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Good unless severe penalties

Neutral unless strong evil bonuses

[shadenight123]

if we move fast up the research tree concerning economics, we might reach a momento of pure bliss, were that 5% plus gets us happily free.
OR we can reduce production levels, to cut off many many costs. and then gradually get it back up as soon as we have advanced more in economics.

[Mr.Person]

The problem with the later economic buildings it that they're expensive. By the time we built even a few, the new colonies will have grown enough to make them irrelevant anyways.

[Shadowgandor]

The Diplomatic Corpse for Peace and Collaboration (DCPC in short) would like to request information on our current standing with the other empires. We have noticed that the initial greetings weren't very warm. We suggest trading technologies with the Iconian Refuge. Having atleast 1 ally in the galaxy would greatly help us as we could trade our goods with them.

We would also like to request our policy towards the colonists. How willing are we to risk their lives?

[Sheb]

Timferius, I'm still reluctant to spend precious construction time on other things that colony ships and freigthers. We need the monies.

If the capital ship ain't enough, how many scouts do you think you need? One? Two?

[Sirus]

Shadowgandor: We have not come across the Iconian Refuge yet. I'm not even sure if they're in this game.

Currently, we know of the Drath Legion, the Thalan Empire, the Arcean Empire, and the Krynn Consulate, as well as a variety of minor races. There are only three major races we haven't met yet.

[Sheb]

I think we should trade with minor races in priority.

[timferius]

2 or 3 would do for now, just so we can keep on eye on any closer threats. I'm sure that should only take a month or two of production. The problem with the survey vessel is we can't really direct it, as we need it to be grabbing anomolies as much as possible.

[Basque]

So here's my plan shamelessly stolen from that LP somebody posted earlier in the thread;  turn the tax rate way down for a few turns to get 100% approval everywhere and kickstart all planets straight into high populations. Go ahead and turn down production to minimum for that time period, nobody will care that much. This is just to get things going fast. Production and tech right now are terrible, so even if we lose a few turns of them in the short term, we'll make out in the long term with a very healthy economy that'll let us make tons of good ships and research very fast with a shitload of UP votes.

If anybody read my posts earlier in the thread:

The above applies only once the planets reach 8 billion population, though. Right now with less than 1 billion population those numbers are about 10% smaller (9% for 75% Approval and 35% for 100% Approval) which doesn't help too much. The biggest impact is the Tax Rate-with a 19% Tax rate we'd only need about a 10% bonus for 100% and then we could turn up the taxes afterward.

I support Mr. Person's idea here wholeheartedly. Taxing more people will bring more money even if the tax rate is lower, and it can always be raised after population is sufficiently high.

IronyOwl of Research and Development had the right idea to research the Xeno Biology line, which I had no idea improved population growth. Is there an improvement we need to build to get the bonus, or does it just naturally apply to all planets? Plus consider continue to pursue this line of research, especially if it's the latter.

Also for R&D with if we research Soil Enhancement and Habitat Improvement we can create Aphrodisiacs which increase Population Growth 50% and can be Traded for profit.

Finally, since we now know Xeno Entertainment if we research Extreme Entertainment we can make Ultra Spices, increasing Morale by 15% . This should be enough to move any planet with approval ratings of 97% to 100%, although again with lower taxes that would probably not be necessary. Furthermore each step up the Entertainment line the Approval increases only 5%, I don't know if 5% qualifies as "huge boosts" or not.

Speaking of which, what trade goods do we have? Trade Routes are more valuable the longer they last, so getting them setup as earlier as possible makes them worth the most. Furthermore since trading a Good gives both places the benefit trading with Minor Civilizations reduces the chances of that benefit being used against us.

Sirus, thanks for the screenshots and everything. It seemed like the screenshots were bigger before though; did you start playing on a lower resolution? I especially appreciate you pointed out what bonus tiles a planet has in the text since I struggle to see them in the smaller screenshots.

