Well the Altarians start with basic factories, labs and economic builds, too. I only like playing them because the three (in my opinion) best traits--Morale, Research and Economy--are concentrated on by Altarians. On the downside, they get no social or military production bonuses and so you sit there waiting for hell to freeze over while your factories get built, your influence is actually a gas cloud brought on by excessive flatulence (a small cloud, but still), and everyone hates you because you're so good (99 I think). I've found that research things to get +10 in diplomacy makes even the nastiest aliens like me better without even having to speak to them. Kinda funny. But their SuperPower is probably the least useful in the entire game. I have yet to form any alliances and I'm not even sure how you go about it, and while all the aliens in the galaxy come to me for help, they are never there when I need them. Unless I pay them. Scum.

The big difference is starting with the entire trade tech branch already researched. You get all the bonus's for that and can focus on growing and building while using trade routes to keep up relations and make money.

Super Organizer is an iffy trait. How good it is really matters as to how many other good-aligned civs are in the game with you. When someone attacks you (and I think when you attack them) then every civ that shares the same alignment joins in the war. Super Organizer turns a little scuffle into a galaxy-wide war.

Organizer is an interesting ability, but it's not going to help you colonize a lot of planets or build a powerful economy. With the Altarians, you can expect to come from behind when the fighting starts due to your allies, but your economy graph will be low compared to what you could do with another civilization. Try the Torians or Thalans or Iconians if you want a stronger start.

I think research is the most overpriced ability to pick. Research is only a fraction of your expenditures, while population and taxes are the majority of your income. Population growth is a much better pick than research if there are many planets to colonize, or if you're planning of fighting a lot.

Do this:

Once you run out of your initial money, then you can jack up taxes on your inflated population.

The decision to buy colony ships, or buy/build factories and build colony ships depends on how many planets there are to colonize. If you're only going to be able to get a few planets, then buy the ships so you can beat your opponents to the planets. But if there are lots of planets to colonize, then it is more important to build lots of colony ships than it is to build a few quickly. Buy/build factories until you can build one colony ship ever two turns, and then pump them out at that rate continuously.

Don't set and forget your spending sliders, move them so you can get what you need ASAP. For example, do 100% research to get Ion Drive, then 100% social to build factories, then 100% military to build colony ships, then 1% military, 99% social to build colony ships while building up new planets, then 100% research to get basic planetary facilities, then 1% military and 99% social to build them and constructors, then 100% research to get basic military technologies, then 100% military to build a fleet, etc. Decide what your immediate needs are, then fill those needs as fast as possible.

I agree, Super Organizer isn't going to help you early on... but it is a powerful ability not to be underestimated. It works like this:

When someone declares war on you, all civs that share your alignment will declare war on them. Automatically. With no choice on their part whatsoever.

This means you don't need alliances. This also means that switching your ethical alignment can make this ability more powerful, just match your alignment to the strongest militaries in the game, and watch all of the more powerful empires become your pawns.

If you declare war, it is no help. If there are no civs left of your alignment, it is no help. But come on, the AI has gotten even more touchy about declaring war now. Shouldn't be hard to provoke someone into attacking you...

Hope that helps.

jwburks

Your problems is simple to solve.

Change these things:
1. Don't build more than one factory on each planet (until you stablize your economy).
2. Build most if not all of your of your colony ships (don't buy them).
3. Switch to from technologists to feduralists (if you don't yet know how to tweek your economy you will need that boost).
4. After building 0-1 factories on your planets build nothing but market places.
5. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT!!!! Build excess colony ships to shuttle some people from your home planet to your newest colonies (especially those better at economics). This is because the growth of a planet population depends somewhat on the amount of people already there. THINK OF IT LIKE STARTING OUT A POPULATION WITH 10 PEOPLE INSTEAD OF TWO. NOT ONLY DO THE TEN PEOPLE HAVE MORE PEOPLE TO START WITH BUT WHEN THEY HAVE KIDS THEY WILL PRODUCE 5 TIMES THE NUMBER OF KIDS.

