Just got my ass handed over to me...

You need to force buy those colonies asap, even if it puts you in debt or you have to cut spending to minimums. You need as many scouts as needed to find the good planets. On a huge world I work towards impulse drives so I can get places faster.

Don't put too many colonists on each ship or you will drain your homeworld. Watch their morale once they colonize because if it's too low they'll die off. You need to get some morale boosts asap. Again, force buy if need be.

Know when to stop. You want a decent size empire but too big isn't good either. Once you have nice defendable borders you can slow down your colony rush. You can always get those planets where the computer has overextended his borders when you're ready. Don't worry, that's what they'll do to you too.

I certainly don't claim to be an expert by any means but this technique certainly works for me but really I generally play the smaller worlds. I plan to move to the bigger ones but I find I am learning a lot by being forced to deal with my neighbors quickly and I really learn the value of the lower techs this way. On huge worlds you can go quite far up the tree before you get into trouble which is fine but for learning it didn't work for me.

Hope this helped or at least didn't hurt too badly.

~SDC~

How do you modify the number of colonists on a colony ship? I just build em and send them out. Where do I adjust number of passengers?

Double click on the ships icon when you have the system selected. It will give you a slider for population. Adjust and then launch and it will put the ship outside of the system.

Double-click on the colony ship's icon at the bottom right of the screen, while its in orbit around your planet. There should be a slider with "loading troops" above it, and a "launch icon". That should do the trick.

~SDC~

I had a chance to play one game last night and was doing pretty good until the Drengin decided to wipe me out of the galaxy. I was able to hold on for a little by using diplomacy to get the other races to declare war on them(except the torians, jerks!), and the minors gave me ships. But after they invaded Sol... game over man! Had fun though

thanks to blitz and phil.
cheers

I prefer to crank military and government spending up to 100% and tank the others for a year. That way, I end up with half a dozen colony ships 'in hand' and no debt


~SDC~

All these people having troubles with the Dengrin. I quite like them. My last game ended when I formed an alliance with them. It's the Yor I hate. Ooh, those Yor... They wiped me out within a couple of hours in the first game I played and I've never forgiven them.

Hmm... maybe someone should start a "which race is your nemesis?" thread. If there's not one already.

~SDC~

Here is my strategy when sending out colony ships when playing large maps:

Most of the colony ships I send out have around 20 mil. people on them. These ships are for colonizing 15-16 class planets

Every once in a while I send out a colony ship with around 100 mil. These ships are for colonizing any 17+ planets which I than use to crank out some more colony ships.

~SDC~

The Yor talk a tough game, and I've seen them hit the other AIs hard, but they've never been worse than neutral to me, and I'm usually good. The Drengin, on the other hand, dislike me at first contact, even if I'm purely neutral.

This all reminds me of my last (losing) game. The Drengin used the time-honored-lame-human-player technique of sending transports around the edge of the map so you don't see them coming. Yeowtch. 3 out of 5 planets taken in one swell foop. I just quit at that point. gg, AI.

~SDC~