1. Xeno Research does unlock a more efficient lab.  However, the Xeno Communications path does lead to Trade, which allows you to build an Economic Capital.  Research requires funding, so the sooner you have improved economic structures to build, the sooner you can afford to build some more research buildings.

2. If races aren't developing warships, there are two possible explanations.  One is that their research has ground to a halt because they don't have enough income.  The other is that they're not pursuing weapons due to a bug in their tech tree.  Larger maps also have n effect on the pace of research.

3. You're right that a higher class planet is best for specialising in generating income.  However, because economic structures have a low maintenance cost, it can be worthwhile filling up a low class planet with them.  Higher class planets can naturally grow to a higher maximum population, so they are more suitable for building farms, which raise the population cap.  More citizens does mean more tax income, but there are diminishing returns as population increases, and approval can become a problem with very high populations.

4. Factories and research facilities cost money to fund and maintain, build them sparingly in the early game, if at all.  Your main priority should be building up income.

5. Any colony ship will do for moving population, but one with more colony modules allow you to move more.  When you launch one you get a dialogue to choose how much population to move.  So take as many as you can from a high population world, and then move the colony ship onto the tile of one of your colonies.  Launch it from there, but this time set the population to just 1 (it's actually 1 million people but never mind about that).  It needs at least 1 to launch.  Then take it back to the high population world, and repeat the process.

6. Bare minimum, just a colony module is fine for sending to nearby planets.  Further away, yes you may want to get some engines and life support on there, but bear in mind this will increase the time to taken to build the colony ship.

7. One trade module is all you need, however to reach a distant planet (for a more profitable trade route) you may want more life support and engines.

8. Economy buildings are best for building up your tax income.  Trade income is useful in the early game when you don't have a lot of money coming in, but it's also a diplomatic tool to make other races like you more.  The way to look at the colony rush is this - one more colony can send you into a downward spiral of debt and low approval.  As long as you net a fair share and don't overextend your economy, you're doing well, later on you can always conquer or influence the planets that were taken by other races.

9. Changing priorities is not a bad strategy, it allows time for population to grow on new colonies.  However if you're building constructors in the early game you really only want to use them to secure resources (the glowing crystals out in space) for mining,

Finally, using a tech tree & AI personality fix mod is highly recommended.  Check out the Modding section of the forums for more details on each one.

Basically the iidea of them is to fix bugs which affect AI player development, particularly the development of a military, and set the AI to a personality which develops its worlds effectively and is competitive in the colony rush.  They may also change balance so that the AI presents more of a challenge.

Researching Invasion gives you access to modules that hold lots more than the 250 on a colony ship.  You can use those troop transports to more quickly shuttle populations about.

Supporting the expansion phase while researching draws down the treasury.  Higher taxes gives more income while reducing morale, yet population growth rate is a function of morale.  It becomes a balancing act.  The challenge is much greater on higher difficulties, when the AIs' bonuses allow it more income than you do, thus allowing them to rush buy more ships and rush buy things like manufacturing capitals.

In the absence of a really juicy bonus tile, it is often better to build no structures on planets until their population has grown enough to produce a positive cash flow.  I generally find that point to be about 1B.  

On larger maps, particularly with lower AI density, it can pay to research sensors and build additional survey ships.

You can explore with colony ships or constructors.  If you come across a juicy mining anomaly with a colony ship, you can "upgrade" it to a constructor.  (We won't mention what happened to the 250 million would-be colonists!)  Similarly, if an exploring constructor encounters a great planet, you can "upgrade" it to a colony ship and then colonize the planet.  It will begin with a population of 1 (million) - presumably the coed crew of the constructor!

another thing i was wondering,  Do you feel it is worth while to wait on scouts till you can make fast ones?  I found getting the early survey module can help make some money, so making a couple longer range survey guys seems to work well.

Basically, im curious what people think of using a tiny with a couple miniaturization techs, Or go for a small vessel, take the extra cost, and toss an upgraded hyperdrive, with a few extra life-support pods.  I can't tell any difference adding the basic sensor over no sensor, and for the cost at this level it would seem that the survey one is better at least early anyway..

thoughts?

I am really enjoying the ship-maker, i can spend an hour just making a little ship

No, it is not. Most people can play it for years without noticing anything wrong. Well, except maybe that some of the AIs don't perform quite as well as expected. Only if you really dig into the mechanics will you notice how buggy some of the parts are.

Most of the stock designs start out with at least one engine on board. You have to add one to your designs yourself, if you want them to be as fast, or faster, than the stock ones.

Only indirectly, because they will reach the target planet faster to establish the trade route. Once that is done, engines won't matter anymore, because the trade ship will only move one tile per turn along the route.

