Colonisation

[Tony Brooks]

Another newbie question.
Have started off a few games now, each one getting more of a feel for the game. But in each game I seem to hit a wall in terms of adding new colonies, whilst other empires seem to get bigger and bigger without any problem. I understand you need technology to colonise certain planets or by taking over occupied worlds.
In one game I had a stack of ocean worlds that I had the technology to colonsise but the button to purchase a colony ship was not active? Tony

[cookie monster]

Make lots of explorers. Give them greater fuel range.

Micro where they go to get 360 degree radius around capital.

Train spy's on easy missions. Then steal territory and galaxy maps.

Crash research (pay cash) most level 2-3 colonisation techs.

Buy lost colonies info from pirates.

Spam produce troops and transport space on ships to take over independant colonies.

Absorb another AI empire so you can colonise their type worlds with their people

This also helps you to get their full Racial bonus

Colonies under 50% suitability are not considered fit for colonising so the AI rarely colonises them.

[Data]

That part with the "button to purchase a colony ship was not active" can come from low funds. Is your economy doing ok or at least giving you profit or are you in the red? Which would not be at all surprising since all of us had to face this balancing act [:)]

[Tony Brooks]

Not an issue with money, I have over 200,000 as a balance and a steady income of some 50,000. Thanks for the tips though, I will give them a go.

[Tony Brooks]

Re the comment;
Crash research (pay cash) most level 2-3 colonisation techs.
How do you actually do that. Research items are random arent they? I understand that the colonisation technology is in the High Tech area so do you keep crash researching those areas until the scientists hit on the right tech to allow you to colonise those other worlds?

[Data]

not sure if we clarified this and I forgot but are you using ROTS? if so, you just follow the tech tree to whatever tech you'd like

[AlPhi]

I don't know if this reflects your situation as you say you have all the needed tech but I noticed that I was shown several options in the potential colonies list of the expansion planner that I could not build a ship to colonise. The reason was that I had not quite achieved the necessary colonisation tech just yet but I had previously found and claimed an alien colony ship that had opened up those options in the list.

[Data]

iirc there is a problem here because I suspect the build colony ship button defaults to your current colonies / colonisation tech. Even after you use that alien colony ship the new colony will not have enough pop to produce a new colony ship even if it still has the ability to colonie that previously unknown environment.
Even after it reaches the required pop you'll have to manually build the colony ship at that colony and only after that you'll activate the new options in the expansion planner.