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[LordBucket]

Exactly how useful is "lucky" anyways?  Would a Rich Home World or other
benefit be better than avoiding random galactic disasters (and the occasional Antaren fleet)?

Lucky isn't very useful. Disasters don't happen very often, and the dangerous ones can be dealt with. If the star in one of your systems starts to go supernova, set all the colonists there to research and it will fix itself in ten turns or so. If you get pirates, just station a fleet in the system and kill them. Space dragons, eels, crystalline entities...whatever the problem is there are usually solutions that don't require you to spend racial picks. As to the antarens...they usually go to whomever is most powerful. If that's you, just kill them. All lucky really does for you that can't do on your own is prevent planets from being overworked and losing one rating of mineral deposits. And every now and then you'll get an upgrade, a population boom, or a diplomatic marriage...but these things happen so infrequently that it's barely worth one pick, let alone three.

Aquatic

Aquatic is a decent, but not usually spectacular pick. It's situational depending on your galaxy parameters at the start of the game.  Yes, it's very functional in the right universe, but it's mostly a waste in the wrong one. If you do take aquatic, you might also want to make a point to set your galaxy to "organic rich" so there will be more planets that you'll benefit from during early expansion.

Now, if I understand that correctly, that means you start off with a Gaia home world,
and that you can also forego the "Gaia transformation" technology, as you won't be
gaining that much by it anyways.  This seems like a rather large boost, so I must be missing something.

Well...yes and no. There are a bunch of factors, and it kind of depends.

1) The number one problem with aquatic is that is becomes obsolete. If you're playing a huge universe with 8 opponents, odds are extremely good that you'll research every technology that exists, and get quite a few levels into hyper-advanced technologies before you beat the game. In a game like that, all of your planets will be gaia planets anyway, and at that point, aquatic is doing absolutely nothing for you. Of course, if you're playing short games, that's probably not an issue.

2) As far as not needing to resaerch Gaia transformation...well, sure, but what do you gain by not researching it? At the stage of the game where it's practical to research it you probably have one to two thousand resaerch points every turn, so it's not so much a matter of "not" researching it as, "do I research it now or in a couple dozen turns?" Also keep in mind that the technology after gaia transoformation is the evolutionary mutation, which gives you either 4 more picks worth of racial modifcations, or an extra 40% bonus to your score. You probably want that whether or not you're aquatic. Again, in a small, fast game where you're not planning on getting through the tech trees, this isn't an issue.

3) As mentioned above, to get the most possible benefit from aquatic during your early expansion, you should probably set your galaxy to oragnic rich. Which is fine if you want to do that. But it does mean not choosing normal or mineral rich. Which again, is fine. But it's an either/or situation.

4) Aquatic means that your home planet has more people, and the increased food production means you'll need fewer farmers, and thus wil be able to put more people on production and research. In all ways, this is a good thing, but the relative value of this diminishes as you colonize/capture more and more planets and the game progresses. Compare to, for example, subterranean, which gives a bonus to all planets regardless of size and class.

5) In a large universe, the real, true value of aquatic is that it gives you increased efficiency during a certain portion of the early-to-middle game. Sure...if you have a bunch of huge barren worlds full of starving colonists, yes it's nice to have your gaia homeworld be able to feed them all...but overall the gaia treatment of your home planet isn't nearly as important as the fact that once you start terraforming planets, suddenly all your terran class planets will be treated as gaia planets too. If you take advantage of that period of increased poroduction to capture a bunch of systems, aquatic has benefitted you.

