Thanks.... funny thing is that most of my planets will be economy worlds!

My biggest expense early game will a cargo hull survey ship.... (if i can find thalium that it) and production is so useless early game you HAVE to rush buy this survey ship otherwise don't bother at all. If i manage to get more thalium i will build a second survey ship, otherwise none until i get survey technology which i usually try to get fairly quickly, then i will rush buy 2 or three more survey ships.... in a typical game i will have between three and five extra survey ships.

Typically i will specialize two production worlds and two science worlds and the rest will be purely economic - not withstanding taking advantage of bonus tiles and adjacency here and there on economic worlds..... and then later on when i have good money i will fully convert these worlds to the science or production specialty.

 

for the most part i do not rush buy planetary structures because i simply don't have the money, however, i do occasionally rush buy on my primary science world.... because science worlds are just hopeless at developing naturally, just hopeless.

 

What else... ok i also try to get small hulls asap so i can build cheaper colony and constructors.

 

I am pretty good at getting economic starbases up and running nice and fast..... well,,, no,,, typically on most newly colonized planets, there will be a delay of around 50 turns for the first colony ship, then, the first constructor after that will typically be around 30 turns, even on a small hull. Sometimes i can get two or three worlds close together to share a shipyard and that helps allot, as does giving priority to starbases that range a greater number of planets.

 

Once i get starbases going with a number of upgrades, things start improving exponentially faster from that point on..... but before that time comes, development is pretty much a total basket case, because shipyards and planetary production needs half a century to do anything, shit.... while somehow the AI, even AI on normal level are able to do so many things and i wonder how the hell?????

 

Oh yea, and while i am in the middle of desperately trying to drag my planets kicking and screaming towards productivity, and i am still just building my first colony and constructors.... apparently i am supposed to have magically been able to build a military??????????????????????????????? And somehow the AI has, and wants to atack me and i am like wtf? already??????????????? (that is an AI on 'normal' level by the way, in Galciv2 i am playing AI on Godlike and they are not coming that fast.... well, not 'fast' as such, i mean to say i can face of the AI on Godlike that comes fast because i am actually allowed to build stuff)

 

 

Really you are pouring nine times more into credits then if you just build them. You are not spending credits in infastructure. If wasting credits is working for you then more power to you in inefficiency. To answer the original post your unindustrialised thats why you cant build anything. Morale will help counter coersion.

Turn auto upgrade off for improvements.

1 Manufacturing World (2-1 Factories to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

For every one Manufacturing World have 2 Research Worlds (2-1 Research Centers to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

For Every 3 Research Worlds have 1 Wealth World (2-1 Marketplace to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

Have Tech Brokering off.

Trade Tech to Minors for Cash, Survey Anomalies for Cash.

Set your Global Production Wheel to 20/40/40 to 12/44/44. (W/R/M)

Build Starbases, 6 Eco and 1 Culture per star System, Fit them in to suit Starbase range(based on tech).

If your not a warmonger, beeline the Diplomacy Branch. Build Embassy's on every planet. Upgrade them asap as you get Tech.

 

Thats what I do, with the default AI works upto Genius atleast.

 

 

Thanks for that.... i am especially interested in that global production setting!

 

I noticed something interesting about the AI last night..... .

Now i have that problem where the Drengin manage to appear with hugely powerful ships... technologically speaking i can match them, but i am heavily disabled to build or upgrade to such a level, and no matter how hard i try, i just cannot convince my lazy planets to do it - this is the problem in a nutshell.

 

Even on 'normal' difficulty this is happening, and i am wondering how? Then last night i think i saw how.....

 

I had a cargo survey ship pass through Drengin territory and i saw them building lots of very weak ships.

 

Then after a number of turns they are upgrading those ships.

 

They are upgrading vast numbers of ships on mass. Its impossible for the player to do this.

 

So my new theory now is that the upgrade costs are vastly, vastly cheaper for the AI? - If true, this is at the heart of the problem, because the player cannot compete with that early game.

If you don't build factories, you lose. Costs are essentially irrelevant, as they grant you an economy in the first place.

You seem to be attempting to turtle and tech, but you also appear to be tech starved. If the AI has more than double your logistics, you're long past royally screwed up.

Post screenshots of a bunch of planets you set up. You think they're bad, let us tell you why directly.

