Early expansion and independent colonies

[Ingor]

Hi guys.

I've seen a pattern in my last 3 games and I want to know if everyone feels the same : does the AI get waaaaay more options to get independent colonies early on ? See my screenshot, where you can see the AI Mortalen getting freebies when I'm out of range of everything.

I'm playing with Scott's recommended setup and independent spawn on low, yeah. But it just feels like the AI is getting all the independents very close. Or is it maybe because my random spawn got me on the edge, and there is less independent people there ?

I'm trying my hand at the hardest difficulty and low colonization range, but that feels really hard when the AI is getting so many cheap opportunities, either by invading or diplo-colonizing.

[zgrssd]

How do you only ahve data on such a small area of the galaxy? I would say the Mortalan Territory map is 5 time as many visited systems.
You literally can not say if you have many or few, since you are not exploring enough.

I build a lot more Exploration ships then the game suggests. Usually upgrading to a full 10 once my economy is stable.

[Ingor]

Because it's still very early, but that's a pattern I'm seeing in my last few games : the AI can expand into independent colonies because they have some in their home system or the system right over, and that never happened to me.

[gravyten]

Could just be bad luck. I’ve seen people complain that in games like this the computer gangs up against the player but I think it’s just unlucky random number generation

[deMangler]

Probably bad luck - here is a screenie from my current latest game playing human on defaults. Half of my colonies here were independents.

[Emperor0Akim]

I had starts on hard with independent colonies in my starting system.

[zgrssd]

I think the Boskara always get a Indy colony in their Home System.
And the Teekans get the free colony from their Storyline.

Otherwise, I see no issue with the number of Colonies. In fact, I turned tthe number of Colonizeables and Indy colonies down.

[Mike847284]

I have found on the harder levels you really need to do the first two hyperdrive techs first up, then move into other areas depending on your plan and situation. You need this to get your exploration ships out to claim systems prior to the AI boxing you in. This will at least allow your to expand to a reasonable size, access to enough luxury and key resources to build the basics of a solid empire.

I had a really hard start in my current game, ended up with 6 pirate factions early on, bought 5 of them off and one was friendly with a non-aggression pact. That one turned on me via event at a planet with pirate ambush, so now I had to fight them off and destroy them early, same event happened to me again some years later. Always seems to be the pirate faction you are friends with, unless I just got unlucky. What saved me, was I was expanding with lots of exploration ships as I had the two early hyperdrive techs, I found a few small abandoned fleets with some decent tech which helped me fight off the pirates. My economy was already heavily negative due to paying pirates and paying for larger fleets. Also had another faction attacking my home system, those junk yard mob, just annoying but another station I needed to get rid of.

After all that my economy is now doing very well, as managed to secure some independent colonies, found plenty of research planets and scenery planets.

In short what saved me, was my ability to explore further and faster to find resources I needed, in this case it was ships to fight and destroy the pirate bases, without those ships my tech and economy would not support the needed ships to take them on that early.

[Miravlix]

You need to pray Brother, because you have not been graced by the incredible RNGJesus.

This game has really wide random ranges for creating the galaxy and I don't think it has much of a balancing system. I had one game with a small cluster of stars with 5 or so Gith independent planets and that was on very rare independent colonies setting.

Save the game, activate the editor zoom out and see the world, then load the save and play it.

[Es78]

How do you only ahve data on such a small area of the galaxy? I would say the Mortalan Territory map is 5 time as many visited systems.
You literally can not say if you have many or few, since you are not exploring enough.

I build a lot more Exploration ships then the game suggests. Usually upgrading to a full 10 once my economy is stable.

And thats still way to few, as soon as you get the skip drive you should have 5. When you get the Warp bubble generator. Turn that up to 15-20 scouts. When your economy can handle it turn that up to 40-50 scouts.
I have had 4 playthroughs, and so far i see the independent colonys being distrubuted quite evenly.

[OloroMemez]

Exploration is how you get all the good stuff.
You learn about the best colonisation targets earlier, you find ruins and events that grant you valuable artifacts or ultra-power endgame tech or something like Way of Ancient government.

My current approach is to get 15-20 explorers when I reach stable warp drives, and upgraded that to 50 when I have Gerax hyperdrives. The more the merrier!

[zgrssd]

How do you only ahve data on such a small area of the galaxy? I would say the Mortalan Territory map is 5 time as many visited systems.
You literally can not say if you have many or few, since you are not exploring enough.

I build a lot more Exploration ships then the game suggests. Usually upgrading to a full 10 once my economy is stable.

And thats still way to few, as soon as you get the skip drive you should have 5. When you get the Warp bubble generator. Turn that up to 15-20 scouts. When your economy can handle it turn that up to 40-50 scouts.
I have had 4 playthroughs, and so far i see the independent colonys being distrubuted quite evenly.

I found that if I build 5 by skipdrive, they end up idlying in my home system a lot.
At least I did, back when I still started on TL0. Now I only do TL1, so I start with proper FTL. I am still rather slow to build more, as I need all resources for civil ships and mines.

[Es78]

How do you only ahve data on such a small area of the galaxy? I would say the Mortalan Territory map is 5 time as many visited systems.
You literally can not say if you have many or few, since you are not exploring enough.

I build a lot more Exploration ships then the game suggests. Usually upgrading to a full 10 once my economy is stable.

