Colonization, Outposts etc..

[Angmar]

One of the first hurdles that I had to overcome while playing this game was how colonization works. I now have figured out the basics but I do have a few things that are stumping me.

One of the first things I do now when I start a game is obsolete all the default ships except the system colony ( and the colony ship if there arent tasty local planets to my start )

Now I micromanage ( aka fight the viceroy ) to keep only ships I want in my military queue. This means that I personally build colony ships. I have never once built an outpost ship.

Now in my last game my game had progressed a great deal and most of my current planets were reaching their population max. This is when I started to find outposts of mine in star in strange star systems on yellow or red planets. They would die. This boggled me, and I assumed that somehow a planet built something and sent an outpost here even though I had ensured that the colonization radio button was set at wait for me to give the orders.

So I started a new game. Again I obsolete all the ships that I dont want. This time Im brave and I turn off the Viceroy on my main planet right away, remove all the ships but the system colony. Queue a few of these, land the default colony ship on the sweet spot planet in my start system. Sent each of my scouts out to explore.

The scout that went "east" discovered a nice chokepoint system that was two hops away, with some nice green planets. I make a mental note that once I finish building up my start system and some minor military that my first colony ship goes there. I tell my scout to move on.. four turns later it arrives at the next system. This is were I boggle. I have an "outpost" on the star system that my scout just left. I went back to the system to check and see if somehow I had misses a planetary special that gives me a free outpost. ( I have gained a few free colonies through specials ).

Again I boggle. The specials on the planet in question are the research bonus and pollution. Nothing here that would suggest a free outpost.

ARR.. Someone care to explain to me where these "outposts" are coming from??

One other question about outposts. In my previous game there was a star system beside one of my main chokepoints that one of my main enemies kept colonizing. Now and again and outpost would show up here. I had my navy in orbit and they would attack and destroy any colony ships that would show up. How did these stinky "people" get there? And why can I not assault such a planet. My fleet would just sit in orbit and I would not get an option to engage in battle until the outpost would grow to a full colony, then I would get a chance to assault it. This is where my fleet would spend 5 or 6 turns bombing into into dust. A few turns later ( or so it seemed ) it would be back.

I am using the term "outpost" to represent a planet that has less than 1000 people or 1 population point and the star system takes on the colour of the empire in question but starts with a lower case letter.

.. maybe I need to learn to be less verbose..

Cheers,

 

[Arathorn]

Your people will naturally migrate from one planet to another. If a planet is too full or if the PRNG is feeling lucky or whatever, your people will start to move to new planets.

This is especially USEFUL with magnate civs, as trying to keep track of what race is in which colony ship would be a nightmare, IMO. Your magnate civs, if/when you get some, will head out on their own and start colonizing new planets (since they know what planets they like and the extremely uninformative surveys you do won't). I've not seen it as early as you mention, but I find it a nice way to have planets fill up behind my selected colonization.

I call this "migration" even though it's different than the migration you can set. Anybody have a better term to suggest?

Point 2: For whatever reason, outposts cannot be attacked. They can't build anything either. Just drop your people on top of them, outpopulate them to 1.0 population and the planet is yours. Only really scary if the other pop is harvester....

Arathorn

 

[Angmar]

Thanks for the comments. This is what I was assuming was happening. It even makes "sence" I was just feeling for a while last night that my Empire was out of [edit] my [/edit] control, and I had no idea who was in control .. kind of scary.

As for the outpost thing, they were harvesters and I was playing a race that is weak in hand to hand combat. Planetary bombardment is my friend

 

[Frimlin]

Originally posted by Arathorn
I call this "migration" even though it's different than the migration you can set. Anybody have a better term to suggest?

Frontier pioneering? Population drift?

Seems odd that you can't attack it before it's a colony. Also odd that the people don't learn after successive failed colonies that they shouldn't build on a planet in your system.

 

[Davour]

One of the first things I do now when I start a game is obsolete all the default ships except the system colony ( and the colony ship if there arent tasty local planets to my start )

Bad idea - Colony ships rip out to much population. With magnate civs and population migration use OUTPOSTS - they establish a prescence and then instead of CREATING a ship, SENDING the ship and LANDING the ship, if the planet is a nice juicy looking option, once you set MIGRATE to that planet you will see around 100-200 people going there per turn --

Me, i would prefer 4 developing worlds rather than 1 colony world

Now I micromanage ( aka fight the viceroy ) to keep only ships I want in my military queue. This means that I personally build colony ships. I have never once built an outpost ship.

Ah i see... try it, it cant hurt
Expansion is so much easier with them - Worse case, you set positive planets (magnate, random research etc.) as SEND OUTPOST and best case you set ALL planets you see as OUTPOSTS --- the reds and yellows take longer to become fully fledged members of your empire (they need a lot of migration) but there is nothing wrong with that

Now in my last game my game had progressed a great deal and most of my current planets were reaching their population max. This is when I started to find outposts of mine in star in strange star systems on yellow or red planets. They would die. This boggled me, and I assumed that somehow a planet built something and sent an outpost here even though I had ensured that the colonization radio button was set at wait for me to give the orders.

Colony and Outpost are seperate - setting colony to No will not stop getting outposts built, it might be a bug but it doesnt

The reason they are not doing anything is that it takes 4x the resources to colonize a red and 2x a yellow world - problem with your plan is that youve left your guys on this world, harsh conditions and the most they got from you each turn was "where is the ore??" --- Without growth through farming a colony/outpost cant grow -

The scout that went "east" discovered a nice chokepoint system that was two hops away, with some nice green planets. I make a mental note that once I finish building up my start system and some minor military that my first colony ship goes there.

If you went to that world and SET OUTPOST/COLONY SHIP to that world then the systems would build a ship to go there -

Again I boggle. The specials on the planet in question are the research bonus and pollution. Nothing here that would suggest a free outpost.

ARR.. Someone care to explain to me where these "outposts" are coming from??

Its called magnate civs - If you colonise a world that has the Magnate CIV special, these are basicaly frontier types who are natural settlers and will automaticaly, without ships or any relevance to distance will colonise worlds they think they like -- the AI decides and you have no control of where they choose

I tried 2 exact same maps, saved at start to test OUTPOST vs COLONY

It took me 4 times as long to build colonies and since these planets were still developing then they couldnt build more - forcing my HOME planet to build outposts - reducing my population and leaving me in a bit of a rutt

About turn 100 I had a half dozen worlds and not much else

Then i used outposts - My main world was producing outposts slowly but around every 2 turns or so it became that I had a new world outposted - Migrated to it until it reached around 7 population...

By turn 100 I had over 15 colonies and had control over 10 systems rather than 5 as before

Outposts are much better than colony, just remember to target specials, greens and magnate