How to Play in Gigantic

Hi!

Simple: don't play in gigantic.

More seriously: there's a limit of ~200 habitable planets I can stand in a game. Anything above that kills fun, because there's too much micromanagement (MM) involved. All my gigantic games were rare or uncommon stars&planets, but I was still not happy, because it took almost forever to move ships from my production centers to where they were needed.


You need to constantly watch your economy: when your treasury starts vanishing rapidly (-500BC at 59% tax), it's already too late to stop colonizing. IMO -100 BC at tax level that makes 40%+ approval everywhere and with 1000-2000 BC in treasury is a sign to stop.


Gigantic maps tend to play less agresively, so you have more time to develop your empire. Take it, and do the task properly. Only when colonizaton phase ends for AIs, you need to develop some warfaring technologies to make yourself less attractive terget. You don't need to build serious warships until AIs start using engines on their warships: whatever they send at you before that, you can make awfully obsolete when it actually gets to you. Range upgrades you don't need so much, because the default range in gigantic is about 3 sectors, and there's a hard cap of 7 sectors. What you need in those wast distances is speed. And luck for avoiding "speed reduced to 5" event.

BR, Iztok

One example for what Itzok outlined is "Planetary Invasion". The smaller the map, the faster you want it to have because the smaller the map, the earlier the colonization phase is finished and the faster you get to enemy planets.

I have never played on GIG, so I am not sure how that would change things. The YOR Interdiction field thing that slows down the enemy doesn't work well in small games but may work well in a GIG or HUGE. Get something that boosts your influence dramatically and you can create a slow-speed buffer that your enemies can't just charge through. and it will give you a cushion of a move or 2 before you have to start worrying about your enemies.

Please, Iztok or someone with a better understanding of the game clarify what i have written and/or expand upon it. I have not been able to play very far on a HUGE because of my computer's memory, and my inability to remember how far into the game it is when it CTDs from mem overuse so that I can save.

GalenEvil

Different people play different ways when it comes to gigantic maps.
On colonizing some people will basically have a preset goal of how many planets they want to grab before switching to the next phase. They go for a quality over quantity approach. This way while the AI is still pumping out colonizers and grabbing planets that will be slow to develop you will have a core of well developed planets that are ready to build your military and the economy to support it.

I personally try to out colonize the AI and on larger maps it is pretty easy to do at all but the highest couple of levels. There is so many planets that you can usually have enough production planets to start your military build up while still colonizing.

The Economy is the biggest obstacle in your speed of colonizing a lot of planets. When you get a good feel for handling that the rest of the process will kind of fall in place. Balancing how you spend your money early on and for what is a big factor in how the rest of the game develops. If you break the bank and start bouncing of the -500bc shutdown point, you'll find yourself in a much bigger hole than if you pace yourself a little and let the AI run itself into a shutdown, and it will.
Hope this helps a little. If you run into specific trouble don't hesitate to ask, there's always helpful people lurking .

If your having issues with your economy, especially on gigantic maps, I'd suggest going Super Breeder. I've never had an economy crash early on me with super breeder because the most I colonize the more my tax revenue skyrockets with my population. That said I rarely use it (Super Hive is just to much of a draw when I go all factories, which I always do).

Beware Huge and Gigantic maps with low numbers of stars if your new to the game. Thats how I started out playing, these maps are less aggressive and you can get away just turtling for a long time. Your then promptly get your ass handed to you on a silver platter if you try and turtle on a medium or smaller map.

I would suggest you learn the game on medium, its avoids the extremes that means you have to relearn fundamentally latter.

I've been playing gigantic for a long time. Aside from dealing with the huge number of planets, it's actually an easier game. You have lots more planets to make money, build ships, and do research. Hehe, I'd probably get my behind handed to me on a small map. I'll have to try playing one sometime. I'm sure it will feel like a totally different game.

To answer the OP's question, you can stop colonizing when you feel you have enough planets to compete or you can stop when there are no more planets to colonize. Either way works. I tend to stop short when I feel I have enough planets to compete. BTW, I'm totally hooked on that super hive ability too. Thalans rule, hehe.

Have fun!

Super Hive ftw, though if I'm going all research I prefer Super Breeder by a very small margin.

I just finished a game as the Yor on Medium size wherein the Super Isolationist was the best super ability around. Having 19 move dreadnoughts against 3 move battalions of fleets gave me a much bigger advantage than I could have obtained any other way.

One thing that I do not like about the way that I play in general is that I am not aggressive enough and do end up turtleing by protecting my space with overwhelming force of 2 Medium sized ships. My Medium hulls kept myself from losing planets on Tough until the very end of the game, where the Drengin finally researched Massive hulls. They were not aggressive enough I think.

GalenEvil

I'm no expert and only played a couple of games all on gigantic. I found that in general a good # of worlds to colonize was between 8-12 provided they were of relatively good class. Any higher than that and the colonies seemed like more of a liability. Of course I guess that depends on star density and the likelihood of habitable systems. I also try to make sure that I gear my spending to leave me with +10 bc for every new world, since that's about what the new colony is going to cost you.

My biggest complaint about the gigantic map would be that I wish you could turn "dead" systems and worlds "off." After a while they just clutter everything up.

Even when ship speeds aren't that high, cargo hulls tend to get loaded with engines by the AIs. The yor ability is a LIFESAVER on smaller maps when 8 move per week spore ships are sent your way.