And thats still way to few, as soon as you get the skip drive you should have 5. When you get the Warp bubble generator. Turn that up to 15-20 scouts. When your economy can handle it turn that up to 40-50 scouts.
I have had 4 playthroughs, and so far i see the independent colonys being distrubuted quite evenly.

I found that if I build 5 by skipdrive, they end up idlying in my home system a lot.
At least I did, back when I still started on TL0. Now I only do TL1, so I start with proper FTL. I am still rather slow to build more, as I need all resources for civil ships and mines.

Your lacking the resources, because you dont build teh scouts. Trust me, once you get those 20 and later more scouts out, stratigic resources wont be a problem. You can build what ever ships you want.
A side note. Your construction fleet should ofcause increase as your exploration fleet finds more and more resource locations.
In my qurrent play through on hardest difficulty and hars starting location. I still pumped out those 20ish scouts rather early. Simply because i needed to find propper mining locations.

[zgrssd]

And thats still way to few, as soon as you get the skip drive you should have 5. When you get the Warp bubble generator. Turn that up to 15-20 scouts. When your economy can handle it turn that up to 40-50 scouts.
I have had 4 playthroughs, and so far i see the independent colonys being distrubuted quite evenly.

I found that if I build 5 by skipdrive, they end up idlying in my home system a lot.
At least I did, back when I still started on TL0. Now I only do TL1, so I start with proper FTL. I am still rather slow to build more, as I need all resources for civil ships and mines.

Your lacking the resources, because you dont build teh scouts. Trust me, once you get those 20 and later more scouts out, stratigic resources wont be a problem. You can build what ever ships you want.
A side note. Your construction fleet should ofcause increase as your exploration fleet finds more and more resource locations.
In my qurrent play through on hardest difficulty and hars starting location. I still pumped out those 20ish scouts rather early. Simply because i needed to find propper mining locations.

There is no carbonite source in my home system.

How are more scouts with skipdrive, nothing to explore and using up what I have going to "fix" that?

[Jim D Burns]

Agree about the explorers, I try and queue up 20-30 (depends on how economy is doing) ASAP once I have a decent jump drive ability.

Something I've learned about the independents. Don't just rely on the give gift diplo option. Negotiate with them and just give them 20k-30k for nothing in return and they'll become happier with you and sign treaties and ask to join a LOT sooner then the typical gift giving route.

[Es78]

I found that if I build 5 by skipdrive, they end up idlying in my home system a lot.
At least I did, back when I still started on TL0. Now I only do TL1, so I start with proper FTL. I am still rather slow to build more, as I need all resources for civil ships and mines.

Your lacking the resources, because you dont build teh scouts. Trust me, once you get those 20 and later more scouts out, stratigic resources wont be a problem. You can build what ever ships you want.
A side note. Your construction fleet should ofcause increase as your exploration fleet finds more and more resource locations.
In my qurrent play through on hardest difficulty and hars starting location. I still pumped out those 20ish scouts rather early. Simply because i needed to find propper mining locations.

There is no carbonite source in my home system.

How are more scouts with skipdrive, nothing to explore and using up what I have going to "fix" that?

Right now i am playing on hash starting system. I had no Polymer and no Silicon in the system nor any nearby system. I am in 2798 and finaly have found soruces of this farawat from my home system. Before that i had to rely on trade.
But one thing is sure, if it wasent for my current 27 scouts, i would never have found these resources before my empire went into a stall.
About the skipdrive. You should go for skip drive as the first tech.
Second tech can be arguable. On normal settings and you have a positive income go for research labs and fund all extra income into research. The go for the second warp Bubble generator (Stable warp fields)
When you get skip drive build 4 more scouts, with cash on hand they are just about done exploering your home system, when you get the Bubble drive. Then build 10-15 more scouts and go looking for research spots and resources your missing.

[zgrssd]

Your lacking the resources, because you dont build teh scouts. Trust me, once you get those 20 and later more scouts out, stratigic resources wont be a problem. You can build what ever ships you want.
A side note. Your construction fleet should ofcause increase as your exploration fleet finds more and more resource locations.
In my qurrent play through on hardest difficulty and hars starting location. I still pumped out those 20ish scouts rather early. Simply because i needed to find propper mining locations.

There is no carbonite source in my home system.

How are more scouts with skipdrive, nothing to explore and using up what I have going to "fix" that?

Right now i am playing on hash starting system. I had no Polymer and no Silicon in the system nor any nearby system. I am in 2798 and finaly have found soruces of this farawat from my home system. Before that i had to rely on trade.
But one thing is sure, if it wasent for my current 27 scouts, i would never have found these resources before my empire went into a stall.
About the skipdrive. You should go for skip drive as the first tech.
Second tech can be arguable. On normal settings and you have a positive income go for research labs and fund all extra income into research. The go for the second warp Bubble generator (Stable warp fields)
When you get skip drive build 4 more scouts, with cash on hand they are just about done exploering your home system, when you get the Bubble drive. Then build 10-15 more scouts and go looking for research spots and resources your missing.

My point was that build masses of Scouts before you have the proper Hyperdrive is pointless.
4 Exploration Ships can easily cover the home system, before you even got T2 Hyperdrives and can leave the system.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Meanwhile me with Zentabia Fluid and Loros Fruit in my starting system