Sirus mentioned building Multimedia Centers on multiple planets. These cost about the same as our new Colony Ship. The Extreme Stadium, the next step up, costs twice as much as a colony ship.

Colonial Affairs Colony Improvements

AFAIK, bonus tiles have an effect on everything, even buildings that themselves double production. I'd REALLY like somebody else to confirm this, however.

Confirmed by the Wiki for some editions. TA - Gold Edition ( 1.8 ): Special resources do apply to Super Projects and Galactic Achievements.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Amcor III:
Follow the Economic Plan

Amber I:
Follow the Research Plan/Economy Plan - Under Discussion

Chebychev III:
Follow the Economic Plan

Embor I:
Follow the Economic Plan

Unnamed Planet:
Follow the Economic Plan if PQ 12+ (PQ Unknown?) - Under Discussion

Mr. Person, since we seem mostly in need of Economy I think the Unnamed Planet should be Economic unless it's on the lower end of our PQs (like 9 or 10). I don't think we know the PQ for it yet.

For Amber I, since Research buildings give an overall benefit I think we should build a Lab on the Precursor Library in the very least, and the Artifacts if funds allow. I don't know how common these special tiles are, should we go straight Research and make this our Research Capitol, or would it be better served as a combination Research/Economy planet?

Does building something on a special tile get improved benefit with the same cost, or does the cost increase as well?

If we do spam Economic buildings everywhere can we decommission them later and replace them with something more important?

Is at least one Factory necessary to produce further buildings at any kind of reasonable speed?

The recent United Planets vote shows we are being greatly out populated so ceasing colonization is very counterproductive. The biggest contributor to UP vote is population so it's a good way to tell how populated a civilization is. Since we continue to find planets with influence tiles I'll continue to recommend using them but not until much later when we're not in any crunch.

SHEB if you want to be a color other than Rainbow here's the list.

Spoiler: Updated Colors (click to show/hide)

War Council is Red
Central Intelligence Agency is Purple
Research and Development is Blue
Colonial Affairs is Green
Diplomacy Corps is Pink
S.H.E.B is still outstanding

This half of the Council of Colonial Affairs supports SHEB's position that ship building should be focus on Colonizing and Trade, since those are the two things that make us money. Furthermore, since Research and Development was wise enough to decide to lead us toward the Eyes of the Universe Achievement, any kind out scout ship will be completely obsolete once we achieve it.

Spoiler: Possible Colony Names (click to show/hide)

If anyone has any names or categories they want to add I'll keep an updated copy of this with the Documentation.

Colonies for Military Use
Asgard
Kratos
Virtus

Colonies of PQ 20+
New Eden
Arcadia
Elysium
Zion

Other Colonies
Erion
Asteria
Gwydion
Xenos
Boatmurdered - Ha! XD Didn't know how serious you were about this one, Mr. Person.
Nist Akath

If it's okay with Sirus and pending the approval of the rest of the Council of Colonial Affairs I'd like to open the possibility of any Colony being renamed with a majority vote by a minority if no one objects.

Spoiler: Documentation (click to show/hide)