The amount of time you can spend colonizing depends a lot on your luck. If you totally luck out and get tons of money via surveying, you can run that deficit a long time. However, you need to keep your taxes low early on if you want to develop your tax base fast. I've never played a large map when planets were plentiful, but I imagine that taking your colonization in stages would be a very effective strategy, since spreading yourself too thin without spending some time to build the necessary infrastructure will kill your economy.

You must be playing on some sparse settings to only need that few a worlds on a gigantic. On a max abundancy setup in DL(475 planets on average) against four or five Maso. AIs I expect to colonize close to 100 worlds. I haven't played a gigantic DA game, but I know the planets count has doubled on it's gigantic maps, so I would expect to get even more planets. The settings you use may also explain why you see so many "dead" systems as well.

I tend to look to colonize at least 20 planets in a normal set up as i feel this gives me the best start without compromising my money flow. One thing to always keep an eye on in the initial stage of a gigantic game is your money flow and by this i don't mean looking at the lower BC figure, but the F4 screen. Looking at this screen you want to ensure you have more coming in than going out so you do not have to rely on the 1000BC anomalies. Instead i use the money gained from the anomalies to rush buy advancements on the planets.

One way i have found to make money faster and get into a positive cash flow situation is to only build one factory and then 4 economy buildings on a newly colonized planet until it reaches the 6 Bil mark. At this stage the planet can then support the extra productivity etc. Of course moving colonist to the new planet to supplement your initial colony does help this and it is a strategy i will use on certain planets (PQ20 etc).

On a gigantic map i cannot emphasize enough the need to get your economy going as you will need it! BTW if micro managing is not your thing then seriously look at the spore weapon technology as it removes the need to look after those poor PQ planets

Good luck in your quest

I allways play a gigantic map.

Just set stars and planets on lowest, with tight cluster and habital planets as common.

Then you get the two standard planets and no close up neighbours.

You often get good bonus on them too.

Set mines and anomalies at high.

Then you have alota space to discover!

I'd encourage a moderate compromise here between working towards a strong positive cash flow *and* ensuring that you can build survey vessels early and keep several of them steadily trolling for bonuses & cash.

During the colony rush phase (or phases, depending on how the DA map worked out) I tend to set myself a cash reserve floor (X thousand BC, X varying a bit according to what I can tell about the map). I run 100% production and work on my infrastructure and colony ships until I get near that floor, and then I lower overall production until I'm getting around 50 BC/turn revenue. Doing this plus keeping up survey work means I can often run at 100% for many turns and feel OK about a three-digit deficit.

p.s. I should probably note that I remain more interested in working for an interesting long game than I am in scoring big. If your goal is points first, listen to the folks who type decently and sport the massive Metaverse bling.

I always tech the higher forms of government and build the economy capital. As for the planets, I grab as many as I can which is still not very many, and as Drengin says, build market places(banks), it is also another thing I tech right away.

Political capital will keep your morale up so you can lower taxes a little less to keep 100% approval to get your pop up and running.

I don't concern myself with being able to defend every planet. I'll often sacrifice a few here and there for the sake of getting more later. Putting those ships on the hunt will usually get many more planets than the number lost by taking them off defense.

In my EX. i just try to avoied these big maps.
1. to much MM for me
2. i have the stupidest computer in the world
3. I don't have enough time in a day to even start geting in to these big maps. Thats why
I like to go small
4.Got to do somethimg better than sit on my butt all day and play games

P.S. I still sit on my butt all day and play video games but who cares

If you set thing up too sparsely, you may have to use starbases just to extend your range. I like all abundant at gigantic.

If you're not using super breeder, you can get a similar effect by putting all your points into population growth, morale, and economy abilities. With that setup, you can essentially colonize as many planets as you want without crashing your economy. It'll provide you plenty of troops and funding for subsequent conquests, too.

Hehe, I hear you man. Somtimes when I'm playing a gigantic map, I think, "wow, what a colossal waste of time." But, when you get those massive amounts of "stuff", it's pretty cool.

I'd like to play in immense galaxies, but there is simple to much micro management.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time when playing on gigantic galaxies.

I have been playing on gigantic for some time now. The setup I like to use is: myself vs 5 random AI races at the painful level - my games are set up with EVERYTHING random, no minor races, no special abilities, no events and trade on.

You can get into some really wild setups with the random mix. And, on painful, you learn real quick to tailor your strategy to whatever situation you are faced with (or you will surely die).

The #1 problem is to stabilize your economy as fast as possible - the AI has an economic edge at the painful level. The #2 problem is to expand as fast as possible without sinking your economy - for there is nothing worse than being attacked by an AI that has 40 planets to your 10 - he can throw half his planets at you while using the other half to continue his own growth and expansion.

Take advantage of all the abilities you choose for yourself at the setup of the game - they are your edge. What I like about the random mix game is that often you really have to scramble to adjust your initial master plan when you get to see what kind of galaxy you will be playing in. Random everything can make for some exciting games.

One ability I like at the gigantic level is the higher planet quality bonus - it is expensive and worth every penny. You have more tiles to work with and can throw a farm on almost every planet you own. The resulting higher populations fuel your economy via taxes, provide troops for your transports, and make your planets much more difficult to invade.

The important thing, however, is to have fun at whatever type of game you like to play.