math:
Don't quote me on these numbers, I don't have the game in front of me...but the way I think it works is that every planet is assigned a number corresponding to one of five size classes: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6. Tiny, small, medium, large, huge. The climate of a world multiples that number to determine the total possible population. Barren is x1, terran is x3 and gaia is x4. Homeworlds are medium unless you pick the "large homeworld" pick. So, by default, a homeworld would have a max population of 4x3 = 12. If you pick aquatic, your homeworld will be treated as gaia, so instead of 12 max population it would be 16. If you also chose large homeworld, instead of 15 max population it would be 20. Sounds like a huge difference, and it is...but compare to subterranean, which gives two times the size class bonus to all planets regardless of climate. So, with subterranean your default homeworld would be 4x3 + 8 = 20, unless you chose large homeworld, in which case it would be 5x3 + 10 = 25. So, subterranean gives a much bigger max population than aquatic, and it applies always to all plantets. No need to wait to start terraforming to get the bonus to gaia class from aquatic. Even that small barren world you put your first colony base on will have increased max population.

Though, note that subterranean doesn't give you the increased food production effect that aquatic does. Even so, in my mind overall subterranean is a much better choice.

You could, of course, take both, which would give your homeworld a max population of 4x4 + 8 = 24, or 5x4 + 10 = 30 if you chose a large homeworld. Starting with a planet with 30 max population and increased food production on day one can be fantastically powerful in a small galaxy with only a handful of star systems. But ultimately, while aquatic is an adequete pick in a small galaxy, in a large or huge galaxy I don't usually find it to be of as much benefit as other choices I could make. In a long game, even a generic +1 research or production bonus would be of more benefit in the long run, and in a short game, cybernetic or unification would probably deliver more bang for the buck.

So it's not that aquatic is a bad choice. It's just that there are usually better choices available.

[LordBucket]

my first normal-difficulty game (without massive cheating, that is), and I win

Congratulations. May there be many more.

how the hell does the AI get so many colonies?  They're cheating, right?)

The AI does cheat at higher difficulties, but no...I've read that it follows the same mechanics as the player does at normal difficulty. Learning how to expand properly is one of the biggest hurdles in the learning curve. It's so easy to get stuck in the "I have one planet and will do research until my fingers bleed" playstyle, because it's easy to do and works very well in lower difficulty games. But it does not work on higher difficulty settings.

If you have specific questions, I can probably offer advice on how to improv your expansion efforts. But I don't want to spoil the game for you. Learning it is part of the fun.

utterly *insane* planetary defense systems

Yes, the Psilons are kind of notorious for that.

AI races hate each other vehemently, so they'll switch sides and use alliances to crush all the others, but how do they act when it's just the two of you left?  Will they be alright with sitting around and being left alive, or will they eventually try to stab you in the back while you're trying to sort out the Antarens?

Depends on a bunch of factors: game difficulty, their "personality" (passive, tolerant, aggressive, expansionist, etc.), the relative power between your empires, the status of your relations and the general history of the galaxy. Some games, yes it's possible to sit around and colonize the rest of the galaxy while they sit around and do nothing. Other games it isn't. If you want to give it a try, I'd suggest checking their personality on the race info screen. If they're aggressive-expansionist...don't count on it. If they're honorable-xenophobes, then yes they'll probably leave you alone.

In any case, I recommend making sure you're more powerful than they are so that you can squash them whether or not they try to start a fight.

is it at all possible to board the Guardian?

No. I think the guardian is considered a space monster, not a ship.

[Kagus]

Hmm.  Shame.  Would've been fun.

As far as colonies go...   Yeah, I've been wondering about that.  Say it's relatively early game, you've planted one colony somewhere halfway decent and now you're just checking out the neighborhood, so to speak.  The nearby stars are host to a really quite staggering number of small to medium-sized barren worlds, mostly of the "abundant" rating.  That's as good as it gets in your ship range.

Since they're barren, you'll also have to feed the populace with food grown back home and shipped out via freighters (and/or invest heavily in hydroponic farm futures).  Is it better to spend 30-some turns building a colony ship to send out there, or upgrading home turf/building a couple war ships?