Active Council Decisions

Colonial Affairs

The Colonial Affairs Constitution - Revised
Article 1-Colony Ships:
1.1: Colony Ships are to be produced at such a rate that at least one is always available and ready to start a colony, barring extraneous events such as warfare or constructors being necessary to grab resource spots.
1.2: Colony Ship design is to focus on reaching planets as quickly as possible.
1.3: Colony Ships will try to explore an entire system before colonizing.
1.4: Colony ships will avoid going into another race's controlled space under the assumption all the good worlds in there will suck and/or defect away anyways.
Article 2-Colony Placement
2.1: Colonies are to be placed on every planet with a PQ of 9+, barring uninhabitable conditions.
2.2: Planets of PQ 8- will not be colonized unless otherwise directed or until all possible PQ 9+ Planets have been colonized.
Article 3-Colony Improvement
3.1: Colonies are to build a basic Factory as quickly as possible
3.2: The Council of Colonial Affairs will provide guidelines on how to proceed with each colony's improvement based on the specific conditions of that colony.
3.3: The Council of Colonial Affairs will decide whether to use special tiles that do not support a colony's specialization based on the specific conditions of that colony.
3.4: Once we have settled to the ends of our Colony Ships' range the Council of Colonial Affairs will look for a new planet to launch Colony Ships from at the end of that range.
Addendum: Article 3b-Colony Specialization
3b.1: Class 13+ Planets or planets with sufficient economic/morale/population bonuses will focus on Economy-after the initial Factory economic improvements, morale improvements and a single farm will be built unless otherwise noted
3b.2: Class 9-12 Planets or planets with sufficient industrial bonuses will focus on Industry-after the initial factory more factories will be built and a Starport once production can quickly produce ships unless otherwise noted
3b.3: Class 8- Planets or planets with sufficient Research bonuses will focus on Research-after the initial factory Research Labs will be built unless otherwise noted
3b.4: If a planet needs to serve another purpose (such as being militarily or diplomatically valuable, etc) it may be specialized differently or generalized depending on the situation
3b.5: Special tiles that support a colony's specialization will be utilized unless otherwise noted.
Article 4-Anomalies
4.1: Our Flagship will always pursue the closest possible anomaly with the exception of cases outlined in 4.2
4.2: If our Flagship can out-speed a foreign ship heading to investigate an anomaly it will do so.

Colonial Affairs Specialized Planet Development Plans

Note: All planets no matter what their specialization should start with a Factory on a Factory improvement square if available unless otherwise noted.
Economic:

• Build Approval improvements to reach 100% Approval. Use Approval Tiles if available.
• Build a Farm when Population reaches its cap. If population has not reached a cap build Economic buildings on unoccupied squares. Do not build if population is over 20 billion/do not build more than 3 farms.
• Build Economic buildings on unoccupied squares.
• Maintain Approval over %60. Build additional Approval improvements if necessary
• If nothing is being built, default to Research Focus unless otherwise noted.

Industrial

• Build another Factory on an Industrial Tile if available
• Build a Starport after the second Factory
• Continue to build Factories on unoccupied squares
• If nothing is being built, default to Research Focus unless otherwise noted.

Research

• Build a Research lab on a Research Tile if available
• Continue to build Research Labs on unoccupied squares
• If nothing is being built, default to Research Focus unless otherwise noted.

Central Intelligence Agency

The Revised Triforce Doctrine

Article 1: Definitions
A) "Minor" civilizations are to be defined as those that only inhabit one world, never expand, and can not be selected as playable at game start (same as ingame definition).
B) Both "minor" and "major" civilizations exist in the cosmos.  However, it has come to our attention that "minor" civilizations can not be swapped by our diplomats, and they tend to far badly in the tech race.
C) Therefore, the term "Opposing Factions" shall be reserved for the "major" civilizations.  Our agent shall not interfer with "minor" civilizations, leaving them instead for The Diplomatic Corps to parley.

Article 2: The Triforce Doctrine regarding "Major" civilizations aka "Opposing Factions"
A) For every "Opposing Faction", there shall be three spies only, so as to reduce costs.  Others can be called in for emergencies, but the idea number of spies shall be computed as three times the number of currently known Opposing Factions.
B) The first spy shall be The Defender.  This spy is charged with counter-intelligence.  Defenders are the reservour from which other spies can be drawn, if necessary.  If enemy spies invade our buildings, they clear them out.
C) The second spy shall be The Saboteur.  This spy is charged with hindering the Opposing Faction.  This spy shall be situated in the most powerful research or industrial building of the Opposing Faction.  If war is imminent, then the Saboteur shall be reserved until immediately before the war declaration, then placed to ensure maximum hinderance of the Opposing Faction's shipbuilding efforts.  If the Opposing Faction is out-teching us and war is not imminent, then the Saboteur shall be placed in the Opposing Faction's greatest laboratory.
D) The third spy shall be know as The Thief.  This spy is charged with gathering intelligence on the Opposing Faction's culture compared to our own, along with other duties.  The Thief shall work closely with The Diplomatic Corps and Colonial Affairs to infiltrate a planet of significant value, close to our borders, that can be convinced to join our faction via influence.  The building infiltrated shall be one that is unlikely to trigger Counter-Intelligence activity from the Opposing Faction.  The Thief shall be reused if possible.

