planet focus sliders at 100% social to get pop growth for newly colonized planets?

4. What is your planet layout for 10-12 tile planets? I usually have a starbase, 5 factories, and a morale tile. Put research on the rest of them? Of course i use fewer tiles for factories if I have good tiles to build in.

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Early game until you're done with your colony rush and infra build you will find better performance setting the sliders to 100% and 0%.

For the first few turns (about 4 or 5) set your research to 100% and buy your colony ships/research centers.

Once you get less than ~1kBC you will probably need to switch to 100% military to keep on pumping out colony ships, you will also want to rush buy some factories at this point.

Once you start hitting bad deficiets, and you run out of anomolies for your survey ship you will need to decrease spending to avoid going under 500BC.

However, you should still find yourself swaping between 100% research (when you need a tech) and 100% social to get your systems set up as fast as possible. Its also nice to keep morale at 100% until your planets have ~6-7billion people, that is if you don't waste time building morale buildings (which you shouldn't until you decide to make some cash planets).

The system is pretty much the same as in GC1. There is not really any good reason to split your spending until you just don't care anymore about min/maxing. You are better off getting your techs in fast, and then swaping to infra pushes to get your economy up fast, then switching to military (if needed) to get your fleets out fast.

Slow building anything just isn't really worth it, especially in the early game.

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1. Nothing. Well, if it's too low you'll get rebellions, but other than that it's just for the pop growth.

2. I don't put research to 50%

3. Pop growth has nothing to do with the social spending rates. Unless you're talking about building farms/morale buildings of course. A new colony should be focussed on Social until it has a couple of factories and a starport built.

4. All my colonies (apart from classes lower than about 8) have two factories and a starport. I'll then specialise that planet further depending on the bonus tiles. I tend to go for more economy worlds than research/production worlds. If I want somewhere to be my manufacturing/research capital, I'll build nothing but factories/labs to maximise the bonus. Otherwise I'll probably have a couple of economy buildings and maybe a farm + morale building.

Personally, my start up depends on the galaxy size. I'll always start by shifting all funding to Social, and build two factories on my home world. If there aren't many planets around, I'll then switch to full military and start pumping out as many constructors as I need, before switching to more sensible spending to try to catch up on research. I normally still manage to grab as many planets as the AI, but without bankrupting myself.

If this would take too long and leave me lagging too far behind on tech, I'll try something different. Firstly, I'll concentrate on social as before, but build three factories rather than two on my homeworld. After that, I'll be a bit more balanced with the sliders, but I'll focus my homeworld on Military. This won't give me colony ships as fast as rush buying, but it isn't really that noticable, and you save yourself a lot of cash this way. Besides, even if you could afford to continuously rush buy colony ships, you'll just drain your homeworld population if you send one off every single turn.

Whichever option I choose, I'll focus all new colonies on Social until they have a couple of factories and a starport. And I don't rush buy anything until I'm really rich. I'll keep spending at 100% (of course) and morale on my homeworld (and therefore probably the rest as well) at 100% to get pop up quickly.

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I start with 65% soc, 23% research and 12% mil.
I always buy my first factory on homeworld. I sometimes buy my colony ships. I sometimes buy the first factory on my colonies. I almost never use focus. Its a judgement call on the situation at hand.

I dont change the sliders (coz unused Soc prod goes to military anyway) until money is becoming tight and the colony rush (however far) is near done. Then its 20% soc, 75% research and 5% mil (or 0% if I already have enough constructors!). I grab techs that will boost my economy. Then I go for techs that can get me a cheap fighter quickly as possible. Sometimes I have to drop spending but it only takes a few turns to go right back up.

Then throughout the game I may have mil up to 50% for times of war and strife. Otherwise its on research like before.

For colonies of 10 - 12 I tend to build: fac, starport, fac, entertainment, fac, lab, bank, lab, bank, farm.
Sometimes I have four fac and one bank etc. I adjust if bonus tiles are available. ie. if I get a precursor mine I dont go for more factories.

I dont always build my Manufct Capital on my most productive world, sometimes its better to have 2 good prod planets instead of 1 great and 1 okay. It depends on the situation. For example I may only be building "tiny" fighters.

