Retire if you lose the initial rece for colonies?

That's a hell of a situation you got into.   On "normal" the AI is not at its best, but depending how many planets they have you could be in trouble. you can see how many planets they have as soon as your aware of them on the foreign relations screen. I think its stats then the misc. tab. Sounds like instead of the One city challenge of Civilization. You have the one system challenge. Good Luck.  

Well, you could work on strengthening your influence ability and send out constructors to starsystem of other races that are not connected to the main empire, as they seem to be easier to flip, atleast in my mind.

In your next game, perhaps attempt using ships without Colony Modules, so you can build several Hyper Drives, and a "Range Module" (Don't remember what they're called.)

TIP

It depends on how hard you want to work for a win whether you continue playing or not. On Normal you should be able to eventually win given a good strategy.

The influence strategy of TIPedersen is feasible in this situation as long as you continue to play nice with the other races (diplomacy) and keep a credible military force.

This is one of the few times I would also recommend some military starbases to help fortify your home space for when evil comes knocking on your door with fleets of frigates.

I almost got into a similar situation once, but was fortunate to gallup over to the far corner of the game area and grab some more planets before the other races.

Suck up to your neighbours, make friends, ensure that your enemies are enemies of your friends. That saved me sometimes, but only 1.5 planets is a bit tough I'd think.
Also use influence to try to capture other planets, that is possible without making other races too angry at you.

Was this a 1 one 1 game? If it was a 1 on 1 game and the planet count after rush is 2 to 30, I would say you have little chance and playing it out won't be much fun. If there were multipul opponents you could go the diplomancy and influence route to eventually win.

Also what you can do is save the "start turn" on a tough game like that and work on your rush strategy's. Try different things and see if you can get a better result.

Being stuck with only your home system does kind of suck, but with those settings against 9 opponents, no one is going to have more than a few planets. So I don't think it's hopeless.

But I wouldn't do what everyone else is suggesting. I'd go for a fast rush. Develop your planets with just the basic structures, then research planetary invasion. If you're fast enough, you can have transports and invade before your enemy even has combat ships. That will make up for your lack of colonization.

That's happened to me before. The AI grabs the planets nearest to you, and then when you're scrambling around for more, you seem to get beaten to each one by a turn or two. It can be frustrating, but I wouldn't say it's hopeless.

I've had successful games where I haven't built a single colony ship. Apart from using the first colony ship, I can go straight for planetary invasion and take quite a few worlds with transports.

PS Did you colonize Mars with your first colony ship?

Ok dont rush your econamy, you bought 4 ships a about 1200 bc, so thats 4800bc gone. Develop your own strategy, one that works for you.

Tip: Buy factories and econamic buildings and optimise your homeworld

Hi!

Can anyone suggest a strategy that might pull the game out when in this situation, or is it better to just retire and move on to a new game?

My before last game (gigantic, uncommon everything) was such: I started close to a corner, but with ~20 stars around. After visiting every single one I realized I was stuck with my homeworld. OTOH the AIs had much better luck, having at least 3 new colonies. If I wouldn't play Thalans with class 15 HW and wouldn't have a 700% research and a 300% production bonus tile on Thala I'd restart the game. So I tried to make best usage of that insane research my HW was producing, and after basic techs went after sensors and built 6 explorers to search for anomailes. Those did an immense job taking most anomalies and giving me ~12000 BC - more than enough for me to research medium hulls, harpoons, planetary invasion and allowed me to hold HW at 100% approval to max the production of pop for conquering Korx. After I took 3 of their 4 planets there was still enough of money left I could afford keping taxes low for additional 10 turns so those planets too had 100% approval.

An interesting experience I'd say. But I probably couldn't won that game without those two bonus tiles on the HW.

BR, Iztok

I never give up until I really do have nothing left to get, and am absolutely sure there are no good planets left. For example, I was out-colonised at the beginning of one game after choosing the wrong star systems, and ended up with my class 10 homeworld and a class 6 planet in a neighbouring star system. I was about to give up when I noticed one star system left. I sent along a colony ship and what did I find?

