Early Game Pointers

Hi!
You forget to mention two very important facts: game difficulty level, and the amount of planets you can expect to get in your game. Without them I can only point you to read more of a Strategy section here on forums.

BR, Iztok

Ah, sorry...

The game settings vary, but I generally want around 10 planets per civ and I play Normal.

I myself usually play on Tough difficulty and what I notice with that is the +2 Speed coupled with getting a trade network up and running first. Colony rush when your ships are moving at 3pc as apposed to 1pc makes a huge difference. And while doing that research your way to some trade routes so that once you start dipping really heavily into the red you should be able to work yourself out of it with Frieghters, which also get to their destination x3 as fast. Your usually always losing money per turn but with what your Survey ship turns up on Auto Survey it's more often then not enough to keep your head above water.

Now, it also depends on the map size, but these steps can help at the very beginning:

- the game general settings are important (f.ex. a federalist party for a strong economy and maybe many anomalies to collect, which also can give some cash 4 free..)
- buy the first factory (accelerates your planet's developpement).
- buy the first colony ship (after this I usually stop buying things...).
- let the population the first 2-3 rounds at 100% moral to grow quickly, than go down (not less than 50%..)
- maximise the spending at 100% (you will later perhaps need to go down a little to maintain your cash, but you better have the spending all the time at +- 100%! otherwise you fall behind the AI)
then:
- put in queue a research center, another factory, then a first trade center, then continue with factory + another trade center (a good technique: build mainy factories and 2-3 trade centers. Trade centers can be later replaced by one economical capital once you researched "trade").
- the trick is to build quickly colony ships without buying them and in the same time to upgrade your planet...
- once you see your money coming into debt you absolutely have to trade techs (all but no weapons...) with your opponents for cash.
- building a first trade ship and sending it to an important neighbor planet (usually homeplanets..) will help to raise income too...
- play all the time with the focus on your planets...and with the perceintage relation between research/military/social (research better more than 50%...)

later steps:
- increase populations on all your planets and choose one middle/small planet as your cash generating machine (only trade centers built on...)
- also build early enough warships (even simple ones) and other races will not declare war upon you so quick
- always tune your ships with the latest weapons and defences

VICTORY !

I think i'll just add a little to what Loups said.

Notice first, that most of his suggestions deal with your economy, this is the hardest thing to get going early on but once its strong you're on your way.

I tend to build a factory first, then 2 markets and then more factories. Remember that you can build over a structure later so don't worry about using up too many tiles. Also, you cn choose what planets will be your cash cows later, evn if they have factories and stuff on them. WHat i do is, as my empire grows, those plaets that are really far from my border get changed into economic and research planets. But again, thats after i hve a bunch of other planets.

I have been using my home planet as my economic capital since it will usully be my highest populated word (all others only get to 13B) AND it has a high population early.

Its true that you need to have some sort of military to keep war away but dont under estimate those diplomacy techs either. They dont just help with tech trading.

I find myself in a hole many times militarily, i tend to do less research than that AI and build fewer ships. most of the game i'm last in military. BUT at the disadvantage of my weapons techs, i have a greater economy and reseach ability so i can change that quickly. So to answer your question, i build up my military later. I try to use treaties, trading and diplomacy to keep the wars away, even getting th two best militaries to fight eachother.

Well thats it for my random thoughts.

Just one change from the previous post though... your planet by planet approval can be as low as 41% before you stop growing your population. Going upto 50% doest change the rate of growth, you ould need to get up to 75% and thats not worth the loss of taxes. Of course you have to have a better approval for reelection of your political party, so keep an etye on whn the election is and gt you approval up just before then.

A couple things:

First and most important, Don't buy on credit early game. The payments will quickly swamp your fledgling economy and bog you down for most of the game.

Second, you don't have to start building everything at once. If you settle a planet but don't tell them to build any thing the population will balance at around 6 billion and will be fairly happy. So, you can build up just a few planets at a time so that you don't overwhelm your economy.

Third, I usually focus on building all the trade techs first, then I sell them to the other races to fund my deficit spending. You can make good money off of them, they don't take long to research, and increased trade is good for everyone (more trade ships headed your way bringing free money).

Now, these are refined technics, which are classified under a top-secret file called "dirty tricks" among many others...

PS: I'am also permanently sicking how to foolish the AI...

It also depends on a large map what civ is next to you as far as strategy goes.If some war mongerer you will have a lot more pressure to build military and stay out of war.
Pay close attention to the plus and minuses in the relations report.This will tell you how you can avoid or postpone war.Trade with a hostile race to gain some browny points.Change your alignment if that is more important to avoid war than to be evil or neutral or good. Try to get an economic or research treaty as that effects civ stance.Keep your military around 100.If you feel a war is looming and you have good diplomacy try to get them entangled with war with other civs.