I thought a little about this, and possibly in the end game this strategy would be better. A strong maybe for most of the game your worlds are undeveloped without factories because of slow building, and shipbuilding would turtle which is fine as long as you don't go to war. We are comparing 50 vs. 3. To remedy you are rush buying. How are making this work again considering it is nine times more expensive than building it. With a factory you build it and reap benefits right away. With farms you build it and you have to wait for it's benefits. For each factory it is easier to build stuff. For farms it takes just as long to build slowing everything g down. Possibly a better solution would be to build factories now, and maybe in the end game after all your planets are developed slowly not all at once switching them out for farms.

When building worlds (my strat)

priority one:
- have a triangle with 1 growth, 1 food hub and 4 farms (at the very least) on any world. Plan for it from the start. never be pop capped. Never have a pop cap way higher then your actual pop.
Reason:
- population is the only component that is limited by time and can not be attained throughs starbases.

priority two:
- have solid manufacturing in order to not be reliant on rush buying stuff for you colonies. A Hive or a Durantium Refinery is an excellent early improvement for that purpose, but other manufacturing buildings will ahve to suffice for most races.
- every system gets a shipyard. If there is no manufacturing worlds they can still supplemen the fleet with medium ships.

priority three:
- specialize your world. Considering you can build a lot of starbases for your planets, it is fin to have only like 33% of a colonies improvements being specialization.
- also there is coecerion, with in my build any world is a hybrid manufacturing research or in very rare exceptions a manufacturing economics world.

Income slider: 12/44/44 in W/R/M
Military Slider: 0% military early on, unless a colony ship needs to be build and I don't have the money to rush buy it.

Homeworld:
- mixed manufacturing/research world. Get manufacturing capital reasonably rearly, use that manufacturing to either build more colony ships or a research capital and other big improvements.
- sometimes I also add my trade improvements here

Approval:
- If you can't maintain >85% approval or close to it, don't be afraid of dropping down to 40% or so.
- approval is gained by: technology, starbases, galactic achievements, improvemens on planets (in that order).
Reason:
- one: this can be remidied later, not having enough population can't.
- two: you lose 10% productivity by going from 100% to 85% approval, 10% by going from 85% to 60% and 5% by going from 60% to 40% approval (i.e. 100% production at 40% approval, 125% at 100%)

Wealth strategy:
- rush colony ships or scouts.
- wealth is for maintainence, not for rush building.
- priority stuff (gaia vortex, research cloisters, big ships, ...) can be rushed with access wealth if available
- income comes from: trade, income modules on starbases, tourism, economic worlds (in that order)

Military strategy:
- be nice (trade, open borders, maybe non-aggression) with your neighbors and start researching military only if a war is brewing.
- start building warships when some acceptable level of military tech is reached or war unavoidable

New colony strategy:
- colonizers only bring 0.5-1.5 pop (they are much more useful working in the manufacturing capital and colonies will develope pop over time anyways)
- usually my build order for new colonies is manufacturinhub (or hive if possible) -> hospital -> farm or manufacturinghub -> farm -> hospital.

_______

Sidenote: normal AI doesn't cheat for upgrading ships as far as I know.

I pretty much build 3 farms in a Triangle, then specialize every world. Homeworld is always manufacturing.

 

First thing you do? Rush scout ships, buy merc surveyors.  Rush colonizers.

 

Get 6-8 good stable planets, then start specializing them.

 

I don't even build a ship with weapons for hundreds of turns.

 

I focus on culture, research and planet development.  Once you have all that, building ships to counter an opponent is easy.

Figuring out how the AI works is simple. They do 1 attack per turn on a planet. If you have a bunch of feeder tiny ships that you can put into a planet 1 per turn you can keep them from conquering your planet indefinately.

 

Also culture flipping is REAL. Just pump out that culture. One game I built 0 warships.  I had 1/2 the insane map conquered in culture.  When I flipped a new planet, I wiped EVERYTHING but the food, and built consulates and left it on production.  When it finished, I swapped to money.  Each new planet was pumping out like 3-6 culture per turn and would just rampage onto the next.

You do this before they get their 5th red tree bonus and you can conquer a civilization, pretty fun!

 

Interesting, thanks...

 

Ok i played what i thought was a good game this last week but again the AI on 'gifted' level came down with fleets i cant touch.

 

Its turn 270 and i would rather quit than watch untouchable fleets destroy all my hard built starbases.

 

My stats are as follows;

Wealth 2531

Research 952

Manufacturing 1337 - social 723, military 668

 

In the timeline all my stats compare well to the AI except my economy is hugely higher but interestingly my military and socal production is practically a 'flatline' compared to the AI.

 

I saved this game at the start... i will replay and try more factories and some other advice from this thread and see what difference it makes?

