Well I usally play on Large or Gigantic maps amd max the Minor races and Major races. I always play with the Tough setting (everyone is suppose to be even.) In fact I have never played on any other setting even in my first game. Now the only games I seem to win is when I either play the Federation (My made up Civ)or the Terrans. Seems that when ever I play an evil race I get killed pretty quick. I have noticed that the AI seems to build a lot of coloney ships early in the game to the point that it seems like they are cheating. My last game by the 5th turn the Terrans which boarder my space had 4 plantes and 8 coloney ships. I had three planets (barely) and attempting to mass produce coloney About 10 turns to produce unless I buy them stright out. And if I just bought them I'd be broke in no time. However the AI seems to have no problems with money. I have seen this happen in several games with different AI opponets. Is this normal?

I think it is pretty normal. If it's any comfort, even on Suicidal the AI can colonize itself into such a deep financial hole that it can't recover for a good while...Usually about 200 planets plus or minus 30 depending on the race and assuming it doesn't take a break for anything, like a war.

If the economy is tough in Dread Lords, it's brutal in Dark Avatar. I've played a few gigantic/abundant games in DA and barely manage to colonize at full steam. I keep approval on the bleeding low edge and build lots of survey ships right away. Those cash anomolies keep you out of the red until your economy gets going. At first, I don't build much other than a few labs when I come across bonus tiles and a few ship building plantets. I don't do any major building until I've got an economy going and I stockpile anomoly cash for the hard-times. I put all my bonus points into morale and population growth and use the Federalist party for its economic bonus. The espionage system in DA gets expensive pretty quick and it's not optional. That keeps your cash tight well into the latter half of the game. The colonization techs are also rough. You need them right away and they're expensive.

The AI seems to be affected by these factors as well. They expand at a much slower pace in DA than DL. In a gigantic/abundant Dread Lords game, I'm usually done with colonization by the end of the second year. In DA, colonization can last well into the 4th year. Also, there are a lot more habitable planets with DA.

In both games, the AI has always been better at building colony ships than the human player. You just have to build smarter, not more. I've played a few games on Suicidal and totally get railroaded by AI colony ships. They come flying out like gangbusters. It's good though. That's how the AI challenges you and that's the way it needs to be. They suck at fighting so they need to be good at *something*

I am thinking it is a genetic throwback left over from Galciv1, since it was in Galciv1 and the minor races did actually highly value star systems in acordance with what the event states.

I guess in the process of making planets worthless in DL, they did not change the wording of this event to somthing like "they are particularly interested in 'not' obtaining starsystems".

Well that’s a relief. I thought that I was doing something wrong. Because no matter what I did, I could not match the AI's speed in colonizing planets. And it seems that the AI is faster on learning Tech as well even when Tech training is turned off. I experimented with this last week. I started a Civ (Borg - the have the Tech and creative bonus) and had Tech trading on. At turn 3 I made contact with both a Minor (Paulo sp?) and the Terrans. At that point I checked both civs tech and they were about even with mine. I set production as high as it would go on my 2 planets and set Research on 100%. It sure seemed like I was learning tech left and right. At turn 10 I check both civs and they had doubled the amount of techs that I had and some of the tech they did have was expensive when I checked my Tech tree. Terrans and Planetary Invasion which when I check my tree would take me 58 turns to learn. Now something is just not right. My setting is on Tough so if the manual is to be believed then that means the AI gets no bonuses as far as difficulty level is concerned.

Hi!

What was your tech speed: very slow? I'm asking because IIRC Planetary invasion NEVER costed me such an amount of time. So either you have very weak research, or you have below average research and the tech speed was very slow. Those "left and right" techs could be the most cheap ones. Those (for me uninportant) ones, that once I turn my research to, are finished five per turn.    Well, in all my games I tend to be heavy on tech site - it's significantly cheaper to fight quantity with quality, than the opposite.

