Well, I would also say it depends on what tiles get and what race you are, but lets say you get a manufacture tile and are the Thalans.

Sliders 100% production 50 military 50 research 0 social.

Rush buy factory for 2 turns, start a manufacturing capital.

Taxes at 100% approval for as long as possible.

Usually I'll rush buy the first colony ship, upgrade the space miner to a colony ship, giving you 3 colony ships in the first 2 turns.

After that it always changes depending on the star systems I find etc. etc.

Thank you for your responces but neither of you answered my first and main question.
What "type" of colony ship do you build. Do you load it up with engines, do you strip it bare, do you put two colony things on it to double its capasity?

Another key question you skiped is what size map do you typicaly use this strat on.
Strats that work well on smaller maps might ruin there economy on the bigger one. Thus causing you to slow down. Typicaly I find that on the bigger maps it pays off to pace your self since the colinization phase is more of a marathon and not a sprint.

I thank you again for your insight but I ask again can you at least tell me what type of colony ship you use and what size map you typicaly use this strat on?

Default colony Ship.

If Im the Yor I might make a custom small colony ship, but then it moves 1 parsec slower, so normally I dont do that

If I plan to do a colony rush, I go with max engines. That's usually only two in the beginning, though. I research engine techs until Impulse Drive to get the bonus there and then switch to whatever else my strategy calls for on that particular game.

I value being able to get there, even if it means I have just a token colonist to claim the world. Quantity, rather than quality. The quality will come through terraforming and subsequent invasions.

I don't always do a colony rush though. If there's a combination of 700%+ research bonus on my homeworld I won't even colonise my secondary planet. I just go straight for diplomatic, ethics, beam and invasion techs. In that case, my initial colony ship usually gets upgraded to a constructor.

I do the same thing, and while I don't know MottiKhan's reasons, I know my own.

First, the colony ship is a cheap invader. When looking to quickly create a fleet of transports, the cheaper the better, especially if playing all labs. The space miner and initial colony ship (which I land and then re-launch with just 1 colonist on it) are both cheap early game survey ships/transports.

Second, the secondary world in your system, if colonized by someone else, is very likely to culture flip to you in short order anyway, and the AI will pay to build improvements on the world and supply you with a population.

Third, for any advantage of colonization, invasion is better. Transports are cheaper than colonizers... have a chance to give you free tech for every world you get, often supply you with worlds with improvements already built, invasions don't ever require any "advanced" colonization tech - so the universe is your oyster, etc. etc.
If I have a choice to colonize a world, or sit next to it with a transport waiting for an enemy colony ship to land, I'll wait with a transport next to the world every time, and almost always pick up the world with at least a starport already built for me.

The only real disadvantage I can see to invasion over colonization is that the AI builds up the worlds for you. In theory, they could build it in a way you don't like. BUT, you can always destroy improvements, the AI is getting better all the time at building their worlds, and the really stupid super projects are almost never built by the computer during the initial colony rush anyway.

Planetary Invasion (or spore weapons) therefore becomes the most powerful tech in the game, just about always.

Hope that helps,
~ Wyndstar

Edit - ALSO, with how upkeep costs have increased in TA, even with nothing built that second world is an income liability while you wait for a population to grow on it. Better to grab it with a population already started for you through (inevitable) culture flipping.

I'm playing my first masochistic game and I'm nicely surprised that my rush is working quite well. I'll list a number of key points to my strategy (many are mentioned in this thread already). I'm playing Thalan on a huge map with abundant habitable and common planets/stars. Home planet has one 100% production square.

- 100% approval rate for as long as possible. Constantly evaluate your progress and cash flow and adjust your planets as necessary.

This is key. Double population growth means the colonies stop bleeding money and become usable much faster.

- Build your home planet enough to create a colony ship every 2 turns.

Buy factories and make it your manufacturing capital. For many games, just having a this one colony factory is enough to win the rush.

- Place a high priority on getting Ion drive.

Having a faster colony ship is important. 2 ion, 1 colony (filled), 2 life support. Impulse drive is more expensive, but get it sooner than later.

- Focus on grabbing the higher PQ planets first. Think marking territory, instead of just randomly grabbing high PQ planets. Grab ones nearby to get them growing quickly. Then grab planets at the further reach of your space. For planets you skip, make sure you will eventually have enough influence in the area to culture flip them.

- Many low PQ planets can become good PQ planets with enough terraforming.

- Don't build anything on many of the new colonies until it stops bleeding money. It depends on the tax rate, but it's probably 3 to 5 billion population.

- Make many of the new colonies into economic planets. One or 2 factories and the rest is money. If the PQ is below 10, I put 1 farm. If it's above 10, I'll put 2 farms. I try to build the farm when the population nears the cap.

- Make researching higher tech economic buildings a priority. The faster your money planets start making money, the faster you can finish the rush.

- Prioritize morale and economic resources. It might be necessary to use your home planet to build a fast constructor to insure you get the resource.

- As the rush progresses, start converting more and more colonies into additional production planets. All factory + starport + farms. Build the power plant when available and you can afford it. Make research planets as necessary.

- Use new colonies to first build additional survey ships. As their production grows, turn them into additional colony factories or constructors.

- Make sure you always keep track of the military progress of the AI. Start building defenders early.