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It cost 10 times as much to buy compared to building something. So instead of buying colony ships, buy a basic factory on your homeworld and start building them. Don't waste money buying; save your cash for keeping your spending at 100% until your tax base catches up.

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theres some really neat tips for economy management (through the sliders and some colony management) in here.

What about some tips for beginner or so level? because I think I may start using that when I get the game for my B-Day in a few weeks because 'piece of cake' in the demo is extremely easy, I primarily use that level to fool around with the ship designer though.

and the main tip about colonizing is to never colonize planets below 7 or 8 right? unless its a stragetic location.

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It cost 10 times as much to buy compared to building something. So instead of buying colony ships, buy a basic factory on your homeworld and start building them. Don't waste money buying; save your cash for keeping your spending at 100% until your tax base catches up.

This may be appropriate, especially if you turn off tech trading, or have few anomalies. However, you are better off getting your colonies set up faster and getting your pop growing on them rather than slowing yourself down.

Essentially if you buy 3 or 4 colony ships (they should cost you around 1k each) and then switch to 100%mil spending to pump out more (if needed) you are better off than playing with less than 100% spending on any area.

During those 3-5 turns of rush buying you will have 100% research (and you should have bought one or maybe two labs) in which to get yourself +1speed and com techs (again if needed). If you are playing with tech trading its easy to trade your early techs for other early techs or cash to let you keep on deficeit spending longer.

I normally do this and after the colonization period I may be slightly behind in techs, but once I turn research back on I can pass the AIs easilly (playing crippling usually) as my population is higher and my infrastructure is more built up.

Now if you are lucky finding BC anomolies you can continue to rush buy social on your planets while keeping the research up at 100%, or you can rush some constructors if you have any resources you want to claim.

In GC time is much more important than money, and getting an early start on colony growth is well worth the cost of rush buying on proabably 90% of maps.

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Again, difficulty up to Maso, size up to Large.

I like the tip about turning your research up on the first turn. That means you don't have to take propulsion as a starting tech. Even if you build your colony ships, you can't get the first one on turn 2, so you might as well research on turn 1 while buying a factory on turns 1, 2, and 3.

I really can't see the point of buying colony ships unless you are losing races to planets. My philosophy is that new planets are basically worthless. It takes too much time and money to get them producing starships. All you're doing in the colony rush is staking out a position for the midgame. So settling a planet two turns earlier isn't worth paying for, unless you need those two turns to get the planet at all. Usually that's not the case for your first batch of ships, and your second batch is better speeded up by buying factories than by buying.

Nobody has addressed my point that Planetary Improvements isn't important to develop, because it adds just 2-3 research a turn on Earth and doesn't speed up your colony ships (they still take two turns). Again, your other planets are worthless. You might get one more research a turn or get your second factory built one turn earlier, but you won't get any extra planets or resources by researching Planetary Improvements. Better to keep military high and build one more colony ship or Constructor.

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This is what I do to out colonize the AI:

start off with max spending, 0% military, 50-60% research, rest to social.

Research up to Impulse Drive, Xeno Industrial Theory
Buy your first factory (duh), build another 3 or 4 factories so you can pump out colony ships in about 2 or 3 turns.
Build some happiness improvements, and adjust tax rates so home planet is always 100% happy.
Build one research center as well.

Once the improvements are done, switch to 0% social and adjust military so you can build colony ships in 2 or 3 turns, depending on how urgent the expansion is. The 100% happiness when enable you to keep your homeplanet at a sufficient population.

Settle planets outside in, but don't build any improvements!!! Construction cost a lot of money and you don't have a lot right now. The key is to let your colonies grow so you'll have a sufficient population to tax when you switch to build mode. Depending on how many planets you have to settle you may want 1 or 2 extra colony ship production planets.

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I generally do 30% Military, 35% Social, and 35% research - and I have never been behind in research to any race on the "Tough" difficulty. Having a heavy social base helpls A LOT, because it alows you to build your factories and laboritories quicker, giving you more output. Also, reasearch the governement techs as early as you can, because each one of them (starting with republic) gives you a blanket 25% boost to your economy, production, and research.

