Some thoughts...

Load your origional colony to 500 B before going off in search of the first planet to colonize.

On normal you should be able to own the colony rush after a few tries. Work on just your start for a few games until you get comfortable. I know some folks, including myself that are still perfecting it. I will rush the tech to impulse as I have colonies built for speed to win the rush. Focus you colonization toward the AI not just in your little area.

Upgrading ships saves you tons of $$$ over the legnth of the game. Turn 1 buy a blank cargo hull for ~450. Turn 2 upgrade to a colony for ~150 (numbers are not percise but close). Compare that to buying a colony outright for ~950. Sure it takes 2 extra turns but you will see the benefit immediately.

Design your own ships.

Design your own ships.

Yes it is that important. Design them to counter the AI. If they have beam atk then build ships with shields. If the are defending against missle then use gun weps. You get the idea.

Get as many anomolies as you can as these add to you $$$ and stats. After impulse get sensors 1. The build probes. Same principle as the colony. Buy blank hull. Upgrade to hull with impulse. Send these guys oyut toward the clusters. After you have sensor 1 upgrade to a survey probe. Set it to auto survey. On a large galaxy I would think 2 of these would do. If you hapen to run across a resource you can upgrade that probe or survey probe to a constructor and take the resource. You can also convert it to a colony ship and take a planet. Good if you find a juicy class 26 but know that planet will suck down credits because its population starts ar 1.

Get some diplomacy techs. You want to stay out of war for as long as possible so you can get your fleets ready. If the AI go below 'cool' relations throw them a tech or two and relations will usually go back up.

To a new player tech trading will be your friend. After a bit you will begin to see what the AI puts more importance on. With high diplomacy you have a better chance of getting a better deal for what you trade.

Building social structures. There is no right way but some are better than others. Alot depends on how you want to play. On homeworld I buy the Manu Cap. then que 3 factories. Every other planet +9 pq I colonize gets 1 econ 2 factory and a star port.

Building freighters after the trade tech will not only help relations but bring in a fair amount of BC. Use of econ starbases to enhance this brings more rewards.

Most importantly, keep playing. The learning curve is fairly shallow after you have a few games in. Look through all of the other threads around here. lots of good stuf in them but be warned you will get thousands of different ideas about how to play. Take what you can use and develpo your own style. Perhaps seek out an Empire to join. It is not requires but greatly increases the fun to be had. I know for sure that the Galactic Diplomats, BC Space Orcas, and HCH are looking for new members.

Happy hunting.

The above advice is very good. The game is indeed exponentional. Also, do not forget to set the tax rates and industry rates ASAP. Set tax rate to 50% approval, and make sure your industry spends about -50 BC/day.

I tend to colonize 7-8 planets in a large galaxy and will then focus on social and research for a while. On Normal settings, I can typically break even my economy and start pumping out some defensive ships before the AI deceides it is time to go on the warpath. Make sure you make enough money, and keep researching. Forget about upgrading your research and building techs to high-tech facilities for a while, first you need to be on equal footing in the diplomacy game and preferably ahead in the armsrace. Checkc your opponents for what kind of weapons they have, and configure your ships to counter those. Don't try and make ships that can defend against everything as this is impossible with lower levels of miniaturization: Just build ships that can withstand one kind of damage. If you're a lover of smaller fleets, build a few military starbases on the edge of your empire. A military starbase can add +1 to all offense/defensive even at the lowest levels, and if you have 3 ships with 1 beam each, they suddenly get +3 as a fleet thanks to the starbase. Your military zones will make excellent defensive areas where enemy ships can be destroyed at ease.

Your economy is extremely important. Money makes the galaxy go round. If you develop Photonic Torpedoes, immedeately sell Harpoon I through IV to your opponents... its old tech, they can get it very quick themselves, but they will still pay handsomely.

Good luck

This is an excellent trick, but it's a bit cheesy that the game allows upgrading outside of a space yard...

Not realy, the critical factor is the technology. An example.... in Startrek Voyager, Janeway (the captain) appears from the future and provides Voyager with serious upgrades making them almost invunerable to the Borg. They did not stop off at a shipyard to make the upgrades, the critical factor was the technology.

Feel free not to use it then. But know that the AI can and will do this. So if its designed this way and something that the AI is capable of then cheese it is not.

And...

If USS Enterprise had to return to a shipyard every time it needed an upgrade or refit we would spend very little time applying warheads to foreheads, which is our job afterall.