- Tech trade as much as possible, especially for the expensive extreme colonization techs. Try to limit trading away weapon techs to one branch, if possible. Hopefully the enemy races will all focus on just one damage type, making it easier for you.

- For planetary focus, it's straightforward. For money planets, it's constant social focus. For production and research planets, start with social focus until it has a reasonable output. Then switch to no focus and eventually military or research focus.

For my current game, I was usually able to keep my tax rate low enough to maintain 100% approval on my colonies until about 9 billion population. I grabbed a morale resource fairly early and built it up. I'm currently about 10 to 15 planets away from the end of the rush. My tax rate is 50%, approval is 95%, income is 4700bc. I'm already nearing the a point where I feel like the win is inevitable.

I'm sure that some of these bullet points only apply to this particular strategy. I specialize every planet, so it does require more micromanagement than some people can bear.

This is an informative thread -- thanks!

Everyone should also post the dificulty that they play on. Almost any stratagy will work on the lower dificulties. Not doing a colony rush and just planning on invading worlds is dumb and will get you killed on the higher dificulties.

This advice only applies to DA. In DL the Thalans pay the same price as everyone for their factories, and in TA they don't get ANY starting factories of any kind.

~ Wyndstar

Of course resources are valuable, but I don't see why doing a colony rush means giving up the resources.

In my current masochistic game, I owned 13 out of the 20 resources by the end of the rush (huge map, 5 AI). If I had scouted better, I could have captured more. My home planet was even located in the corner sector of a huge map. By the time my home planet was churning out colony ships every 2 turns, spitting out constructors was no problem. I easily grabbed the ones near me and I was just waiting on my scouts to unearth others.

I haven't tried suicidal, so maybe that's the difference. Hmm...on second thought, on smaller maps, it would be harder.



From the posts in this thread, I thought I had an understanding of your general strategy. But this quote confused me. Switching from all labs to factories to econ to labs... What does that mean? You literally took all your planets and re-specialized them? I'm having trouble understanding the benefit.

In my current game, I have 119 planets. There are 108 more to capture. I don't see how re-specing all 119 planets over and over again would even work. Maybe I'm just not familiar with the terminology you are using to describe your strategy.

Thanks for trying to explain, but honestly, I'm still lost. I think the problem is that the answer must be so obvious to you, that perhaps you aren't explaining it at a basic enough level for me to understand.



That's the last sentence I understood. After gobbling up a bunch of planets, you took a breather from war to integrate the new planets and rebuild infrastructure.

Then you started switching from one 'all' to another and I don't understand why.





When you say 'no factories or labs', does that literally mean NONE of your planets have any factories or labs? When you say 'No factories exist,' that literally means NONE of your planets have any factories?

I'm fine with playing with sliders. I go to 100% research all the time when I play, but I don't rebuild my primary infrastructure to match.

I do understand that economy buildings play a big role. Money is the foundation of the entire gameplay. So your money infrastructure stays constant while you are switching between 'all factory','all labs', and 'all economy'?

When you in 'all factory' mode, your planets only have factories, economic buildings and farms? The sliders are no research, 92% social, 8% military.

When you switch to 'all labs', you destroy all the factories and replace them with research buildings? The sliders are 100% research.

When you switch to 'all economy,' you destroy all the factories and labs?

That's what it sounds like you are saying to me. I'm having an extremely hard time understanding how that could possibly work.

The amount of money/time/micromanagement spent transitioning from one 'all' to another must be ridiculous.

In my current game, 35 of the 119 planets are pure production. 20 of 119 are pure research. The rest is pure money. So let's add up 35+20 and say that 55 of my planets do the work. Transforming 55 planets from all factory into all labs would take a ridiculous number of turns to accomplish. In that time, I could have won the game if I played normally.

How do you transform all labs into all economy anyways? Since you have no factories, you have to first rebuild the factories in order to build more economic buildings??

I must be missing something really obvious, but it just doesn't make sense to me!

Thanks. I'll take a look at the AAR. The strategy is so different from how I've played this game for so long that it just seemed foreign. I think it's great that such a different strategy from the 'norm' works well. It's a sign of a good game that there are many ways to play.



I can see this strategy being excellent for smaller maps where the colony rush is a sprint. In larger maps, it's a marathon. I'm not sure the population grows fast enough to churn out a colony ship every turn for too long. With a colony ship every 2 turns at 100% approval, the population will eventually become depleted. Hmm...maybe with Super Breeder...

I'm one of those people and encourage both old and new players to read it. There are many key points in Wyndstar's AAR that can be integrated into almost any strategy.





I also learned a lot from Mumblefratz. His AAR that started at the core was quite enlightening to say the least. Others from whom I've gleaned valuable tips from include DethAdder, neilo, Firebender and Purge. I'm sure I forgot someone, but the idea here is that a group of people working together can come up with some fairly decent 'out of the box' ideas.

(Caution - Shameless plug follows. Parents might want to take their children out of the room now...) It's interesting that all but one of the above are in the Tyranny of Evil Empire (but hopefully, all of them will be members before too long). We freely share any info we come across to help each other out and will go to great lengths to test new theories. If someone wants to learn some decent tips in a friendly and sharing environment, I can't think of a better way than to join and then visit the team forums.