Worst start turned out to be my best yet.

I decided to try some of the tailored game options and so I start in Ideological war scenario which puts you on a team with 2 good races as the terrans and at war with 3 neutral and 3 evil civs. Settings were Large Galaxy, and occational - common on stars, planets and habitable, painful difficulty.

So I appear in the very bottom corner, sector (1,1) and think well this kind of stinks for exploration and expansion, but at least I'll be secure. (I was hoping for a furiously fast start having altered in +70% population growth just to try it out) I knew the race to the relatively few planets would be intense so I sent out a bunch of custom sensor and colony ships. This setting, probably the game type also affords a rather large 20,000 BC starting fund which was key to me being able to turn this around.

I take a look at Earth and I've got 2 +300% research tiles so I buy those and start researching like mad. Since I'm buying the first several buildings and ships I leave it all on research anyway for several turns. I check in on the 2 stars next to me and out of like 7 planets, 1 class 8 was available. As my other ships closed in on the next closest star which is almost 3 sectors away and I see the white border of the Korx, whom I am at war with by default and I'm hitting my forehead, thinking that this game my already be a lost cause. Anyway I continue to look around, building more sensor ships only to find that they have colonized all 5 of their surrounding planets up to the Drengin boarder.

Confindent in my population growth advantage I had sent off 5 full colony ships already, 4 of which were now just wandering around. I had upgraded to impulse before the Korx so I was keeping my ships ahead of their extra colony ships which were aimlessly looking for homes also. This was to no avail however since it seemed all the worlds were taken by the time my ships made it out (about 8 turns to Korx and even further beyond at 3/week) So I start to recall my colony ships when it dawns on me that it's still only a couple months into the game and with a lot of the cash I started with, I still have a shot.

Korx was in such a hurry to colonize that most of their planets still had 70 million - 500 million on them, and so I conceived a plan. I parked all my colony ships by the Korx worlds and pump up productivity and set research back to 100% and get planetary invasion in 11 turns. I also customized one of my scout freighters with a particle beam and started tearing up their loose colony ships, killing the people contained within. Watching and waiting for those turns was the longest 11 turns of my life, I was either doomed to my pathetic 3 planets (PQ 10, 8, and 4 Mars) or destined for glory. With 8 turns to go I see the 1st race militarize, then another, and a 3rd right as I upgraded all my colony ships into transports. Luckily none of them were the Korx. I also got planetary defenses for the soldering bonus right as the invasion began.

As I had planned, my shiney new ships had each retained all 500 million civilians which were now a loyal army and in one fell swoop, took all but one of the Korx worlds. (Thank god for the air superiority advantage bonus) Their last remaining world I took down with a couple customized 500 capacity, very fast transports since I didn't have enough people in their space which was quickly becoming mine. Just like that, one of the neutral races was out of the way and I had the best 'inital' colony grab I have ever had. Booyaka! I was so happy it worked out.

Before this I hadn't even thought to rush to invasion, it was inspiration brought about by deep desparation. I guess I was also pretty lucky to have started with an uber research Earth and 20,000 BC. Still, I thought I would share. ^____^

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