AIs are known to trade tech 1-for-1, not 1-for-many like live player has to pay. Humans also have very high starting diplomacy, so they might just bought that tech from some other less diplomatic-savvy AI. In games I played with tech trade ON, I quite often saw most AIs has after some time almost all tech equal. Now I play with tech trade off, and it seems that this hurts AI significantly more than me.

BR, Iztok

The Tech speed is set to normal (I have never played n any other speed)
Every game I have ever played in the Planetary Invasion has always been one of the most expensive (usally in the early rounds it starts at between 110 and 60) I don't usally get it until towards the end of the game. Now you said that you can research multipul Techs at a time, how do you do this? I can only research one tech at a time. Is ther a way to select more than one to research?

Iztok is right, I think it should be faster. Looking back and reading your post though, you are checking this very early. Also, the AI shouldn't have planetary invasion techs on turn 10, they usually they don't have planetary invasion until after year zero has passed. I tend to expect the AI to out research and colonize me through the start of the game and then I start to catch up later as I build more planetary infrastructure early than the AI. Eventually it pays back dividends. It is worth doing a couple of games where all you do is play the first three to nine months to try to optimize your colonization.

He is getting the multiple tech thing due to tech overflow. I get the same as well. If you decide early on that some techs are not critical for your success and you ignore them completely, you will have beginning game techs to still research late in the game. When you finally do go back to them, your research capacity is massive compared to the amount of RPs necessary to get the tech (think about a couple of hundred planets researching beam weapon theory). All the leftovers flow into the next tech in the chain. You have enough left over to complete that tech and so on, until you finally run out of RPs several techs later. You can't pick where the overflow will go, but you can predict it.

Indeed like Purge pointed out, it might be you're starting this research too early.
But how many "technology buildings" (whether it's a xeno research lab of some kind or a technology capital) do you have when you start researching that tech?
I usually don't bother with anything that takes above 20-25 turns to research early in the game, then I'd rather grab some quick technologies that will boost my economy / production / research before starting that tech.

Hi!

Bellack, we're talking about game feature that has been made possible pretty early, probably Dread Lords 1.0x patch. But if you're playing some old non-updated version of DL, then it's obvious you can't know anything about that.

BR, Iztok

I apparently have a bizarre playing style, because I don't run into the economic problem you're having, or at least not to the same scale. I play a custom race, medium economic bonus, no morale bonus. Instead, my points went into tech, soldiering, population growth, and PQ. (IIRC, I don't have it open in front of me.) I also tend to specialize my planets far less than the norm. Nearly all planets will have factories, and all will have starports.

As someone previously stated, do NOT put all factories on your homeworld. That's the economic equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot, but higher up and centered Instead, build a factory or two, two morale buildings, and economic buildings. Design a custom ship with small hull and a colony module, then crank 3 or 4 of them out. Colonize the first few planets with these, then focus your homeworld on social to finish the buildings. If you really like to micro, on the last turn of each ship you can usually focus social, or turn the military focus off. It buys you a little bit of progress toward whatever you're building from production that would nomally be wasted.

On your first wave colonies, build 2 factories, a lab if there's a bonus, a morale building, and a starport. By the time the starport is done, the population should be high enough to start building colonies from here, leaving your homeworld to increase it's economy in relative peace.

For technology, I start by running up to diplomatic relations, then getting the first factory tech, then the first economic, xeno medicine, xeno entertainment, and from there it varies between games. Trade is completely ignored as an income source (a freighter costs more that early than you could possibly recoup from it in a year or two), but the RoE is necessary.

Other important notes: I play on painful with maxed everything and 7 major races (9 starts you too close to other people). Never put 100% spending into anything at the beginning of the game, I personally choose a 20/20/60 mix and leave it there until I run out of tech to research. Trade goods and other one-off buildings are absolutely vital - very useful for you, but worth even more to deny to your opponents. I usually pick one or two high PQ worlds with at least a 3x manufacturing bonus and crank these things out in 20-30 turns each.

