Post beginner tips here!

[Zhahz]

So far the best things I've learned off of the various forums are:

1 - buy your first factory.
2 - Don't, and I repeat DON'T, make too many farms.
3 - buy your first 2-3 colony ships.
4 - set spending to 100%, set taxes to a level where your approval is near 60%, and get military spending near 60%.
5 - Anyone else have something to help the new players?

I'd stress that #4 is the most critical (non-obvious) thing you need to do at the beginning of a game (obviously you need to scout and colonize) - set your industrial capacity to 100% otherwise you're not realizing your full research and production potential. You may tweak capacity over the course of a game for financial reasons, but in the beginning you want to be at 100%. It's good to know how industrial capacity works since it's a concept you don't find in Civ.

I'd add that you'll want to design your own ships even early on. You can advance your propulsion tech early on (amongst other things). The first drive upgrade can come very early and can boost all your core ships (colonizer, constructor, scouts) from 2pc/wk movement to 3pc/wk - a 50% gain that helps you explore and expand faster - which can be huge early on. Personally I always go for propulsion first but opinions vary, of course.

You get some "stock" ship designs along with techs over time, but generally speaking your custom designs will be superior. Designing ships can be a bit daunting at first but once you (quickly) get used to it it's both fun and addicting.

Design ships to fill your exact needs, particularly early when maximizing/optimizing is most critical. If you're going to colonize that class 4 world right next to your home world you don't need a colony ship loaded with drives and life support. Conversely if you're racing an AI to reach a juicy world that's a ways distant, then you want a colonizer with all the drives you can fit and probably need adequate life support modules to reach it at all. Even in the early game a small tweak to a ship design can have a big impact.

Fairly early on via tech you'll get a few "capital" miniwonders (every race can build em) you can build. For example, manufacturing capital, technological capital, economic capital. Each one requires a planet tile to build. Each one gives a nice boost to it's relative concept. It's usually a good idea to build them on planets specialized to their concept. A fat industrial world with lots of factories and a manufacturing captial, for example, will crank out ships (kinda like a mine-rich city in Civ with appropriate structures and wonders will crank out units). You will also pretty much always get these miniwonders even with specialized research, so plan ahead for where you want to build them.

As population increases morale/approval decrease - which is why you don't want to go crazy with farms (can easily overgrow population and crush a planet's morale). Find a balance of farms and +morale structures that works. There is usually no point in building a farm at all til a planet is near/at it's pop cap. Build factories, labs, and econ structures first to get your production, research, and economy going. You can get farm techs to increase their production (rather than build multiples of them). A common "rule" some players write (and that I use myself) is that for every farm you throw down you also build an entertainment structure to keep morale balanced.

The resources on the map affect your entire empire if you control them (by building a starbase on them, and ideally improve them with lots more constructors). These resources can have a huge impact. It's a good idea to grab as many as you can and make them priority targets in war.

 

[Xenos]

1.espionage, do it early.
2.Starbases are your friend.
3.Trade.
4.Balanced Fleet.
5.Custom ships.
6.Know your enemies before starting war. (strengths/weakness etc)
7.Know that when you can fight a war you could end up without anything imperialist tacticians be careful.

 

[Supreme Shogun]

I think Ascatoni beat me to the punch on econ worlds. There's just one thing... bonus farm tiles *shudder* My only complaint using them is not enough tiles to build enough improvements to keep large pop. happy. One xeno-farm on a 300% farming bonus + default colony food output = 29mt/wk. 29 Billion people! Devoting the entire planet to morale/banking was worth it. It was my highest money planet. Plus on the flip side, if it became war time you can always land several assault landers and fill em up and send off real quick

 

[woodelf]

I don't know the exact formula, but it seems that finding all of your neighbors seriously helps out early game with tourism cash. I always overexpand and end up stifling my industry until freighters, but the little extra that tourism generates is vital for my survival until then.

 

[monkeyman90000]

heres a super big one expand extreamly fast
i mean fast if u get stuck in a area where u only have like 10 planets yr screwed

 

[Ixpha]

Could someone explain me how farms and planet size work regarding pop ? Because it says in the manual that a farm can feed 5 million people, yet I have planets with 2 billions people on it and no problems O_o

ok, first of all its billions probably and not millions

If it said millions, it must have been either: You just started the colony and they haven't grown yet, you made tons of colony ships or troop transports ( 500millions pr core ship) or you just have been invaded and there has been casualties.

