What am i doing wrong

I used to play DL allot, but after playing it for 200 hours i got a bit tired of it and moved on to another game just to return later on.
Well now is the time and i can say i totally s*ck at this game now.

I'm used to play at crippling level, even in the early DA game.
Now i am playing painfull, 7 AI's, huge galaxy, latest DA (beta 1), i believe i have extra CPU for IA option on and i'm yor with most of my points going into economics and moral.

Well they grab planets way faster than i do, when i have 25 planets they have 50. but i cant go faster, i go bankrupt. There economy is way better than mine, like twice as much and i cant figure out how.

I start the game by building a few factory's on my home planet to make construction go faster, and grab the nearest big planet who also builds a few factory's. Now i have about 1 new ship in 2 weeks. The first 10 planets i grabbed i started to build into economy planets right away, the next 15 (who were all smaller) i didn't build right away since it would cost to much money.
my initial 5K BC are now up, my income is not to much, my colony maintainace takes up about 60-80% of my income and i need to either lower my production slide bar or turn taxes up a notch wich will bring my morale to 50%. either way here is i believe were it all goes wrong.

In several months i have a decent economy and builded most of my planets, the AI now has way more planets, has militairy, has decent research already and twice my economy.
As i said i used to play at crippling level and win, but now i cant keep up with the computer, what am i doing wrong?

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My tips - take them for what they are worth - my experience only.

In DA, the aI is much more intelligent than DL. You may want to drop a level or two until you can learn some of the differences in the two games.

An all out colony rush is not a good strategy in DA. The economy is a lot harder to manage, and approval is harder to get.

The pace of the game is much slower due to engines being nerfed. You don't have to worry so much about the aI getting fast ships soon - they will spend all their research time the first 6 months researching Extreme Planet techs.

I only rush buy a factory now if I have a bonus production tile. Instead, I'll rush buy Markets to improve my cash flow.

I now make sure to keep my approval at 100% as long as I can. I used to send out 100 colonists at a time...no more - I almost always send out full 500 colonist ship now to get my pop to grow faster.

I don't worry about outpacing the aI in planet numbers. I play medium maps - and am happy if I get 5 8+ planets to work with at the start.

I build colony ships on small hulls - 660 BC is half the cost of cargo hulls. I can rush buy 5 ships for half the cost.

I don't worry about putting starports on my new worlds right away. I only rush buy ships at my HW the first 3 or 4 months.

I'll keep my research set to 80 to 90%, my social to the rest, and military at 0%. I'll focus on military as needed; since I am rush buying it does not matter.

I want to get as many early Econ and diplo techs as possible. I'll only research an Extreme colony tech if I see a close by Plum planet.

I try to get to Republic within the first few months - and Star Democracy within the first 8 months - the economic benefits are huge easrly on.

If I play with abundant anomolies, I'll try and get to Sensors 2 quickly and rush build a second and perhaps third survey ship. I can usually get at least 2/3rds of the anomoliers on the map this way. and get several hundred or thousand 'free' credits.

I don't worry if I drop below 0 in my treasury - once the rush building phase is over. I'll then deficit spend until I get close to -500, then put my taxes up high enough to get back in the black quickly. I;ll sacrifice pop growth for a few turns - but never let it drop below 30% so I start to loose pop. Pop is too important.

No military the first year. Only colonizers, survey ships, miners or constructors.

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thanks for the reply man.

i think i have to disagree with one thing, about the AI people allot slower.
i have another thread on this forum, i checked out some of the AI movements and they had 12 coloships after like 10 turns. read the other thread for more details.
its insane how fast that ai was going and i'm only at painfull, i should be able to keep up with the AI.

also, some of your tips are really usefull, i am going to try them out.

here is my other post:
WWW Link

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