Hi Sole Soul, I don't really play "mumblers" since I think that term implies building a starbase array and no real colonization effort. TA really rewards you for doing your own colonization though, unlike DA, and since I love the colony rush I like TA better than DA. I love the differing tech trees too. I also don't have a lot of interest in playing a ZYW either. So for me I vastly prefer TA, but that is just a personal preference and I could be the village idiot. I wanted to say thanks for all the help you gave me back in December when answering my Noob questions so patiently. I paid attention to you and it certainly helped me a lot.

Sorry, accidental double post. Please ignore this reply.

Hello

@Clanlindsey, thank you for the info and I will check any thread that is helpful.  I play in TA . How do you get a good start in the planet rush?

Gm00nii, there are lots of ways of going about improving your colony rush, some of which are easy to explain and some of which require knowledge of other game facets so they aren't easy to explain. Without having to write a book, let try to give a brief synopsis that will get you going in the right direction.

First, I see that you read the thread I sent you which is good. One thing I learned there was that conquests victories score much higher than other victories so to get a high score you have to turn off all victory conditions except for conquest. Learning that, my scores began to improve rapidly.

Next, there are certain styles of play that rely on the AI to do the colonizing and then taking planets from the AI. This doesn't work as well in TA so if you want to score well in TA you have to do some colonizing on your own.

Now, to answer your question. Building the colony ships the game provides you costs 141 BC's (at least in the game I am playing now). You can try to build these as fast as you can on your home planet, but this is a very slow means of colonization. It takes too long to build them, and they take a long time to get to a suitable planet. One thing I learned elsewhere on this forum is that you can build a "blank" cargo ship, i.e. a cargo hull with nothing on it for a cost of 55 BC. Basically you can build almost three of these in the same time it takes to build one colony ship. You fly the blank to the planet you want and upgrade it to a colonizer when it gets there.

There is an even better way though. Instead of using a blank cargo hold, use a blank tiny hull. They only cost 25 bc so you can make six of these in the same time it takes to make 1 colony ship or 3 blank cargos. I believe they are cheaper to upgrade to a tiny colonizer than the blank cargo hull.

There is one catch though. In order to put a colony module on a tiny hull you need the first two ranks of minaturization technology so you will want to research those as soon as possible.

Nice!!! Adds to list, scurrys back under rock to finish game.

But wouldn't upgrading to a larger colonization vessel cost enough money to push it up to 100BC? and even when upgrading you'd have to return a colony ship to a planet inorder to load colonists onto it. At least that's what O have been told you have to do, colonists arn't included in the update.

There is also a matter of speed. A colony ship comes with hyperdrive, giving it 2 move points or more. empty hulls only have 1. I just don't understand the logic in this trade off because beating the AI to a planet is just as important as getting as many planets as possible.

it seems there are alot of backfiring traits in these methods which must be overcome but giving up something else like economy for a speed bonus or all your techs to get a valued start on the propulsion tech tree. If i seem arguementative it's only because I believe there are some faults in the plans. TA offers many routes to take but inorder to gain the start advantage you have to suffer in an specific area later in the game.

I think Clanlindsey's idea can work well under certain circumstances. It looks promising if one has Aphrodesiac, and wants to build ships on new planets to snatch adjacent planets. On each new planet, build a fertility clinic, a starport, and repeat.

The point is not so much the cost, as clanlindsey has implied, but the time they take to build.  Both values are quantified in BC, so it's easy to confuse them.  You are correct that it does cost you more money overall, but the entire point is to get colony ships out as fast as humanly possible.

When you upgrade a bare hull into a colony ship, it gets 1M colonists placed on it, so you can get away with not returning it to a planet to refill it first.  Since DA introduced "spored" growth, where a planet below the 75M base growth has anywhere from 1-5M pop added to its growth, before bonuses, this isn't as detrimental of a strategy as it probably should be.  The growth and the base are low enough that stacking growth bonuses on almost doesn't matter-this strategy relies on ferries more than it does on real growth-but Breeder would still help enough that the colonies could support themselves in a relatively short period of time.

True, a default colony ship has a hyperdrive, granting it 1 more speed than base (which in TA is 2).  Thanks to TA's base 2 speed, and with impulse drive researched, our speed is 3 for a bare hull, or 4 for a colony ship.  The colony ship will get there faster, but it doesn't matter if it takes us twice or even four times as long to build it.  And the effect is magnified the more speed bonuses you tack on-for instance if you're playing as Terrans or with their tree; the innovation complex is horrendously valuable in that respect.

Taking an economic bonus won't help you during the colony rush, because you're spending more money than you could possibly make, your populations are ridiculously small, and your tax rate is ideally too low to make any money of significance to stimulate growth.

There is an exception to this if you take all economic bonuses with the DA Thalans, as they will then break even at about a 29% tax rate (if memory serves) on new 250M pop colonies, but that's about it.

All very good comments and observations. Honestly, I use more than one or two or even three strategies for colonization. To do it really well you have to be able to use them all in concert. I was trying to explain one of the simpler strategies.  Once you master one strategy you can move on to the next, and once you have gotten comfortable with several, you can begin to blend them together. But you do have to start somewhere. As SS points out the value of this strategy is not cost, but speed.

The question about the number of colonists is a good one too, and Snarkotamus is correct in his response. Yes, you only have 1 million colonists this way, but this is a "plant your flag first" strategy not a plant your people strategy. To grow my population quickly I generally spawn five or six fertility accelerators and I get to aphrodisiacs as quickly as possible. That very tiny initial population grows quickly enough.

