Early Game expansion

I usually buy(or lease) at least one extra colony ship right off the bat, and have my 2 new colonies build colony ships until I have 4~5 in a stockpile.

Just lease a bunch of colony ships until you are drowning in a sea of debt, then hope that those colonies will be prosperous enough to make up for all the debt.

Note: I haven't actually tried this, but I will utilize this theory in my next game.

Alternative aproach:

First increase your budget spending to 100%, set your military production to 80%, social to 0%, research to 20%. You can play with these values a bit and set military to 60% and research to 40% or do M60% S20% R20% and so on. This way you will be cranking out colony ships en masse, but your treasury will go down slowly, so make sure you don't go in to red. Once you get close down to around 100 even out lower the budget spending so that you are maybe loosing a few bucks a turn. Adjust your MSR sliders also but leave M a bit higher than the others. Also do not increase your taxes to much in this period. It will slow down your population growth substentialy. I prefear to leve taxes at 33% and make adjustments whan I hit 100 in treasury.

~SDC~

What do you guys think about defense? Will the AI attack you if you only have colonies pumped out to the far reaches of the galaxy?

It takes a little while before they can get transport tech, right?

I do exactly what Space Dust does, except I bring my spending down to around -400. The new production cutoff is now -500.

A typical colony might get strung out VERY thin...Once I have all the worlds I want, I'll start using colony ships to ferry citizens to planets with VERY low populations.

Certain starting abilities (populist party, PQ bonuses, speed bonuses, morale bonuses) make things easier. Heck, the 10% PQ bonus trait lets you colonize PQ13 worlds and boost them to PQ15 after soil enrichment!

Defense isn't an issue. If I get creamed, I get creamed. If anyone attacks, I WILL get creamed. But usually, I play nicey-nice until I get defensive ships built.

- Nobody

Early game I do roughly the same as Space Dust. I set military spending to 65% and research to 35%. When my treasury gets down to about 100 BC, I start slowing down on the spending.

Research goes towards getting Impulse Engine initially followed by either manufacturing techs or communications techs. After getting the initial manufacturing techs and communications techs, I start building towards getting BattleAxes which works pretty good at protecting my planets.

Ideally you will have battle axes coming off the production line about the time that other empires start getting really aggressive.

Interesting hearing what other people do early game ...

I've been increasing both tax rate and spending early game so that I can crank out colony ships. I don't know if this is a good idea, but when I've left my tax rate low, I've found that my population grows too fast which lowers my morale, which means that I can't raise my tax rate later if I need the money.

- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~

There is another way to gain colonies early in the game, here is what I do:
Before begin the game, set the Reasearch bonus to 8 or 10, this will give you a very much boost on researching ability which comes in very handy later on. Upon begining the game, set the research project to Communication Theory, fly around while your project is underway, when it is finished, research Nano electronics, after that, research Stella Catography. With this project, you will be able to identify suitable planets in the galaxy map, which are shown like white dot(unsuitable ones are grey). With the research bonus you have, you should finish all those research in 30~40 turns. Did I metion all those time you should keep on building colony ships? The way I materalised this tactic is that AIs dont use maps to find planets, they just KNOW it.
By doing this, I am able to colonise as much planets as possible in very early stage.

~SDC~

Sorry, I made a mistake, the metions turns to finish those project should be around 20. not 30~40, what was I thinking!

~SDC~

I have trying to avoid the expansion rush by setting habitible planets to rare.

It is fun had to change my opening tatics

I usually play habitible planets on rare. Gives you lower scores though!

Paul.

~SDC~