It's a tough world

Cheat?

Without cheating, I'm not that much of a cheaparse.  

I like to set myself up nicely before playing.

I keep restarting the game till i get a starting point at the edge of the map and a factory bonus of at least 300 on Earth.

Then i rush buy a factory on it and with careful manipulation of the economic slider bars i can usually build a colony ship every 2 or 3 turns without rush buying.

Be warned, you really cannot rush buy colony ships in this latest version. You will go broke, that is assured.

Why cheat? Just go back to playing at the lower levels instead.

I've been playing with the rush buying of factories lately and it does seem to work better than when rush buying the ships. As Mystikmind points out, you will go broke. I am not adverse to rush buying one or two colony ships, however.

But I'm still figuring the game out. I hain't got past normal too well just yet.

you really cannot rush buy colony ships in this latest version

Yes and no. You won't get any abandoned yachts worth 2500 BCs in DA, for instance. You can still buy the first several if you're willing to wait a turn or two in between purchases, though. Here is the basic strat I have been using:

Set taxes to the point where your starting planet's happiness is just above the 40% no-growth limit. Tweak often to keep it there. Buy the very first factory on your home planet, then let all other structures production-build afterwards.

Set your social production slider to 29% and lock it there; set the others to 40% apiece. If your race has Ion drives, build a better colony ship and get it started production-building on your home planet. If not, your first tech to research should be improved hyperdrive. Drop your military production slider until the time to research that tech falls to 1 turn, then hike back to 40%.

Your first few techs to research should be improved & ion engines and galactic warfare & space militarization (for the 10% military production boos they both give). Then go for planetary improvements, which gives econ, social, and military production bonuses. Impulse engines should be next.

Design a better colony ship every time you get a new engine tech. If you play abundant stars and planets, it's a good bet to just send them out blind as soon as they are built.

Build/buying your ships: Let each colony vessel build on its own for at least one turn; sometimes two is better. On the following turn, purchase the ship and drop your military production to 0%. This is very important because it allows you to tech up faster in this crucial stage. Just remember to turn it back up to 40% on the next turn!

If I follow this procedure in a Masochistic game, I can keep up with the colony rush for a good long while. When I'm out of cash for buying ships, I usually put all of my sliders back to 33/33/34%. I know it can be maddening at first to slowly production-build that first factory on every colonized world, but the small sacrifice will pay dividends later on.

Some people like to keep all of their planets at 75-100% morale for the population boost at the beginning of the game, but I feel that at this point the extra growth is unnecessary. I stick it to my citizens for a little while at the start, then ease off on taxes when my economic improvements start to come on line.

You shouldn't be losing the colony race. This pretty much sets up the whole game. On the smaller galaxies research speed up to Impulse Drive ASAP. You need the speed to out race the AI. You also need to produce colony ships as fast as possible.

My goal is to quickly get to the point where you're producing a colony ship every other turn. A good manufacturing bonus on your home planet helps, but is not absolutely required. Pick a race that starts with Xeno Industrial Theory so you can build your manufacturing capital on your home planet right away. These are Iconian, Thalan, Drath, Yor or Torian. In my mind the Torian are the best because they get a free 25% morale bonus. The Yor aren't a bad choice either.

Buy a factory on your home planet and build the manufacturing capital and another 3 or 4 factories. You'll be cranking out a colony ship every other turn in no time. You want to fill up your colony ships as much as possible but I'd never let my home planet pop dip below 5B. You want to keep your approval on all your colonies at 100% so they grow ASAP. Taking the 70% pop growth bonus is a big help as well. The goal is to get your colonies profitable as soon as possible.

I never buy buildings on my colonies but use my initial 5000bc to fund deficit spending for as long as possible. I usually build 3 or 4 economic buildings. By the time these are complete the planet is profitable before I start building factories. The AI won't attack you until the end of the colony rush, so break it off a bit early and work on building factories and researching military techs. While I'm colonizing planets I usually research morale and economic techs. Remember morale is money, build the morale wonders and you can increase your taxes and earn more money. Money is the root of all.

