| If you start a game and find yourself in a corner, RESTART THE GAME |
Starting in a corner is no problem for me or most experienced players.
| Begin researching Planetary Improvements (the best overall improvement tech in the entire game!) |
I agree it is beneficial to research Planetary Improvements before doing any production.
Personally I set Research to 100% and research to impulse engines, then planetary improvements and space militarization.
After that I start using MP to produce a colony ship every 2 turns and use the rest of my spending for a bit of research.
I do the impulse engines first because I buy survey ships and upgrade them with impulse engines so if I research the engines first, I have my fast survey ships faster. ( your basic premise of a very fast start )
| Buy you Capitol world a basic factory the first turn. |
I buy 2 basic labs first. ( only 1 if I have any research bonus tiles ).
Then I buy 4 basic factories ( or the equivilant of 4 basic factories on normal tiles ).
I do this while researching my first techs ( see above ).
| Send your colony ship back to you homeworld and put 500 colonists on it! Otherwise you entire expansion is slowed down dramatically |
definitely a good idea and I really kick myself when I forget to do this.
| Go to the shipyard screen and upgrade the colony ship design and add another engine. |
| Launch your colony ship and send it to the nearest star. AFTER it moves, upgrade it to your new colony design. |
never tried this -- but unless it is dirt cheap I wouldn't bother -- after all I'll be producing a colony ship every 2 turns that has 2 impulse engines on it starting on my 9-12th turn.
I may or may not go to the nearest star -- I usually expect the initial colony ship to be used to create a colony that extends the range of my survey ships.
| Set your flagship for auto-explore (the A button) |
I've never tried the auto-explore or the auto-survey but I would think that you'ld want the flagship on auto-survey if anything -- survey ships have a device that knows where the nearest anomalie is wether or not the anomalie has been discovered.
Personally I like micromanaging my flagship and 3 ( initially, I add more as production/colonizing allows ) survey ships -- If they are on auto they'ld probably not co-ordinate their efforts too well -- also I'm both scouting out planets and resources and grabbing anomalies with them.
Set your production slider in the domestic policy tab to 100% and adjust your tax rate until your Morale is at 50%.
Begin building another colony ship |
I delay building colony ships till I can put 2 impulse engines on them and till I have all the techs that give +10% to MP.
As for tax rate and morale% -- there are a couple of viable strategies.
Prior to update 1.3, I always went for 100% morale to get the double population growth bonus.
However with 1.3 the basic population growth rates for low populations was drastically increased so it is not that big of a deal anymore.
So with 1.31, I pretty much go for high tax rate and keep my morale above 42% on all my planets.
| After this read some of the other posts for advice. What you do on the first turn affects the rest of the game dramatically. The game works on an exponential scale, so small changes at the beginning have a HUGE effect later |
I do believe in being very efficient with my opening moves.
I do believe that a player should have an opening strategy.
The opening startegy will vary quite a bit depending on what type of game one plays -- I play games with larger maps and 8-50 habitable planets per civ.
There are a lot of events in the colony rush that'll come down to being a turn or 2 ahead of or behind the AIs -- the colonizing of the last few planets, grabbing an anomalie or resource, or even worse yet -- getting pinned in and not being able to colonize out of the starting position area.
