Citizens to colonize

The best way to get a good "empire" is get as many colony ships as possible with full population on them. As for technology, go for the diplomatic route, and establish trade. After that weapons and defences. And don't forget to incease propulsion techs.

I always fill up my colony ships. It helps the colony to become productive (in terms of income) if it starts from a larger base population.

The tech tree question is a lot harder to answer, as it depends on what size galaxy you're playing, whether there are a lot of habitable planets, etc. There are some interesting posts in the strategy forums on this.

I appreciate the info. With regads to the population on the colony ships, if you fill it with the maximum number of colonist, is there any impact to the home world, the one that provided the population?

The colonists you put on the ship are subtracted from the population of the home world, so you don't want to do this on a world with a low population.

if you thought population magically appeared on the ship without impacting the homeworld you are a giant moron.

Way to make an ass of yourself twice in the same post - by flaming a newb and quoting the wrong post while doing so.

A good tip later on during a game is to add more Colony Modules to a colonization ship, that way you can transfer more citizens during the initial colonization.

You can also use a colonization ship as a shuttle for transfering citizens from overcrowded planets to lesser populated ones.

Also, while colonising, you may want to NOT build anything on the new planets for a while.

New colonies cost enough without the added costs for production and maintenance.

I think I found a bug.

I design a ship with no colonitation module and a lot of engines, call it a scout if you want to. Then when I find a good planet i upgrade to a colony ship and I am able to colonize a planet. I just can't remeber how big a pop i get on the newly colonized planet, a shame.

You get a population of zero, IIRC. It will still grow, but very slowly. Yes, you get to colonize the planet, but you face steep econonomic losses until that planet gets a population - and starting from zero, it could be half a game year or more before you break even.

The same thing happens when you spore a planet.

thx... I just did it with a couple of planets and did not notice...

You'll note I didn't say this wasn't worthwhile in some specific circumstances, it's just not generally economically viable. If nothing else, follow up your converted "colony ship" with a real one (or a transport if you have them) and leave it parked in orbit for a few turns. After 5-6 turns send it on it's way, and the population that grew while it was there will give your planet a healthy boost.

This works especially well if there is a good planet nearby you need tech to get. Park your colony ship until you finish researching what you need instead of just waiting.

thx... are you able to place colontation modules on a tiny hull? beacuse then you just buy cheap fighters and upgrade them.

Not without researching the first two or three levels of miniaturization. Small hulls work, and are still cheaper than cargo hulls.

Nice... I have to experiment with that the next game

I'm still playing DA (long story) but I generally have two standard colony designs - one based on a cargo hull, and one on a small hull.

The small hull has nothing but a colony module, making them fast and cheap to spam. These are excellent for short distances or colonies that don't have much capacity to build yet.

The cargo hull has the colony module, life support, and as many engines as I can cram on it. This is good for settling planets further from your center, or starting a cluster of colonies. Send one out, let it grow a few turns while buildings are set up, then start launching small colony ships from it. These ships also get built by colonies that have factory bonuses, to slow down production to where the population can replace what's lost with each new ship.

The important part is: build both of these with starting tech. Both designs are available to me from turn one, and rarely do I need to upgrade the designs during a game.

Protip: Just because a mechanic makes sense doesn't mean it'll obviously be in a game.

I mean, these colonizers can fit what, a hundred million people on them? The realism boat sailed. There's nothing moronic about expecting other leaps of unrealism like not affecting the home planet.