killed on normal

Here's a secret..if you have a weak military, you will get picked on. The game decides your military strength based on the attack value of all the ships you have added together. Unfortunately, this means that Battle Axes and Defenders don't do much to prevent war from coming, even though they are pretty decent defensive ships.

I personally think spending ability points on Technology is a waste. I like to buy most of my tech from the other AIs, personally. Especially the military stuff. I never research Weapons or Defense theory, I just wait and buy Shields/Phasers/Corvettes and the other goodies. I do find I have to research Defensive Phasers myself, as the AI doesn't seem to realize that Battle Hammers are awesome.

Paying tribute won't keep the AI off your back for long. You need to boost up your military rating and that will keep them off your back. The best ships for boosting your military rating are:

Early on: Corvettes (Attack of 3 and only cost 50 to build)

Later on: Missles (although after the latest patch they don't count for their full attack value anymore )

Keep in mind though that Corvettes will largely suck if you actually GET into a war...they are just good at scaring the AI away from bullying you around.

First off, don't be Mr. Nice guy. If you see a minor race next to you, INVADE! Immediately. you aren't going to get anything from trading with them, and if you wait, another major will take them out. Those minor races need your leadership. They are begging for you to liberate them.

Second, devote your trade to a couple of the large civilizations. Don't distribute the trade evenly, just focus on at most 2 of similar alignment and BIG - and don't establish trade routes with the minor races. This way if one of the remaining races declares war on you, they will side up with you and significantly help your cause. Giving you ships at least, and joining the war at best. The drengin decided to attack me because I was a weakling. But little did they know that the Altarians and Torians relied on me for trade. Eventually, without even really fighting the drengins directly, they came to me apologizing and giving me their tech. Easiest war I've ever fought.

Third, fight small fast expansion wars - on your terms. You decide when the war happens, if you wait for them to declare war before building up your fleet, you're doomed. It's all about invade, and make peace. If you can completely take them out then do it, but if not, just focus on grabbing a system, and saying ok, truce. Also, once you've decided that you need to take out one of the races do it expeditiously. The faster you do it, the less it'll cost.

Fourth, have extra constructors ready to claim resources from wars. Starbases start getting demolished in the battleship era, and if you are in times of peace, you can profit mightly from the wars of other civs.

I don't know if these help you, but this is the strategy I'm currently applying. Next game might be a bit different though.

Redshift's Opening Strategy:

I agree with Bog Nug about 50% tech not being the best route. More important than your tech bonus is the raw amount of research your economy can handle. That means more/better planets and resources.

The key is getting a good start. You need to know your surroundings. I start my initial colony ship heading to the nearest sector with 4+ planets, and my survey ship in a different direction. The first colony ship only has 100 people on it, so it isn't too productive for colony ships right away, so I have it build a scout. If you're lucky, you can get a scout or sensor drone from an asteroid.

I set my economy sliders to 45-25-30, to crank out more colony ships. Once you find your nearest enemies, try to form choke points. In the early game they can usually only move 2 sectors with a colony ship. If you can fill up two sectors of 15+ planets between them and the rest of the star clusters. It's not always possible, but if you can pull it off you can choke them out of a large part of the expansion. If it's just going to be a free for all grab, try to monopolize the sectors with 3+ yellow stars, because one starbase can benefit all of them. Always race for any 26 level planets of course. Keep exploring, and keep an eye out for resources. I prioritize them as econ, morale, military as the most important (in that order).

Research I start with comm theory, univ trans, diplomacy and immediately switch to republic for the extremely important 20% econ boost. This allows you to push out the colony ships faster (and you even might find that you should tone your sliders down slightly if you find that your 100M colonies are popping out ships before they can get above 250M citizens. If you haven't had to hurry too many colony ships to fend off the comps, you can try to hurry diplomatic translators, and on normal, especially if you get a little lucky with unexplained anomolies, you can go for controlled gravity and the very helpful accelerators. On the higher difficulties I give up accelerators for lost and head for sensors, and what I consider to be the greatest wonder/trade good of the early game: Eye of the Universe. This thing works wonders throughout the entire game, and really helps you get a jump on the good resources.