Initial colony is 5 billions, how many u want on a planet u decide by making farms, by making more farms and more peoples on ur planets makes it harder for enemies to take over a planet since u have more troops to defend them.

Also when u have more peoples on a planet and build economic buildings u get more income from that planet since more ppls pay taxes.

Basically u decide how many ppls u want on any planet, its totally up to you (5 billions pr farm)
after the few initial planets you want to make some specific planets that does something special depending on what you need, for example if u happen to need more money as you feel you dont have enough to finance your ship building u make planets with lots of farms and economic buildings. same with research and construction planets. (contruction planets should also have additional ppls on it if u plan to make alot of troop transport and colonyships)

If u get a planet with alot of ppls not happy about you, just pop up a entertainment building, or if they'r very angry and almost at riot before u notice it, just buy one.

 

[Gunner]

I think one thing which might be confusing people about figuring out the relationship between farms and pop is that all buildings (including farms) upgrade as you research stuff. So farms eventually produce much more than they originally did by the end of the game.

 

[woodelf]

Another confusing thing is that in Civ you get a number next to your city with the population in it representing number of tiles you can work. Finding you pop in GC2 takes a little searching and I never even think to look at it except by accident.

 

[Tboy]

First grab every planet in sight, then one word: TRADE. Trade with your allies and don't ever attack them, make them your allies, and just TRADE. Trade makes money, money buys ships and buildings, ships make an empire. Simple.

 

[woodelf]

Echoing Tboy - The minute you declare war you had better have cash stashed away. It's amazing how much money is lost by losing trade/tourism with just 1 civ!

 

[Kozmos]

About warfare,surgical strikes can save a lot of headaches.Meaning prepare the required number of fast transport and good number of attack ships. Though it can be expensive and take quite a while to build all those ships.The general idea is to strike your enemy down in 3-4 turns.

Once you have space superiority,position your attack transports around their planets.Invade most of their planets in the SAME turn.This is important,because it prevents them from surrendering lots of planet to another civ and making your life harder.Fast ships help a lot.

 

[warpstorm]

Don't let anyone (except yourself, of course) own an Influence mine. Seriously. Go to war as soon as possible and take it out. Really.

 

[Tboy]

Woodelf, thats another point worth making. Build strong trade links with ALLIES, or at least people who won't attack you. Otherwise all those years of research and building are lost.

 

[SzechuanLlama]

One of the first things I do is build new scout, colony, and constructor designs with as much engine power packed in as I can. The default designs are slow slow slow; a fast colony or contructor can make all the difference in grabbing that nice PQ 17 world or that military resource. Also, *do not* use auto explore. I've found the AI to be pretty dumb when it comes to exploring (very similar to Civ4 in that respect). Send those fast scouts to planet bearing suns, not auto-exploring some empty sector...

 

[woodelf]

It's amazing how much faster your ships go with Impulse drives. Of course by the time I get them into my Colony Ships all of the habitable planets are gone! Once you get to a high enough diff the AI is a colonizing machine.....

 

[Xink]

Can anyone give a little help here please...?

I could understand that many factors might influence your choice in doing this, or not, but is it possible to have certain planets for certain tasks, rather than having a 'balanced' planet...?

For instance I colonise a size 10 planet and apart from an entertainment network I then decide to build a lot of basic labs and select the priority to be social until some are built and then flip the priority over to research. Would this give me an 'optimum' research type of planet...? I understand once the population gets to 5b then I would need a farm tile and maybe another entertainment network.

Would there be a flaw in developing planets with an emphasis on manufacturing, research etc etc etc.......?

Second point is if I build an influence starbase and it pushes my cultural borders to bring a neighbours planet within my influence enough for it to flip over to me, indicated by the skull above the planet, and I feel that the starbase is no longer in an optimum position have I got no choice in moving the starbase, is it 'fixed' in position...?

 

[SzechuanLlama]

It's amazing how much faster your ships go with Impulse drives. Of course by the time I get them into my Colony Ships all of the habitable planets are gone! Once you get to a high enough diff the AI is a colonizing machine.....

