Maybe I'm dumber than I thought....

Addressing what I can, ignoring what I can't:



None are innately superior to the others. Mass drivers are the cheapest and do the least damage. Missiles are the most expensive and do the most damage. Beam weapons are between the two. So the manual tells me, at least.



I usually play on smaller maps than you do (Medium or Large), so my advice in this area is limited. Personally, I make a beeline for Impulse Drive, for that additional +1 speed, then get the essential diplomacy/infrastructure techs and then I move on to building a military (I play for Conquest victories). I would suspect, however, that with the extra time you have on the larger maps that you may be able to research more techs before moving to the military ones than I do (life support and extreme colonization techs come to mind as ones that could be more important in your games than mine).



You'll get better results by specializing each of your worlds and achieving balance only at the Empire-level. Have each planet be almost exclusively factories, or almost exclusively labs, or almost exclusively economy buildings. Many of the key buildings operate on a percentage system - +20% to industry, for example - and therefore they are most effective when applied to as big a base as possible. If all your worlds only have two factories, that base production is never going to be very high. But if you have a world with 8-10 factories and then stack a bonus on top of that, you get a lot more bang for your buck.

- Ash

An overview of the game principles to follow and note for the early game - its in the latter where the whole thing is won or lost.

1. Economy Rules - particularly at the Gigantic / Immense maps. Its essential to really understand the economy model and how things are paid for and gained, it permiates everything, and is a signifcant background game control mechanism.

2. What you do in the early game has a HUGE effect on your later outcome - its an exponential effect. Visualise your start point - one planet - and what that turns into by mid game. Now imagine you had two planets at start, double the midpoint outurn. Crude analogy, but gets the point across. Its very important to pay attention to the slightest detail in the early game to maximise the exponential effect later on. Every bc counts - every single one - get real picky, maximise your bang for your buck in the early game.

3. The economy is a harsh one to get used to. As an overview, dont build anything (except Home World and maybe one other to pump out colonisers) until you start to get consistently in the green and population is building nicely. Your main early income source is population, so maximise that by best use of finance buildings and morale buildings. Most buildings have a maintenance cost - now imagine on your current scheme the effect of a couple of buildings on each planet you get - they are too few to have an effect, but you pay maintenace on them - hence dont build production until the population is building nicely. Clearly some building must take place to get out colony ships and build tech structures, but concentrate the build on a few planets, leave the rest empty until later.

4. The first couple of buildings tend to be general in build type for most people, however specialise as soon as you can ie buld only econ on one planet, production on another, and only tech buildings on another. Its far more efficient that way. You'll need some production buildings on any planet to build the rest, but usually two factories on each specialist building will get you going. Make a Finance and Tech planet an early priority - especially a finance planet.

5. To start with set slider to favour research - on those maps I usually start off with max 100% production, and a split of 80 - 10 - 10 (research, social, military). Note the big spend on tech at the start. You want to crank out all the productivity techs that help production, techs that speed up ships, yellow techs for the diplomatic and influence bonuses, and the early low level tech enhancements. Look at the descriptions for each tech - you will find many "productivity" aspects tucked away in them. At first go for those that leverage other effects - eg planet productivity, finance bonuses, morale bonuses. Remember the AI is also building up, and will not be down your throat for a while. I usually trim down the research spend gradually over the first 50 turns or so, ending up at around 50% tech spend.

6. Build a few cheap low level military ships - say, 2/3/4 defenders early on - that will keep the AI off you for a good while. Just top it up with another one every 30 or so turns.

6. Everyone plays it different in detail, and you will develop your own style, however follow the general guidelines above - and more important understand WHY you are doing what you are doing. Dont follow a "silver bullet" formulae, spend your time understanding whats where and the effect it has on the framework above.

Later having got into the Start Game ok, you can concentrate on more detailed stuff to fine tune it, for now spend time learning the productivity & Econ side of the game. You'll probably loose a few while you do that, no matter, take the slow learning root - far better in the long run.

Regards
Zy

Even dumb people can learn to play well. They need more time to learn to play well.

Lucky for you, I just updated my guide a few minutes ago (at time of writing this reply). The Terrans were among those updated.
TA 101

grrr the edit - gone again ... sorry double post.

Forgot to emphasise one thing - do lots of early games (for say, 2 game years or so) then ditch the game start another. And another, and another , etc etc get into the early game, it is so important. Once you feel you have consistently nailed the early game, you are good to go. Little point struggling through a full game until you nail the early game, you only end up fire-fighting, not dictating the pace, and learn little.

