Very basic rule-of-thumb strategy guide

Also get sensors quickly and build some survey ships at the start to explore.

Customize every ships, including the colonizers, and add engines to them. Even the regular constructor gets better with some engines.

a great reading on this topic is Intellekt's post on the following thread:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=347&aid=131866

scroll down to reply #28

I always rush the econ techs. That along with one farm per planet (and around 4 or so econ buildings) means that I blow away the AI by the mid-late game.

I have to respectfully disagree with your number 4 point on population. Increasing your population above the initial 6 billion will generate more taxes and provide more soldiers for invading enemy worlds - and for defending yours.

I like to build one or two farms per planet above PQ 5 (it's a waste of a tile on 5 or lower because of the PQ pop cap) depending on PQ. There is a 'hidden' morale bonus for planets of PQ 11 and higher, so on planets that will cap out <= PQ 10, I build one farm and one morale building. For PQ 11+ planets I build two of each.

The killer with building two farms is that you don't want to get above 18 billion, which is where morale really starts to tank, so you have to go into the planetary governor and turn off auto upgrades once you have gotten to intensive farming. You may not plan to research advanced farming, but you might accidentally get it when invading someone else.

It's kind of a pain, but the payoff in tax revenue and invasion power makes it worthwhile. I usually do this with all of my colonized planets and any that I capture early on. Once I get to the late period of the game and I'm invading planets constantly, I just try to get a single farm and morale improvement started on new planets to avoid the auto upgrade hassle.

I really rather wish alternate strategies were as viable in this game, I really do.

They used to be, in v1.2 and earlier. You could get planets over the "morale" hump and have 100 billion populations - then they nerfed morale and farms   

Then you should be building the new Food Distibution Centre now instead of that second farm. With just a 25% increase, that would put your population up to 17B with a single advanced farm and the initial colony. 25% of 7 for the farm and 6 for the colony would only add an extra 4B to your population, making it about right for your limit.

...and the economy, and now diplomacy is dead, too. This isn't a whine about my favorite strategies going down the tubes. I enjoy changing my strategy and finding new ways to play the game, but I have to agree with you that it seems that alternative strategies are being squeezed out of existence.

Even though I could mod the morale, farms, and econ if I wanted to, the completely gutted diplomacy system is not moddable. I feel as though the game is being slowly manipulated until the only type of game left to play is one of constant military action where all of your neighbors will eventually declare war just because you are the human player. DA kind of reminds me of the Total War series now.

I think this worry about having too much farming is getting a little out of perspective. The idea behind having less farming is because you can use the tile to plop down a Stock Market instead. But if there's no difference in the # of tiles you use, what's the big deal? It's not going to make-or-break your elections. Build a Xeno Farm for 60bc and go 2 billion over, who cares?




I don't think that's their plan. I think they definitely want a peaceful path. But what I do think they're doing is, they find out what we do to win Suicidal, and then they band-aid it so you can't do that thing. That's not the answer. You make the game more challenging by improving the AI, not by eliminating all the players' strategic options.

Here is my strategy for a new game on Huge Galaxy on Suicide and with 5-9 other major civs. Note : I always reset the map until I have a good set of stars around me and im not next to the drengin . I also always have pretty much 100% approval through out the game and I get tons of rebel colonies joining up by mid to end game..see it does pay to be good guy

1: Research new propulsion
2: Build colony ships as a fast as possible and send them out and upgrade as propulsions become available
3: send out flag ship to hunt down anomalies as fast as possible
4: Now I use the planet/ship panel to find the highest " unowned" planets in my area and I send my colony ships to the high quality planets right away .
5: At first I am pumping out factories and labs so my colonies get built faster and my research gets done faster.
6: I keep all my colonies at 6billion people until at least mid game ( even the huge class 26 worlds ).
7: I don't even bother building warships I just use diplomacy to keep the potential enemies at bay until I get get my worlds really making money and producing people .
8: I only use econo star bases and usually only along major trade lanes because influence pisses off to many races and military is not that useful .
9: If money starts getting tight build economy tiles . I research to stock markets pretty early on .
10: Go after those alliences and economic treaties it is vastly more profitable to have major tourism on your worlds then you will ever make from trade ships. I usually making 5-6000BC just from tourism alone by the end of the game .
11: By the end of the game I have at least several alliences and when a civ starts getting tough I can usually buy or trade techs to get ships and weapons quickly as I am research them myself .

I usually win by influence or alliences but occasionally I just crush the enemy especially if they start making my colonies defect with influence star bases !

Well, the fact that the most likely way to be successful in any game is to 'colony rush' (The rush is a common tactic in alot of videogames, zergling rush, etc) and then just sit back and the rest of the game becomes alot easier.