Whatever you do, do not rush to xeno ethics on this big of a map. The various bonuses you can get from choosing evil options during colonization are worth far more than anything you get by declaring neutral (it's been so long, I forgot what bonuses you can get from being neutral). If you choose to go neutral, do so after most of the colonization is done.

A year or two into the game, the economy does go south. Rather than adjust production, simply accept a 200+ bc loss per week as long as possible, then sell tech, trade goods, and anything else you may have to as many civ as you can to prop your economy. Rarely is it necessary to go through more than one or two selling sprees before the economy rebounds. The alternative is to go dark, let your treasury fall until your production shuts off, then alternate a productive turn with a dark turn. Only do this if you are likely to get serious cash in the not-too-distant future.

The major problem with this path is the severe lack of military. Keep an eye on your diplomatic relations, and bribe the two or three most belligerent civs into attacking each other. It's not uncommon for me to have minor civs ranked higher than I am for most of the game.

I do have the latest patch. I have not encountered this tech overflow that you speak of yet.
As far as starting building I usally put in a 2 or 3 factories, and Labs to start with. I at first always built a farm first (thinking that it incresed the amopunt of POP you get a turn) until i found out that all the did was increase the Pop cap so I usally wait until I almost hit this before building a farm.

That is a problem if you want to invade planets, because instead of getting valuable techs from the AI, all you will get is the crap techs you skipped. You should at least trade for the skipped techs, as many as you can get before invading any worlds.

I put all factories and a manufacturing capitol on my home world first thing. Then I build a few labs on bonus tiles as soon as I come across them. If you get those survey ships out there quick, it's not a problem. For the first few months, I think it's better to get ships out than concern yourself with economy. That falls into place once you get enough planets and population.

It would be better to save those factories for planets with factory bonuses. I like to have new planets in key locations on the map up and running quick smart to pump out more colony ships. Also i like to save my manufacturing capital for any planet that gets a starship bonus.

Hi!



Just with these few sentences you told everything:
1) you don't have the kind of galaxy and oposition that would force you to do the colony rush faster, so
2) you expand too slow to have econ problems.

To see the situation I've faced, crate the same galaxy I did in OP and put in it 5 ultimate AIs (suicidal game). Now play for one game-year and check how many colonies will go to the AIs and how many you'll have after the end of that year. If you survive that long. After the test you'll understand why against suicidal AI building a colonizer each second turn is woefully slow.

BR, Iztok

I will do some trading with minors for whatever is available. But in general, I find it's more important to get the invasion rolling asap before the balance of power shifts. I've found there is a sweet spot for hitting the AI early that I simply want to get to as soon as possible. If you do it right, you can sweep multiple AIs during that window. Especially during that first war, when I'm taking on a bigger foe who can outdo everything I can, I want as little delay before the start of the war as possible. One I knock him back, he is never coming back. Then once I'm on the second foe, it's not such a big deal since I'm usually going to hit at least twenty planets in a couple of turns. Even on a large map, where things aren't quite so extreme, I find I can take more planets than the AI has techs to steal. I'm sure it's more important the smaller the map. But even then, you'll get cases like my current game where no one has gone beyond laser I, while I'm currently working on quantum torpedoes III with a window of three turns. I could clear big chunks of the laser tree, but why bother? I would rather be a turn or two closer to Positronic II. Both of the two remaining AIs are missiles as well, and I'm well ahead of them...

Hi!

This statement made me try something I haven't done for a long time: to play Dread Lords game once again, for the first time the suicidal difficulty. So I ran DreadLords 1.5 at friday's evening and generated quite some galaxies to get approximately the same amout of planets me and AIs had in the game in OP. Players also had to be distrubuted evenly and have about the same amount of planets around HWs. I also created a different race, more suitable for colony rush: Torians with default 25% morale and added 30% econ and 70% growth bonuses.