I didn't realize this at first, but if you put additional engines - even low-powered ones - on a particular hull, you get increased speed. The tradeoff, of course, is that they use more hull space but that is not really a consideration when all you're carrying is a colony module. So I just pack the engines in until I'm out of available hull space.

I also like to send my scouts into "enemy" territory as soon as feasible. Grabbing a nice planet or two in their backyard is a heck of a lot more fun than having them to the same to you!

My initial few turns usually go something like this: build X factories on my homeworld. Rush buy the first, so that it can help build the next few. Build 2-3 fast scouts (depending on how the map works), buying each one. Send flagship to nearest star system toward an enemy border. Same with scouts. Send initial colony ship to nearest "safe" star system. By the time I get a look around, I'm on track to build fast colony ships and/or a constructor if a particularly nice resource shows up. Expand expand expand until I've gobbled up most decent worlds in my area. Always nice to have a crappy planet to trade away, though.

Start building constructors - I usually have at least one world dedicated to this purpose. Research my initial weapon system, then and only then go down to things like the universal translator (but I'm playing for a military victory, so YMMV). I like to have my economy, factory, and research to level 2 as early as possible.

 

[woodelf]

Trade techs with the minor civs like there's no tomorrow! For some reason these little buggers are always way ahead of me and the other majors. I won't trade good stuff with the majors, but I'll give anything to the minors to gain techs. Also, sell techs for needed cash, especially if it's a tech that isn't military, to everyone. You can get enough for another colony ship or constructor easily.

 

[PaperBeetle]

So far, I've just played the campaign, but I'll try to steer clear of tips which are obviously specialised for the rather unique play-style necessary to deal with the Dread Lords.

1. Scouts? Stellar Cartography? Piffle. You can see where the suns are; send one colony ship to each sun which you think you can get in your rex phase, and colonize the planet you find there. No planet? Then try the next sun. More than one planet? Buy a starport immediately, and then buy a colony ship, and next turn you have that planet too. When hopping from planet to planet like this, design custom colony ships with just enough engine on each to reach the next planet in one turn.

2. Hammers go to waste if you aren't building a social project on a planet, so late in the game, when you don't have so much improvement to do (especially if you don't have the techs for building upgrades), it is probably worthwhile setting social spending to 0% and just using socail specialisation on planets that still have stuff to build.

3. Remember that you can demolish improvements and build new ones. This is useful if, for example, your planet ends up less happy than you planned for, and you need drop a lab or factory in favour of a morale building. Similarly, you used factories to build all those labs on your science planet, but as you run out of room, start switching those factories over to labs too. Maybe your specialist science/tax planets don't need starports either.

4. When your economic sliders are in a relatively stable state, you will find that your factory planets all tend to hit the same number of shields, so design your ships to meet some multiple of that shield cost, to make military spending more efficient. Well, actually it is a bit more complex, as the number of shields per planet is a factor of the number of factories you could fit on it. So you get several planets all doing 76, several doing 87, and several doing 98, or whatever. But the principle still holds.

5. Don't waste a fleet's hard points on sensors; just have a tiny-hulled escort that flies with each fleet (or armada of fleets) which is loaded with sensors and nothing else (apart from whatever engines and life support are necessary to keep up). You could also drop all the life support and just bring some constructors along for starbasing, although you risk your armada being stranded if the starbases fall. A military starbase is, in any case, a fairly efficient way of beefing up your fleets' firepower.

6. If you subscribe to the theory that the best defense is a good offense then you must be a Civ player. And you'll probably want to skimp on ships in permanent orbit around your planets. But maybe it is still worth leaving a naked tiny hull up there just so that no one can take your planets 'for free' with just a couple of fast troop ships. Or put your smallest weapon on that tiny hull, and you can kill any unescorted troop ships which do come snooping around.
But if you subscribe to the theory that the best defense is a good defense, then you will want to have some beefy ships in permanent orbit around your planets. Remember that these guys don't need engines, life support or sensors.

7. When you design your own ships, make them look really hard. It gives you the edge in combat. No really!

 

[woodelf]

2. Hammers go to waste if you aren't building a social project on a planet, so late in the game, when you don't have so much improvement to do (especially if you don't have the techs for building upgrades), it is probably worthwhile setting social spending to 0% and just using socail specialisation on planets that still have stuff to build.

This is helpful, thanks. I know I've been wasting hammers!