tips on managing huge empires?

Short answer: With a LOT of micromanagement.

Longer answer: I will pick a few choice worlds that will crank out ships and actually focus on those. A lot of the others I will queue up a lot of building (stock markets, farms etc) and forget about them until I get the report that xxx built something, and the next build is "nothing", then I will go to that planet and see if anything else need be done. As for ships I will usually use the governor function to auto build constructors or warships or whatever it is that I need

If you dont know already, you can go to the tab on the bottom that brings up the colonies/timeline/governor page, and click on the colony tab. From here it will give you a list of all planets, what they are building, what ships they are building, what the focus is on, the approval rating, pop size, and several other things. Its helpful to say the least.

I favor gigantic maps, but with a bit fewer habitable worlds than the true scoremonsters around here like.

When I have more than five or seven worlds finishing their build queues in a turn, I use the Colonies tab to add more projects to the incomplete worlds and check focus and/or Starport settings for worlds that are finished with tiles for the moment. If things are quieter, I just click the green squares on the main map to do the same thing.



IMO, the basic rule here is that The Map Is The Game. If a world has major bonus tiles, you have some thinking to do. If it is smaller and has no bonus tiles, you should probably make it a money farm, but you should think twice about that if the world is in an active or possible combat zone. Small, unremarkable worlds off the beaten paths are best used as tax farms.

Large, bonus-rich worlds that are also in the thick of things are likely to be your drama points. They'll help you win a region in some long wars, and make you seriously regret your failure to be more defensive in others when your enemy takes them and uses the infrastructure to slap you hard for your sloppiness.

I actually use the opposit advice as given above in larger games.

In smaller games, specializing you planets and micromanagement of planets is a great way to go. I on the other hand I love giant games where it is common for me to have an empire 200+ colonies by the midpoint of the game. I have found the only way to manage such a large number of planets effectively in a timely maner is to standardize your building cues.

I have a standard formula for what to build that is the same for each planet. What gets built is only changed by the planets size and rescources. What I lose in specialization, I make up in bulk.

I use the colony management screen as the place to look for colonies that need detailed attention. This saves me huge amounts of time, and with a properly designed template I still tend to dominate the board.

I also tend to try to create large peaceful empires which may need different strategies from more aggressive play styles.

Scincerely,

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