I'm in another game, this time in a huge galaxy.  Started out with five AI contenders, now it's down to two.  Psilons and Klackons (yippee).  The Psilons have twelve or so systems with colonies in them, the Klackons are roughly the same.  I've got four systems, one of which was stolen from the Psilons (which was originally stolen from the Humans.  I've still got some humie slaves on there), however I've got two systems fully stocked with multiple Terran-level rocks, including some converted gas giants.  I can churn out about five titans in fifteen turns (but, of course, I don't have the command points for that.  Yippee).

Ths Psilons are not particularly happy with me at the moment, and the Klackons have been exercising supreme douchebaggery ever since the beginning, even though they're threatened by the Psilons just as much as I am.  I guess "Repulsive" might do that to ya.


At the moment, I'm feeling slightly buggered the Psilon fleet of titans and battleships that's amassing nearby is having that effect on me, interestingly enough.  I've been looking to expand but everywhere I look I've just got more of those pathetic little gray rocks...  And having to baby several of those things through the process of being more than just a drain on the empire's cash reserve is not particularly appealing to me...

Speaking of which, I've currently got a net income of -127 BC per turn.  This is due to my looking at shiny objects while building my fleet, and not noticing that I had overstepped my allotted command points.

On the bright side, I'm hanging in relatively tight with the Psilons in terms of research.  Hell, they keep trying to steal tech from *me*.  My homeworld has been turned into one big science lab, thanks to the ancient artifacts I decided to take as a pick, among other things.  So the few ships I *do* have stand a fair chance against the Psilon equivalents.  I've just started putting a new class of titan into production to see how it fares in comparison to the others.


So, yeah.  The Klackons are leaving me pretty much alone thanks to their not having any ships to burn my border colony with.  But the Psilons, well...   Better put a rush order on that ground battery defense system on Ye Olde Human Slave Colony.

Since I'm not too happy with my colonizing prospects, I think I'll see how this upcoming battle turns out and ultimately just try to steal underdefended planets from the Psi-Guys.  I may not gain much, but they lose just that much extra.  Plus, transports are a heck of a lot easier to build than colony ships.

After that I think I'll try and make a research push for Stellar Converters.  I know you said that they're not particularly worthwhile, but I have a very hard time ignoring 1400 points of damage that completely ignores shields (and, furthermore, can be used to really stick it to those *#%^& bastards.  Only the most deserving ones, of course...).


I had to quit out of the game before this one.  I had attempted to make a custom race in the style of the Imperium of Man from WH40k...  Yeah, that worked about as well as a pig in a blender.  Although I must admit, naming your leader "of Man" yields some interesting results when dealing with the heretical alien races.  The Mrrshan ambassador warned me that their leader was looking to give the military some sport, of Man.


Speaking of which, what's your professional opinion on the "Warlord" trait?  The extra ship rank seems nice, but just how far will that take you?  And the ground combat bonuses seem somewhat moot, as planetary invasions have a funny way of being lopsided by way of numerous bombs dropped from orbit...

[LordBucket]

relatively early game
staggering number of small to medium-sized barren worlds
Is it better to spend 30-some turns building a colony ship to
send out there, or upgrading home turf/building a couple war ships?

30 turns sounds like a long time to build a colony ship. You might want to invest in some pollution reduction technology. An extra 15-20 turns to get atmospheric renewers would probably be worthwhile. To answer the question broadly though, unless you expect to lose planets to the computer the moment you colonize them, it's usually best to expand as much as you can as fast as you can. Whether that means spending 90 turns building three colony ships, or 20 turns researching tech to reduce construction time to 15 turns, and then 45 turns building three colony ships, either way the point is to expand as much as you can as fast as you can.

Every lone colonist with his automated factory and research center on a small, barren world is generating research points for you. Or he's building colony bases so you can put yet more lone, starving colonists on yet more small barren worlds. The sooner you have 20 or 30 lone, starving colonists, the better. No matter how little food your empire has, population on a planet will never drop below one from starvation alone. Let's say a system has three small, poor barren worlds. Assuming no racial reseach bonuses, that's roughly 21 research points (more or less, morale, etc.) just from having a single colonist with a research center on each planet. Realistically, you'll probably want more than that...automated factory, research center, marine barracks, missile base, etc. But since you don't have to supply these planets with food to keep them running, once they're established it's basically free production, free research, and extra buffer zone between you and your opponents. Even small, radiated planets are useful.

