My way on large maps or bigger is as follows.

Do not buy scouts, design your own improved colony ships and produce those.

Buy factories rather then colony ships, a factory is 500 bc approx, a colony ship is 1,000 bc. After a few turns u end up with more colony ships this way, hence more colonies.

I do not bother with scouts until the colony rush is over, let those colony ships scout for u.

I only target PQ 10 or above with my initial colony ships and do not really bother with anything less then a class 8. Let the AI handicap himself with those low PQ planets.

I am happy for the AI to colonise low PQ planets in my sphere of control, they will flip to me later or be easy invasion targets. Alot of games I let them have my PQ 4 'mars'. If I am evil I usually use PQ 7 planets or less to engage in planetary destruction, ie when invading use mass drivers etc.... then a transport will take my conquering soldiers off the planet and I 'nuke it' by selecting destroy colony

Those tactics work very well for me on suicidal level.

except I try and take all planets, no matter how low a PQ

I avoid low PQ's because they effect morale----->less tax revenue------>leads to being poor.

Higher PQ planets have a morale bonus, which means higher taxes, more money.

so that the computer can't rush in later and undermine my influence solidarity.

Never had this problem, they might get an area to 2-3 times but so long as it never reachs 4+ let the AI waste resources trying.

i have always played on Gigantic maps and i use my own custom civ. They have Bonus in luck so i used this to my advantage. At first i put my spending sliders to the following :
Military: 5%
Social: 55%
Research: 45%
(i play 1.1) What this does is that i am mainly gonna be doing is researching and building planetary upgrades VERY fast. In 1.1, however, any unsused social production is translated into military production, meaning if no improvements on the planet, i get a whopping 60% military and 40% research. Then what i do is immediatly research the technology that alows you to see the planets in your mini map (sorry forgot the name) At first this technology may seem useless, but if you look closely at the mini map, good planets look slightly different than non habitable planets (it would help if you take all the displays off except for planets in the mini map) What i do then is buy Colony ships and send them to those planets i think look a bit different.
Whilst i am doing this, i have my capital ship on auto survey, since i have 25% luck bonus i rely heavily on getting the nice money bonuses (2,500 preferably) since i am buying most of my colony ships.
After all of this is done, i research the technology that allows you to put survey modules on your ships (sorry forgot that one too) and then i build my own personaly survey ships with alot of engines, and a survey module, and then I give them Life support so they can go far into space, and set them on auto survey.
And then for my last tip, after getting the survey technologies, i then go into at least ion drive so i can get the 1 point speed boost.
That is my colony rush, it may seem like it will take forever, but since i have bonuses on technology and luck, and the fact that i play on gigantic maps, it usually doesn't take me too long.
P.S. i take over all planets regardless of PQ

Keep taxes low to keep approval at 100%. It will pay off big time in terms of population and ability to send out colony ships. This means be careful how the initial 5000 bc is spent. Unless good treasures are found in anomalies, that 5000 has to last a long time.

If you keep taxes that low, you obviously cannot produce as much at first. How long does it take to pay off? I am convinced you need to do the planet grab as soon as possible. Then work on getting the morale up.

If you keep taxes that low, you obviously cannot produce as much at first. How long does it take to pay off? I am convinced you need to do the planet grab as soon as possible. Then work on getting the morale up.

Use a morale building. Since your homeworld is going to sit at 5,000B or so for much of the colony rush phase, keeping its morale up isn't a problem. One building, + a decent morale ability (which you should always have some morale bonus) is quite sufficient to keep them at 100% happiness. Keeping your worlds at 100% is vital for good growth, even with a growth bonus ability.

It's hard to say without complete information, because little things will change the strategy I use for openings (well, it's always changing).

For example, the decision to research Impulse Drives before colonizing is a function of how many planets I want, how far away they are, and how valuable they are (class, defensibility, economic starbase considerations).

Even things like the decision to build a research lab or a factory on the first turn is determined, I'm beginning to think, but galaxy conditions. I believe a research lab is almost always the way to go, except in closely-packed large galaxies with high numbers of habitable planets.

One thing that is constant across openings is holding approval at 100% as long as is practicle, and aiming to keep industrial capacity at 100% for the whole game.

What are the drawbacks to go into deficit spending (below 0 bc)?

Hi,

Hard for me to remember my exact method but it's pretty much the following on Large and Gigantic maps which are the only two sizes I have played on...

I pretty much go for what would probably be considered a straightforward head-on approach. I made a fast colony ship by stripping the default one and putting one colony module on it, 3 hyperdrive engines on it(i think it's 3), then a couple of life support modules iirc. I think that left room to also put one sensor module on it. That's my initial colony rush ship and I send them out with 250 million onboard each one. And I purchase my colony ships until I get somewhat under 2000 bc(i don't like owing money so i never lease). This means I can really only buy a few colony ships at first. I seem to have bad luck with finding anomolies that contain bc so I don't count on that and do not make any survey ships. I just go for buying and making colonizers, no scouts until the colony rush is over.