Inter-Council Agreements
Unnamed Intelligence Agency/Diplomatic Corps/Colonial Affairs Pact - Incorporated into the Intelligence Agency's official position with the The Revised Triforce Doctrine.

The Sun-Tzu Pact (War Council/Colonial Affairs) - (Agreed):
The Council of Colonial Affairs will specifically design industrial planets with optimized production so as to produce a mighty armada for times of war and economic planets to support the maintenance cost for such as space fleet. In return, the War Council will agree to not use war tactics that will decrease a Planet's PQ so that upon capture those planets can be put to their fullest use. Furthermore, if the Central Intelligence Agency discovers a planet has a capturable Super Project or similar structure that we could get the benefit from, we will attempt to capture it rather than destroy it.

[Sheb]

Timferus, I'm sorry, but I'll only give you one for now. Priority is trade and colonization, scouts will be of no use if we learned that we've been outgrown.

Ships, Ha rbours and Eth ereal Bases Dept.

-A single scout ship shall be built for the Pacification and Freedom-Bringing Comitee.
-Basque class colony ships will hten be built, alternatively with IronyOwl Freighters (Small freigthers with nothing but engine and Trade Module) until we have two Freighters. Then the Focus will be on Basque

Should I build more Asteroid Miner/Starbases? I think we need a focus on colonization right now.

[Sirus]

The larger screenshots were breaking the forum layout a little, so I tried using smaller versions. I can go back to the larger screenshots for ease of viewing, if you'd prefer.

Another thing I forgot to mention in the official update is that before the turn had ended, scouts (the asteroid miner and flagship) had found a bunch of average-quality planets, so colony ship production had resumed. Those won't be acquired until the next turn, of course.

@ Sheb: Our single asteroid miner is sufficient for now. Starbases are useful; not only for harvesting resources, but they count as a planet for range purposes, allowing these short-range ships to travel further.

Gonna get the information everyone wants right now.

[Sirus]

Alright, I think I got what everyone is looking for. First, here's a shot of the Terran Alliance's territory (look at the minimap)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The blue areas are where our influence is. That gray speck up against our borders are the Krynn Consulate, who are also expanding.

I managed to get the other race's opinions on us. Both the Krynn Consulate and the Drath Legion are neutral. The Arcean Empire is actually warm to us. Only the Thalan Empire is cool. What I found interesting is that every race is cool towards the Thalans, though the Thalans are warm towards most everyone. And for a spot of good news, our diplomatic abilities seem to be the best amongst the known major races. The diplomatic evaluation of the Thalans says, and I quote:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Let me put it like this, if you say "these aren't the droids you're looking for" they'll just repeat that. Whatever we say is great as far as they're concerned.

For IronyOwl and the rest of the R&D committee, I have discovered that Advanced Trade will take 16 weeks at current rates, while Xeno Trade Centers will take 32. Those are near the bottom of the list of current tech projects. Also note that Space Militarization will only take 4 more weeks, so start thinking about which paths to take military-wise.

And now, the bad news. The following is a screenshot of our victory progress, along with the Thalan's:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Don't ask me how, but they are already 31% along the path of a Conquest victory. What's worse, according to the ratings, the Thalan Empire is in overall 1st place, and comes in 1st in terms of population, influence, and many other things.

