Well, part of what makes it a strategy game though is the necessity of using different strategies. If your strategy doesn't work for every starting position, the solution is simple: don't use that strategy in every starting position. Use it in those for which you have plenty of high-class worlds early on. When you don't have lots of high-class worlds early on, you need to come up with a different approach to make up for the deficit. A given strategy (unless it is merely a collection of broad principles) certainly should not work for every situation.

The all factory strat has nothing really to do with the issue you describe. You basically describe the problem as one of either "bagging" four or more PQ10+ planets or not. The act of describing the problem in such a manner pretty much implies and dictates a fairly small galaxy. Clearly in a gigantic galaxy where you're going to colonize 50~75 planets getting 4 PQ10's more or less really doesn't make that big of a difference.

So what you're really talking about are *small* galaxy strategies versus larger galaxy strategies. In your example failing to colonize those four PQ10+ planets is going to make a similar difference whether you're going "all-factory" or "all-research" or a mixed build of both building types.

Basically all these strategies are simply planet specialization strategies where you optimize your planets for one thing but use focus to get the other.

Generally I've found that the larger the galaxy the more freedom there is to play substanstially differently.

But you still can play differently in small galaxies. If you get short changed in the colony rush then just rush to planetary invasion and conquer an opponent or two before they can put up any kind of defense. In this case the key is to research a key handful of techs before your opponent so it would be necessary to concentrate of research. This clearly would not go so well with all-factory, but in this case you might want to give all-research a try. Also nothing says that you can't rebuild your planets and do one thing at one time and another thing later.

Try building research early to get a jump on planetary invasion. Jump an opponent or two and then switch over to all-factory. The point of a strategy is have a battle plan to achieve victory. Often the first causalty of war is the battle plan, so what? Don't put blinders on just because your plan doesn't work. Simply change your plan.

In a large galaxy it's even less important if you happen to lose the colony rush. I often do so intentionally. I call it the quality over quantity method. The way this works is to let the AI's colonize all the planets they want and be selective about the planets you colonize both in quantity as well as high quality PQ. In this case you're counting on the fact that when you colonize many planets it will take you longer to develop these planets. With only a few high quality planets it's easier to get them productive quicker.

Again you would try to get to planetary invasion and a decent weapons tech fairly quickly but you don't necessarily have to get there that much quicker than your opponent. It's just that while he has a whole lot more planets than you do your's are stronger. You do need to attack and take him down before he can get his planets developed or you're in trouble but it's a legitimate strategy that works quite well and has the advantage of making the colony rush not quite so frantic as it usually is.

If you stop and think about there is a wide gradiation of things you can do in line with this from greater or lesser dependent on they result of the colony rush. While I do think you are correct in saying that your choices are more limited in a small galaxy, I think it's not correct to say that you should simply start over if you fail to win the colony rush. There's always something you can do.

Pay someone to start a war with someone else and pick off a planet or two in the confusion. It's surprising how cheap it can be to start a war.

I'd like to add that you dont' always have to rush to invasion if your colonized planets envelope the little ones you skipped. A couple constructors and perhaps an embassy here or there for a few turns can get you that world as well.

I'm not understanding your description of an "all-factory" game strategy. You say no research buildings in colonies, slider set to zero research, but then "planets focused on research." What do you mean by "planets focused on research"? If you play this strategy how do you move up the tech tree?

Starports build ships. You use the techs you already have, but no moving up the tech tree there.

If colonies build all factories, then no research flasks are produced, hence no moving up the tech tree there.

If the slider is set with research at zero, then it doesn't matter how many flasks you have there's no moving up the tech tree because whatever tech you are researching at the time, the time to gain the tech is "never." So no moving up the tech tree there.

That leaves "planets focused on research." What is this and how does it move you up the tech tree? Your colonies are on planets, but the planets themselves don't have any production or research capacities outside of the colonies, do they?

I'm relatively new to DA but I've ve been playing and winning games at the Normal level...am I missing something here?

Thanks for your reply.

Since I don't care about the metaverse, let me say that that's both ridiculous, stupid, and absurd, at the same time.

Is that in the right thread? Whatever the case may be, it is rather bizarre that one can still research reasonably well with no research spending and no labs. I'm sure it's not something the devs would have wanted to happen (it just makes no sense) but that loophole has been found and thoroughly exploited.

J.