Starting to wonder if computer cheats when in "colony rush" phase....

Your early colonies shouldn't be building anything that costs significant maintenance or spending, which is exactly what those factories do. You want structures that provide morale, pop growth and income. Only the homeworld should be spamming colony ships at the start of the game.

And the AI does cheat if you're playing on a difficulty that's higher than "Tough".

One strat I enjoy doing right now is to build 1 or 2 production tiles on my homeworld, (depending on bonus). For this I set my economy at max, with 100% social. Then I set it at 100% military with a colony ship to build, and depending on your military production bonus, you can sometimes get a colony ship every 2 days. Then I start grabbing any planet I can find, while scouting perspective colonies with my original colony ship and my flagship. The trick is to leave the new planets with only 1-2 maintenance buildings, no more. If you don't have any, just leave it empty and focus the planet on research. When you've several planets, switch your economy a bit to slow down ship production a bit and resaerch useful things. Recruiting centers are great for a new colony. Once you have your planets population grown and taxable, then you can start development and heavy research/ship building/what have you.

If you want to be a "serious" player in the colony rush at the higher difficulties you need to focus on that.

I personally love the Thalans and I admit - when I play at the difficulties Maso and upwards I reload the map unti I get a 300% production bonus tile on my homeworld.

Then I use to construct a cheap colony ship (Small Hull+1 Colony module). Those suit my Medium maps with lots of Stars just fine.
If I need to fly longer distances I also construct a colony ship with 2 Ion drives (I usually get the engines up to Impulse drive asap, so I get the Ion drive and the additional +10 from Impulse Tech)

I can produce such a ship every 2 turns if I also put quite some ressources into Research or one every turn if I'm lucky with the asteroids (and get +14/+15 from them) and focus on miliary solely.

How long you can afford that mainly depends on how many anomalies you have. If you can get a lot of anomalies you usually should get quite a few +500/+1000 which give sufficient funds for a while.

Taxes are early on set so that I get 100% moral on all worlds (usually 19% tax for Thalans)

As soon as the Hot colonization phase is over I build ~2 Ferry Ships (2 colony modules+1 Impulse drive) which I then use to transport pop from my homeworld to the low-pop worlds.

I like to play at very slow Tech, so if you prefer faster techs you can probably build more efficient ships sooner.
I remember a DA game where I played with very fast tech, there I could build ferry Ships with an advanced Troop module and tons of engines very soon, which made the whole tax-income issue really "cake" for me.
With lowtech-style you probably need to plan quite a few turns ahead and know when you must stop the colonization.
(But I usually run out of planets before I run out of money....)

I do not know about production bonus. AI is supposed to get several bonuses on higher difficulty levels. However, I am fairly certain that AI knows the location of nearest habitable planet without scouting. Whether this should be called "cheating" is another matter. See the last post on this topic:
https://forums.galciv2.com/148553/page/3

The AI leases its early batch of ships, hence the number that suddenly appear early game. If you watch the stats graphs closely, you will note AI races have a massive drop in output/economy at the same point of every game it flatlines to zero, and the period of almost zero growth can be long. The latter is a result of the AI having to get over its initial very big leasing purchase - they went broke and have to wait for population increase to build revenue.

It can be "terrifying" to watch 10-15 ships pour out, however keep the faith(!), there will be a gap appear at around 12 ships as the AI has gone broke at that point (on Immense maps - timing and numbers will change for different map sizes, but the principle still holds true). At that point you start to irrevocably overtake them, maybe not in planet numbers, but in economic and production terms your basic economy is more resilient and has better long term potential. Most AI planets will early game have few production facilities in the colony rush, they cant afford them - thats why as Terrans (or whoever you are playing as) we will always overtake them in the end - just need to hold our breath in that early "what the hell's that" phase as they leap off their Planets faster than greyhounds out the starting gate

You can also lease if you want to, personally I dont as I always find with Terran abilities, I build better in the long term by not leasing.

The other factor later on about many races compared to Terrans, is their own Racial ability. For example with the Korath the ability points can be used to rack up +50% in both military and social spending. Add to that the inherent race ability of +25 on Military spending, the +25 for the race home planet, the (upto) 34% from each starbase, add to the (max) 30 mp points from each individual feeding mine station, add +20 for production and +20 for military from the Industrialist Party, add a slider setting of (say) 90 in production, and you have a massive production powerhouse that very easily - and very quickly - can lead to well over 150 production units fairly early on in the game from only two Slave Pits. That apparent advantage is of course counter balanced by disadvantages in other areas, its all part of each Race having inherent and unique abilities.

The leasing is however why it appears they "cheat" at the very opening of the game, they dont, they are leasing.

Regards
Zy

I had no idea the AIs leased all their ships!

Seriously, I've been playing on challenging and every game I play I'm about even with the AI for the first couple years except for military strength and tech, but then my empire just explodes and I end up steamrolling over the whole galaxy.

It's just a matter of keeping them off my back until then. It's definitely time to bump the difficulty.

I love this forum.

Thank you for the explanations! Plus I picked up new tips and insights as well.

I always appreciate the depth and kindness of posters here - thank you!