Other tips: There is a population growth bonus at 75% approval and 100% approval. The one at 100% approval is huge. Your home planets colony building puts out 24 industry instead of the standard colony 12. This is huge in the begining and I usually don't need a factory on my home planet. If you econmony starts to tank really fast don't aquire any more new colonies.

Well, best I can do here is tell you how I like to play, I usually play at Crippling altho I can handle the AI at harder levels (I just dislike the idea of them getting so many bonuses over me). Here is a quici compilation of tips:

- First, realize that everything you add onto a Colony Ship jacks up the price. The cost you see in the Shipyard screen is multiplied by 10x (I think) for Buy Now.
While I eventually upgrade my propulsion on my ships, thats not the best way to do a Colony Rush in my experience, granted the map can alter that.
Instead, I build a Small Hull Colony ship that costs 69 instead of 114. On the Buy Now thats 690 instead of 1140 and it can hold the same 500mill population. I build these and only build more advanced standard Colony Ships when I need to expand my ship range so my little ones can get there. Send out all Colony ships with full 500mill complements, INCLDUING your start ship (land it, load it, launch it). Regardless of whether you are building or Buying, it is cheaper in terms of time and money you can get out alot more ships. I can usually hold my own in the initial Colony Rush and have at times beat down the AI with the sheer size of the empire. Anyways, I do not use the initial Colonyship for the PQ4 planet, I send it out in the direction of a large star cluster with my lil ones trailing (they grab everything nearby the first for a good coherent empire with solid borders); I usually do not colonize the PQ4 until about the 5fth COlony ship (pretty quick as at 690 you can buy alot of em).

- Second, while lots of people talk about the 100% Approval bonus, your pop growth is capped at 200mill per turn I blv, so its limited. As someone else stated, there is a difference between 75% Approval and 50-74%/ I keep my Approval at 75%+ in the early game so as to keep up moderage pop growth; I ALSO keep my pop on my homeplanet breeding by constantly shipping out pop via colonyships to alreayd established colonies ( I usually build one Colony ship to act exclusively as a ferry).

- You really do not need to spend 100% on research; think about what you are doing. You are blowing all of your cash on the research that your capital's Capital Colony and any Initial Colonies can produce. These do not generate RPs efficiently compared to dedicated research buildings. I usually set my sliders to 20M/40S/40R, I go for PLanetary Improvements as my first tech (too good to pass up imo, +10 S, +10R, +10 M), Fertility as my second tech, Econ as my third.
At the least, if you are taking this route, Buy a research building so you are getting effective rsearch; I usually buy a Res building if I get a Res Bonus tile.

Re: Homeworld Dev, I tend to play the map so to speak, especially when I start with special tiles. If you start out with a triple Manuf bonus tile, playout the factory manual prodn strategy; if you start out with a 3x-10x research tile, go more heavy into researching to better tech. If you start out with farm stuff, focus on population and econ buildings (beware 3x farming though, you can get into trouble with this).

Your first Colony, unless it is laoded with specials, focus on Econ. When you get to colonizing more planets, alternate between Econ and Social production planets; I like using a farm on every planet (overall tax base) with a morale booster (last item on the planetary que).


The early game is all about colonization then economy management; usually what happens is you go out, colonize 5-6 worlds, and then the improvments on those worlds break your bank as those colonies are not generating taxes to support their building maintenance for all the improvements. You need to head this off by building an econ base bigger than your homeworld; in order to ahve planets left over for research and miltary, you need to expand.