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and the main tip about colonizing is to never colonize planets below 7 or 8 right? unless its a stragetic location

My rule of thumb is to only colonize PQ 10+ planets, unless the system is of strategic value.

Also, in systems with 2 or more colonizable planets, don't bother colonizing the others at first (unless they are really nice planets), save them for later stages, or for influence flipping later in mid game.

All this really depends on the size of the map and the difficulty level. Smaller maps/higher difficulty make it more important to be efficient during your initial colony phase.

Cheers,
Reaver

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3. Pop growth has nothing to do with the social spending rates. Unless you're talking about building farms/morale buildings of course. A new colony should be focussed on Social until it has a couple of factories and a starport built.

I am confused about this. How do you focus your home planet on something like military or research while focusing new planets/colonies on social? The only sliders I've found are for all the planets. Haven't found controls for individual planets.

Thanks to everyone for the help so far.

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On the planet screen for each individual planet, at the top, where the Shields and flasks are displayed, there is a little icon next to each number. Click on that and that planet is now focussed on that aspect of your planet.

Cheers,
Reaver

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OK, I started a new game, and used some of the above ideas. Here is my situation....

I have 10 planets of 10 or better

Tax rate is 30%
Ind Cap is 31%

8 BC in the bank

1 research done in engines, no other done yet

Taxes 107 Military 18
Tourism 4 Colony Maint 92
Total 111 Total 110

Nothing built on any of the colonies
Oldest colonies at about 1 billion pop
Youngest at .5 billion pop

Anyone see anything wrong?
Now what do I do to get my economy going?
When does Colony Maintenace costs go away?

Thanks again.

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@smjjames I actually like the 4 and 5 PQ planets so I grab them too. I know the theory that the small planets will flip but at the start of the game it is handy to have a planet that you can stick 2 factories and a starport on and let it build constructors or small fighters.

Also you may be against a naturally loyal race so flipping may not be an option. People also set these up as lab planets, build a factory and 2 labs then upgrade the factory to a lab. No starport just research.

They can get bonus tiles too that can help decide in what to specialise the planet as. A PQ4 with a precursor mine will be able to build your bigger ships no problem, your other planets can foot the bill, I certainly dont want to overlook that!

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Hi!

start off with max spending, 0% military, 50-60% research, rest to social.

Research up to Impulse Drive, Xeno Industrial Theory
Buy your first factory (duh), build another 3 or 4 factories so you can pump out colony ships in about 2 or 3 turns.
Build some happiness improvements, and adjust tax rates so home planet is always 100% happy.
Build one research center as well.

You can afford such a slow approach only when there's either:
a) lots of planets per player available, or

AI is dumbed down (below tough).

If you start in a crowded universe and/or with the competent AI, your approach will give the AI big advantage. They will settle in "your" space, before you'll launch your second colonizer, reducing your race to a minor. Also, it seems that on AI levels above crippling they tend to colonize towards my race from the get-go, reducing the number of free planets even further. If you want to stay competitive, you need to start pumping out colonizers ASAP.

BR, Iztok

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If you want to stay competitive, you need to start pumping out colonizers ASAP.

This has been my experience as well on tough and crippling, large galaxies with 'common' as the default for everything. I have found that rushbuying your first 3-4 colony ships and saving enough cash to rushbuy starports (which are dirt cheap) and a starter factory on the first round of planets you grab makes it quite easy to essentially grab all the systems you can get to. Of course I also play with 9 AIs, so unless you really get a perfect starting locatin (I don't ^N ever) you will need to have your colony ships out and moving faster than the AI in the first 10 turns or you will have a planet deficiet to them.

I hate wasting planetary space on culture builds (other than the Resturaunt) and don't want to have to build influance bases in 'my' territory early when I should be building econ (or resource) SBs, so I don't like it that much when the AIs grab those small PQs early, though its not that big a deal as I can eventually invade them anyway, kinda like that sometimes, its like having a free tech depending on what direction you go vs. the AIs.

