This is my first full game of GC2 and I figured I'd throw some screens up and talk about my games to see what I can learn from you guys. I played about 10 starts to learn the game but haven't played past 30 turns or so.
I decided to go with an immense map abundant stars with common planets/habitable and to play as Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio the leader of the Libertarian Federation (Terran tech). I took Super Trader, creative, lucky, economy and trade as my bonuses. Stefan and the boys were loaded up onto transports and kicked off Earth when they refused to share their crayons on the first day of kindergarten so here we are.
I've got a 4x production tile in my home world and I colonized my PQ4 with the miner (starport-colony ships) while picking up another 4x production tile in my next colony. I have my own galaxy with 2 guys in neighboring galaxies with room for me to nab planets near them.
I rush bought 2 factories then just built colony ships only researching UT. My first two out of my homeworld (+1 speed building) went west and south to settle as close as possible to the AIs. I also build a scout to go south and sent my flagship west after it picked up 1500bcs! within a few parsecs of the start.
I met the Akillians after a month or two and they are in my little galaxy north of me. This is awesome I believe since I have super trader and can send all my traders to them and then put down a +trade starbase. On an immense map the trade starbase is useless I think as trade routes are too long so this is great. Then they traded me the first two military techs for +20 military! This put me 1 production short of 2 turn colony/trade ships in the capital but I had just built an asteroid mine which I diverted for that 1 extra.
My neighbors are the Drengin and Drath (I don't recognize the colors yet). The Drath I thought were leaning evil originally so Stefan decided to crush some bugs for no real reason to hopefully give us time to build the economy, but the Drath actually were neutral and all the neutral and the 3 good decisions failed to restore the good name of the Libertarians.
In this shot you can see I built another colony on a PQ5 world near the homeworld just to put out more colony ships. My first ships settled close to the AIs and revealed quite a few ok planets. So those 2 planets near the AIs also build colony ships and I spend 1000 speeding up their production to make sure I get the border planets.
I didn't build traders early enough and my flagship was scouting the Drengin so I was 4 turns from -500 when I got a 900bc evil decision and a 400bc evil decision on two of my new planets which took me to the end of the year. Oh maybe thats why I'm still leaning evil
I have 3 trade routes up (17-31) and will have 8 up within 8 turns, plus 4 constructors were built for a +60% trade station so I expect to have about 200-250 a turn at that time and 350max.
I've been on ~59% taxes the whole year staying just about 40% in my capital. I wanted to make sure I could rush buy colony ships once I settled border planets with the two AIs... Population is low though especially in my border cities since I built colony ships out there.
Plan is to build on all my research bonus tiles next while researching to tech capital I think.
The HW needs to build the economic capital. Galactic Bazaar won't be finished for another 30 turns or so at which point I assume I can trade for weapon tech and build a few ships to deter aggression.
You'll notice I'm 1 pt researching in hopes of creative kicking in - I didn't do this at all the first year because the 1 research took a 5% slider and meant 3 turn colony/trade ships instead of 2 turn in the capital. From my other starts I assume I'd have likely already gotten invasion if I had though.
The Terrans are threatening war with everyone to extort money I think. I'm going to enjoy liberating their people I think.