The best stratergie that I have found is to do this.

First turn:
-Direct surveyship to the nearest "Astroid" class anomely, as there normaly the ones that have money, the set it to Auto Survey.
-Go to shipyard and Re-design the collony ship so it's faster and can go further.
-Return your first collony ship to orbit around Earth, then re-launch it and send it strait to Mars, as this one is crapy and slow. Depending on the quality of Mars in your game you can choose wether you want to set it up as a Research or Econ planet. I would normaly put it as research as it is too small for Econ in MOST cases.
-Buy your first Mark 2 Collony ship.
-Buy a factory on the best tile for factories you have.
-Fiddle with your economy so that you have a farily good Moral* and the production slider in the 90's, don't worry if your not making money, you shouldn't be at this stage.
-Research the next engin tech, Normaly "New Propulsion Techniques" as fast as you can, adjust the Research slider untill you get it on one week. It doesn't matter how low your other bar's are right now, there not being used.

Second turn:
-Launch your new Collony ship and aim it strait for the nearest star. If you already have Stelar cartography, then aim for one with more planets around it on the mini map, as you will have a greater chance of finding a habitable planet.
-Buy anouther factory on Earth.
-IF the tech you just researchd was a useable engine part, IE: Ion Drive, Create a Mark 3 Collony ship and start BUILDING that, don't buy this one.
-Research the next engine tech. While fidling around with the slider's to get the best time as you can, keep in mind that you need to build Social Projects on Mars (and soon earth) and the next Collony Ship on Earth, so you need to keep them at around 25% atleast.

Third turn:
-Buy anouther Factory on Earth.
-Re-design your collony ship if the new engine is avalible.
-Micromanage! Most inportant skill in this game, Micromanagment.


This is a pritty standard stratergy that I use when I'm playing, it verie's depending on map size, starting local and the local of other planets.

Note*: The reason you want a good morale at the expense of running in the red is that if there happy, they reproduce faster. And if they reproduce faster, you get more tax payers faster, and a better economy. If you have them in the gree from the first turn your deficit should remain fairly constent for awhile, instead of getting bigger and bigger. Before you know it, you'll be in the green. A great way to get in the green, is to start trading strait after the collony rush, you should have a freighter by the time the last habitable planet is collonised.



Hope this helpd you,

Fate,

Thanks to all,

I know as soon as I break the tough barrier I should be able to take care of two difficulties above it. Personally I think that the custom races should have more tech ponits at there disposal to run contest with pre-made races, but thats just me.

I usually play on Tough, and I have found Painful to be considerably more difficult, and in different ways. For one thing, the Yor become absolutely amazing colonisers. It doesn't matter if they are on the other side of the galaxy, they always end up with at least one planet within my territory.

If it is any help to you, here is (more or less) my standard starting plan. I put the production slider to 100% and the tax slider to 9%. I leave those there until I get down to about 500 cr, and then put taxes up to 49% and reduce production until income is positive. In some games, I have only had to reduce production to 80%, and then only for a few game months. Anyway, I always buy the first factory on the homeworld, and once I have xeno research I buy the research facility. I set the homeworld to building colony ships. I almost never buy colony ships. It's just not my style. That said, I always try and pick starting positions with a lot of systems between me and anyone else, so I have a chance to get some colonies before running into anyone. On the research side, I always go Impulse Engines, then Planetary Improvements, then the communication techs (so I can trade for techs with the other races). I just build colony ships, on my homeworld and one or two first colonies, until I have gotten all the worlds I can reach.

This doesn't seem like much compared to the other strategies here, I think, but it works for me.

There are some good ideas in the posts here... i am suprised that no one suggests researching trade first up. All i do from day one of the game is research towards trade. I keep researching trade untill the whole branch is complete.

There is no need to research the other techs these above posts talk about because you can swap the trade techs for them. However it may be prudent to research ion drive if your doing a big colonisation run.