Well, I suppose if you bought each colony ship as cheap as possible, using one of the per month options you could build that many, but you'd be in debt in no time. Not sure how otherwise, unless he bought and built all factories and was just pumping them out.

I just checked his stats again, and he was running into the red, but he was still bringing in 4x my amount in taxes and had twice the research spending I did. And this with a morale of 67%. I have my tax slider up to just where my morale goes into the red, at 45%, yet there's no way I could possibly build ships that fast. Even buying my ship on credit would be impossible at that rate of expansion. There has to something wrong here, I just can't see how it can be done.

Please, you´re doing it all wrong.

Colony ships FIRST. I rush at least 3 to 4 colony ships, with enhanced engines and sometimes life suport systems.

5 explorers? That is just plain dumb. Not even if they had survey systems in them, something that takes time to discover.

Build 4 to 5 colony ships first, then you may consider building one explorer with the survey ability. An explorer without survey is just plain useless.

First off it is possible. Most expert players would say the Krynn are actually a bit behind the colony rush but that's something different . Just because you cannot at this stage replicate the AIs performance simply means you've got more to learn about the game .

If you finance colony ships you can get 2 or 3 straight away. The AI tends at times to not fill them all the way so you may want to check the population of those planets. Also the AI rush builds a star port on new colonies. Meaning once it has 4 or 5 colonies it can quickly double that to 8 - 10 simply by building colony ships again.

I'm sure the AI has cropped spending somewhere else to make up for its research budget. Unlike a novice human player the AI adjusts its economy on a turn by turn basis. (Conjecture of course and dependent on the difficulty setting). Just 1 5000 bc anomaly and you can easily afford to crank out another set of colony ships. Heck even a few 500 or 1000 ones can do the trick.

Remember the AI has no fancy tricks up its sleeves. It plays with the exact same rules and constraints as you do. Certain AIs are written to be aggressive and other more passive.

For the record scouting with a colony ship in general is better then a normal scout for one simple reason: When you find a good planet you don't have to then wait for the colony ship to arrive .

Krynn get a massive moral bonus, so when they tax people they can tax them to death while they are still semi happy, there is one source of income in that.

Well I discovered part of my problem. I've been setting up 5% towards Espionage right from the start. This last attempt I decided not to. Not only am I able to produce more colony ships, but my research is way ahead of where it used to be. I was having problems before keeping up in that area, but now I'm ahead. I should even be able to put more into Military spending to speed up my expansion. Espionage certainly eats up your revenue quickly. Obviously it's not a good idea to invest in it until your empire is more or less established.

That's not what I'm seeing, they usually have a higher research expense than I do. I'm usually falling behind them fairly early. I can usually keep up only by trading, and then only with the minor races, thanks to the new changes. I quite often have to give up three of my techs for one of theirs.

Yeah, I usually do. So far though my games haven't lasted long enough for me to get them. I'm either quiting in disgust or figuring I can do better. With this new patch it's like having to learn the game all over again.   

Over all though I like the new tech trading. A bit on the extreme side, but definetly an improvement from vanilla. Negotiations seem like a bit of a challenge now. It was way too easy before to gain a wide tech lead strictly through trading, the AI was practically bending over backwards to give me their techs. I really have to work at it now.

Belanos, why not come join us in the High Command Hegemony. (shameless plug!)

Always plenty of people to help you out here on these forums and our own,

WWW Link

You'll fit right in, and of course we are the largest and fastest growing empire in the Metaverse, and we will be number 1 very soon!

Against the computer is all it is. The difference between Meta games and normal is that with the Metaverse the rules are the same for every one. No mods are allowed, and your scores are uploaded to the Metaverse. You don't have to join an empire, but if you do all your scores along with others of your empire are tallied and that gives you the rankings.

Long story short....
1) you play against the computer just the same as normal,
2) your game score is uploaded to the Metaverse,
3) no mods, just the standard game, a level playing field for all,
4) you are given medals based on your achievements to show off your progress.

Have a look around, most empires have an empire thread on here, and some their own forum site for empire members as well. It's a community in it's self with alot of competition between the empire's, especially the top 3.

Check it out and if you decide to play in the Metaverse we'd love to have you...

I'm using mods so I guess that counts me out. Nothing major, basically just some things from the example mod that came with DL patch 1.2, and a few tweaks of my own. I'm not much into competition anyway, unless it's against the Thalen. Man those guys bug me!   

This reminded me of something totally off topic: I once started with 2x +300% and 1x +100% to... FOOD production Somehow my fingers slipped to CTRL-N right after that.

when i start i slide my spending to 100% right away. i try not to rush ANYTHING if i can help it... maybe a factory if i really need it but for the price of a factory i could play several extra turns at 100%. doing this i can pump out colony ships about ever 3 turns once i get my factories built, wich doesnt take long at 100%. AND YES i do build 1 or maybe 2 scouts first. basically i can build a scout in 6-7 turns while its still like 20 for a colonyship. so while im waiting for my factories to finish up ill build a few scouts and get them looking around first. this realllly helps once i start pumping out colonyships. since using this stratagy, ive been playing on tough and painful, and ive had no problems with the colony rush. infact normally i out colonize the AI! I like playing on either Large maps with sparse spread out stars, so theres alot of space in between, or medium maps with abundent stars/planets/habitables... both ways i seem to out colonize the AI. Since i always play with max population growth points at the begining, my economy seems to come up into the green nicely right around the the time my account dips below 1000. only once have i had to go into the red, thus lowering my slider below 100%. It really helps being able to keep that 100% spending through out the game. i remember befor i read this tactic in the forum. i used to rush alot of colonyships and would scew over my economy early in the game. i was ALWAYS out colonized and even if i made it to mid game, it was always a rough uphill battle trying to get any respect from other civs...

just a thought. hope this stratagy helps.