After playing about two years into the game I can say the quoted sentence is VERY correct. In the DA game from the original post I've been at the end of the first year so broke as never before. I this game I've bought 2 colonizers and one constructor, at the peak running -800 deficit (500-600BC average) at 19% tax and 100% approval, and still having 9000 BC in treasury. The game actually never felt like suicidal, but more like Dark Avatar's masochistic one with a sub-average start.

The main differences, that made me feel so, were IMO:

• significantly better money amomalies. Each 2500 BC anomaly means I can buy 2 more colonizers, or run my empire at 100% approval for 5-10 turns longer.
  In the game I had quite some luck with them - IIRC I found 2 or 3, with quite some of 1000, 750 and 500BC, a total of about 13000BC.
  
• 70% starting growth bonus. In the colonization phase my HW never went below 7.5B pop, despite I've sent with each colonizer 500M pop.
  
• about 40% better economy - the built-in difference between DA and DL.
  
• significantly lower cost of colonizers: in DA my main colonizer is cargo hull with 2 ion engines for speed 3 (4 with Impulse tech), that costs 145 BC. In DL my speed 5 cargo colonizer costed 110 BC.
  
• many AIs overextended, and colonized planets with very low amounts of pop - the most typical were Yor, that virtually exploded, their colonizer zipping all ove the galaxy at speed 7 and range 5, but carrying as little as 18M pop. They get into my far backyard taking class-19 planet, and also a couple of small ones, incuding Toria IV. After a year, when I started a war with Yor, most of these planets were still below 200M, never paying for themself. In DA those tiny colonies would grow significantly faster, because of the added random 0-4M pop each turn.
  
• quite passive AI. Maybe because they were all more or less overextended, but I've not seen horders of drengin's ships invade space of their victim, like there were in DA, and I'm not talking about SuperDominator corvetes here. I incited the war between Drengin and Yor, but despite both had mighty small hulls (attacks in range 20-60), those ships almost never moved out of orbits. Both of them had lots of planets undefended, their warfare reduced to mostly sending troop transports to those planets. I've seen one particular planet changed hands 3 or 4 times. It looked almost like pop-drop tech trade in Stars! Only after I've almost eradiced Yor, I saw the first drengin's fleet going into yor's space, destroying defending ships over one planet, and completely ignoring ships over the planets 2 and 4 sectors away.
  
• 500M pop colony module probably had not so big impact as I thought first, because of better (default) growth rate in DA (no more 3.5%, but 4-7%, with 0-4M random pop and with 10% bonus from the Xeno Medicine).
  
• only one planet type to colonize. In original game Drengin already had toxic tech, while I've been still struggling with colonizing normal planets. And if Drengin had toxic, what else had others? No way I can take all planets in my space, because all my resources go into colonizing, while for AIs and their 5-times suicidal bonuses colonizing means just a small side expense.

While I've been playing, I also made some other observations.

All-factories approach seems to work well for large games, as it allows a player to quickly build ships, and also infrastructure on planets. But the tech lag is horrible, at least for me, as I've regularly beaten AIs in tech race in any game I played. If not in every field, then at least in key-techs. In this game I admit I haven't researched weapons beyond the very first level of all three branches. I simply couldn't afford to dedicate research to anything that would not directly help my empire, especially because most AIs had lots of undefended planets, and I had good tech for troops and about the same amount of pop as three biggest AIs together. If any of them would start a war, I'd take at lot of their planets before they'd manage to strike me. So I fought my first war only with troop transports, without any yor's ship destroyed. Only alfter I got Graviton driver II from invasions, was I able to start producing ships to conquer other planets with defenders in orbit. But until the latest invasion on the last yor's colony was the Graviton II my best weapons tech. Imagine my frustration seeing Drengin using Disruptors, and researching Subspace weapons, when I'v been using outdated attack-3 guns. Now I know how my AI's victims felt when dealing with my tech-superrior ships in old games.