Early game econ is pure Taxes with some tourism coming from your influence radius; expand both by shipping more colonists form homeworld out into the final frontier. The pop growth chart is a curve; the sweet spot is around 4-5bill in the early game as the pop base is large enough to repopulate very quickly without running into approval issues (larger pop causes approval problems, below 5b ppl are happy and reproductive = keep your pop below 5b by moving them out into the stars, the repro at a high rate which can be used as people farms to populate the galaxy with taxpayers. Keep your taxes to try and keep your finances current, but realize that a larger pop base is the long term goal, so do your ebst to stay above 75% apprv even if it means a small hit. THIS IS AN EARLY GAME STRAT and has less to do with things once the Colonization rush is over and your pops are capping out at the top ends of the bells curve.

Wait a sec, you can put colony modules on SMALL hulls and they fit?? Are you YOR ?? (where you get the mini bonus? )

Yes - colony, trade and constructor modules can fit on small hulls.

I have started using these in DA.

You can't put engines on them ...and only room for one or two life support modules initially. If you pick the Speed bonus ability at the start of the game, this means that those ships will be able to move 2 or 3 squares without engine modules. But since speed has been nerfed overall in DA, this is not that big a deal. The Ai is slow too...You can research Engine techs to increase their base speed also.

There is a great post about this strategy in the AAR or Strategy forums.

jwburks:

Your problem is population growth and money.

1. Do NOT set your tax at 49%. You need to grow population, and that needs good approval. Many recommend setting approval to 75%, whatever taxation is necessary to maintain it. Keep this in mind. Your maximum tax rate should be defined by your target approval rating.

2. Make an extra Colony Ship and later on a Transport Ship for the purpose of ferrying colonists. Colonies grow relatively fast once they're over 1B on a good approval rating. Keep this in mind when managing population.

3. Population is only taxed and for fighting off invaders. Building performance is not affected by population directly.

4. Do not be afraid to let your spending slide below 100%. You should usually be at 100%, but don't force it. If you can't maintain 100% spending, it means that you have an cash inflow/outflow problem. You're not earning enough cash.

5. Don't forget Trade Routes. They can add as much as 50% again to your income. That can be leveraged into a lot of extra cash, or a lot of production in research or buildings.

6. I don't recommend building a lot of colony ships until you know what the score is. You could easily end up having more colony ships than you can deploy. I actually build 2 Tiny scout ships so I can tell if there's any resources nearby that I can exploit with a quick constructor. Even there isn't any, the quick scouting can tell you where to send colony ships in the immediate future.

I saw this post earlier and want to second it...for me, to hang on to the game and learn it, i started at a very easy setting...fool opponents and worked my way up. It got me learning the basics and what the improvements were and I was able to do entire games and win. Probably a hollow victory, but rather than winning, i was learning the game, all the way through. That was the value. And I would suggest to Mr. Burks that you learn it first then you work it.....knowning as much about it is what's valuable, because if you play varied games you will be fighting differnt hurdles each game. And applying what you know will be what makes you or breaks you.

That's what is so neat about the game. I played Moo for years and years. Bought 2 cd's so I had a back up in case the first got worn out. Finally, the new computers wouldn't run it very well. Thank heavens I found this game. Its my modern MOO. Thanks Frogboy for saving the computer for me. What a treat!

Alot of good advice here for many varying styles of play so I think I'll just emphasize a thing or two.


1)Random AI is a killer if you are learning the game. The AI gets pretty smart on high levels and will crush you if you dont know the game mechanics.

2)Try to balance your initial colony rush. If you overextend too soon your economy will stutter and crash HARD. Once you learn more and start to gain your own little building strat you will be able to increase the colonies you can grab at the very start.

Ok i guess I will say a bit more...

You may want to try to tone down your initial rush and then settle in on a few less planets and begin to build a powerbase. I had your problem at first with my economy crashing and decided to grab a small base and build from there. The slower start fits my style more anyway. I dont build any military at all and stay nuetral to everyone else for a long time. Many wars come and go before I need to build a fighting force and by that time I usually jump from around seventh (9 major, 8 minor, huge map) to first in a very short amount of turns.