Hmm, no that's not a lot. For your reference, something from my most recent game (Drengin tech tree custom race). The only thing that might not line up with your games is that dure to Horemvores Tweaked AI mod I was able to produce a few Ideology points through planetary projects, but that is not that big a difference.

Turn: 161
Homeworld Manufacturing: 1456.3
Homeworld Research: 1097.8
Homeworld Population: 134.5

Total Worlds: 9                                    (mentioning this is important, The more worlds you have the higher your economy.)
Total Population: 816.4
Total Manufacturing: 5239
Total Research: 5514
Total Income (Savings/Trade/Tourism): 1609 (1042/414/152)
Total Maintenance: 850
Balance: 758

I don't mean to bragg. This is only for your reference for what you can actually achieve in this game. The AI shouldn't be your reference

Especially if it is not Horemvores Tweaked one.

Why are you playing on gifted if you can't win on that difficulty? Knock it down one until you understand the mechanics better.

Again, show us worlds. Nobody can tell you what you're doing wrong, because nobody knows what you're doing.

 

I am playing on Gifted since i can play on Godlike in galciv2.... but certainly i have thought i might have to take down the difficulty more? But first i will try to replay this map with more factories, if that doesn't work then i will post a saved game or something.

Now as it stands, i am doing very well in the replay so far.... i am building way more factories, yet my money is still good! Wow, that is so not like Galciv2!! lol

 

Also i find the AI does not colony rush anything like Galciv2 either.... so i am changing my strategy to build more constructors early instead of all colony ships.

Also i am less bothered about claiming resources with constructors early on.... a few for range extension and for building survey ships and that's it for a while. Main focus on planets, getting morale modules on starbases nice and quick is my first priority now.

 

What else is different in this game is i managed to jag orbital manufacturing from an anomaly after about 10 turns! So i am starting very early with small hull colony and constructors - but that is more luck than strategy, although my strategy is to switch to orbotal manufacturing whenever i see a gold anomaly!

 

 

 

Don't underestimate durantium refineries and thullium data archives. They are awesome to the point where I wonder whether it is worth it not to rush some early colonizers in order to get up a durantium refinery fast; maybe together with rushing a manufacturing capital on the same world.

You mean rush buy early constructors? No, that's what the first colony ship is for (pragmatic ideology - You get the three free constructors) - send two out for range extension and one for thalium, secondary goal is whatever else you can to fit in the starbase range while doing that. I like to try to get Promethium if i can because a survey ship with a prototype engine is far superior.

Yea, I do tend to rush buy data archive, tech capital and economic capital, but not manufacturing capital since it usually gets built on a good production planet (obviously, lol), so no need to rush buy.

Think more like:

intuitive trait (free tech at start of game): get manufacturing capital super early + durantium refinery asap, no need to rush buy colonizers tech capitals etc., since they finish fast anyways (on your homeworld but where else would you build an early tech capital).

Maybe with going small hulls next you can get some useful 1 turn build time colonizers.

 

 

Well i usually play Terran, so there are usually far better planets than Earth to be found for tech or manufacturing capitals. Especially if i can get a good Ghost world with 50% tech bonus. Manufacturing capital needs to be a better than average quality planet with a few other planets in range to share the shipyard and to build shipyard projects on without wasting valuable space on the manufacturing capital.

 

Incidentally... this game i am replaying... it has a level 21 Ghost world right next to Earth!! 50% tech bonus!!! But that is about the only good thing about this map in terms of planets, the rest is pretty average with a huge section of dead worlds taking a big bite out of my left side.

 

Funny how sometimes the random map generator gets all excited about having dead worlds all over the place! Often i start a game and i can count the first 15 star systems nearby are all dead and i have habitable planets set on 'abundant' hahahahahahahaha

These bonusses are additive. Meaning that if you have a world with 50 production and +150% manufacturing from buildings and a world with 50 production and +0% from buildings you get the same amount of manufacturing out of the capital (ignoring adjacencies). Same goes for ghost worlds and tech capitals. A ghost worlds gets more out of a thullium data archive though.

The reason I put these on my homeworld is that I want these bonusses early in order to make most use of them (if I don't rush them the capital is the only world that can build them in a reasonable time frame). Plus early my homeworld has the highest pop and the civilization capital has a few better bonusses then the colony capitals. I believe I get more out of developing my homeworld early like this. My homeworlds are often comparable to the terran one, because I prefer the early growth rate of a second world over having a class 16 starting world.

Good to see you are doing better, are you using multiple shipyards. This is how you could build colonies, and constructors at the same time. I would use constructors to build shipyards. Using planets is a needless waste of time. I'm glad to hear three is harder than two.