A class 18 with a Precursor Mine!

Won spectacularly in the end.

I hate colony rush...

Cant wait for Dark Avatar!

Lesson 1: Do not buy colony ships after the first turn. Buy factories. Focus your homeworld's spending on ships. Don't worry about social spending on anything yet, you can do that when the rush is over. Buy two or three factories typically, or less if you happen to get a nice production bonus tile. Only buy those factories and let the shipyard do what it can. It should get down to less than five weeks per ship in REAL short order.

Lesson 2: If you play a smaller galaxy, the first thing you do is hit the shipyard, get a cargo hull, a colony module, a single support module, and as many engines as you can strap on. Forget sensors, these ships aren't going to exist long enough to make them useful. You're not going for distance, you're going for speed. Get them to the next available habitable ASAP. Let the Flagship explore while its hunting for anomalies. A medium or smaller galaxy, and you can probably forget the support module, just get those ships to the nearest habitable like yesterday. Focus research on engine techs and keep those ships upgraded. Every new engine tech, you hit the shipyard and create a new version of your colony ship with the faster or smaller engine. Don't upgrade ships in flight, that just slows them down for a week or two, just have the shipbuilding worlds make the new version. If you think about it, sequence them like v1, v2, and so on, to ensure they'll be available in future games as you research techs.

Lesson 3: If you keep getting hammered in the colony rush, then saturate the area with more targets. One thing I've learned playing gigantic galaxies is that there's nothing common about common numbers of planets. In fact, it tends to be bloody sparse.

Lesson 4: When you launch your colony ships, if you don't see a habitable immediately on screen, then you work your way around your homeworld, sending ships to the nearest unknown stars until you find them. Don't get too linear in your exploration, you do NOT want your homeworld on someone's border. A small area empire that is thoroughly colonized is less a handicap than a spread out empire with a lot of other people's planets interspersed in your area of control (unless you like Influence fights, in which case, that's actually an ideal set up).

I am probably going to get flamed for saying this, but if you find yourself in a corner when you are starting, hit ctrl-N and get a better starting place.
Being even against one wall increases the difficulty of a game by 50%, Being in a corner makes it at least 4x as hard.
If you are looking for the ultimate challange, keep restarting until you are in a corner. If you are looking for a regular game, restart if you are 'cornered.'
Scincerely,
Scintor

PS I have won more than one game starting in the corner fyi.

I don't mind starting in an edge or a corner, so long as another alien race isn't sitting right on top of me... THAT gets ugly in a hurry. For some reason, the game seems hellbent on starting my Terrans with either the Drengin or the Yor up its butt...

I like starting against a wall or even a corner, as long as I have a bit of room. It is nice knowing you have a safe flank.

If I don't get enough planets in the initial rush, I restart. Personally, I just don't find the game any fun unless I have something to work with. I also never consider the military option.

The number of planets on Common seems to vary a heck of a lot. I have had games were everyone got 4-6 planets, I have had one game where the Altarians got 6 or 7 planets, and the other 8 of us has 2 or 3.

Another way of coping with the rush is to start with a race that has Ion Drive. That's the Drath, the Yor and the Korx. You can also create a Custom Race with Ion Drive. I've done that recently, although I have not used them yet.

Finally, for those that play on Tough or below, I played some Painful level games recently. If you think the rush is bad on Tough, it's horrific on Painful. I swear the AI does cheat. How else can it sends ships to worlds through my space when I have not seen a scout or survey ship of their race?

The end of the rush is one feature of Dark Avatar I am really looking forward to, perhaps my favourite. However, I can't help but wonder whether it will just change the rush from an insane colony ship-building strategy to an insane tech race AND colony ship-buidling strategy. Probably not, but we'll see.

This happened to me the other day!

Luckily I had a few bonuses and I managed to get 1 other planet so I had 3!

My strategy, which somehow worked, was to get plenty of trade going with my neighbours. Also, like others have said research influence. Then I researched planetary invasion pretty quickly and conquered some minor races. If you don't have any minor races you should definitely conquer the weakest (near) civilization!