For high quality planets I usually slap down two of each military, research, and economy then specialize the planet from there. Happiness boosting projects are on all my planets. Low quality planets I usually use for economy and nothing else, My resort planets as I call them (high population, no starbase, economy, food and happiness buildings only). Some planets here and there will change as your game goes on specializing in different ways as more buildings become available. A few here and there are going to lose you some money and you can try to tweak them until they are in the green if you want, it doesnt really bother me considering my overall economy is pretty strong.

I dont agree with having to keep your spending at 100% at all times, mid to late game sure but in the beginning mine stays down until I can start pumping out some cash.

Freighters usually come a little late for me. I'm always too busy researching ahead of myself trying to improve my planets and buildings to get ready for my military rush. By the time I get around to researching trade, government, weapons and defenses I am able to get around five techs down a tree in around ten turns. But when I do get them my economy booms right along with my military making sure I have enough to support a HUGE force (I mean overkill, I am gonna have to up the difficulty).

I think Ive said enough, perhaps too much. Good luck with getting your groove going jwburks, bend like the reed, flow like water, all that junk. It will come you just have to get used to all the micromanagement, and dont get overwhelmed, it doesnt need as much management as it seems to.

You might find that high-quality planets make better economy planets, actually. With more spaces, you can plant more farms to build up the population (though don't build too many) and more economy buildings to take advantage of the higher population. My highest-quality planet I leave a few spaces open for things like Economic Capital and Political Capital (which also takes advantage of large populations). I don't usually build starbases, but I might start doing that, as eco planets do make good places to recruit troops from, since the planet will repopulate quickly, unlike some production worlds.

I use lower quality planets for production or research, depending on special tiles. A planet with a bit more breathing room, but not big enough to be an econo-world, I leave reserve a few spaces for things like Technological Capital.

Another caveat, if using DA, a Barren world will start off as a lower-quality world but might eventually become one of your highest. So, often I will reserve these worlds for economy as well. Really, the more econo-worlds, the better.

Randomising the intel is your frist problem: there is possablity that you playing suicidal oppents, which isn't good for a bigginer.

I've read this chain with interest because, while I consider myself to be an experienced player, I have not been successful on DA and have gotten increasingly frustrated. One common thread of advice here has me scratching my head and may be where my strategy is failing -- the comments about colonization techs. That really surprises me. I generally play on higher difficulties with lots of major and minor races. For my beleaguered civilization, there’s a common storyline in my games – I rush out and colonize any normal nearby planet with a PQ of 10 or higher, but there simply aren’t that many of those planets in the general proximity of my home world and nearby high-PQ aquatic, barren, etc. planets sit empty. Meanwhile, the zones of influence of my adversaries expand ominously in the mini-map. Before I know it, my colony ships are advancing into systems already controlled by other major races and their colony ships are settling on those high-PQ planets within my sphere of influence. Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, I find myself hemmed in on all sides, with nowhere to expand save for a few crap PQ planets.

At first, I adjusted my strategy to focus on getting that additional +10 speed bonus in the hopes that my colony ships could reach more systems faster than my adversaries, but that didn’t work. Then I focused on getting the miniaturization tech that would allow me to put those fancy warp engines on a colony ship, but that took forever, even when I’d magically found some space anomaly to speed up my research. So I gave up on that to focus on getting a least one of the colonization techs, but generally that allowed me to colonize only a handful of high-PQ planets, which, because of the production penalty, took a long time to become productive colonies. And I can never trade the colonization technology with other races in the hopes of getting another colonization tech in return without having to give away every single one of my techs, treaties, the kitchen sink, the farm, my first-born, etc.

