Xodarap777

I recently played a crippling game on a large map, a setting that's still pretty difficult for me, and I discovered what appears to be a bizarre and overpowered combination! I was playing a custom race with First Strike, econ +30, morale +20, mil +50, and soldiering +30 -- or thereabouts. I did decently well, playing a general research game, using diplomacy to keep people off my back (and eventually spin control + fodder) -- but the humans! Wow, they pulled off some strategy that would

[quote][quote]say I have a 9-tile planet: I go factory (to start), two labs, three banks, farm, morale, special building or starport, then lab over the factory.[/quote] Do you do this very quickly at the start? If so, the maintenance costs would be disastrous.I go easy on the buildings at the start. Once I have a bunch of colonies, then I can go nuts on the planetary improvements, and still have plenty of cash to spare.[/quote] First, no, I don't do that at the start. To start I go

[quote]I tend to trade the most useless extreme world techs for alien cash, and bankrupt the aliens in the process. Then I cook my building, research and military production up the the max. Try to Trade the same tech to all the major and minor races in one turn - try to get all their cash...and nullify the advantage they have over each other with the same techs.I keep researching these extreme world techs, and I trade other less advantage giving techs.. and I keep doing this throughout the game.

Ever since upgrading to TA, I can't keep enough money in the bank to fund my research. I'm a fan of a big "tech win" -- that is, get way ahead in tech, switch to all factories, churn out advanced ships, go nuts. But I haven't been able to get ANY strategy to work; I run out of money right away. I can go straight to stock markets and build some farms and markets, and I'll stay even, but that takes 60-80% of my tiles, then I can't get ahead, or even keep up, on research. I

So I've been playing GC for a long time, on and off, here and there. I like my basic strategy of all-banks on the first world, all labs for two years on other worlds, then switch to all-factories and churn out the war machine. I disable tech trading, and go slow if need be in the first year to develop population and economy. My all-lab/factory worlds usually add a farm if there's room, for more people, and I use breeding abilities to speed up the taxables. I typically research some dip, then

Keep researching this strat. I've been wondering for quite awhile if an "all-econ" strategy would work, like the all-factories or all-labs. The game hinges entirely ON econ, so it seems like it would make sense. Although, aside from purist considerations for fun and curiosity, it seems like this would work great WITH an all-factories or all-labs approach: that is, go all banks on several worlds and all-factories on others. You will still have the advantages of all-factories, since your banks