I don't get it?

Multiple shipyards? How do you assign a planet to multiple shipyards? The only option it gives you is 're-assign'?

 

Sometimes i forget i already have a shipyard nearby when i colonize a new world, then i use the free rush buy and end up with a shipyard i don't want until much later when individual planets have enough production to no longer need shipyard sharing (except for when building military vessels of course). If i can remember i have an extra shipyard, i will not build one at the next planet i colonize and send the shipyard there, and hopefully it is not too far! lol

But yes, later on when planets are improved enough that its worthwhile having its own individual shipyard, then i send a constructor to build the shipyard..... gosh, but so often i accidentally build a starbase instead and then have to decommission it!! hahahaha

OK well the first question was meant when you colonise your second planet in another solar system. Maybe it was bad advice, but I found it handy to have a shipyard for colony ships and a constructor as soon as possible

Your raw production is what the manufacturing capital multiplies.

 

You gain the most from it by putting it on the highest raw production planet that you're using for manufacturing.  He's saying being a ghost world or something is irrelevant because those bonuses are additive, not multiplicative.

 

Your homeworld is actually a very good place for these types of buildings unless you have absolutely fantastic planets.  It gets both a population bonus, which equals raw production, and a raw production bonus.  Populations being equal, "Earth" is massively better than class 20 planets that have far more buildings due to that +10 raw production advantage it has.  You may end up with a several hundred percent difference in manufacturing bonuses on that nice planet, but the manufacturing capitol doesn't care if the raw production is the same.

 

Now if your class 20 planet has a 50% food bonus or something and you can get a huge raw production, eh, the homeworld sucks.

You said you wanted your mnufacturing capital on a world with lots of space. So let us assume you have some additional mnufacturing buildings on it:

World A has 50 Production and no manufacturing bonusses, slider is 0.2/0.4/0.4 W/M/R:

Manufacturing = 0.4*50*(1+0) = 20 manufacturing
now you add manufacturing capital (ignoring the additional adjacencies (~5-20%)) you get)
Manufacturing = 0.4*50*(1+200%) = 60 manufacturing
-> your manufacturing capital gives you 40 manufacturing

World B allready has 4 basic factories (110% manufacturing with adjacencies) and pseudo ghost world (+50% manufacturing to planet, I know there is no such thing but I will use it here to explain why ghost world has no impact on whether or not you want to place your capital there), 50 production and same sliders as above

Manufacturing = 0.4*50*(1+110%+50%) = 52 manufacturing
now you add manufacturing capital (ignoring adjacencies again (~40-50%)) you get:
Manufacturing = 0.4*50*(1+110%+50%+200%) = 92 manufacturing                          (*)
-> your manufacturing capital gives you 40 manufacturing

(*) = Here you see what I mean with the bonusses being additive: It is 1+110%+50%+200% = 460% and not (1+110%)*(1+50%)*(1+200%) = 945%; then it would be considerably better to build your capital on a big world.

So I ignored adjacencies so far, but they make no difference if you make a specialized world and are able to surround your capital anyways eventually (possible on class 12, especially on Earth you can reserve a spot like this).

So what will happen that makes the capital on a large world better then on a small world is the terminal population size of the planet (whenever it is reached), because this contributes to production and therefore multiplicatively towards your total W/M/R.

But all this said, my second paragraph was the more important argument for putting them on my homeworld.

hmmmmm ok thanks for that, my head hurts but its starting to make sense! lol

 

Special thanks to zuPloed for putting in so much detailed effort to explain.

 

So if i am looking for a manufacturing capital other than the homeworld, i am mostly considering population potential more than anything else..... got it! that's a good tip! But also i see the advantages to making the homeworld the manufacturing capital

Or raw production bonuses.  The tech for precursors can make for excellent manufacturing capitals if you have no planets with extreme population levels possible.  They cap out around +30, which is somewhat mitigated by the horrendous 50% food reduction, but for sides that have significant percent bonuses, that can become a relatively minor detraction.

Oh yes, and the other very important thing to consider for the manufacturing capital is how many nearby planets there are.

 

My best manufacturing capitals EVER, had a number of nearby planets that when combined on the one shipyard, the production speed is mind boggling and no way could my home world match it. Overall its less efficient i know, but when you consider the combined bonuses from shipyard projects - the more production you can force through one single shipyard with project bonuses, the better!

 

Speaking of shipyard projects.... if i build all those on one planet, can i rotate to any number of shipyards for one turn of production and those bonuses will be added to the ship or not? how exactly does that work?