Colony ships, etc

from GalCiv2 Forums
EDIT: Note: This is almost entirely with regard to DA, as I have not yet become fully enamored with TA, as well as the fact that many DA strategies will have their place in TA.

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I've been playing the Thalans almost exclusively in DA (haven't settled on a favorite yet in TA, but it's looking more and more like everyone's favorite will probably be the Terrans, though that's a topic for another discussion), and while I can remember what colonizing was like without Super Hive from my DL days, ships (in particular, engines) were less expensive there, so it wasn't as much of a worry.

My question is, for those of you who don't play Super Hive, how do you get colony ships out the door fast enough? And, for you, what is "fast enough"? Even in tiny/small maps, you'll need a couple of them, though I guess depending on planet abundance (or rarity, as it were) you could just outright buy any you might need.

It's not -as- big of a deal shipbuilding on the homeworld, but I find that without Super Hive having (any, even one or two) frontier worlds build colony ships is A) slow and B) expensive.

I'm tempted to give Super Breeder a try, but I just don't want to give up my Super Hive.

Thoughts?
strategies
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my sandbox games, I don't have a colony rush, so of course there are no colony ships. But for campaigns, I design a single Ion-Drive powered 'Basic Colony Ship' and a faster twin Ion powered 'Colonizer'. Keeping Approval at 100% for population growth, I build these colonizers only from my base world and kick them out every 3-4 turns at maximum military production with no focus. 3 turns for Basic Colony Ships and 4 turns for Colonizers.

On the turn just before a new colonizer is completed, I turn up research spending as high as I can without delaying my shipbuilding, and keep playing the ol' spreadsheet like this for each ship, trying to fork out the last BC worth of production possible.

I just leave new colonies blank, until I've expanded to my limit. Then I research for at least getting Research Centers, Trade Centers and Factories followed by a social production rush to get my colonies built.

Some of the best players here, like Wyndstar, appear(as far as I can tell from AARs) to buy a lot of stuff and expand/research until they go broke. I don't know if that's whats needed on Suicidal, so colonization may be different up there. I just keep approval and spending at 100% until my tax rate hits 0%, my population and buildings are complete, or I've got less than 200 bc left. Their advice is obviously going to be several times better than mine.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How do you not have a colony rush in your sandbox games?

Sorry, can't help but be curious. Seems you'd need at least a couple.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
...and more like everyone's favorite will probably be the Terrans, though that's a topic for another discussion...
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They're not going to be mine.

My question is, for those of you who don't play Super Hive, how do you get colony ships out the door fast enough? And, for you, what is "fast enough"?
End of quote


I've played each race in TA atleast twice, probally more, so I'm probally on the list of those whos played Super Hive, but I'm going to answer anyways.

-I ussually build factories and increase military spendings to get my ships out the doors.
-My "fast enough" is 1 ship from my home world every 3-4 turns.
-For the Thalans I've been spending points into military production, and building starport on recently colonized planets to help feed my colonizing demands.

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I hope this helps.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I appreciate your input, DivineWrath, particularly on how fast is fast enough for you. I've been looking around the forums a great deal for quite some time, and somewhere in the vicinity of 3-5 turns seems to be the average value. I'm just not sure how much weight to give most of those posts, as plenty of them are fairly old. Personally, anything more than two turns for a colony ship feels like a waste, to me. As an aside, yes, this is with normal factories (not basic, as Thalans, among other races, start with Xeno Industrial Theory in DL & DA).

However, I believe you may have missed the point, and perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I'm looking at colonizing as it pertains to DA. TA is another beast entirely, and while what I can learn from DA will help me there (more so if the Thalans i.e. Super Hive remain[s] in quicksand in the early game), DA is what I'm concentrating on at the moment. I've edited the original post to reflect this.

Especially with regard to your last point, it seems your advice is primarily for TA. My apologies if I'm misreading that. That does seem like a good way to get around the (current) lack of early Thalan factories in TA, though. Will have to give it a try. The inherent military bonus helps that as well.

While not entirely the subject of the thread, I'm also curious what your favorite TA race will be, and why; I'm very interested to see what people are playing as if not the Terrans.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

How do you not have a colony rush in your sandbox games?

Sorry, can't help but be curious. Seems you'd need at least a couple.
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Rare Stars
Rare Planets
Rare Habitable Planets
Tight Clusters
Huge Galaxy

You send the one colony ship that you start with to the other habitable planet within your home system. After that, there are no worlds left to colonize. Just empty space with some stars and some asteroid fields.
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Currently, I'm playing the Milky Way galaxy with the Terran Alliance. Since it's a custom map(not affected by settings), there was obviously a colony rush in it. I took 7 planets(apart from Earth) in a successful rush and then purchased 16 more planets from the AI races, for a total of 24 planets(the Krynn were second with 7 planets at the time). Surrendering AIs in the midgame have given me 4 more planets for my present total of 28.

See, whenever an AI colonizes a world, you can go talk to them on the very same turn and buy off the planet for ~1000 bc or some useless tech like Beam Weapon Theory. Being a Super Diplomat(Terran), I have a severe advantage in doing this. I bought more than twice as many planets from the AI than I actually colonized.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm just a beginner, but in my current DA game I'm playing as the Thalans on a small map with 5 opponents (down to 4, now :-) ). The star/planet occurrence rate was set random and ended up pretty sparse.
The Thalans don't get a 2nd planet in their own solar system and I was boxed in on all sides by the other civs. My colony ship wandered around, but there were no nearby habitable planets! Very frustrating.
I ended up pumping out a few colony ships from the home planet (with lots of factories) and sent them off to the far corner of the map and found a few good planets.
Anyways, one trick I used was to research propulsion technologies until the colony ships could go from 2 moves per turn to 3. This helped a lot in beating other ships to the as-yet-uncolonized planets area.