Hints on starting moves
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Hi all;
I have been playing the Beta for awhile now, and would like to get some tips on how to advance my starting position quicker than I am doing now.
I am comparing my starting advancement with the AIs. They are on "Bright", which I think still means they are given no advantages.
With my first test game, I tried the approach of buying colony ships as quickly as possible, and shipping them to any good nearby stars. I kept the taxes and spending set to keep my expenses in line, but with setting up 8 colonies too quickly, I was 300 credits in the hole when I meet the first AI. Doing some trading with them, I could see it had the same number of colonies (8), and 600C in the bank. It also had numerous military ships, and significantly more tech than I did. This was around 30 turns into the game.
So for test try #2, I tried to manage the buildup more efficiently. I bumped my spending to max, my taxes I kept low so that the approval was in the 60's. I then set it all to military. I was able to pump out a colony ship every 5-8 turns. By the time I had bumped into the first AI, I couldn't talk to them yet, as I had no tech. But I could see how many colonies they had made by looking at the growth curve bumps. They had 8 colonies, while I only had 6. So I was still significantly behind again.
So after all that, my question is how to improve my growth curve? The next couple of games I will try to fiddle with the approval rating, and see how that changes anything. I did notice that I was putting 10 credits/turn into military, and only the capital was building ships. The colony ship was 50C, so it should have taken 5 turns, but I was seeing 8 turns. So it looks like something else effects it, maybe approval.
This is what I like most about the game, learning all the tricks within it
I have been playing the Beta for awhile now, and would like to get some tips on how to advance my starting position quicker than I am doing now.
I am comparing my starting advancement with the AIs. They are on "Bright", which I think still means they are given no advantages.
With my first test game, I tried the approach of buying colony ships as quickly as possible, and shipping them to any good nearby stars. I kept the taxes and spending set to keep my expenses in line, but with setting up 8 colonies too quickly, I was 300 credits in the hole when I meet the first AI. Doing some trading with them, I could see it had the same number of colonies (8), and 600C in the bank. It also had numerous military ships, and significantly more tech than I did. This was around 30 turns into the game.
So for test try #2, I tried to manage the buildup more efficiently. I bumped my spending to max, my taxes I kept low so that the approval was in the 60's. I then set it all to military. I was able to pump out a colony ship every 5-8 turns. By the time I had bumped into the first AI, I couldn't talk to them yet, as I had no tech. But I could see how many colonies they had made by looking at the growth curve bumps. They had 8 colonies, while I only had 6. So I was still significantly behind again.
So after all that, my question is how to improve my growth curve? The next couple of games I will try to fiddle with the approval rating, and see how that changes anything. I did notice that I was putting 10 credits/turn into military, and only the capital was building ships. The colony ship was 50C, so it should have taken 5 turns, but I was seeing 8 turns. So it looks like something else effects it, maybe approval.
This is what I like most about the game, learning all the tricks within it