It's tempting, but you should take a good look at your income first. Fully exploiting a Precursor Library is quite expensive, and can easily crush your economy early on. Also, it is +700%, not +600%.

Could you provide a link to one of those documentations? I only remember Frogboy saying, that the AI used to know this in GalCiv 1, but doesn't in GalCiv 2.

A bonus tile increases the output of your building. The bonus output, however, still costs just as much money as the regular one. So, if you build a factory on a Precursor Mine, you receive the output of 8 factories, while paying accordingly. The real bonus of those tiles is, that you need less space to achieve the same effect and, therefore, also pay less maintenance.

Did that star system only have one planet or several? If it had several, then I would have sent a colony ship too, because there was a good chance for a habitable world. In fact, I always use colony ships to scout for planets, because it is faster.

Did he play with Blind Exploration on or off? On the other hand, it's possible that this setting doesn't change anything for the AI. What I mean is, that the AI always knows where everybody's sphere of influence is.

As a counter argument, I can bring up my current game. In it, there is a aquatic world about two sectors north of my starting-position. It is also the only habitable planet in my cluster outside of my homesystem. The Iconians were a little further to the north-east of me. I knew that the planet was in range of their ships, because they were sending fleets to destroy one of my mining starbases, which was further to the west of the planet. Yet, they never send a colony ship to the planet. Not once in the five years until I wiped them out.

I've seen similar instances in previous games too (planets not colonised, even though I knew, that they were in range of the AI), so I don't think, that there is 100% proof, that the AI knows where all habitable worlds are.

I was only asking about the major races. Sorry, I probably should have made that more clear. From what I remember, Frogboy himself said, that the minors know the location of all resources, but are also on a timer to not go after them immediately. I could be mistaken though.

A few times, but I wasn't paying much attention to this. I was far more concerned over how the AI is researching and building up it's worlds.

I've given Frogboy not enough credit for the AI on several occasions, so I wouldn't be surprised, if he actually did code them that way. After all, it would be only logical to do it this way. If you don't know where the habitable worlds are, send your colony ships to where the most planets are, because this will increase your chance of success.

That depends on the race. Just like it is for the player.

In DA, only the Terrans don't start with it. In TotA, the Terrans, Altarians and Krynn are missing it.

However, there is also the question of the AI difficulty. On higher difficulties, the AI gets bonuses to it's abilities. Among them sensors. I could be wrong about this, but I think, that the AI doesn't have a hardcap on sensor range like we do. This means, that the AI can see a large part of the map from the get go. Well, if I'm right that is.

Anyhow, I think we've derailed this thread long enough.

A DA game I started today had another hard to fathom set of events.

My Homeworld and the other planet in my system BOTH had 7x research tiles.  I had chosen technologist and maxed out the racial research picks.  I had a custom race that started with the second research building.  The galaxy was the largest one with stars and planets on the lowest setting (rare).

I rush bought research buildings on both 7x tiles and concentrated first on Planetary Improvements (research bonus) and then on Ion and then Impulse engines.

While I was researching faster engines, I sent my flagship directly at the closest multi-planet system, as indicated on the map.  I gained Impulse engines about 4 turns into the game.  By the time I got to that system, the Krynn had already colonized the one habitable planet there!  This is in ADDITION to colonizing the second one in their home system.

I scouted around and found that the Krynn homeworld was almost exactly the same distance away from that planet as mine was.  I think it was four squares closer on a gigantic map.

So, how the hell did the Krynn get a scout close enough to "see" the planet, buy a colony ship (likely not with impulse engines) and get it to that planet even before my flagship did, even though my flagship went directly at it?

It's scenarios like this that leave me unconvinced that the AIs do not start knowing where the habitable planets are.

Well the secret to planet micro is to not build one thing at a time, unless your income is really low and you can't afford all that social production.  Then you're not constantly having to assign new things to build.

Leave some space on the worlds where you want to build ships quickly, and add factories to empty tiles as you need them.  Not every planet is going to have a +700% or +300% manufacturing bonus so make use of what you do have.

There is a Counter Espionage tech and a building for preventing spies from shutting down your improvements.  They are fairly costly to build and they won't nullify any spies already in place, you'll have to do that yourself.  But it's a way of keeping spies off your important worlds.

You don't need the colonisation tech to invade a planet, but until you have it you will have zero military or social output on that planet.  So it's pretty useful.  You need Planetary Invasion tech to build troop transports, which have one or more troops modules.

You can build empty hulls to defend your planets.  I prefer actually building something that can do some damage, but given that defenders tend to get destroyed, I use cheap fighters with maybe one or two of my best available weapon module.  Either empty hulls or proper defenders will deter enemy transports.