When I first started I just did the first six game months then ditched it. Got through several a night that way, and maximised the learning curve. Learn the early game first, get it nailed, ditch the rest for now.

Regards
Zy

I would recommend you play Tiny, or other smaller maps on low difficulty. The reason is, if you are new to this game, it'll give you some time to learn the game mechanics, and if you are comming from DA, it will give you some time to adjust to the changes.



The stuff I do varies from game to game, but I'll provide some suggestions.

You should try to get "Universal Translator" early on, if for no other reason than knowing you can trade techs for cash.

Avoid techs that improves buildings early on. Those buildings ussually (Thalans are one such exception) cost more to maintain and take longer to build. However, you may wish to consider researching the first economic buildings tech because it provides +10% economic bonus, and the first morale buildings tech because it provides +15% morale.



I use my mining ship to do early scouting. My first concern is determing which stars have planets, and which of those have habitable planets.

Once I have a few planets under my control, I build a better scout ship to scan the universe with a magnifying glass. One of your nearby sectors might have a galactic resource hidden under a parsec of unexplored space.

________________
I'm assuming you are new to this game. As such, I'm going to suggest that you spend your points when setting up your civ on economics first, morale second, and whatever remains on population growth. Also, pick the Ferderalist party since it provides a large economic bonus. You can worry about trying something different once you understand the game better.

Thank you for the help and replies - I appreciate how open and kind (and patient!) people are here

I will practice the opening - good suggestion. Getting a grip on the economics is difficult - so many small details it seems. I am constantly going into the yellow/red on cash flow...

One question: do people build a starport on each planet so they can build ships everywhere or do you focus a few shipyards and send ships to defend planets?

Another: on the specialized planets - do you build a few morale structures? Just wondering b/c most of my planets I find are in the 7-10 range meaning: 1 Starport, 2 Factories, 3-6 specialized, 1 morale ?? And I assume no one builds farms? I still cannot figure out when/how/why it works to build up the population without seeing your morale take a terrible nosedive.

DiveWrath - I look forward to reading your guide - thank you. Again, to everyone, thank you for the help - it is vital!


J

I usually get 1 morale building as quickly as possible. I also tend to leave my taxes at whatever level is necessary to get 100% morale until I'm broke. I figure it works out kinda like this:

49% taxes in early game gets me 10 credits
29% taxes in early game gets me 6 credits


49% taxes in mid-game with double the population growth up until now gets me 500 credits
49% taxes in mid-game with normal population growth because I've been taxing the hell outta my people the whole time gets me 250 credits

It doesn't take too many mid-game turns until I catch up.

Regarding starports: Build them only where you have the production to use them, unless you need a quick ship. (for those "Where the hell did HE come from?!" moments) A 2 factory world with a starport isn't doing anything with it. A 10 factory world can crank stuff out.

Most of my planets cap at 8 billion people. If I build a farm, it's because this planet is an economy planet. A 125% increase in taxes from my economy buildings looks much nicer from a planet with 16 billion people than 8 billion, even if they need 2-3 morale structures to support them. Under NO circumstances should you exceed 18 billion.

Building farms + morale buildings can be a way to improve your economy (though depending on the race it might be more profitable to build econ. buildings instead) but it also helps to increase your influence if you're pursuing that kind of victory. In addition, it give a much larger pool of people to fill transports with, so farms are not entirely without use.

I would turn minor races on, and go for 8 of them. They are excellent trading partners, and you can take them over mid-game and get a really nice planet for it.



I would drop the population and research bonuses and go for max Morale and +10% each to military and social production.



100% production is a good idea, but 60% in military early on is not a good idea, especially on the larger maps. With the large, gigantic, and immense maps the colonization rush is WAY less important than on the smaller maps. A good human player can take out an AI empire twice the size of his own as long as he can maintain a one-front war and has a tech and income lead due to smart early choices. So don't rush the military while hamstringing your internal growth. Instead focus on Social growth early on along with some research. Once you have a solid home planet colonize like mad.
Personally I do 1% military, 99% social, and 0 research, then I "Focus" on research on all planets, occasionally turning research up to 99% to "rush research" a specific tech I need immediately.



