Early Game, Research or Factories

One thing I like to do is rush to Impulse Drive in order to design a custom faster Colony Ship (5+ moves). So I set Research to 100% and buy Labs in the first couple of turns. Then I buy 3-4 of these ships outright with all the cash on hand.

If there are more habitable planets within reach than I have money for my advanced Colony Ships, I will buy a factor on my howeworld, and switch to Military 100%.

A major variable in how this all plays out is the number of Xbc Anomalies I find.

I tend to go labs first and 100% on research. Then once I have a couple of labs rush buy factories. (Of course I'll rush buy ships as needed also but may wait until I have better engine techs.) Once I have engine techs I want I'll move slider off 100% research.

The colony ships seem to travel automatically faster without the cost of upgrading them once you've researched faster engines.

"But I noticed the developer Draginol building research labs first instead"

Have you been stalking him, or what?

"The colony ships seem to travel automatically faster without the cost of upgrading them once you've researched faster engines. "

Whatever it is that you're smoking, keep it away from me .

Lately, I've been experimenting in the opposite direction from most of the posts above.

Turn 1: Turn off military spending; buy 1 factory and start building another; buy a Deep Space Scout (cargo hull crammed with engines and sensors); park the starting colony ship in homeworld orbit, unless the survey ship spots something juicy right away.

Turn 2: Return spending to an even split between the three categories; get to three factories before building other structures; start building a colony ship.

After: Keep building colony ships - pretty soon they'll pop out every 6 or so turns. Don't rush buy them unless you need to. The natural pace of shipbuilding with three factories will allow your population to keep growing and increasing production. I never move homeworld spending focus to any of the categories unless I'm desperate to crank something out ahead of another culture.

New colonies: purchase the first factory, set spending focus to social, let the colony build two more factories on its own, go from there.

All of this puts me way behind on research during the initial colony rush, but I accept that because, with all of those factories going online early, I can build things pretty quickly on each planet. Plus, I can usually at least keep up with the others' research through tech trade until I get my economy fired up.

This comes in very handy when upgrading all of your planets to research academies, for instance. I very rarely have to purchase my spaceships or structures in the mid-late game, and can save my $$ for things like massive (several bases each turn) influence starbase upgrades. I just won my first Metaverse game after starting out this way; an influence victory over six other races in a huge galaxy.

"But I noticed the developer Draginol building research labs first instead" Have you been stalking him, or what?

Brad has posted game play examples in various places, which I am sure is where Sandlapper got this...

"The colony ships seem to travel automatically faster without the cost of upgrading them once you've researched faster engines. " Whatever it is that you're smoking, keep it away from me .

Yes, when you research higher levels of engine technology, you do get a speed increase on all ships - immediately - regardless of what engines they have on them. For most ships it is an extra parsec per turn.

My strategy is to build 1 or 2 factory's each planet first. build 1 farm, a couple of lab's' and galactic achivements, trade goods or markets.

Sephlock - is that a Klingon word? Anyway, as for speed increasing after researching engine techs: Read the descriptions for Impulse I, Warp I, and... er, whatever the highest engine tech is called's level I. Each of them states that all ship speeds will be increased by 1 when the tech is researched. If you've ever noticed that suddenly your flagship is going faster, for instance, this is why.

I rush build one factory, put one factory in the build order and then rush research on the Ion drive (or whatever is next) so that I can make a 4 PC/wk colony ship. I then move the original colony ship into the nearest planet, which is always PQ 3 or 4 and start research labs there. Rush build one, put the others in build and focus on social production.

So in essence, I do both!

Remember: It doesn't matter which planet you put a research lab on, a research lab is a research lab and outputs the same amount.

Waiting for Impulse Drive (the tech) and putting two Impulse Drives (the component) on your Colony Ships increases their speed by +4 total. From 2, that's a 200% jump. The Yor can get up to 8 without any Miniaturization techs...

I do factories first, to build up an industrial base. Then market centsrs, so I don't go broke. Then farms, to make more money. Then entertainment, so the people don't riot. Then labs.

Unless there's a research bonus tile, labs are low priority, although usually I'll build at least one on %homeworld% early on.



Lately, I've been researching xeno ethics and going neutral as quickly as possible. I've discovered the "Neutrality Learning Center" that you get by aligning neutral. Don't know how I've never noticed this before, but it puts out more research than a Discovery Sphere, long before you ever research far enough to get a DS. Crank research up as far as you can afford and watch the tech tree shrink in a hurry.

It depends on the galaxy setting. Brad generally plays on rare planets, so he doesn't have to worry about the colonization phase, hence he will jump into researching first so that he can get a military headstart. Afterall, there's no point building empty ships. So instead, he researches weaponry and planetary invasion quick so that he can catch one of the AI while they are preparing as his means of expansion.

However, if you play a setting with abundant planets to colonize, your starting funds will never be enough to finance that kind of colonization effort. So it is essential to build factories and use a high military spending to build them in deficit instead of buying them outright. After you get your manufacturing infrastructure up and is able to pump out colony ship at a reasonable rate (2-3 factories), it becomes time to build up your economic infrastructure so that you can support your many new colonies. After you get the huge landgrab, with manufacturing and economic infrastructure in place switching to tech will be fast. You will catch up with everyone else in a month or two, long before they become a serious threat.

In short, both... At least up to factory (xeno industry) and research centres (duh), then build your industrial capital and technology capital and start specializing your planets (at least quasi specialized, always include some economics)

I usually start with two factories then two labs, research 50%, social and military 25% each. I like a balanced approach leaning slightly towards research.

Factories all the way. The best way to get more research is to colonize more planets.