The one time I played with abundant settings (on a medium map I think) the rush buying wasn't as important as you have to switch to normal production quickly anyway, but even so, having those extra planets up faster (and with +70% to pop growth they grow to 1B pretty quick) means being able to send out 500M colonists from your second planet(s) earlier as well. It also means getting a jump on constructors for econ or resource SBs, which will just continue to speed your process along.

Frankly you have a bank of 5000BC to start, and you might get lucky with anomalies to add to it, there is little reason not to spend it quickly down to ~1k to get your economy going that much faster. By the time I'm either fighting debt, or having to turn down spending, I either have Trade so will be able to turn it around quickly, or I have 10+ planets with over 5B pop each, so its just a matter of speeding along some +econ buildings in the right places.

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@ Jim48

Ok, first off-start a new game.

Normal Difficulty, 7-9 races, huge galaxy, Abundant Anomolies, and select any alien race (try the Yor).

The FIRST TURN is actually one of the most crucial in the game, so pay attention..
You'll start off first with your first choice of research, go ahead and choose the first (and fastest) choice you're usually given (probably Xeno labs or Propulsion, depending on the alien race).

Next, your homeworld..
BUY the first factory. Set the others for 'Build' in the following order:
Factory
Factory
Entertainment
Trade
Lab
Lab
Trade

DO NOT BUILD ANY FARMS! Your Colony center is already producing enough food to support a 10 Billion pop.

Next, design 2 new ships. Use Cargo hulls. Make one a colony ship. Include a Colony pod, 2 Basic LifSup, and 2-3 of your smallest/fastest engines(as many as you can fit). Next, design a scout w/ a Cargo hull. add 2 LS, 2-3 sensors, and 2-3 engines (usually range is more important then speed since it can't find anomolies, but you don't want it to be too slow

). Don't forget to give them unique names, so you can find them quickly in the list.

Now, select YOUR scout and BUY it. Set the Flagship for 'Auto-Survey', and move the generic colony ship in the opposite direction (unless you just happen to find a 12+ PQ in range).

Lastly, go to the 'Domstic' tab. Set the taxes to 49%, Spend rate to 100%, Mil 20, Soc 30, Res 50.

Ok, NOW you can hit the 'TURN' button.

Next turn, set the ship yard to build your Colony Ship. Launch your scout, set it to 'Auto-Explore'. Keep an eye on the Approval Rating of your homeworld. if it goes below 50%, BUY the Entertainment Center.

Try to research up to 'Sensors II' as quickly as possible, and modify your 'scout' design to include a Survey Module. This will be your 2nd 'flagship/Survey/Anomoly Finder'. Get it out as soon as possible.(Don't forget to set it to 'Auto-Survey")

Try to locate at least 12+PQ (14+ if possible)planets first. Build in the following order:

BUY first factory
Factory
Starport
Factory
Entertainment
(If 14+, Farm)
Trade
Lab
Trade
Lab
Trade
Embassy
(Trade, if 14+)

Of course, you can alter this for your specialist 'Capitols'. If you find a super-PQ planet (20+), it is usually worth it to throw another Entrmnt and farm on it (watch your approval ratings, though..). I like to FOCUS on 'social' to help "speed up" construction until I only have 1-2 things left.

Don't forget, never build farms on bonus tiles. It takes too many entertainments to balance it out.

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I wouldn't follow much of that advice Rripperr. Especailly the bit about farms on bonus tiles. That's the only place to put them on your high PQ planets. On low PQ planets there isn't even a point to building farms anyway.

Its also pretty worthless to buy a factory first, or even to put any production into soc/mil for the first 4-5 turns.

Buy a lab, and set spending to 100% research to quickly get a couple of propulsion techs and UT if you have close neighbors (if trading is off then UT isn't needed at all really).

I also don't see much point in building scouts. Use your colony ships to scout with (and your flagship of course). The AI loves its scouts though, which is one reason why it sucks expanding often enough.

There is also no point in adding range to your colony ships unless you absolutely have to. Just establish colonies that allow you to expand your range in a sensable manner.

Of course if playing a custom race always take +70% pop growth and additional morale and sensors.

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