Medium maps are only 5x5 sectors I believe that is pretty small -- smallest I've played is medium 8x8 and i usually only do 3 oponents on that small of a map.

You can always choose abundant stars, planets and habitable planets to have more planets/civ. The smallest amount of planets/civ I would care for is 12.

As far as the economy falling apart early on -- that is always a problem-- a couple of possible helps

1: population growth ability bonus pick at start of game ( taxes are tied to pop)
2: low tax rate early on to keep morale at 100% to get pop growth doubled for 100% planetary morale. This speeds up getting to the population where taxes will keep your economy running.
3: don't buy too many factories/labs on colonies -- my rule is only buy em on 300% and 700% bonus tiles. I do try to buy a starport on each planet as I colonize it. And I don't stray from this even if my bank gets up to 7 or 8K harvesting anomalies.
(well maybe 1 or 2 100% bonus manufactoring tiles if I haven't gotten a 300%+ bonus tile after 10 or so planets)

If you are building factories on your planets as you colonize them , you could very well create more capacity than you can support.

I don't build planetary improvements till I'm done colonizing and then try to build up my planets at the same time. Factories first of course.

4: don't buy colony ships -- build em -- you should be able to get setup to build a colony ship every 2 turns on your homeworld.
This might not work on smaller maps where there are too few planets/civ -- prob just have to buy colony ships for the rush.
5: practice the start of the game a little and try a few different strategies to see how they work.
6: Cheese -- hit Control-n till you get 300% production and research bonus tiles on your homeworld. If you have a good strategy this is not necessary but would definitely help the colony rush -- especially if there are not a lot of planets/civ in the game.

Those are some general suggestions that might help -- obviously there are a lot of details you'll have to fill in.

kblore, why buy the starport rather than just build it? I know it's an inexpensive building, but it's still costing you 80BC extra to buy rather than build, and it only takes 2 or 3 turns (slider depending) to build.

Because I have SP% set to 0%, MP% set to manufacture a colony ship every 2 turns on my homeworld and the rest to research%. I like getting a little research done. If I was to use focus to get the starport it would take 10 turns or so I think. The colony ships and/or constructors I get off the planets even without factories seem to be just about right for the planets/civ games I like. And I usually get 2 or 3 planets with 300% production bonus tiles which seem to help just enough too. Also with my aggressive use of survey ships, I usually have just enough cash to afford them.

I do realize that there are other strategies that work just fine and probably even better than mine. That's why I like to suggest trying out different strategies.

Actually I've been considering not buying the starport on the last 7 or 8 planets I colonize to save even more cash -- the MP should go back into the treasury. But that's sort of an extremely refined strategy point.

Also, and I hate to admit this, but I didn't really understand all that stuff about what happens with MP or SP when they are not actually building something -- until recently. So I thought I was paying for that MP without doing anything if I didn't have a starport. I'm a slow learner.

I had the same problem when I tried a game on crippling and I ended up with my slider literally set at about 5% production. It was brutal. I think I pulled through it at the end with some agressive trading and eventually my taxes caught up with my production but I was too far behind by then and got wiped.

The 2nd time I played a heavy economic/diplo civ (modified terrans with 30 econ and federalist) and was sort of keeping up but in the end got totally outclassed by the Yor who got set on a much higher intelligence and already wiped out 2/3 of the map.

Throttled back down one difficulty level after that

Thanks for the help.

I'll try and keep the population happier so they don't leave, which is why I struggled last game. Buying too many improvements probably screwed me early, they cost money to maintain.

I can see it's going to take a certain feel, trying to balance the economy and everything else.

Thanks again

I've been reading over all of these "strategies" so to speak and my main question is do they have a reference manual anywhere that shows what exactly an overall strategy should be? For instance, where kblore mentions not buying anything and striving for a 300% bonus tile, I am assuming obviously that the bonus is for the planet. So as a whole, are all the planets cumulative? Or is it that a 300% bonus tile on one planet would in effect be like three seperate factories on three seperate planets? Possibly sitting on 100% bonus tiles themselves of course. I know what I ask is kind of stupid but there are just certain things that I can't wrap my head around when it comes to figuring out financial strategy within this game. I probably haven't worded this right but if anyone thinks they know what I am getting at, let me know.
Oh and yes, still love the game but experiencing freeze ups after a couple of turns now. Damn these bugzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!!

What kind of computer sytem do you have? To all of you out there who have been able to fire this game right up and play without any real issues, what kind of systems do you people have? I really didn't think this game was all that when it came to being too demanding for a decent system but with all the probs I keep having I have to wonder. Are you guys using five thousand dollar gaming platforms or what?!?

For instance, where kblore mentions not buying anything and striving for a 300% bonus tile, I am assuming obviously that the bonus is for the planet. (etc)

The bonus tile (100%, 300%, etc)is only for the tile itself - a factory (if it's a manufactoring bonus) on a 300% tile acts as if 3 factories were there. If you mismatch the bonus type and improvement, you negate the bonus. Careful - you don't get the additional production or research for free... (the other bonus tile benefits are free).

Really dunno .. CAN SOMEBODY PLZ EXPLAIN HOW TO POST A NEW THREAD ON THESE FORUMS ?? ... THX in advance

Ok, a big thanks to the help here, especially to Kblore.

I played a medium/crippling last night with Torians/Universalists. I tried to keep every colony except my home world at 100% morale. I did not build very many buildings at all early on. I got a couple of 2500BC anomolies so there were a couple of +morale buildings I bought to keep them at 100%. The others I just let build slow, my Social Production was <15%. My economy held steady throughout the expand phase. The +25% morale of Torians is a good boost.

I did drop down to three (random) opponents; Yor, Arcean, Human. This is the first game on any difficulty that my military has shown up as strongest on the graph. The game seems to undervalue my ships so I always figure I had half again as much power as showed on the graph. This time my military is at the top.

My population, there is no competition. Highest by far. I chose +30% and Universalist gives a +10%.

I'm walking away with this game, everyone, even the hostile Yor, are paying me homage as the super power. I did get lucky, I have an economy and a morale resource. And I have planets with +700% manufacture and research. I have had those in previous games though and I still lost.

It's good to be King

Time to move up the difficulty again.

Thanks

maybe you have the same problem that I had, one day, I logged in and I enter my Empire forum, and I saw some replies, I wanted to reply too, but I couldn't, usually you need to get the message: "hello guest" and I'm not a guest, I'm registered, but it wasn't the problem, the problem was that I didn't get a message at all, it just had the last reply, no "add post"... then I thought it was a closed forum, but how can that be? I tried another and it was the same... then I tried to post a post about "why can't I reply?" but then I saw the post button is gone! and I can't do anything! so I went to SDC and I talked to the devs, and they helped me a lot. thanks to them and I can post here again... so if you have a problem, you should go talk to them in the chat, if you have SDC.

thanks again everybody!
-Master U