Let's Play Game: How to Get a Gazlillion Colonies on Larger Map with Standard Amount of AI

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198088036064/screenshots/

Started in middle of galaxy, with a class 8 planet nearby. Lucky. Screenshot not working though.  But you can go to link.  It's  posted there.  (How do I post the screenshot here?)

Turn 1 still:

Colonized the class 8 world.  Got pragmatic 3 constructor ships.  Converting them into colony ships.  Rush bought Factories on both worlds.  Set it to 100% military production, no research, and no wealth.  Building custom colony ship 3 (literally only a colony ship module with no engines). 

Converting constructors into Colony Ship 7 Long (Ship Designer.  Colony Ship 7 long means they start with maxed out engines and a few range boosters).   

Sending scout ship and survey ship in different directions to look for planets to colonize.  

You can find all of this on screenshots in my steam link.  

Turn 2:

Screenshot posted in  my steam folder.  

Found a planet nearby to colonize.  However, I will NOT use the newly converted Colony 7 Long ships to colonize that planet.  They will travel in 3 different directions.  

Instead I will use the Colony 3 ship that I'm about to build 1 turn from now to colonize that planet.

Moving the colony 7 long ships back into homeworld, stock them with 1.8 population each, and launching them out to explore.  

The first little piggy goes West.  The second little piggy goes North east.  The third little piggy goes south.  Consequently I'm exploring and sending colony ships  in all directions.  

Turn 3:

First littte piggy (the one going west) finds a class 14 world.  Colonizes it.  Other little pigs still exploring.  Screenshot posted in Steam.  

I use Colonizer to Rushbuy a Shipyard.  I rush buy a factory on that planet.  I choose Benevolence ideology (it was a bad one, but whatever).  

Because I found another planet in that star system that's habitable, and because it's near my home world, I set my homeworld shipyard to produce another Colony 3 ship (the one with no engines).  That colony 3 ship will colonize that extra world.  

If I'm not sure there is a nearby world to colonize, I build Colony 7 Long ships (the ones with maxed out engines and Environmental support things).  

Turn 4: My scout ship finds another world near my homeworld.

I set my two current shipyards to produce Colony 3 ships to colonize these worlds.  

Turn 5: 

I now have 4 colonies and 3 shipyards and 4 colony ships (got one of them from Benevolence Pioneering).  

Screenshot posted in Steam account. 

Turn 6: 6 colonies.

I get Benevolence level 2, Class 10 Homeworld.  I have 5 shipyards, and 2 current colony ships.

The shipyards are building:

Colony 3, Colony 3, Colony 3, Colony 7 long, Colony 7 long because there are other planets nearby I can colonize. 

The Colony 7 longs are for longer range exploration/colonization.  

I use my Colonizer Super ability to get a free shipyard on each new planet.  I rushbuy a factory on each new planet.

No tech, no wealth, nothing. JUST COLONY SHIPS.  

Turn 10: 

10 Colonies. You can see it on the screenshot.  Every colony with a shipyard.  Most colonies have rushbuy a factory.  

Every shipyard is producing another colony ship of one type or another.

Just got Benevolence LVL 3 which grants 2 extra population upon colonization. This means ALL COLONY SHIPS FROM NOW ON WILL BE BUILT WITH 0.5 POP EACH.

Next: Colonize more planets.  Then grab the research line of Benevolence.  

My survey ship has had awful luck and hasn't found any anomalies or artifacts or what not. It's awful.  

In this game I was not able to get an early Hives tech from an anomaly.  Ah well.  

Turn 10 Continued:

My survey ship finds a scout ship. Will make good use of that.

One of my Colony 7 long ships discovered a nearby world close to my homeworld.  That ship will NOT colonize that world.  Instead I will build a Colony 3 ship from one of my shipyards to take it later. 

Other than colonizing, the goal of my Colony 7 long ships is to explore.  To find new world that I can later take with Colony 3 ships.  

