Colonizable Planets--Where are they?

[DMan777]

I've begun two different games of RotS, the first with the colony prevalence slider at normal, the next with one step up from normal. In both games, I've explored 20-40 systems and have yet to find a colonizable planet. Am I doing something wrong? I never had this difficulty in vanilla DW.

Thanks

[TheLastRonin]

ORIGINAL: DMan777

I've begun two different games of RotS, the first with the colony prevalence slider at normal, the next with one step up from normal. In both games, I've explored 20-40 systems and have yet to find a colonizable planet. Am I doing something wrong? I never had this difficulty in vanilla DW.

Thanks

I think they're slightly more rare on normal (possibly due to the way tech works now you can't colonise everything right off the bat) but I'm personally finding a lot more planets, sometimes 12+ planets (not even counting moons) in one system.

[Baleur]

Im finding less planets too, mostly due to only being able to colonize 1 type from the start without research

[Carewolf]

Take a colony ship and right-click every unexplored system. If there is colonizable planets in the system, a submenu will appear offering you to command the colonyship to go there and colonize the planets. But I am pretty sure this is a bug and an exploit

[DMan777]

I'll have to look into the tech tree suggestion.  This does however intensify one of my reservations about RotS--that I would not be able to continue playing the game the way I enjoyed it.  I often played DW like something more akin to a simulation than a strategy game.  I used to concentrate mainly on exploration and colonization and leave most functions automated to just see what happens.  I like to think of it like an ant farm where I decide where the tunnels go.

I'm certainly not giving up on it, but I think I'm going to have to make some adjustments.

[Erik Rutins]

You can actually leave Research automated, set policies for general focus and add a few manual requests to the research queue.

[DMan777]

Thanks, Erik.  I definitely have to do some exploring with the new aspects of the game.  I've only had about an hour with it so far, but it is greatly improved over the original release.  Today's my last work day of 2010, so I hope to have lots of time to tinker in the next two weeks.

[Justascratch]

In most of my games I found that usually colonizable planets were more sparse than in the original game.

Even when you gain techs to colonize new planets it cn be difficult to find then with a value above 50 (especially volcanic and desert planets).

Still, as the game progresses you usually end up with plenty of planets to manage.

I like the fact that empires mature a bit more slowly and that truly excellent planets are "precious assets that must be guarded jealously".

Late in the game you can do some very cool things with stealth an intelligence that allows you to attack seveal "precious systems" of an enemy quickly and without warning to bring them to their knees. Very satisfying.

[Igard]

I must say, I'm playing on the 'occasional' setting. It's very hard to come by colonisable worlds so exploration has now become paramount. I'm getting more involved with searching for new worlds rather than just checking the expansion manager every 20 minutes.

Good stuff. [;)]

[shinobu]

Has the formula for game creation been tweaked here or what? I've been doing some custom game creation, then looking at nearby systems with the game editor. On the "Colony Prevalence" setting of "plentiful", I have looked at about 20-30 systems out from my home system and maybe found one continental planet. In regard to the "Independent Alien Life", on a setting "teeming", again it is hard to find more than one or two in an entire 700 star galaxy!

Really not trying to be negative here, but something seems amiss...

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Justascratch
Late in the game you can do some very cool things with stealth an intelligence that allows you to attack seveal "precious systems" of an enemy quickly and without warning to bring them to their knees. Very satisfying.

I haven't found stealth to be of any use. As far as I can tell, the AI behaviour is identical for reacting to stealthed and un-stealthed fleets. Have you actually experimented with it?

[Litjan]

Once I gained the abilities to colonize marshy swamp, ocean, desert and ice I have so many (dozens) colonizable planets in my list that I can´t build colony ships fast enough. And this is on a small map with 6 opponents, normal settings. I agree, there are few continental planets, but more than enough other ones to settle on, even with good quality.

I still settle the lesser quality ones, if they are in a strategically important place.

Jan

[ASHBERY76]

In the game you now research colony types.So less continental planets is just balanced better for this new system.

[elmo3]

Only playing my first game with RotS and I have four colonies out of about 40 systems explored.  Just researched continental colonization (to go with marshy swamp that is my homeworld) and that opened up a couple more planets for me.  Playing on normal and it feels about right to me.  Maybe the design philosophy has shifted a bit more toward "if you want colonies, go take them from someone".  [:)]