Start with exploration and expansion. You've got 1000 BC for a reason; set spend rate to 100%, consider pumping up taxes, and -- since you need to crank out colony ships while doing research -- consider something like an 80-0-20 split for military/social/research. You can add the soil improvements later.
You start with a survey ship, which you should use to check out nearby stars -- exploring the densest regions first, to maximize stars revealed per turn. Your colony ship should probably go to the nearest PQ15+ system unless you're a lucky bastard who started within sight of a purple star with multiple potential Gardens of Eden.
Research path should vary depending on map size, proximity to neighbors. On the huge maps I prefer, I might be inclined to go for the first four trade goods first since early war is unlikely, while the possibility of some rich minor getting a trade good early before anybody attacks them increases every turn.
Expand, expand, expand. You may want to crank out another scout or two to help search; you want to locate delicious, tasty high-PQ worlds, and resources (in particular, econ and military; economics goes into EVERYTHING since very little is completely free in GalCiv, whereas military bonuses will help your ships win battles and live enough to be experienced).
When expansion slows down (lower availability of good-PQ worlds) shift econ to something saner like 40-30-30 or whatever, catch up on social improvements, get trade goods, et al. The need for a military will vary with proximity to neighbors; you might be able to get away with being rather weak early if they're far away, but you WILL almost certainly need to build up at some point; there's no Great Wall or United Nations wonder to keep them away.
Some trade goods and wonders to keep in mind:
- Diplomatic Translators boosts your diplomatic trading with AIs.
- Aphrodisiacs will boost pop growth. Pop generates taxes, production.
- Gravity Accelerators gives +20% speed to all your ships -- very useful for both "hot" war and for beating AIs to resources and planets.
- Eyes of the Universe will make it harder for the AI to sneak anything past you because of the boost to sensor range.
Some stuff to keep in mind:
- Bribing AIs to fight each other might make them too busy and too weak to fight you. It'll also ruin any trading they might be doing. This can also be useful for getting one AI to blow away another's starbase so you can take the resource.
- Don't forget to use espionage. You may well want to track what the AIs are researching at any given point.
- If you have no "safe" trading partners near you, perhaps because you consider all majors potential enemies and all routes with minors could be blocked by the majors, consider giving a minor one of your worlds in an area where you can keep the route safe. Trade can generate a LOT of money.
- If your economy's being dragged down by obsolete ships, sell or give them to somebody else.
- Certain United Planets issues are, basically, time bombs.
- DO trade for tech. While any tech that grants a warship hull will be overpriced (badly) if the AI is even willing to sell it at all, other tech can be obtained at more reasonable prices. Sell tech, as well; you might find that an AI is willing to pay for tech that it's researching at that time. In addition, you can get tech that you would not otherwise be able to get due to alignment. The tech tree's BIG, and there's no Great Library or equivalent to get you free tech in this game. Don't expect to be able to keep up with all the AI's combined research if you never trade.
Stardock Forums
. Research Dreadnought tech., and build loads of AMM's!
