Well, I've decided to write an AAR while playing my first actually challenging DA game.

Stats:
DA v1.5

Large galaxy
Difficulty: tough
Common habitables/planets/stars
Tight clusters
Common asteroids
Common abundant
Normal tech rate
Random # of minor civs
Tech trading off
Mega events/Super abilities on
All victories on

Custom race: The Ghouls


I go with speed for the help in the colony rush, pop growth and morale for the effective economic bonus and to be able to have a decent tax base early on. The federalists will keep me from an early economic death spiral. As far as techs go, having up to ion drive will give me a clear speed advantage.

For my opponents, I pick the Torians, Altarians, Terrans, Yor, and Drengin. Since I plan on going neutral, that will give a nice 2/2/2 split between the alignments.

The galaxy starts out laid out like this:

(Look at the minimap).

The Yor and the Terrans both appear to be pretty much screwed over; the Yor are (quite fittingly) isolated from the rest of the galaxy, while the Terrans have the Altarians between them and anything good. I'll have to squeeze between the Torians and Drengin to get to that main cluster, which could leave me fairly vulnerable. Alternatively, I could stay content in my corner, grab what I can, and attack the Torians for lebensraum. I'll send some colony ships to the NE at the start, and commit to one of the alternatives as the game develops.


June 1, 2226.



Off to a decent start here. My homeworld had a 100% manu bonus, and 2 each for approval and influence of the same magnitude. Nothing great. I rush bought a couple of factories and started churning out the colony ships.

My initial forays were to the NE, but there's not much in the way of habitable planets up there. Without various extreme colonization techs, I'll have to be content with Mars, the other planet near my homeworld, and the one up in Torian space. That one will have to be defended, and I'll build a morale building or two on it to try and prevent it from flipping. It had a 100% manu bonus, so I decided to make it a manufacturing world. If/when I invade the Torians, it'll be a good stepping stone into their territory.

My planet in the SW was an excellent grab-700% manu bonus and two 300% rsch bonus tiles. I bought a factory on the bonus-I'll use that to build my labs, and eventually make it my tech capital.

Off to the west, my planet there is nothing special, but it's next to a PQ19 heavy grav world. Once I get there, I can use that to pay for the rest of the empire. I found two anomalies that each gave me 25% progress on my current tech, which is how I finished Extreme Colonization fairly early.

I've been running at low enough taxes that my new worlds are at 100% morale, with the homeworld in the low 90s. Once I've got my empire established and pops up, I'll jack taxes and rake in the money. I've been at full spending, with a 50/25/25 distribution, but more of that will be going to research to grab that PQ19 world.

Overall, it seems like I'm doing decently-I've got a powerful industry, the eco's only losing roughly 80 bc/turn, my pop's at 20B-pretty good for early game, with only 5 worlds. Yay Super Breeder. Any comments/questions/suggestions are welcome.


NOTICE: I'm heading over to my mom's tomorrow, so this will probably not continue til next week. Sorry.