Then I do what Alfonse said. IIRC I purchase the entertainment center(morale building ) to keep my home world at 100% morale from the get go. It also allows me to increase my Taxation rate. As I send out colony ships my home world does not go over 5 billion pop and they are always at 100% morale and therefore the pop rate is increasing at max with that one entertainment center building.

Also IIRC I purchase the first factory as they not only help with the speed of ship building, but also with the speed of new structures(buildings) too. But after that I'm purchasing colony ships rather than factories. I might go a turn or two without purchasing a colony ship so that I can purchase a partially made colony ship, which is less expensive... but I do purchase them.

At first I leave the Spending(67%) and Spending Distribution(33, 33, 34 or something like that) sliders at their defaults. After securing a good number of planets I think I have had to turn the Taxation up somewhat to keep from going in the hole, putting morale at less than 100% for a bit unfortunately. But then I get things stabilized and after a while, as soon as I think I can get away with it really, I will lower the tax rate and then after a bit I start pushing the Spending rate slider up. Later on I will adjust the Spending Distribution sliders as I desire according to the current situation.

In my current game I have had the Taxation rate at 49% nearly the entire game with Spending at 100% and overall empire morale at 90% or better(rarely lower than 90). Every planet I have has a Starport on it and only for a short while mid-game did I command all Starports to stop building a ship. Other than that all of them have always been buidling a ship. I only playing on Challenging though which some people might consider to be fairly easy. So far I have found it to be, well, challenging. But with what I've learned so far and the way my current game is going I think I might be ready to go up to the next level of difficulty.

So it sounds I do it a lot like you pnich. However I haven't reseached faster drives until a considerable amount of time has passed. Perhaps I should try getting them earlier than I have been? I've just been using the early fast colony ship I made with 3 of the engines you get to start out with.


Cheers

Colony ships should never be wasted.

You can always upgrade them into Constructors if you built too many.

What are the drawbacks to go into deficit spending (below 0 bc)?

I think you're confusing deficit spending with a negative bank balance. Negative bank balance means a morale penalty (I think?), plus you cannot rush buy/upgrade/pay money in Diplomacy. I'm not sure if there is any interest? If your money gets too low, production will stop entirely.

Deficit spending is spending more money than you are making each turn. Obviously, if you keep this up for too long, you will run into a negative bank balance, but until then there really aren't any drawbacks. If you avoid rush buying, you can run on a defosit for a good while, and if you build enough economy buildings you can basically keep your Spending slider at 100% for the entire game.

Actually, I don't purchase anything until I have so much money that I have no other way of spending it...

1. send out several scouts as far as they'll go and send your colony ships as far as they'll go as well, so as to create the largest perimeter possible. Produce colony ships as quickly as possible while maintaining research and social construction. 2. send out colony ships as they are produced, in random directions, looking for planets. No scouts.

Depending on other settings like the abundace of stars, planets, or the clustering of stars number of opponents doesn't it?

If planets and stars are abundant and quality is high, scouts are of limited use (in terms of looking for resources they can still be useful), since every star system will have at least 1 or more good planet to colonise. On the other hand if planets (and good quality ones) are not abundant, you can very well send a colony to a far remote star system and realise on arrivial none of the planets are habitable, wasting time. Worse yet, the close by star systems might be equally barren. This is unlikely on abundance settings.

So #2 is better than #1 the more abaundant planets are and the higher Quality settings , as you can send colony blindly to planets or star systems (you don't need to find planets, they are already marked by stellar cartography on the minimap, you only need to see if they are habitable) and be sure to find at least one habitable planet usually in the star system.

If you run into other races or hit empty space you could 'waste' a few colony ships but that's better than wasting time on scouts. Produce colony ships as quickly as possible, reduce research and social to bare minimums, buying what's necessary for production.

You can avoiding running into other races by looking at the mini map and roughly see where they influence are (unless you turned on blind exploring), you can try to send colony ships into such areas quickly to snatch planets, but after a certain point it is highly unlikely there will be much left, so either do it early, or don't do it at all. Me? I seldom do it, because it's a gamble.

I prefer to expand quickly in the direction where there is no race yet. I also leave out until later star systems that are behind me, in my backyard corner, where the AI won't see them until much later.

3. colonize only the good planets; leave the PQ4-6 for later on.

This is compatiable with #2 actually. Again it depends on your settings. At the most abundant settings, I never settle for anything below 10 PQ. Don't worry about PQ 4-6 , particularly those within your backyard (Mars!), even if the AI gets to them, they will just get cultural flipped.

The only exception why you would colony a low PQ planet, is for strategic reasons to extend your range. I almost never equip my colony ships with life support (though researching a couple is not a bad idea on bigger maps), so colonies need to be strategically colonised if they are necessary to extend range. This is less important in not so clustered settings.