Alternative to Colony rush

I am a relative newbie. Just won my first tech victory at masochist level on large playing korath. I was about to start up another game when I had this sense of lethargy at the thought that I have to again go through this colony rush business.

So here is a suggestion for developers. Can we have a game option which provides a completely different starting point where all the civs have already populated most of the worlds?

If someone starts with say 5 civs then each one civ occupies about 18% of planets (actually tiles maybe better), plus minus 2%. The remaining 10% is unoccuppied. [After all these are galactic civs and are surely not restricted to one planet ]. Each planet occuppied may have pop of 0.1B barring home planet which remains 8B. Everything else remains the same.

This now means that the mad colony rush business is not so important. The remaining 10% planets will mean some element of rush. But now the focus can shift to building on ones strengths and exploiting others weaknesses in a more strategic and meaningful way.

I think this will make each game far more varied and interesting tactically.

I would love to hear what all the game gurus and experts have to say about this. I would also love to know what the developers have to say about this.

[have to go - starting up as torian on suicidal ]
9,248 views 7 replies
Reply #1 Top
If you want to try something different, don't bother with colony ships. Once I played a successful game where I didn't build any more colony ships after the first. I threw myself into research, and got to planetary invasion. I think I took out the Thalans and Drath before they even had defenders. The other races began to catch on, but I had caught up in planets by then, and already had a tech lead on weapons.
Reply #3 Top
Yep, that's my next game. My biggest worry is always alien influence, so most of my victories tend to end up being leader of a hegemony or subsuming other races into my Empire. By the time the big guns arrive, there's no one left to shoot at

I'm just not evil enough
Reply #4 Top
I agree. However my idea behind the suggestion is to have an altogether different game where no civ is into colony rush . Dont know if its do-able. Maybe there could be a campaign built like that.
Reply #5 Top
It would be fun if it was some kind of scenario, where the races could be given a balanced set up. Don't forget that the races have different advantages. A race built for expansion would be penalized by starting the game in that way, while a slower race with a production bonus would have an advantage.
Reply #6 Top
If you're not playing metaverse games, there is the Ctrl+L cheat which distributes all uncolonized planets among the major races.
Reply #7 Top
Oh. I didnt know about that. Does it merely allocate planets equally or is there some random distribution? Must try it out sometime. When does one use Ctrl+L? After starting game and getting to the first screen?