Well, I was torn limb from limb anyway, how'd they get 10 Beam power on a small fighter? Ah, well, it's over, game deleted, might as well start a new one.

Well, I was torn limb from limb anyway, how'd they get 10 Beam power on a small fighter? Ah, well, it's over, game deleted, might as well start a new one.

You could try an experiment... Imagine you were very lucky and started a game with a really good map? Now force find that luck with CNTRL+N!

Get a map where you are near the edge, preferably a corner - very important, you don't want an AI behind you believe me!

Try to get at least a 300 manufacturing bonus on earth, or if you are very determined with CNTRL+N, hold out for a 700 manufacturing bonus. Rush buy a factory on it and then tweak your economic slider bars to produce a colony ship every 2 or 3 turns.

This will kick start your empire nicely, and then when the game gets too easy, simply begin games with a crappy starting map like most non CNTRL+N people do.

bumper sticker- "The Terran Alliance: Applying Warheads to Foreheads Since 2225"

I'll take two.  

A game is a game. There have been various patches already, and if upgrading was a glitch, it would have been patched. Its not, you pay a lot of cash for an upgrade, even an easy one.

Not realy, the critical factor is the technology. An example.... in Startrek Voyager, Janeway (the captain) appears from the future and provides Voyager with serious upgrades making them almost invunerable to the Borg. They did not stop off at a shipyard to make the upgrades, the critical factor was the technology.

So you fight cheese with cheese? Time travel? You know the implications of time travel don't you? And those upgrades, they're usually sw or hw refinements, not replacing entire weapon systems or defenses or modules...

So if its designed this way and something that the AI is capable of then cheese it is not.

It's the design that's cheesy

The problem here is not the upgrading cost but the purchasing cost of a colony ship. So if you want to know what the cheese is, it is In the inflated cost to buy a colony ship outright.

Wrong. It's all of it. At least the cost issue has a drawback, as FC mentioned, that's the 2 turn delay.

I'm talking about the introduction of new technology, however that may happen is irrelevant. Have you even seen 'Voyager'? You wouldn't say that if you saw how dramatic the upgrades were to stop the Borg in the episode i'm talking about.

Yep, I've seen Voyager. And no, it's not irrelevant, not to the point I was making. You want it to be irrelevant, but that's it. The colony ship upgrade, not only is unrealistic, but cheesy - as in, bad design, not "just" unrealistic. If you'd think about it for 2 secs, you'd see there's no technology kind of excuse for this. The car example, it's bogus. Who takes the "parts" to the hull when it is in position? Your ships? Do you have any cargo ships? Do they travel instantaneously to the location? Ok, I'm done.   

Getting parts out of nowhere, including *colony modules*, is outright stupid (not intended as an insult).

I hate to add fuel to this fire... but didn't Star Trek have "replicators"? Did they, or did they not, get parts out of mid air?

I think turning a "blank" hull into whatever, is very plausible. Take the Military Hummer for instance. When first created it is a blank hull if you will. It has so many different things it could end up, from an ambulance to a Anti aircraft platform, from a convertible to an armored, T.O.W. missile firing, stump jumper.

Add the technology of being able to create parts from thin air, and any thing is possible. No, maybe not creating an entire colony module but... Lets say the freighter "blank" is carrying several thousand people, (being as big as they are)all they would really have to do is create the things they would need to land on the surface of a world capable of sustaining life... and flourish.

As far as the car is concerned... yes it would cost you more to build it yourself, however, if you bought a new car, sold it piece by piece, you could take that money and buy 2 more.

As far as the car is concerned... yes it would cost you more to build it yourself, however, if you bought a new car, sold it piece by piece, you could take that money and buy 2 more.

Hehehe yea, sad but true. Anyway, the point i was trying to make with the car thing is that it should be cheaper to buy a complete ship than to buy a hull and upgrade.

But it is only a matter of 'realism' and i do not think it really damages the game all that much the way it is.

The blank cargo hull, build it up as a survey vessel, if you send one of those out, find a nice planet, and refit it into a colony ship, it colonizes the planet with a population of 1.

Na, no good. Theoretically speaking it is reasonable that Colonising a planet is more than landing a ship, it is a way of 'claiming' a planet as your own. The minimum possible number of passangers allowed on a colony ship that is launched from a planet, is the minimum possible population alien civilisations will accept as a true colony(theoretically speaking).