The tiny hull strategy I outlined is best thought of as analogous to the "island-hopping" strategy employed by the US Navy in the Pacific Theater in WWII. It has numerous advantages in GalCiv, of which the principal ones are speed, as noted, but just as if not more important, it is a great way to extend your range quickly. Send a tiny blank to a planet, build a starport on the new planet in two rounds, build another tiny blank in two rounds, and ship it off to the next planet down the line. The planets topple like dominoes and your range extends farther and farther very quickly allowing you to now grab those juicy resources that were frustratingly just out of reach earlier.

Whether your colony ship move at 2, or 3, or 4 points doesn't matter much if the ship starts out 12 parsecs closer to the destination and it ready to head out 6 rounds earlier. Don't confuse movement points with speed, they are very different beasties. This approach costs a lot of BCs though, so if you over-extend yourself with this you will tank your economy quickly. A less BC intensive strategy is to use your MP points to build full-blown colony ships. If the AI will give you the time to do so, then in that situation you can save BCs by building out the regular colony ship. Learning when to use which of many possible strategies is the fun of the game.

Thank you for your info

In my next game I try blank ships in planet hop, I will 

Thanks for sharing some of your colony rush strategies clanlindsey.  Definitely some good stuff in there for newer players.

I started my first giga-all-abundant yesterday, and I'm about halfway through Year 1.  Since it's my first game of this size, I dont have a good reference point to judge how it's going, but I do hope to get close to, or over, 1 million points.

Sentient species taste better...

Hi KP, I just started a giga-abundant this morning. This game might be a little slower getting done....lot's of family stuff going on here for spring break. Good luck on breaking the million, I was pretty excited to do it on my last game, but it is completely dependent on if I get the econ event or not, and when. I think I told you you I eschew starbase arrays and do most of my own colonizing instead of the swindle, but those are obviously powerful point drivers based upon Mottikhan's score last night. Wow, I am impressed! I wonder if that beats Livonya's score? I don't want to do that much work myself, and I don't think they work nearly as well in TA. Are you  playing TA or DA for this game?

I'm not sure when I'll get mine finished either, because a giga-abundant is somewhat slower going than the huge maps I'm used to, and I also picked up Empire: Total War this week.  I tripled my RAM from 1 to 3 gigs (two 1 gig, plus my 2 old 0.5 gig modules), but my video card seems to be having a bit of trouble with some of the real-time battles, especially the naval ones.  Might be time to upgrade that too.  I'm 100% certain that Motti's score is a record.   My game is in DA, mainly because I use focus pretty extensively.

Sentient species taste better...

Keep the flow of fresh juicy tourists coming from your empire, and the lines of communication will stay very active.

Good luck on shooting for 100k...I dont doubt that you will achieve it with this game or the next.

Sentient species taste better...

Here's a few GC2 related links for those of you who are not famliar with them:

GC2 AltMeta - An alternative ranking system for both characters and empires, based more upon recent activity.  Scores depreciate down to 0 eventually, unlike the main MV, allowing new players to rise in the ranks.

The Galactic Core - Most of the people here are from GC2.  It's also where a number of the older empire forums are, and it has a number of fun features to the site including the Arcade and the daily competitive Trivia Quiz, for when you need a quick break from conquering the galaxy.  Some additional worthy souls must challenge my trivia skills!

galcivguide2.com - A relatively new site by Drengin, including forums, mods, & AARs.

GalCiv2 Wiki - In addition to the wiki, many great links here too.

Interactive Tech Tree - Useful for DL and DA, but not so much with TA.  If someone knows of an interactive site with the various TA tech trees, post it please.

Everyone feel free to chime in with other links that may be entertaining, fun, or informative.

Sentient species taste better...

Thanks, KP!

I did another all abundant, medium map. 1yr Military Conquest vs. 9 apponents, 8 minors. Got me +100K. A harder target might be 200K in 2yrs. I like these medium maps because I can complete them fairly quickly. Started an all abundant, immense map, but it DOES look like a large time commitment. I'll work at it off and on.

Oh yeah.  Immense is...immense.

I like the mediums as well, but I may step up to large as my "normal"-a medium just doesn't have enough planets for me to get my colonization rush high from.

Nicely done Ferrel!   At this point you might want to consider doing some ZYWs, which with my newest write-up (updated today) can net you 105 - 115k in just 10-15 minutes.  A lot less of a time committment!  Anybody who is interested, let me know and I'll send you the write-up.  I recently set a new record of 117,200.  Also you might be better off with a giga-all abundant instead of immense, because the planet count is the same as immense, but less empty space in between planets, and consequently a faster game.

Next on the agenda is an update to the Great Galactic Swindle with a few things I've been doing lately.

Sentient species taste better...

KP, some of us play for challenge, rather than score.

Certainly, no argument there.  Being a score-monger myself at this point though, most of my useful advice is related to scoring.  Luckily there are others around with broader areas of knowledge, such as yourself.

Sentient species taste better...

Might just try another ZYW. I'd did one during a MVL round, but haven't tried one since.

I've been working on increasing my efficiency during during year 0. This last TA game I included Fertility Clinics, along with Recruiting Centers, in my planet build. They are really cheap and can be built over once population is nearing the cap. Both the RC and FC cost 204bc each, or are built quickly. This gives a 45% population growth. My last game, most of my planets were already maxed out, or very close, by the end of year 1. I've been eliminating a lot of the tech tree as well. Homing on what actually needs to be reseached early. Next game I'm going to do a bullet form AAR.

Ahahaha.

Silly Ferrel, use your social production!

I sat down and made a list of techs I need to research to win the game once...in order.

I never updated it for TA, though.

Thanks to KP, I FINALLY broke 100k in a YZW. And it only took 131 tries!