I used to try to develop planets like this. It doesn't work very well because your factory production is always to slow. Instead I suggest putting factories on all but two of the starting free squares on your home planet. Put morale on one of the remaining squares, and an economic or research on the other.

Future planets should be focused into economy, production, or research. Regardless of the focus plan all of them should start with one or two production and a morale. Economy and production planets should have two or one farms (respectively) as well. If you are trying the 1/99/0 strategy though then only build research on +300% or +700% research locations as your industry planets are the real source of your research.



I actually don't recommend colonizing mars on big maps. Let the AI take it and then you can flip it right back. Do this with most 4 star planets near larger planets you already have owned for a while... Unless you have nothing better to colonize, then take them.
Also, NEVER build starports first. On all planets factories are built first, however many you plan to have, then morale and farms and research, and anything else you are building. Then at the very end you build your Starport. Why? Because a new planet has low income (because of low population), and just paying maintenance and social production is expensive enough. If you are actually building ships as well you are going to be spending too much which will ultimately slow your expansion. Indeed, you would be better off building nothing at all for quite a while on many new planets, especially non-production planets. For instance, if you set down on a PQ9 planet and immediately start building one industry, one morale, two farms, and four banks what will happen? You will be paying a ton of maintenance on these structures as they get built, far more maintenance and production costs than the planets low population can pay for. Even when you are done building the population will likely not be close to sufficient to pay the maintenance, even with the economic buildings. Instead (in the early game), wait about 30 turns, then start building. Your planet will already be positive when you start building, and will be about even when you finish, but then it will grow rapidly from there.



With the focus on industry on your home planet this should be down to about 4 weeks, which is going to help your colony rush a whole lot.



Early on grab a couple speed upgrades and/or miniaturization, whatever it takes to get a 4 speed or maybe even 5 speed colony ship. Get a range increase as well. Then grab econ, social production, and military production. Work communications in there as well to start talking to other species. At this point on really high difficulties you will be getting war threats, so go straight to military techs and production now. Otherwise, grab an industry tech and upgrade your production facilities before doing military stuff.



Already answered.



Use your survey ship only to scout anomalies. If you want to scout the area, use your miner... Although you could also commute your miner to a colony ship, pick up a load of people right away, and scout/colonize with it. Some people mine the immediate area first, then do this for the small production benefit.



You have my thoughts on all this already.

There is lots of good advise here. I wish to add my two cents, so here goes.

First of all, learn what the tech trees do for each race. this will help you better choose what techs to pick and in what order. Econ and Diplomacy are obvious early choices, but keep in mind that the further along any given tech tree you go, the more expensive (and time consuming) it gets.

As far as weapons are concerned, look at what your opponents are researching. If they are using shields of any kind, research something other than Beam weapons. And always research the defense appropriate to the weapons they are using. Obviously this goes for all three combinations. Also, I usually research on the 80/20 rule where 80% offensive, 20% defensive. And make sure to include miniaturization in your strategy.

As far as Econ is concerned, population is tied directly to this. Keep as many citizens as you possibly can. Keep them happy and they will help pay for the infra-structure. The higher the approval rating, the more they prosper (and populate) and the more mouths you will have to feed your pockets with.

for the Military/Social/Research slider, I always favor 20 mil, 20 soc, 60 Research myself (personal choice). I do this because, it doesn't matter how many war ships you have, if your opponent has a higher tech rating, chances are they have better weapons and defenses against YOUR weapons. This is a personal preference. There are a lot of ways around this.

I usually also go for global increases over individual planet increases. There are some techs that will give you a Civilization wide increase. This helps everything. Keep an eye out for these as they show immediate lift in stead of having to be built.

Do the whole colony rush thing, but understand your limits. Don't rush build the entire planet right away. Pace your building with the amount of colonists. I usually start off with a Recruiting center (boosts population and gives 10% inc) and go from there. Keep in mind that most buildings can be built over when you need something different/better there. Also, don't over reach your limit on planets. Don't rush to get lower PQ planets if there are higher ones in reach. Always keep in mind your sphere of influence. Tight clusters allow for Econ star bases that can increase research/production, and are easier to defend with fleets.

A lot of folks reccomend specializing planets. This seems to work but be careful that one of your "Specialized" research or economic bases don't get invaded and ham-string your strategy.

By and large, I would reccomend playing nice with the neighbors, at least until you can totally dominate them. If you are playing an aggressive race, attack early (and often), but other than that, see how far you can get with Diplomacy before attacking.