Also consider that there's nothing really "special" about your homeworld. If you have a few starving colonists on a dozen insignificant barren worlds, as soon as you research terraforming, those dozen worlds will be on their way to becoming a dozen new homeworlds. Once I start terraforming, the sole purpose of my homeworld is to support the colonies, whether it's with food, colonists, or both. If you have to, transport people off your homeworld to the barren colonies to aid in their terraforming efforts, and let them starve. It usually takes impractically long for a single colonist on a planet to build infrastructure, make more colonists and terraform on his own. But send an extra 5 or 10 colonists from the homeworld and you can have a barren world up and running very quickly, even if one or two of them starve to death in the process. Once that's been done, you now have two or more terran worlds, and food will never be a problem again. Also keep in mind that population growth reates are affected by amount of available space. A terran world with one out of a possible 12 colonists will repopulate much more quickly than a terran world with 11 out of a possible 12 colonists. Colonists taken off your homeworld will replenish quickly.

Once you have a terran world in a system, it can provide support to the other planets within the system. Within 100 or so turns, your 10 star systems with two or three insignificant barren and radiated worlds each have become 20 or 30 densely populated terran worlds pumping out research and warships. Of course, along the way you probably ran into the computer, so maybe you lost two or three of those systems because you were too busy expanding to defend anything. You still end up with the remaining 7 or 8 systems full of planets.

having to baby several of those things through the process of being more
than just a drain on the empire's cash reserve is not particularly appealing to me

Well, colonizing tends to be more important during the early part of the game. Once you're established, it's often easier to capture heavily built worlds than to build them from scratch.

in another game
Since I'm not too happy with my colonizing prospects, I think I'll see how this upcoming
battle turns out and ultimately just try to steal underdefended planets from the Psi-Guys

Out of curiosity, why not take planets from the Klackons instead? You mention that they don't have any ships. And they probably have much less technology. They'll probably be easier to conquer than the Psilons. Try sending your fleet, along with four or five transports to capture their homeworld, looking for well developed, large planets along the way. If you can't reach anything worthwhile, outposts will extend your range. A full dozen slave-klackon colonists on a terran world with a whole bunch of infratructure will probably build defensive strutures faster than the outlying colonies will. When possible, it's generally best to take highly populated planets. Eradicate any planets with too few people, or too little infrastructure to be worth keeping.

I think I'll try and make a research push for Stellar Converters.  I know you said that
they're not particularly worthwhile, but I have a very hard time ignoring 1400 points
of damage that completely ignores shields

Just be careful if you're creative, and haven't yet captured Orion. The tech "upgrades" along the way to stellar converters will completely devastate the effectiveness of the starbases and ground batteries throughout your empire.

what's your professional opinion on the "Warlord" trait? 

I don't personally care for it. Basically it works out to a bonus of +15 attack and +15 defense for all ships, though the amount of the bonus does scale upwards to a maximum of +25 if your ships last long enough to reach maximum level. It also gives you an extra 2 command points per colony, which is nice, but not a big deal. Couple other miscellaneous effects, but mostly it's about these two benefits.

I hesitate to call it a bad choice...but there's aren't many situations where I can't think of a better place to spend 4 picks. The ship bonuses themselves just aren't that great. Warlord only really makes sense to me if you're playing something unusual...like say, an uncreative fuedal race, where you're going to end up with zillions of little low-tech ships. The free level would make them all a bit more effective, and the extra command points would allow you to have more of them. If you're stuck with low tech, trying to take down shielded starbases with missile frigates into the middle game, having an extra couple dozen frigates would probably be helpful.

[E. Albright]

Sounds like a huge difference, and it [Aquatic] is...but compare to subterranean, which gives two times the size class bonus to all planets regardless of climate.