So I’m really intrigued by what I’m reading here. You folks are finding that you can take 5-6 normal PQ 10+ planets, build those up, and ignore encroachment by all of those dirty, snotty other races? Generally when that happens to me, I’m not far from losing the game, but maybe that’s because I’m overextended. Ignoring the colonization techs seems counterintuitive to me somehow, but obviously my strategies aren’t working…

Cumberberg:

Your reading right. On a huge galaxy I only take 8-12 worlds in the intial colony rush. Build the base from there. I usually get the last 2 or so of my worlds because they are low PQ planets that the AI overlooks and therefore it gives me time to grab them. Buddy up with the strong military powers. When someone declares war on you just pay off 2-3 of the other AIs to attack them. With that kind of damaged and the fact that the AI does not send a lot of transports at you, you can usually sustain yourself. I also build a ton of transports before I go to war because I usually have excess population. When they declare war on me this allows me to swoop in and take some of their worlds when my buddy AIs break there planetary defenses. Basically the first war I have no more than 5 medium hulls for defense and about 30+ transports with 2000 troops each. Its a cheap strategy, but you have to press all the advantages you can when they are doubling and quadrupaling your production.

On the higher levels you are not going to get the colonization techs before the computer trust me.

Also I play the Yor so I do start off with barren world 50% colonization. So I usually grab the best barren world I can find close to me.

On the contrary, I think it so much more realistic. I know it keeps it interesting, but the game often moves to fast, unrealisticly. i.e. You don't declare war and make peace three times in a year. And every week, population doesn't grow by millions a week, so I think slow population growth is much more realistic, although a challenge.

keep plugging ive gone close to 15000 in the hole came back and kicked ass it almost always llooks bleak in the early game

gotten planet pop to 100 bill, a max, but it took years and shipping of people.

One of the most important corollaries that must be realized is that you must not indulge in 100% research unless you know what you're getting into. In most cases, your planets may not be equipped to handle the research you're doing. The most basic example of this is getting really, really advanced weapons and defense tech and then have crappy manufacturing planets. You'll be building better ships, of course, but the relative benefit of the research is laregly stunted by your civ's state.

If you're going for a research tech or a research tech plan, you have to have an immediate plan or use for it. You may research an expensive tech for your own immediate use, or you may research it for trading purposes. Either way, it must be a carefully considered move.

Most of the time, the state of your planets and civ will tell you which research is most beneficial to take. Farming research almost always gets the shaft for this reason. You hardly ever need it that much.

Colonization techs also gets this problem. Most of the time, yellow environs planet colonies cost more than they give back - they're a drain on your economy. I sometimes take advantage of this when deciding which civ to take out first. A civ that appears large because of a lot of yellow planet colonies (from his perspective, not yours) could actually be on the ropes, economically speaking. You might just need to nudge it a bit to get it to collapse.

Consequently, I only usually tolerate yellow planets on my side of the screen when I'm denying opponents juicy green planets or when I'm about to get the advanced tech myself, usually from a prospective trade or invasion.

Dear (Citizen)Roxlimn
April 27, 2007 04:18:05

I just started playing DA and I've been eating humble pie every day now for the past 3 days. All my DL strategies seem to need revising - there's a HUGE difference between Tough DL and Tough DA ... extreme colonization is a major headache for me at the moment. I used to rachet up my tech research whenever I researched the next higher level of tech building. However, now I'm getting smeared all over the galaxy before I can ever get close to finishing. The GNN & Quarterly reports show my tech at 150 to 200% and the AI just walks right in and has every freaking extreme tech already researched and every AI empire has them all - even with tech trading disabled. wtf??? I suspect he AI just steals it and that every AI empire is researching a different extreme tech, so I can never beat the AI. Maybe its more cost effective to buy spies and try to steal techs?? I dunno, but then again I'm trying to learn what the new techs do. I think I need more research before starting again. Playing Suicidal on a small map in DL was pretty much cake to playing tough in DA with max cpu selected, and modifying the races bonuses to make their high abilities higher. Of course playing a small map with 8 minor civs doesn't help either. Makes for a high paced, action packed, 50 turn game though ...   