Consequently there will always be a ball of Colony 7 long ships expanding outwards in all directions, with Colony 3 ships filling the planets in between.  

So far I have ONLY built shipyards with Colonizer and rush bought factories on some of the worlds.  I have ONLY built colony ships of different types.  I have set my economy to 100% military production.  I have literally done nothing else.  

This is exactly what I want to find every mourning in between getting my shoes on and a cup of coffee:

Another thread by marigoldran!!! May I be allowed to call you Sensei? (sorry still a bit drunk I guess)

But to add at least something constructive - you can add pictures directly to your post by using the Insert Image thingy that is 2 pieces to the left from the Add-Smiley function above. I think you need to host these pics beforeahead and use a directlink to them, but don't nail me on this, anyway it should be easy just fiddle with it around a bit

Finally, you see there's a lot of overpowered stuff right now in the game, and you're right that this is killing the challenge out of it. Now I guess if you wanna have this changed then, your challenge is not to show what's broken (we already know) but actually to introduce a change to system that will balance it out.. because this is much more difficult to do because there's so much stuff interwoven you might break other stuff or take the fun from casuals away etc and I'm sure you'll understand that a problem isn't fixed when it'll just shift the problem to another region or place....

First you must diagnose the problem before you can fix it.  "You must first understand the enemy to defeat him."  Remember that, little grasshopper.  

And the insert image thingy doesn't work.  Sensei is bad with modern technology.  Go to my steam account and look at my screenshots if you're so interested.  It's not the job of the Sensei to make life easy on you.  In all those martial arts movies the Sensei BEATS his students to make them stronger.  

Besides, people was telling me: "POST A GAME TO PROVE YOUR CLAIMS. WAAAUGH WAAAUGH WAAAUGH!!!"

So fine.  I'm posting a game to prove my claims.  Blame them, not me for this post.  

Well I only managed to get 14 colonies by turn 16.  The reason is because the recent patch 1.02 severely limited the habitable number of planets.  Or maybe I just suck at this game. I don't know.  

On the other hand I have like half a dozen colony ships exploring still, and producing more every turn because I have shipyards for every planet.  Still have 3k credits.  Just unlocked Beneveloence Research Lvl 1.  I already have Level 3 Benevolence (free 2 pop), and Level 1 Pragmatism (free 3 constructors).  I'll probably use the research  boost from Benevolence to get better engines.  

I'm going to continue this game tomorrow.  Give you guys some time to digest the results.  The screenshots are all there on my steam account. Let me know if it doesn't work.  

I'm actually looking forward to finding out if he's gonna manage 100 by turn 30. Anyone running a book?

Either way, 14 by turn 16 is pretty good going, and once again highlights the weakness of anti-expansion measures.

I said 100 colonies by turn 40. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get that.  I made that claim BEFORE patch 1.02 which seriously nerfed the number of habitable planets.  Also, in the game where I did get 100 colonies by turn 40 I got lucky with the survey ship and got TWO techs (both engine techs) in the early game.  This time my survey ship went the wrong way. Oh well.  Still, one can try.  

More tomorrow though.  Glad to see you're interested.  But that's enough for now.  

But but but! You're a Grand Master chess player and you day-trade for a hobby! Luck surely has nothing to do with it when min-maxing is part of your personal code of ethics!

Seriously, though, this is a good way to highlight the lack of anti-growth mechanics - just please don't post half a dozen thread saying the same thing again. That just turns a lot of people off because, well, it's kind of an asshole move.

Hear hear! (agree)

Ok, I tend to spam too many ideas at the same time.  But I've noticed the best way to get peoples' attention (including the developers) is to come up with legit ideas and then SCREAM AS LOUDLY AS YOU CAN.  

It works.  At the same time if you don't like me very much I fully understand and will not be upset.  

Nonetheless, I want a better game, and I will do whatever it takes to get it.  

No, they were asking you to WIN a game and post its metaverse URL. No need to spam the forums with more posts saying the same thing.