Of course, if you're truly looking for overwrought, teeming masses, you can't beat Tolerant Subterraneans. I mean, sure, with all your racial points tied up in that and penalties, those seething hordes might not be good for much, but if your goal is to be a grand-scale galactic slumlord, it's all about the census figures...

[Kagus]

The reason it was taking upwards of 30 turns was because I simply didn't have the labor force.  Ten or so people on the homeworld without automated factories researched yet.

Still, if you say so...  I must admit it's going to be tricky to convince myself to pump out colony ships rather than that missile array or radiation shield I was looking at...  And it's going to be especially difficult to just ignore the starvation warnings.

As for why I'm not taking stuff from the Klackons, the reason is that we're currently in a somewhat unsteady peace, and I'd really rather not have another front to worry about.  They may not have much in the way of a military, true, but that wouldn't stop them from building one cruiser to go out and mess up the one border colony I've got, which is rather disturbingly deep in their territory.

As for the beams, hmm...  No, I haven't captured Orion.  I don't think anyone's even seen it yet.  I hadn't thought about what it would do with the beam defenses...  And I do need those beam defenses, desperately. 


By the way, what purpose do outposts actually serve?  Do they just extend the range of your ships around them?  In that case I won't be needing any, thanks to some cranked-out missile research which resulted in the ultimate fuel cells.  I can go anywhere from everywhere.


Oh yeah, one more thing...  Just a little terminology question, but you do actually mean frigates when you say "missile frigates", right?  As in, the smallest class of ship?

EDIT:  Okay, score one for brilliant AI leadership.  Here I was freaking out as this huge fleet was amassing at the former Human home system, which was the neighbor star to where all my guys were nervously hanging out...  10 Destroyers, 15 Battleships, and 7 Titans...   All with Psilon technology.

I have about 7-8 Titans, depending on who's counting.  Total.


And then, just as the rest of the fleet moves in, I get a meeting with the Psilon ambassador...  Apparently, they so desire peace with me that they're willing to give me 10% of their income to sweeten the deal.

Okay...  I don't have a problem with that.  I get their money, they get to attack the Klackons (which I should probably be rushing to do as well, before all the good worlds are taken), and I get the chance to snoop around a while longer for that big green fuzzy rock we all love so much.

EDIT2:  Well, I won.  But it wasn't a particularly fulfilling victory. 

The Psilons were utterly dominating the galaxy.  No doubt about that.  The entire Klackon empire was wiped out in four turns by their truly frightening armada (18 Doom Stars?  30 Titans? 45 Battleships?  Yikes).  They were leaving me alone (and still paying me...  Funny little creatures), but I wasn't going to bet my life on things staying that way.  Besides, I was too far behind in the colonization and research race for it to matter much...  I'd never be able to catch up.  Hell, they'd even managed to steal half of the tech I'd gotten from conquering Orion (where the hell did they get 70 spies from?  And how come all my spy-repeat build orders kept getting clipped?).

So, instead, I rush-produced six or so prototype Titans with stellar converters and time warp devices.  I sent these along with the Avenger and an older model Titan (the 'Usurper' used specifically for boarding ships) to Antares.

And so, with a little selective firing (I had to take over from the AI.  The first battle turned into an utter mess since the computer would fire one of the stellar converters a turn, ignoring all the other ships that had them, and then waste the extra turn provided by the warp devices), eight Titans with class VII shields destroyed the Antaren homeworld.  Technical victory.

Got 1173 points out of it, though.

[LordBucket]

The reason it was taking upwards of 30 turns was because I simply didn't have the
labor force.  Ten or so people on the homeworld without automated factories researched yet.

Ahh. Yes, build lots of colony ships, but by all means build some basic infrastructure first. Automated factory, research center and a pollution processor at least. Depending on your racial picks, possibly a spaceport and an atmospheric renewer as well. Researching chemistry in the early game is doubly effective because it not only increases your production efficiency, you also need it to gain access to the MIRV enhancement for your missiles.