[Basque]

Sirus, having a shot of the universe like that is great! It's good to see the mini-map so we can get a lay of the land. I don't know exactly which star system is which from the Minimap, but if we get an Industrial Colony near the Krynn Consulate that can build ships I would advise we colonize around them if possible to lock them within a Sphere of Influence. However, that's not as important as just colonizing the best possible planets as quickly as possible.

Don't ask me how, but they are already 31% along the path of a Conquest victory. What's worse, according to the ratings, the Thalan Empire is in overall 1st place, and comes in 1st in terms of population, influence, and many other things.

The recent United Planets vote shows we are being greatly out populated so ceasing colonization is very counterproductive. The biggest contributor to UP vote is population so it's a good way to tell how populated a civilization is. Since we continue to find planets with influence tiles I'll continue to recommend using them but not until much later when we're not in any crunch.

Just from the previous UP Vote we should all know this to be true. I believe the "coolness" of other races towards them is because they realize this as well. It would be up to the Diplomatic Corps (DCPC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (S.P.Y Network) but we may be able to use this to our advantage and instigate a war between other Races against the Thalans at some point while we profit from the sidelines.

Also considering our apparently vast Diplomacy advantage, I think we should exploit this to our benefit as much as possible. The most important thing would be to trade for other Planets if possible (without giving up any of our own) but getting Technology would be an advantage as well. Once we get in a better Economic situation this could be something else the DCPC and the S.P.Y Network could work together on; spies could investigate to find the best planets for us to acquire.

Of course the proceedings are entirely up to those councils, from a Colonial Affairs standpoint I'm just interesting in anything that can acquire us more planets.

I could not confirm with the wiki but is Conquest Victory counted up by percentage of the inhabited worlds you control? I think it must be something like that since we're at 10% and haven't conquered anyone. It's likely the same for the Thalans. In other words, faster colonization is the reason for the Thalan's advancements. To rectify this we should proceed with colonizing as quickly as possible.

Sirus, should R&D get an update for how long what they want to research will take? It may vastly change the R&D strategy if it takes 32 weeks to research something while other things can be researched in 8 weeks. On the other hand, how does our "Creative" ability work-it seems to just instantly finish research randomly? If there's no limit to that we could research some high end things and hope to just finish them magically. Of course, all of those are just possibilities to be decided on by R&D.

Also, you mentioned finding a bunch of average planets, what can you tell when you find them? There's no way to tell if there's any special tiles or anything until you colonize it, is there?

Speaking of the economy Sirus it looks like from the screenshot we had 759 Billion Credits. Are we just steadily losing them but not actually in the hole yet?

Finally, does Twilight of Arnor have different random events then previous versions? Again the Wiki's not up to speed on this and the only influence event I could find was Undue Influence which involves crystals, nothing about devices.

[Shadowgandor]

Yes sorry, I meant Krynn Consulate instead of Iconian Refuge. The problem with allying with the Thalan is that they like everyone. That means that they might frown upon us and perhaps even break our treaties if they like the other empire better.
The Drath are an evil race and are looking forward to mass genocide..not the kind of Empire you want to trade and grow with.
The Arcean Empire is a possible ally as well, although I do not recommend sharing technologies with too many races. If however, a possible trade route can be opened between our nations, we should grab this chance in order to build a better relationship.

Lastly, I'd like to recommend building a fleet and placing it near the edge of our territory. If we show the other species that we can fight if necessary, other races won't attack for a while.

[Sirus]

@ Basque: Correct, there is no way to know anything other than a planet's class and hostile environment type (if any) before the colony ship arrives. I believe the planet's surface is generated on colonization, so even save-scumming won't provide reliable results. I promised myself not to save-scum though, so don't even suggest it.

@ Shadowgandor: So you're recommending building relations with the Arceans and the Krynn? Just to make sure I have that straight in my head.

[Shadowgandor]

@ Shadowgandor: So you're recommending building relations with the Arceans and the Krynn? Just to make sure I have that straight in my head.

Right, the Krynn get priority but Arceans are okay as well. I'm also asking if you're going evil, neutral or good.