Once it becomes clear that you won't be getting any more star systems, leave a couple stars producing colony ships to backfill your multi-planet systems, and switch most of your colonies to constructors, with a few building corvettes. In the early game 5-10 corvettes does wonders at keeping anyone but the drengin from being too eager to kill you. Once I can I try to build a battleaxe at every star in case the real noise comes. Switch your sliders around this to be more balanced, and build soil enrich, banking center, news network at every colony, and add fusion factory when possible. I ignore entertainment centers early, as I find that I don't need them.

Grab as many of the resources as you can and once they're all taken stick a defensive module in each (just one for now). If you got any of the one's I mentioned above, put a mining module or 2 in, and then start working on your two sectors with the most planets (or sol and one sector, even if sol only has 2 yellow stars). Put one def module and max our your distributers and mining upgrades. If you think war is coming, and you have a good idea of from where, put a couple military upgrades in a strategic system, cause even those corvettes can do some damage if they have +6 to attack. At this point in the game I have about 1/3rd of my colonies building battleaxes and the rest constructers, on a rotating basis (I usually only build one battle axe per star, but sometimes make exceptions for Near Drengin Systems)

Once you have beefed up your two best systems, star working on your next two, and also add a second or third defensive module to your resource bases. The other civs are going to have battleships by now, so trade for them if you can, or better yet, jump straight to dreadnaughts via a juicy trade. Put about 1/3 to 1/2 of your colonies making dreadnaughts or battleships and consume any enemy you find tasty. Keep building starbases until every sector that has 3 or more colonies (could be 3 in one star) has a production bonus, and don't neglect the defensive modules. I find that wars are a lot easier if a few enemy ships break themselves attacking a fortified starbase. I tend to go for bigger before more on starbases, although I understand this isn't everyone's approach.

If the war comes early, despite your best efforst, concentate on repelling the invaders and then try to get peace. Hopefully your enemy will have more than one war going and you can get peace back once your military looks impressive enough (calculated by total attack value I believe). I don't fight aggressive wars until dreadnaughts usually, and hopefully with a military resource or 2, although we can't always get what we want.

Be ready to swoop in and take resources that are uncovered by wars, and update your build queue whenever you get a good social structure. Get 2 super-producing colonies with Manufacturing Capital and Hyperion Manufacturing Center and use them to crank our trade goods and wonders. If times are peaceful don't max out spending, so you can build a treasury reserve for a rainy day. Build trade routes with one or 2 key partners and litter the route with trade upgrades.

That's about it, although I'm sure I missed something. Like you can usually get away with refusing extortion once. Good Luck!

Redshift

On note on Bog Nug's comments: Take over minor races, yes, but remember to extort them for all the money, influence and tech you can before hand. Destroy any orbiting fleets, take everything you can for peace, then invade.

Thanks guys, Ill give it a shot!

Are you sure about the republic giving you a 20% economy boost? My last game I was brining in 114Bc per turn, I switched to republic and it dropped to like 50bc, i switched back and it was 114 again. Does it take a few turns to kick in or anything?

I think it boosts the economy but also lowers morale somewhat...so you might have actually hurt yourself because your morale might have fell through the floor. I generally find that after a government switch I have to play with the tax slider a bit to find the new sweet spot, and then I see a small boost in revenue. I find the greater production capacity to be the bigger benefit from the better governments, really. Because you can spend more money under higher governments, you might see your bottom line per month turn more negative for that reason as well. If need be, just adjust your monthly spending rate to compensate if you can't handle the strain on your wallet.

Beware of better governments and production boosters- they are double edged swords. On one hand, you get the expected boosts to production and research, but if it's not listed under the bonus column, guess where that new added capacity is coming from? That's right, your pocket's hole just got bigger. Plus, since the people are more testy under more advanced governments, you'll see an overall drop in moral if you don't lower taxes (or were sneaky and built moral enhancing improvements while you were already at 100% approval under the old government).

Thus, be prepared to have to cut back spending and lower taxes. In you're poorly prepared, the more advanced government will be a drawback for you. However, since you were still getting a profit, I'd say it was a good move to make- the bonus you're seeing (behind the misleading total revenue/loss indicator), is a much higher rate of social, military, and research progress. If you look at the numbers themselves, you should see that they've kicked up a few notches in both aqusition and expenditure. Thus, your bonus has bypassed your pocket and gone right to your end production. This is a good thing, don't sweat it.

~SDC~