Just win your game, go find it on metaverse and then post the URL in the existing thread.

Can you do a screenshot now and then that includes the faction power list instead of the minimap so we can have a bit more of a idea how you are doing relative to the AI?

@bigbadb draginol also asked for medium map not immense, but let's not QQ to much and see if he wins first

Wake me up when you get to Turn 150.  

I don't know the OP in RL (so I dont know if he would or wouldn't be an asshole) but I can see why people could/are getting upset with him, but what he's saying is true.

marigoldran

Most people (myself included) dont look at pure min/max set-ups for games unless they have to. For me it's with PvP settings and I have to say that I'd still have come a right cropper if I'd have played you without you sharing your method.

So, yeah, it works but....

As has been said:how to fix this is much more of a problem that highlighting it though.

Any thoughts on that?

The most obvious fixes are:

-play a game where you meet another civ before you have 20 colonies

-make the large empire penalty scale better + nerf patriotic (which i think is on the list along with making research cost scale with mapsize)

1. He's on course to hit 20 colonies by around turn 18. No AI is in any state to do anyting about it at that point, and as noted elsewhere, he's still able to trigger the 50-turn Pragmatic peace option whenever he likes.

2. LEP scaling, and therefore patriotic, have no real impact here. He's not gotten to a 'big' empire yet in immense/abundant terms, and increasing LEP nerfs the AI more than the player. The trick is NOT simply punishing the player for having a big empire - if you're going to include big maps, then big empires need to be playable. The trick is making a big empire harder to achieve. You need a mechanic which produces a 'sweet spot' for growth rates, so that expanding too fast causes an issue, not simply handing out meaningless punishments for having the audacity to build a big empire in an empire-building game.

LEP isn't part of the solution; it's part of the problem. You can get round it by just not bothering to build farms; the population division effect is far, far, far more damaging than the effect of any number of LEP penalties - and what's more, it doesn't limit the RATE of expansion - it just produces an artificial cap on the number of worlds that you can support. Increasing it won't help, since your best strategy remains spamming colony ships as rapidly as possible until you reach whatever the cap turns out to be.

We need something which makes new planets a liability until they've been built up. That is the only thing that will make any early-game strategy other than colony spam viable. There's two basic options for this - one is increasing maintenance levels from undeveloped colonies, the other is forcing new colonies to 'import' food from somewhere or else lose population until they go extinct.

Inclined to agree.  Having new colonies not being a burden on the Empire in their early stages does seem to run against the 4X grain somewhat.  When new frontiers don't require support from established worlds expansion comes at almost no cost and becomes the default 'right' thing to do. 

I don't have an instant fix for this because everything I think of butts up against some other component of the game in a negative way; even simply increasing the maint cost of the colony hub isn't a neat solution.

Perhaps two kinds of colony hub are the answer:-

- Outpost.  For newly established worlds.  Costs the Empire to maintain.  Is upgradable to a Colony Capital when certain population size requirements (or other) are met.

- Colony Capital.  As currently used in the game.

1) its not possible to expand to fast if all the worlds are colonized before you get to 20-30 colonies, therefore it solves the problem of expanding to fast. 

2) You can make the LEP scale however you want, it's currently linear which is meh.

If tuned correctly the LEP does this:

-small empires have high happiness and get more production/growth/etc to keep up

-large empires have medium/low happiness early/mid game because they expand fast, but grow very strong late game.

-very large empires that expand to fast suffer from rebellion/striking workforces and stuff like that. 

A alternative/combination is to make maintenance cost prohibitive for worlds with low population meaning you go bankrupt if you expand to fast. but i dont like that approach because it incentivizes you to not spent your starting money. But really low happiness achieves the same without complicating stuff, you can easily make a low happiness world a burden by tweaking some numbers around. 

In the end there will always be a cap on how many worlds you can sustain, and things to exploit and what not. Might as well keep it simple and tie it to one mechanic rather then spread i out to much.