Thanks.... funny thing is that most of my planets will be economy worlds!

My biggest expense early game will a cargo hull survey ship.... (if i can find thalium that it) and production is so useless early game you HAVE to rush buy this survey ship otherwise don't bother at all. If i manage to get more thalium i will build a second survey ship, otherwise none until i get survey technology which i usually try to get fairly quickly, then i will rush buy 2 or three more survey ships.... in a typical game i will have between three and five extra survey ships.

Typically i will specialize two production worlds and two science worlds and the rest will be purely economic - not withstanding taking advantage of bonus tiles and adjacency here and there on economic worlds..... and then later on when i have good money i will fully convert these worlds to the science or production specialty.

 

for the most part i do not rush buy planetary structures because i simply don't have the money, however, i do occasionally rush buy on my primary science world.... because science worlds are just hopeless at developing naturally, just hopeless.

 

What else... ok i also try to get small hulls asap so i can build cheaper colony and constructors.

 

I am pretty good at getting economic starbases up and running nice and fast..... well,,, no,,, typically on most newly colonized planets, there will be a delay of around 50 turns for the first colony ship, then, the first constructor after that will typically be around 30 turns, even on a small hull. Sometimes i can get two or three worlds close together to share a shipyard and that helps allot, as does giving priority to starbases that range a greater number of planets.

 

Once i get starbases going with a number of upgrades, things start improving exponentially faster from that point on..... but before that time comes, development is pretty much a total basket case, because shipyards and planetary production needs half a century to do anything, shit.... while somehow the AI, even AI on normal level are able to do so many things and i wonder how the hell?????

 

Oh yea, and while i am in the middle of desperately trying to drag my planets kicking and screaming towards productivity, and i am still just building my first colony and constructors.... apparently i am supposed to have magically been able to build a military??????????????????????????????? And somehow the AI has, and wants to atack me and i am like wtf? already??????????????? (that is an AI on 'normal' level by the way, in Galciv2 i am playing AI on Godlike and they are not coming that fast.... well, not 'fast' as such, i mean to say i can face of the AI on Godlike that comes fast because i am actually allowed to build stuff)

 

 

Turn auto upgrade off for improvements.

1 Manufacturing World (2-1 Factories to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

For every one Manufacturing World have 2 Research Worlds (2-1 Research Centers to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

For Every 3 Research Worlds have 1 Wealth World (2-1 Marketplace to Farm Ratio), Approval to keep morale 75-100.

Have Tech Brokering off.

Trade Tech to Minors for Cash, Survey Anomalies for Cash.

Set your Global Production Wheel to 20/40/40 to 12/44/44. (W/R/M)

Build Starbases, 6 Eco and 1 Culture per star System, Fit them in to suit Starbase range(based on tech).

If your not a warmonger, beeline the Diplomacy Branch. Build Embassy's on every planet. Upgrade them asap as you get Tech.

 

Thats what I do, with the default AI works upto Genius atleast.

 

If you don't build factories, you lose. Costs are essentially irrelevant, as they grant you an economy in the first place.

You seem to be attempting to turtle and tech, but you also appear to be tech starved. If the AI has more than double your logistics, you're long past royally screwed up.

Post screenshots of a bunch of planets you set up. You think they're bad, let us tell you why directly.

When building worlds (my strat)

priority one:
- have a triangle with 1 growth, 1 food hub and 4 farms (at the very least) on any world. Plan for it from the start. never be pop capped. Never have a pop cap way higher then your actual pop.
Reason:
- population is the only component that is limited by time and can not be attained throughs starbases.

priority two:
- have solid manufacturing in order to not be reliant on rush buying stuff for you colonies. A Hive or a Durantium Refinery is an excellent early improvement for that purpose, but other manufacturing buildings will ahve to suffice for most races.
- every system gets a shipyard. If there is no manufacturing worlds they can still supplemen the fleet with medium ships.

priority three:
- specialize your world. Considering you can build a lot of starbases for your planets, it is fin to have only like 33% of a colonies improvements being specialization.
- also there is coecerion, with in my build any world is a hybrid manufacturing research or in very rare exceptions a manufacturing economics world.

Income slider: 12/44/44 in W/R/M
Military Slider: 0% military early on, unless a colony ship needs to be build and I don't have the money to rush buy it.

Homeworld:
- mixed manufacturing/research world. Get manufacturing capital reasonably rearly, use that manufacturing to either build more colony ships or a research capital and other big improvements.
- sometimes I also add my trade improvements here

Approval:
- If you can't maintain >85% approval or close to it, don't be afraid of dropping down to 40% or so.
- approval is gained by: technology, starbases, galactic achievements, improvemens on planets (in that order).
Reason:
- one: this can be remidied later, not having enough population can't.
- two: you lose 10% productivity by going from 100% to 85% approval, 10% by going from 85% to 60% and 5% by going from 60% to 40% approval (i.e. 100% production at 40% approval, 125% at 100%)

Wealth strategy:
- rush colony ships or scouts.
- wealth is for maintainence, not for rush building.
- priority stuff (gaia vortex, research cloisters, big ships, ...) can be rushed with access wealth if available
- income comes from: trade, income modules on starbases, tourism, economic worlds (in that order)

Military strategy:
- be nice (trade, open borders, maybe non-aggression) with your neighbors and start researching military only if a war is brewing.
- start building warships when some acceptable level of military tech is reached or war unavoidable

New colony strategy:
- colonizers only bring 0.5-1.5 pop (they are much more useful working in the manufacturing capital and colonies will develope pop over time anyways)
- usually my build order for new colonies is manufacturinhub (or hive if possible) -> hospital -> farm or manufacturinghub -> farm -> hospital.

