Q1: Why do they like me?
A1: There are a lot of things which go into whether a foreign race thinks you're good or not. Ideology does impact it, with opposites being a -3 diplomacy modifier, but it's not the be-all-end-all of why relationships work. Within the main diplomacy screen (the big ring with you in the center) mouse over one of the other races. It will show you all (most) of the modifiers which are impacting things right now.
Q2: Tourism with the Drengin?
A1: Nobody wants to visit the Drengin worlds, it is sort of like inviting yourself over as the main course for a meal! More seriously, I don't normally use the Drengin tech tree so I can not comment on it in detail. However the normal pattern is you research Tourism and then begin receiving free money. You can raise this level of income by researching further up the Tourism tree or by building buildings. I will take advantage of special tourism bonuses on worlds, but it is very rare for me to build a tourism building without such a bonus. The basic fact is that I am rarely hard up for money, and I would much rather use the limited amount of planetary land for research / production / food than dedicate it to tourism. I think it's a much better return on investment.
Q3: Why do the Altarians hate me, when I haven't even met them yet?
A3: It was a random galactic event, and that's how it happened to pan out.
Q4: Why do some planets grow much faster than others?
A4: The main thing which impacts planetary capability is raw production, which is generated mostly by population. To see the values, open up any planetary detail window and then inspect your raw production value. It will show that you're getting X amount from the colony capital, Y from population, +/- % due to approval, losses due to coercion, etc. Some things you want to try and do:
- Try to avoid coercion penalties. These kick in when you are forcing a large amount of your population to focus too much on one aspect (say, Manufacturing) and not allowing them to enjoy Research and Wealth as well. I tend to set my values in the main civilization governing tab to 44/44/12 Manufacturing/Research/Wealth and then leave it there for virtually the entire game. This incurs 0% coercion and thus no loss of productivity. I do not normally adjust it on a planetary level except in very rare circumstances, such as shifting to more wealth, as the coercion penalties can be severe. I suggest you experiment a little and you'll see what I'm talking about.
- Keep your approval rating high, the +25% bonus to raw production is huge.
- Keep your population growing. You need lots of population to generate the raw production which is then converted through buildings into Man/Res/Wealth. Try to plan for at least two adjacent farms per planet.
- Be careful about sucking all of the population off the planet using Transports. You might find your planet is covered in factories but has no people, thus the manufacturing capacity is low.
- Try building one or more economic staircases near your planets. They can be a huge boost to all of the above. I normally build one maxed out Econ starbase by each planet, with a full ring of multiple staircases around clusters of planets or major production centers (i.e. homeworld).
Q5: Why do I suck?
A5: Likely it's through not understanding Q4 above. Mastering the economic capacity of your worlds and empire will greatly accelerate your growth potential.
Q6: What should I do now?
A6: Experiment! Once you've tried a few things, come back and ask more questions. Either myself or another will help out.