Though as always, the most efficient path will vary with race and galaxy conditions. I would do something totally different in a small, pre-warp galaxy than a large advanced galaxy. A race with no production bonuses at all might need more technology before building colony ships than a unification race with +2 production. Etc.

In any case, my usual target is to have colony ships take 12-15 turns to build. At that point, I'll typically keep building them non-stop until I start bumping into enemies. In a huge galaxy with 8 opponents, that's usually 5-6 colonies. At that point I start I'll start building missile bases if it's practical, and try to colonize less valuable planets that I may have skipped that are further away from the enemy empire, and thus less likely to be attacked.

Though even this isn't set in stone. For example, if I'm playing a telepathic race in an advanced galaxy, I'll never build a single colony ship at all. I'll just go start capturing empires.

it's going to be tricky to convince myself to pump out colony ships
rather than that missile array or radiation shield I was looking at.

Defenses are only useful if somebody attacks you. The computer has range limits. If you expand quickly, the computer is incapable of reaching the systems in the interior of your empire.

I'm not saying don't defend...but try to have something to defend first.

And it's going to be especially difficult to just ignore the starvation warnings.

Well, you can try to feed the colonies, but it's usually a huge slowdown to do so. You need your homeworld either building colony ships, or researching terraforming. It's much faster to already have a dozen planets with automated factories, research centers, marine barracks, hydroponic farms and two or three colonists each than it is to get terraforming first and then start colonizing.

By the way, what purpose do outposts actually serve?
Do they just extend the range of your ships around them?

Yes. Largely irrelevant later on, but they're cheap to build, and a few in the right places can often extend your range into the heart of an enemy empire. If you only have enough ships to capture and defend a single system, you'll want to capture the most valuable one, not the outlying colonies. Plus, striking at their heart like that often means that even if they want to counterattack, they can't reach you. Range limits apply to the computer too. If you capture every little planet on the way to their capitol, that gives the computer a nice trail of poorly defended colonies to follow back to your empire.

you do actually mean frigates when you say "missile frigates", right?

Generally, yes. You could load up a larger class ship with MIRV-missiles, but usually by the time you're building lrger ships you'll have superior beam weapons to choose from. The point of a missile frigate is to build MIRV-enabled missiles to be built as quickly and cheaply as possible in a completely disposable ship. Frigate class, battle pods, 2X mirv missles (typically nuclear or merculite), no sheilds, and nothing else. Your automated factory and 12-15 colonists should be able to pump these out in a couple turns each.

In the early stages of the game, a tiny handful of these ships will be able to destroy starbases. Look especially for races that havent' developed any shield technology. A couple blasts from MIRV-nuclear warheads will destroy an unshielded starbase. MIRV-merculite will take out a starbase with class-I shields. Fly 3-6 frigates to the first enemy capitol you find, and capture it. If they have defensive ships, just wait for them to leave. When the battle starts, fire all your missiles, then turn your ships around and try to run away. Second turn, fire the reset of your missiles and spent the rest of the battle flying away from their missiles, and out of their beam range. You'll get a big, populated terran planet with some buildings already built, and they'll lose the planet that was probably the source of the majority of their food, production and research. Absorbing the rest of their empire is usually fairly simple after that.

It is not a strategy that works 100% of the time in all galaxies for all starter races. However, it is a highly effective strategy that can give you a huge power boost early in the game, and works very often once you're familiar with it. Often you can simply set your capitol to auto-repeat building them, and abrosb the entire empire of the first opponent you find just by swarming these ships at them. You may lose a few every battle, but that's part of the point: they're easy to replace.

They were leaving me alone
they so desire peace with me that they're willing
to give me 10% of their income to sweeten the deal.

*shrug*

Medium difficulty.


Also...just to be sure, you are running version 1.31, right? There were massive AI upgrades in some of the patches. The original V1.0 AI was notoriously dumb.