_______

Sidenote: normal AI doesn't cheat for upgrading ships as far as I know.

Interesting, thanks...

 

Ok i played what i thought was a good game this last week but again the AI on 'gifted' level came down with fleets i cant touch.

 

Its turn 270 and i would rather quit than watch untouchable fleets destroy all my hard built starbases.

 

My stats are as follows;

Wealth 2531

Research 952

Manufacturing 1337 - social 723, military 668

 

In the timeline all my stats compare well to the AI except my economy is hugely higher but interestingly my military and socal production is practically a 'flatline' compared to the AI.

 

I saved this game at the start... i will replay and try more factories and some other advice from this thread and see what difference it makes?

Why are you playing on gifted if you can't win on that difficulty? Knock it down one until you understand the mechanics better.

Again, show us worlds. Nobody can tell you what you're doing wrong, because nobody knows what you're doing.

Don't underestimate durantium refineries and thullium data archives. They are awesome to the point where I wonder whether it is worth it not to rush some early colonizers in order to get up a durantium refinery fast; maybe together with rushing a manufacturing capital on the same world.

Think more like:

intuitive trait (free tech at start of game): get manufacturing capital super early + durantium refinery asap, no need to rush buy colonizers tech capitals etc., since they finish fast anyways (on your homeworld but where else would you build an early tech capital).

Maybe with going small hulls next you can get some useful 1 turn build time colonizers.

These bonusses are additive. Meaning that if you have a world with 50 production and +150% manufacturing from buildings and a world with 50 production and +0% from buildings you get the same amount of manufacturing out of the capital (ignoring adjacencies). Same goes for ghost worlds and tech capitals. A ghost worlds gets more out of a thullium data archive though.

The reason I put these on my homeworld is that I want these bonusses early in order to make most use of them (if I don't rush them the capital is the only world that can build them in a reasonable time frame). Plus early my homeworld has the highest pop and the civilization capital has a few better bonusses then the colony capitals. I believe I get more out of developing my homeworld early like this. My homeworlds are often comparable to the terran one, because I prefer the early growth rate of a second world over having a class 16 starting world.

I don't get it?

Multiple shipyards? How do you assign a planet to multiple shipyards? The only option it gives you is 're-assign'?

 

Sometimes i forget i already have a shipyard nearby when i colonize a new world, then i use the free rush buy and end up with a shipyard i don't want until much later when individual planets have enough production to no longer need shipyard sharing (except for when building military vessels of course). If i can remember i have an extra shipyard, i will not build one at the next planet i colonize and send the shipyard there, and hopefully it is not too far! lol

But yes, later on when planets are improved enough that its worthwhile having its own individual shipyard, then i send a constructor to build the shipyard..... gosh, but so often i accidentally build a starbase instead and then have to decommission it!! hahahaha

Your raw production is what the manufacturing capital multiplies.

 

You gain the most from it by putting it on the highest raw production planet that you're using for manufacturing.  He's saying being a ghost world or something is irrelevant because those bonuses are additive, not multiplicative.

 

Your homeworld is actually a very good place for these types of buildings unless you have absolutely fantastic planets.  It gets both a population bonus, which equals raw production, and a raw production bonus.  Populations being equal, "Earth" is massively better than class 20 planets that have far more buildings due to that +10 raw production advantage it has.  You may end up with a several hundred percent difference in manufacturing bonuses on that nice planet, but the manufacturing capitol doesn't care if the raw production is the same.

 

Now if your class 20 planet has a 50% food bonus or something and you can get a huge raw production, eh, the homeworld sucks.

hmmmmm ok thanks for that, my head hurts but its starting to make sense! lol

 

Special thanks to zuPloed for putting in so much detailed effort to explain.

 

So if i am looking for a manufacturing capital other than the homeworld, i am mostly considering population potential more than anything else..... got it! that's a good tip! But also i see the advantages to making the homeworld the manufacturing capital

Oh yes, and the other very important thing to consider for the manufacturing capital is how many nearby planets there are.

 

My best manufacturing capitals EVER, had a number of nearby planets that when combined on the one shipyard, the production speed is mind boggling and no way could my home world match it. Overall its less efficient i know, but when you consider the combined bonuses from shipyard projects - the more production you can force through one single shipyard with project bonuses, the better!

 

Speaking of shipyard projects.... if i build all those on one planet, can i rotate to any number of shipyards for one turn of production and those bonuses will be added to the ship or not? how exactly does that work?