Improving my post-land-grab development
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I’ve moved up in difficulty to the "Painful" level, I think it is. I’ve gone to a "huge" galaxy, but not a lot of stars – I like open space, I guess.
Anyhow, the land grab phase is just ending, and I find this point in the game the most difficult. I have 3 neighbors who surround me in a corner. One is the semi-aggressive, human-cousins (Toreans?) that I’ve had problems with in past games.
I’m playing with abundant resources, and have about six in my sphere of influence, not yet with starbases. I’m playing on Fast tech research. I have a custom race with bonuses to economy, soldiering (great for defending) and research. I have about 15-20 planets most size 10-12 (I might be getting a couple more, but it looks unlikely as they’re so close to the other races I doubt my ships can get there in the next couple turns).
At this point, I need to transition from land grab to successful development, and in this difficulty setting, I’m afraid of making errors. I know I need to get my economy going, and although there are still a fair number of anomolies left, I’m not counting on too much more money from them (I nabbed more than 6000 during the land grab). However, I do have the market cornered on them as I’m the only one of my neighbors with Sensors.
My economy hit the -500 mark in the last couple turns, and I have to adjust the sliders. Upon this point, I’m not sure what is best:
Is it better to move up taxes at the cost of Morale, or is it better to turn down my production slider (and if so, do I make any concessions with regard to social/military/research). I do have a morale resource, and it’s going to be the first thing I build on (in the next several turns as constructor ships launch).
Military: I have a strong fear of that human-cousin guy. He’s attacked me before in other games. He’s also looking like he has the center of the galaxy covered (Drengens are on his far side from me, though, which is cool). I’m building tiny ships with a missile and no engines (there’s no room!) just to "fool" the AI into thinking I have a defense. I think I know how to handle that in terms of building cheap ships that actually can’t do much, but they look like a defense. Any tips there? What concerns me is using my fragile economy to maintain crap ships… And falling behind further in research…
Now, most of my planets are literally PQ 10. I have a couple 12s, a small number of 7/8, and one in the 16-18 range (too close to the green triangle guy for my liking). I’ll be colonizing some 5/6s as the land grab winds down.
Should I specialize a few planets? I guess I should definitely specialize 3, one for research capital, one for manufacturing capital, and one for economic capital (probably the 16 for that, right?). Mostly I’m concerned with how to get good research output, because I generally am okay at improving my economy on planets with population.
Thanks for any experience you can lend to my increasingly challenging game.
Anyhow, the land grab phase is just ending, and I find this point in the game the most difficult. I have 3 neighbors who surround me in a corner. One is the semi-aggressive, human-cousins (Toreans?) that I’ve had problems with in past games.
I’m playing with abundant resources, and have about six in my sphere of influence, not yet with starbases. I’m playing on Fast tech research. I have a custom race with bonuses to economy, soldiering (great for defending) and research. I have about 15-20 planets most size 10-12 (I might be getting a couple more, but it looks unlikely as they’re so close to the other races I doubt my ships can get there in the next couple turns).
At this point, I need to transition from land grab to successful development, and in this difficulty setting, I’m afraid of making errors. I know I need to get my economy going, and although there are still a fair number of anomolies left, I’m not counting on too much more money from them (I nabbed more than 6000 during the land grab). However, I do have the market cornered on them as I’m the only one of my neighbors with Sensors.
My economy hit the -500 mark in the last couple turns, and I have to adjust the sliders. Upon this point, I’m not sure what is best:
Is it better to move up taxes at the cost of Morale, or is it better to turn down my production slider (and if so, do I make any concessions with regard to social/military/research). I do have a morale resource, and it’s going to be the first thing I build on (in the next several turns as constructor ships launch).
Military: I have a strong fear of that human-cousin guy. He’s attacked me before in other games. He’s also looking like he has the center of the galaxy covered (Drengens are on his far side from me, though, which is cool). I’m building tiny ships with a missile and no engines (there’s no room!) just to "fool" the AI into thinking I have a defense. I think I know how to handle that in terms of building cheap ships that actually can’t do much, but they look like a defense. Any tips there? What concerns me is using my fragile economy to maintain crap ships… And falling behind further in research…
Now, most of my planets are literally PQ 10. I have a couple 12s, a small number of 7/8, and one in the 16-18 range (too close to the green triangle guy for my liking). I’ll be colonizing some 5/6s as the land grab winds down.
Should I specialize a few planets? I guess I should definitely specialize 3, one for research capital, one for manufacturing capital, and one for economic capital (probably the 16 for that, right?). Mostly I’m concerned with how to get good research output, because I generally am okay at improving my economy on planets with population.
Thanks for any experience you can lend to my increasingly challenging game.