The other problem with all-factories approach was I could not increase my research output on most planets any other way but by building more or better factories. However this either goes on the expense of my financial output (replacing econ buildings with factories), or significantly crippling the development of the newly-gained planets, because there's no possibility to use older designs of factories first. On a cluster of my manufacturing planets I've built 12 starbases to support my main ship-producing planet, but each new starbase costed more, so in some turns I could't afford building one (my econ 6000 BC, costs for a SB 2000 BC).

Another problem arrives when planets mature: it's hard to afford building ships on every single one I have, so some run with empty queues, but the focus on the research. Now how would one call 75% of industrial production lost? In this phase the all-factories, compared to all-labs, runs terribly ineffective. But all-labs has to survive until this phase...

To conclude: those of you who still play large games with Dread Lords, be prepared for serious financial and other problems when you move to Dark Avatar. Economy is brutal there.

BR, Iztok

I normally just turn those planets into big cash planets, and a few for industry.

I've been unable to keep my economy moving if I put too many factories on worlds under DA. The only way I keep from going bankrupt is to start each world with:

- one bought factory,
- the Starport,
- one lab,
- everything else but one is a financial building,
- and then, finally, a farm.

I then have to push to Stock Exchanges, at least Republic, and the first Morale-type research item. If I can find enough cash anomolies to survive until that point, I'm OK.

Under DL, I could survive with a balanced approach (building- and research-wise). Under DA, nope.

First, I assumed you meant gigantic maps, not large (is that even an available size?) For some reason I read it as "largest" map, so that may be part of the problem. On a gigantic map with abundant everything, I can easily get out of the rush phase with 80-100 planets, so it sounds like you're a couple steps smaller than that.

Admittedly, playing with 7 painful opponents is not the same as 5 suicidal ones - in economic terms, it's about half. But I thought my experience was at least somewhat relevant. As far as building a colony ship every two turns, I actually go slower than that - at least until I have a few colonies able to make their own colonies. So the first 15-20 turns turns go slower, but then I start putting out several ships a turn over the next 20. Suicidal goes faster than that, but it can't be THAT much faster, can it?

As for not rushing fast enough to have econ problems, on a gigantic map it's darn hard not to. Part of why my start seems so slow is that it is slow- intentionally so. I've found it's better to have a smaller, stable empire to start with instead of the largest possible collection of planets, most of which lose money for the first year anyway. Better to pick your area and stick to it, colonizing it thoroughly so you will eventually pick up the occasional AI planet from influence. The alternative is to spread yourself too thin and risk losing your own planets to influence.

One strategy I've used is to get weapons tech relatively early and build a picket line facing your nearest neighbor with the smallest, cheapest ships you can get. Simply blast the incoming colony ships before they can reach a planet. This can go on for dozens of turns before armed colony ships show up, even longer before real warships arrive. This works on painful, which theoretically has the AI at the highest setting, so suicidal AIs may not react quickly either. Anyway, it's something to try.

Random thought: If you were intended to survive the attempt, why did they call that setting "suicidal"?

Well i am still playing DL and it is quite impossible to get planitary invasion and population for transports before the AI has superior fleets. Although i will sometimes attack an AI early on if it has planets inside my territory - in which case i am usually suprised by how easily they fold. That is on Masochistic level, however i usually boost the intelligence of the Drengin to obscene but havn't ended up close to them at the start so far.

i typically play on a large map... not nearly as many planets but just a thought of things you can do to keep your economy running.

choose a few planets to be income planets, farm + markets- relatively cheaper to fill w/ these improvements.

micromanage by shutting production on some planets while building on the ones that need the infrastructure to turn it profitable.

I used to do it in DL as well, but I have to say I think it is actually a little easier to do it in DA. The big difference is that there are more research choices that I can choose to avoid in DA. For instance, I don't research any of the planetary environment techs and focus on stuff more important for a first war...Very fast tech helps here as well, since it's a touch easier to gap out ahead techwise when narrowly focused.

Out of curiosity, have you ever managed that at suicidal with "very slow" tech speed?