You have to be a bad ass to win from this situation. Since I realised how to do it sometimes I don't even bother with the rush and just go medieval in space

I haven't tried this with 1.4 but one thing you can sometimes do is switch to 100% science and go for planetary invasion techs before switching to 100% military. I've won several games this way on Crippling.

Yea I tried that out yesterday too. It's funny taking a homeworld away from your neighbour, then they have no population and are completely screwed

Although I haven't mastered the strategy yet - I need to work out how many research buildings to buy, how many factories to buy, what level of engine to research up to, and generally other stuff that will make it work!

Also if you play the Drengin it's pretty much impossible to do this because they have ships so early.

Well, the majority conensus seems to be either (a) give up and go on to a more enjoyable game(Scintor, ras1310)or(b)try concentrating on influence and diplomacy while rushing planetary invasion (TiPerdsen, Tertulian, Biggy Boy, nullspace, Evil Muppet, r02778, 7th circle).

In my limited experience, I don't mind being put in a corner. In games other than the one in question, I havent found that starting from a corner necessarily handicaps finding habitable planets to colonize. I agree with ConQuesci - it's nice to have your rear and flanks protected.

Evilo Druid, it was a 1 on 4 game.

Evil Muppet, No I've at least progressed enough to have figured out to not colonize Mars until there are absolutely no more habitable planets to find.

I like the suggestion of saving the game repeatedly and coming back to saved games to try new strategies. Seems like a good way to learn.

The thing to do about Mars (or any other grotty barely-habitable world) is, if you have time to produce one, make a short-range coloniser without adding anything. When you see a colony ship headed over, launch your in-system coloniser. It'll still get there before anything coming from out of system, assuming you spot them (a couple of scout ships cover this contingency).

Hmm... I like being against a wall. A safe flank is a wonderful feeling, and thought it may take a LOT longer to win, it's not nearly as bad as having four computers gang up on you and realizing that there is one on each side of you. I once played a gigantic map. The Drengin and I (Terran) were totally isolated in one corner of the galaxy. That was ugly. He jumped me militarily, but in the end I hammered him technologically. (It always makes me smile when I've been losing a war and then role out one single battleship that the enemy can't beat...) Anyway my philosophy is always play the game to the bitter end. Even if its a lose. You learn more that way.

Most of my games are limited to 'Earth' and "Mars' or equivalents. That makes it easier to keep your economy balanced. Even easier if you don't take mars.

Forget the planetaty rush thing, that will just piss every one off and make life hard.

Forget the influence gambit, that will just piss everyone off and...

Research Trade, Planetary Invasion and Speed.

Utilize Russian winter. The first race to declare war will have a huge fleet with nothing to hit. You will build a small (number of ships, not size of ships) quick fleet that runs around behind them and steels all their planets in 1-2 turns. You will now have more planets than anyone else

ShuShu62,
To reveal my ignorance - What is "Russian Winter"?

I you are referring to my strategy, that wouldn't be ignorance, it would be intelligence, because it was a strategy post that no-one read.

If you are talking about the strategy the Rusians used to defeat the French in 1812 and the Germans in WWII, then there is a learning opportunity.

The russians continued to give ground to the superior forces of the enemy. It allowed the enemy to aquire territory, but nothing else. No people, no crops, no resources. The enemey overextended and was then caught in the Russian Winter without supplies and sufferer attrition. At the same time the enemy is weakening the Russians strengthened. Onec the odds shifted in favor of the russians, they counter attacked.

There is a similar approach in Galciv. The only assets of value are planets, Resources, and Freighters. The Galactic Privateer protects the freighters and you won't be sacrificing many resources, so as long as the enemy cannot take your planets, all you are conceeding is space.

Although the enemy won't suffer attrition, you can leverage superior speed to marshal your resources until you are strong enough to counter attack. When you counter attack, go for his planets, not his space.

The AI could counter this strategy if it managed its transports better, but the AI is fairly ununtelligent when it comes to managing transports, so Russian Winters are highly effective against it.