TIPS: Small-Medium Map, First Few Dozen Turns

[Gelvan]

Yeah, won my first game, with whoppy 59 pt. (allied victory)

It seems to work, at least on a small map on beginner - I've had 5 planets and 3000 bc in the end, nearly every sector under control.

The key was the beginning, as I mentioned above, to build Soul Enhancement and Habit Improvement as fast as possible, thereby switching between Social and Research, then straight forward to Trade and Moral Improvements. (with a short trip to Impulse Drivers (to get Transports) to surpass the period where the Pop Growth is to fast to maintain high morale - I put those unhappy people on some nearby star systems and lost them eventually to the Independent league, who were friendly as long I gave them some trade goods).

Of course on higher difficulties and bigger maps the AI would colonize faster and supposingly they're not as nice as they were in this game. But all in all, I've got a "feeling" for Economy now, which should also help on the higher difficulties.

thanks for the tips here and on Galvic.com!

[Master Marcus]

Even if you don't need a particular Trade Good, and still can afford to build one or two on productive planets, then do it. ka-ching: the AI pay well for TGs, you can kiss goodbye to an economic stagnation (at least in my games so far ) but that's for mid-game and late-game. Very early game: I prefer using slowly my 1000 bc towards a high spend rate - when I reach red, contacts with some civs are already made and trade is at hand.

[LDiCesare]

A few comments on leasing and trading:
I have only a few games (2 won, 1 lost, 1 abandonned after it crashed thrice, 1 ongoing). I tried various strategies, and found out several are available. The one which worked better (against normal AI) is:
Rush-buy at the lowest total cost. Thus little or no leasing. This can lose you a turn and make your start slower, so maybe leasing is a good strategy too, but I think it coss more so it's bad unless you really profit from the small window of opportunity it provides to gain a star or resource. Trade techs (or other stuff) at maximum (cost*time).
The AI tends to buy a tech like either 100$ now or 200$ over 10 turns. By repeatedly selling techs for tribute like that (over 10 to 20 turns), I managed to avoid building things which increase morale or economy, keep my expenses at 100% all the time. I started building banks very late when the game told me I had an income of 108bc and my fleet cost 136bc to upkeep. That was not much of a problem really, considering I earned about 1000bc per turn form tech trading...

Note that when I say buy at the lowest price, you should do the math sometimes, because the cheapest is not necessarily the immediate buy. Sometimes you can buy cheaper with a lease.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Things like banking centers, economic exchanges, and the like should be built as soon as you get them- they don't have any upkeep!


My usual early-game build list is soil imp, habit imp, fusion power plant, manu power plant, bank, econo exchange, research center. That usually puts me with a decent chunk of "discretionary" that I can either put into the productivity slider or burn with other improvements in a few planets - shipyards and the like.

Stuff I've NEVER built:

News Network
Embassy
Any of the "Entertainment only" line
Any of the "Culture only" line

I make a point of going after the morale-improving techs and trade goods, and these are enough to keep my people smiling.

[Grumbold]

I'm still inexperienced at the game but Soil improvement seems to be a good thing to get as early as possible. It makes the planets happier, increasing population growth and allowing you to tax them more. With a small amount of money spent on propaganda in the class 15 planets a 60% tax rate is quite sustainable.I'll have to try out the all-tech route to see how it compares.

[Pyrkaige]

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Stuff I've NEVER built:

News Network
Embassy
Any of the "Entertainment only" line
Any of the "Culture only" line

I make a point of going after the morale-improving techs and trade goods, and these are enough to keep my people smiling.

Give it a few difficulty levels; you'll be building all those things, too. Certainly at the easier levels, it's rare that you need to build entertainment and culture, as they tend to come automatically when you're ahead of everybody else and have all the trade goods. Once the AI can out-spend (and therefore out-build) you, though, and when the Drengins or other hostile races are pumping money into destabalizing your people -- at that point, you'll be doing everything you can to keep your people happy and your culture expanding.

The Embassy and News Network can be useful even at lower levels; they push out culture expansion and economy points which are always helpful. I end up eventually building anything that is +economy on all difficultylevels, since at its core a large part of the game comes down to being able to finance however you plan on winning (research, military, etc.)

[Gelvan]

Furthermore with the 5% bonus you've already paid the maintenance.

[Fried-Psitalon]

*Does* the 5 percent bonus always pay at least the maintenence on some structures? I seem to recall a few very brief tests I did saying 'no.'

I was under the impression that the AI didn't get "cheat bonuses" like extra money or production on the higher difficulty levels- is this incorrect?

And at the moment, playing gigantic map/all AIs set to "Bright".... I still don't need any of the entertainment/news structures.

(Though admittedly this game isn't far along.)

[Pyrkaige]

Whether the bonus pays for the structure depends on the size of your economy: on a small planet that has little money flowing through it, 5% won't mean much. On a massive planet it is quite helpful.

The AI does get more money from taxes at the Genius and Incredible intelligence levels. The specifics are in the faq that lists exactly what the various difficulty levels get you. As far as economics in general, I'd recommend reading the notes Brad put up that deals with some undocumented parts of the game. Quite helpful when it comes to figuring out how to keep the economy rolling.