If you're modding their abilities, then of course it's not the same as the Tough setting you were playing on DL! You're increasing difficulty artificially, so don't complain about that.

I'm also having trouble with extreme colonization issues. The abundance of habitable extremes seems to be always set at random, so just when you think you have a strategy that works, along comes a game where you have to play very differently. The hardest for me right now is when there are far more extremes than regular habitables. Anyone have any advice on that situation? I can usually trade for one low-end extreme tech, like aquatic I, but even then colonizing an aquatic planet is a major cash-drain for a long time.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound whiney, I was just commenting on how much more intense the DA experience is compared to DL. I prefer fast hard games, which is why I started a new DA on a small map with 8 major civs, all adjusted for max abilities, no tech trading, and AI resources set at 10% with all races intelligent. Also have random minors but never got. It wanted a set up with each major AI getting 1 sector, and me getting mine. Very interesting game. Turns out the Yor got to colonize the majority of extreme worlds and then became the first baddy. I was allied with the Alterians and they got a magaevent called godhood(?). Never seen that before, but it didn't help them anyway. They lost all their worlds to the Yor's influence and even when I built an influence starbase next to their last world and gifted it to them, they just scapped it and 5 turns later were absorbed culturally by the Yor. Now the Dread Lords have appeared and the Thorians were wiped by the Arceans and gave their remaining worlds to the Terrans. The Krynn gifted me with their best ship (a precursor ranger) to fight the Yor with. I also found one myself, so I have the best fleet and am slowly invading and capturing their planets. Because their influence is so strong I have have trouble keeping the worlds I conquer, therefore, when they start to flip I trade them to my allies for ships, resources, and whatever else I need. Now I'm allied with the Terrans and close to everybody else (except the Yor, and Thalins). The Thalins got upset with me building influence starbases in Yor territory and attacked, so now I'm getting ready to invade their last planet.

Well, I'm hardly anyone to give advice, since I only like to play at the Tough setting on DA, but it's quite doable. I can win on DA even when I'm isolated on the far side of the galaxy with like one or two habitable planets in range - the map placement is less of an issue precisely because of the environment changes.

Never research Extreme Colonization tech to start with. Ever. Especially if you have no prospective planets to colonize. Generally speaking, I only research Extreme Colonization tech for something like a class 15+ planet, and only for several reasons. It has to deny the same to an opponent and it has to give me significant range advantage on my ships, asteroids would also be a good thing. I don't bother researching the tech for anything less than Class 15.

Even then, it's a money sink until you research the Advanced tech version.

Don't get all intimidated by colonization tech. At Tough, the resources are even. Generally speaking, I find that taking small normal planets and then researching Soil Enrichment is a much better strategy. If you can't find planets, scout out the galactic resources and asteroids and take them. The resources you don't spend getting the tech and making the colony ships should allow you to be stronger on the basics and take advantage of what you do have.

When you do get Extreme tech, make sure you get the correct one. Count planet tiles and get the one that nets you the most benefits, tile-wise.

In fact, here's something you can try: Scout wide, fast, and early and establish your trade routes. Find the juiciest normal planets and colonize those. Then find the smaller planets and go for Soil Enhancements. Once your military machine is developed, look for someone who's got a lot of yellow planets (his perspective, not yours). Attack that civ, taking only the normal planets. It'll be easy. The Iconians, in particular, are pushovers this way.

Generally speaking, developing a trade route, a galactic resource, or a good cluster of asteroids on a smallish planet is better than colonizing an extreme planet. Use this to your advantage. Let the AI chumps pay for the colonies.

Even when you have no tech trading, tech prioritization should come from your environmental cues. If I had a Class 15 Aquatic and a Class 4 Aquatic with a rich asteroid field, I would definitely get it, and then try for the Advanced tech as soon as feasible. However, if I had a nice cluster of galactic resources in the same range, it would be a tossup. Morale, Econ, and Military boosters are extremely hard to turn down.

if you want to get more population build farms