Even with the new planet types the colony rush still seems to be the most and possibly only viable tactic.

It'd be interesting to see some alternatives. I mean, really, I'd think it'd be cool to construct lots of habitats in space or colonize asteroids or think up something creative whenever I lose the colony rush. That or a be a wheeler dealer diplomacy master or something. It's just a bit frustrating that the rest of the game is heavily depended on the first couple turns.

Yeah they said the colony rush is not so important but it seems to me the AI researches techs for colonization pretty quickly and before you know it they are in your back yard . Really sucks when you get a kind of section of the galaxy but half the plants belong to your neighbor which usually set up influence star bases sooner or later . I personally would rather have my complete maybe smaller portion of the galactic pie then share it with a bunch of alien scum ...

Colony rush isn't so important when playing Korath....

So true

I have to admit, sometimes it's hard to be anything more than a military juggernaut. You have to have such a large military to keep the rest of the galaxy from whaling on you, sending them over to whack a neighbor isn't that much of a big deal.

Also I wish they'd un-nerf diplomacy. Just because the AI is dumb in diplomacy doesn't mean you should take it away. It means you should make the AI smarter. I think it'd go a long way if they separated "trade value" and "research value" or something. That'd help things like the AI giving away their entire portfolio for a colonization tech.

At the same time I'd like to see them up how much you get for ship sales - generally when I build a fleet of ships to pull a black market and sell, unless someone is so far browbeaten that these would be their only ship, I'd get more credits for just deconstructing the stupid things. And that's with all diplo techs, super diplomat, and the galactic bazaar.

I don't know that colony rushing is the only way to start off the game. If you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with no planets in sight, the only way to salvage the game is to build starbases pronto to get to the good planets. Colony rushing won't help you there because the good habitable planets will most likely already be taken.

If you only play the game when you're in the middle of a fat clump of planets, then sure, colony rushing is always the right thing to do.

Games wherein you're "boxed in" or halfway the galaxy to the nearest generally habitable planet isn't unwinnable. It's just a bit more difficult and played somewhat differently.

If you want a change of pace, select for games in which you're placed in a vareity of awkward positions. The game plays radically differently then.

I am in agreement in a way. I don't necessarily 'mind' that the devs are attempting to keep this game rolling in the replayability factor, sometimes though I wish they would leave certain things alone, like the stock markets as they used to be...  among other things. However, I believe that part of making the AI 'better' involves what tetleytea is saying. The way I see it, the devs are not eliminating the players' strategic options, they are enhancing the AI to both analyze what the player may do, and possibly even emulate what the player may do. They can't improve the AI without 'showing it' what the human player is capable of doing.

One word that will do wonders to how much you own the AI completely and utterly:
Propulsion.
I can't stress the importance of propulsion technologies enough. It lets you do everything Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Obtaining Warp I while still in Colony Frenzy is a game winner in and of itself. Later on, military ships with speeds in excess of 10 will prove a much more effective means of patroling your space, since you don't need a lot of them to cover a large area. Gone are the days of churning out small hulled single-engined planet defenders. One 10+ speed ship per sector is enough, and if one can't fend off an invasion, your improved mobility means that you can muster atleast 3 and at most 8 more ships to defend a given sector within the week.
A word of warning: the Propulsion ability bonus is NOT worth it, too expensive for too little. Those 5/8 points are better spent in Research and Economy, even Military or Social Production.

I disagree, at least in part. It depends on your map settings. If you have research set to very slow, it may take years to reach hyperwarp. But in the early part of the game you can build ships loaded with weapons with no engines or just one ion drive and still manage speeds of 7 or so, while the AI is struggling with speed 3-4. Even in the colony rush, if no one can get to warp drive quickly because of the research settings, you have essentially given yourself a huge advantage in the colony rush/anomoly rush... and if you can get a good setup in the first year, the rest of the game is just cleanup.

On faster research settings, I agree with you. Generally I find that being faster than the AI is always better, its just a matter of what you are willing to trade to get there.

Playing this game is a bit like going to prison - if you don't kick someone's ass the first day, you'll spend the rest of your time there being someone's bitch.

Basically once you get all the habitable planets around you, and you have all the basic Xeno techs (xeno reserach, xeno entertainment etc) you want to start thinking about invading someone. Researching planetary invasion takes about the same time as researching one of the colonisation techs, and it has the bonus of taking an already fully developed world and stealing tech at the same time. Obviously the best targets are minor civs, because they have a massive homeworld and won't put up much of a fight. Be wary of attacking the Drath or the Alterians because they will often call other civ's to their aid, also I'd avoid getting into early skirmishes with any of the evil races because they usually get powerful much earlier. Good early targets are Terrans, Krynn, Torians, Korx - usually I can invade them before they even have defensive ships.