J

This is not a very fast rate of production and any AI at any reasonable level can easily match this in a number of ways.

I'll preface my comments by saying my experience is limited to DL and that I realize that there can be significant economic differences in DA and TA that affect the suggestions I make. However with that said I am sure that there are significant improvements that you can make to increase your rate of colony ship production.

When I'm going for a maximum quantity of colonies (which is not always the case), I have no trouble producing a colony ship every other turn on my home planet almost indefinitely. There are also times when I can produce a colony ship every turn for an appreciable period of time. Usually the limitation is being able to fill the ship with colonists as opposed to merely being able to build ships.

Basically it helps to have a 300% or 700% production bonus on your home planet but that's not absolutely essential. In DL it's also helpful to have your manu cap on your home planet as well. I know in DA the manu cap bonus has been reduced but it's not really essential anyway. Just pile on the factories until you have the necessary production. If it takes 10 factories then it takes ten factories. So be it.

But this is just the normal production way of building colony ships at a faster rate. You also have the rush buy/upgrade path either with or without lease buy options.

Generally the economics is the biggest limitation to any of these methods. In all cases I'll take a turn to research Sensors so that I can build a survey ship and another turn or two to research to Impulse II and then I can build a couple of reasonably fast cargo hull based survey ships to start searching for those money anomalies. That plus optimizing all your racial abilities and political party choices for economics can make a huge difference in how long you can maintain your colony rush.

Anyway once my survey ships are out looking for cash (usually by turn 4) I can then start my crash colonization effort. Certainly the faster engines helps out there as well. So basically you can go the route outlined above that is basically build up your production level to such that you can spit out a colony ship once every other turn. To this you can combine the idea that the first colony you build should quickly be turned into a second home planet to start sourcing colony ships as soon as possible. Generally this takes a number of turns as well bussing pop to the planet with another colony ship, but this can get you to the level of producing one colony ship per turn within 5 months.

However you can also go the rush buy/upgrade path and that can take a couple of different forms. I never buy anything on time but many good players do swear by it. Lease buy is certainly one way to (at least initially) cheaply fund buying a bunch of colony ships. This can be mitigated somewhat by producing for one turn then buying the remaining production to lower the cost.

I find the most cost effective way to "produce" colony ships is to rush buy the bare cargo hull (for about 400bc) and then next turn upgrade the cargo hull to a colony ship (usually less than 300bc). Your initial 5000bc (was this changed in TA?) plus a few money anomalies can go for quite some time doing this. In medium galaxies and below you can colonize pretty much the entire galaxy this way.

So essentially any player should be able to reach the every other turn rate of colony ship production in a number of ways. However, you need to be very spendthrift of your cash. Never buy factories on newly colonized planets expect if you're trying to setup a 2nd home planet. But other than that the best thing to build on any new planet is *nothing*. Wait for the planet to build up some population before allowing it to start building it's own factories. That initial colony building requires a huge maintenance. Don't be in a rush to make the planet cost more to support particularly when it will be some time before you can reasonably start producing anything on that planet anyway.

The giveaway that they are about to "hit the wall" is watch for AI colony ships coming out with aka 56 / 12 / even 2! people on board (click on the ship - its very small size anyway indicating numbers on board - you'll see the number manning the colony ship). The leasing not only placed a massive strain that broke their economy - and have little left to build future infrastructure - they have literally run out of people to man the colony ships. Fast leasing of ships drains population faster than inherent birth rate, so they run out of available population. At that point, look at the stats graphs set for the whole time period of the game so far - I'll guarantee in every case the AIs have flatlined.

At that point you have a breathing space where they can do ziltch. At that point everyone does different things depending on your style and the Race you are playing. However if you are ever under extreme almost intolerable pressure early game, watch for those low manned ships and flatlining - the Cavalry is about to arrive

Its for that reason that in a Strategic sense, birth rate improvements attached to many techs, and the "Aphrodisiac" improvement available in the Habitat Tech, are Absolutely Key in any rapid victory. The economy is built on people numbers, the latter on birth rate. Getting the Aphrodisiac improvement asap is the biggest Strategic move in the game, everything else is merely Fluff at a Tactical level, or style preference. Its an inescapable logic - economies are built by people numbers - they are built by birth rate - quickest way to do that is aphrodisiac, no amount of Fluff or "Tactics" will ever get round that. Watch your economy explode after getting Aphrodisiac (providing you have kept to basics in building other Infrastructure building blocks - not sidelined by big military early game).

From that point, your concentration on basic building blocks and quality infrastructure can only have one outcome - you are going to win. Its only a question of how fast and the "quality of the win". It may not seem that way at times, but the latter always holds true, whatever chaos you see on the surface.

Always keep the faith, dont get bullied by AI numbers and surface agression - its all Froth and Bluster designed to panic the opponent. The AIs dont have the depth, flexibility and resilience you do due to their initial leasing tactic - in a Strategic sense it Kills them. You retain the long term upper hand because you held out for Infrastructure Quality not short term up front bluster and numbers.

A bit like Real World life really, and some people's desire for constant short term publicity and fame, not long term growth

Regards
Zy