pacificwing

Join Date 03/2009

Winning the Planet Race

Hi,

This is my first post here. I've only bought the game today after playing it on a friends laptop. I enjoyed the game, but he needed his laptop back so I had to get my own copy. As a result I'm a little more serious about playing now, so I've come to seek help on the forums.

I think I understand the basics, and I"ve read some beginner strategy guides. However, there is one thing that I still am having difficulty wrapping my head around.

When starting a new game, planets of >0 value are few and far between. I try everything I can to colonize as fast as possible, but the AI always seems to beat me to them (as though they know where they are). As playing humans with everything on default (occasional habitable planets, I think) and normal difficulty, I've yet to colonize more than Earth and Mars. Despite building mutiple scout ships and trying to explore as quickly as possible, any planet over 0 PQ seems to be already taken by the time I get to it.

It seems once I get 4-5 planets under my belt of decent quality, I can usually hold my own, but I always manage to fail economically and productively with only earth and mars.

Is there something I"m missing or is it supposed to be that hard?

-PW

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I'm sure Sole Soul will chime in shortly!

Are you playing TA, DA, or DL?

Can I assume you start with Stellar Cartography, so that you at least know where the stars with planets are? If so, do you send your initial colony ship towards a likely near multi-planet system, or do you just colonize Mars with it? If there are no asteroids near, you can also upgrade yor miner to a colony ship, or do that once the asteroids close to your home planet are mined.

While I'm asking Qs, what choices do you make in race setup? Some races start with ion drive, and that helps a LOT in the first colony rush. Do the Terrans get technology choices?

What size galaxy?

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TLI, really.

But I'll hazard a guess that you haven't learned how to play with the sliders yet. Each new game starts with them at 33/33/33 and only 67% total production, which means you're getting 22% of your total output in each category. For the homeworld at 24/24 that's 5 military/5 social/5 research, which is too little to do anything.

In the first 10-12 turns, you're going to have your sliders be >50% if not >75% of one thing-whether that's social, research, or military is dependent on playstyle.

Galaxy size is important, though-with those settings, there will barely even be any planets to colonize in a tiny, for instance. Particularly if you're running with the full 9 AIs, you're going to have a hard time finding anything available.

Despite building mutiple scout ships

A great many of us, myself included, don't bother building scout ships and simply build colony ships to "scout"...and then when we run across a planet, we colonize it!

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Quoting LTjim,

reply 1

I'm sure Sole Sole will chime in shortly!

Are you playing TA, DA, or DL?

I take it Sole Sole is the resident Guru?

To answer the questions in the previous threads, I"m playing TA, I think. I bought ultimate and there are separate tech paths for each race. I understood that to be a new feature of TA.

As for the sliders, I was aware of them, but I was always trying to balance them. It never occurred to me to focus on one particular attribute except for later in the game when the AI was threatening to attack and I needed ships. Thanks for the tip. I'll try to bounce those around a bit.

As for my starting attributes, I usually dump stuff into diplomacy (which I might change as I've found it to be near useless as despite a huge advantage, the AI never seems to offer a reasonable trade), morale (for higher tax rates), and whatever’s left goes into research.

I've given up with the scout ship technique, as they're near useless after the initial rush. I didn't know I could turn the miner into a colony ship. Great tip there. I'll try that next time.

Humans don't seem to allow me to choose starting tech. One thing I noticed is that I always used to start with universal translator on my friends computer, but on mine, I seem to have to research it. I was looking for a way to get that back, but i've yet to find it. I'm not sure how he set that up.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I spend a lot of time hitting the "Next Turn" button with little else. It seems that I'm wasting turns, but in fact everything is automated. Is this normal for the early game, or is there something else I should be doing with my turns?

Is it worth buying colony ships, or should I just wait for the construction turnaround. I've experimented with both, and honestly can't decide which works better. I guess I've been paying too much attention to other things.

This game is a little overwhelming, but I'm a veteran Civ player, so I'm getting the hang of it quickly.

Thanks for all the insight.

Cheers,

-PW

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You're about to discover the joy of playing a custom race. You only get 200tp of starting techs, which is less than most if not all the stock races, but you do get to choose them yourself. Custom races also get 15 customization points rather than the 8-10 that stock races get, although customs have no inherent (i.e. free) bonuses. But it's still better from the point of view of playing the way you want to play; after all, the Korx +trade and +trade route bonuses are useless in the eyes of almost everyone, no matter how many points they're theoretically worth.

Rush buy cost is [cost ^ 1.1 * 6], which comes to in the range of ~9x the construction value in that stage of the game, so you're better off waiting for them to build. You might consider planting some factories on your homeworld to get them to build faster, though. Oh, and design a new colony ship. The default one has range modules on it, which you'll almost never need, and very early in the game you can put ion drives and/or impulse drives (hint: make this a priority tech, as it gives a passive +1 speed) on them instead of the default hyperdrive.

You may also want to consider building colony modules on small or tiny hulls, but to do smalls you'll need interstellar construction in TA, whereas for tinies you'll need 25% miniaturization (basic is 10% and enhanced is another 15%). This isn't necessary below a medium galaxy, though, and is debateable even there.

You haven't answered what galaxy size you're on, or how many opponents you're competing with for the admittedly few planets that the default settings will produce.

You don't need customization points spent in diplomacy; it's far better to tech your way to the bonuses if you intend to play musical technology chairs with the AI (also referred to as tech whoring and tech pimping, among other things). Personally, I primarily use a mix of research, military production, and speed. I find it difficult to ignore the 10% morale for 1 point, so I generally get that as well.

As for your other question, I'm one of many.

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Quoting Sole Soul,

reply 4

You haven't answered what galaxy size you're on, or how many opponents you're competing with for the admittedly few planets that the default settings will produce.

I shake it up between small and medium. I find more success on the medium maps finding planets, but the AI always get more.

Usually about 5 other AI players. I usually ally 2 with me, and the other 3 are unknown.

I've been playing a new game with some of the suggestions above. I've had a little more success. I've also adjusted the number of habitable planets to common. I find it I can claim 5 good solid worlds I usually do okay. I like to specialize my planets, so I find that usually gives me what I need.

Cheers,

-PW

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