Two questions

[Hetulik]

Hi All,
Just started playing the game a few days ago and am enjoying it alot.

Two questions:
1) Do you colonize everything? I was just colonizing nice planets (habitable/ideals and rich barren planets and icy/dead planets to improve my range as needed) then started wondering if i should be colonizing everything to prevent other empires from taking the planets? There are alot of bad planets - irradiated, venusian, dead, icy, etc and if i colonized them all that would be alot of planets. Just curious what other players did in terms of what planets they colonized. It's still early in my first real game so perhaps i'll figure some of this out myself soon.

2) Do most people autoresolve the battles or play them out in real time? I tried a few and wasn't too impressed. The turn based aspect of this game is fantastic, but the real time battles seem a bit chaotic and the interface is a little difficult.

Thanks.

[Anguille]

Hi,

1) As long as i don't meet any foreign nation, i tend to colonize only good planets. Bad planets with rich minerals or specials (like tourism) will be colonized too as they generate a lot of money. It also depends on your victory conditions. If i have a race which needs lots of population for VPs, then yes, i do colonize most. Systems without planets are not very interesting though, so i colonize these only to extend my range.

2) I like to have control, so i do manage most of my battles myself. In combat, i may assign some ships to AI so i focus on specific troops and the foot soldiers.

Cheers

[Hetulik]

Thanks Anguille!