The idea is to slow down the enemy enough to buy yourself time to get a fleet over to the place being attacked and wipe them out before they can make a run with troop transports.

Starbases simply aren't a match for determined attackers.  You need to have a fleet in the area or on top of the starbase's tile to keep them safe from large fleets.

Economy starbases improve your production on nearby planets.  They can improve trade income, but you need to build them along the trade route lines to be effective.  They have no effect on tax income.  Bear in mind that each one costs 5bc to maintain, and that trade routes generate the most revenue when freighters are far from home, not close by.

To get more money coming in, you should raise taxes (though this may lower your approval) and build more economy buildings if you can since they magnify tax income.  You canbuild morale buildings to offset the effects of the taxation, but you don't have to do this for every planet, just the ones which have a high population (because high population also reduces morale).

You can also increase your tourism income by building Embassies or Cultural Exchange Centres on planets with a high ip value.  Homeworlds are a great place to build those.

Take a look at your budget screen.  Find out what is sucking up so much money.  For example, if you're funding a lot of social or military production, you can stop building ships or buildings where you don't need them.  If it's colony maintenance that's killing you, look and see if there are maintenance-sucking factories on planets which are now too far from the front line to get ships there in a decent time.  You can demolish these improvements and make way for some new economic structures.

Hope this helps!

The more influence that your empire has as a whole, the more of a bonus it gives to your planet's ip value.  This adds to the bonus you get from your influence ability, the population on the planet, and the influence buildings you have added to the planet.  You can see this as a tooltip when you hold your pointer over the ip value.

Where it does matter is when you want to convert another civ's colony.  In that case, your influence needs to be at least four times greater than theirs.  This is why planets which are deep within another civ's borders often convert to that civ.  Your influence and the influence of other races extend out from planets like a bubble, meeting at a point determined by which is greater.

Influence from starbases is different.  It radiates out from the starbase and counters the influence of other races, but it doesn't form a large bubble like a planet does.  Influence is greatest close to the starbase and weakest at the edge of the circular area of effect, and the strength is determined by the culture modules which are installed.

Trade Goods and Galactic Achievements can grant a bonus for your whole civ.  Sometimes they only affect one planet (like the Omega Research Centre).  So sure, if you want to build those on one low-value planet to maximise tiles available on other worlds, you can.  Bear in mind though that you will want to defend that planet really well, otherwise one invasion and you lose all those things.

Basically as far as trade outposts near trade routes are concerned, you should be sparing about how many you set up.  Their effects can stack if you have more than one starbase covering the route, but I find that the best thing is to minimise the overlap and maximise the time that freighters spend in the vicinity of a starbase with trade modules.

Starbases are 5bs a turn each, and the most bang for your buck is to be had in the part of the trade route closest to the other civ's planet you're trading with.  It is worthwhile to have two or more trade routes take a similar path, going past the same starbases.

One of the neat bonuses of having a starbase all the way out there is that it extends your range, allowing you to send freighters to planets that are even further away.

As far as power plants are concerned, it depends on the colony's Industry (mp) rating - find this out by clicking Summary on the planet screen.  So for example, if you have access to Advanced Factory which adds 8mp at a cost of 5bc, your colony must have more than 80mp for it to be worth building a fusion power planet.  An anti-matter power plant magnifies production more, so again with the example of the Advanced Factory you would only need more than 8/0.25 = 32mp for it to be worth while.  A quantum power plant would be efficient as long as the colony generates 27mp.  As a rule of thumb though I would hope for a power plant to replace two factories, not just one, saving me a tile, so double those figures would be better.

Because power plants create bonus mp, they make it cheaper to manufacture things because bonus production costs only half of base production, and because production of a building or ship is done sooner.

Only one power plant can be built on a planet.  When the technology is available though, they can automatically upgrade to the better version.

My advice would be to get some spies gathering intelligence on the Terrans - click the 'Place' box on the Espionage panel so that you have a least three spies assigned to them.  When your espionage level with them reaches 'High' you will be able to double-click the worlds they have colonised in your space and see if they're actually any good.

The class 4 sounds like it will likely have a fair number of tiles available after soil enrichment, habitat improvement and terraforming are all done, but without being able to look at the class 5 you don't know if it's worth putting together an influence starbase.

Thing is, the longer the Terrans hang onto it, the more the population will grow and the more difficult it will be to influence them.  However, they're also building stuff there which you could get for free when the planet converts.

After you've got the intelligence level up to High you can remove those spies from the Terrans and assign them to another race to do the same job, or keep them in reserve to nullify enemy spies.