I am a total n00b, so I have a lot of trivial questions - thank you in advance for your time!
1) My colony was spawned in an area without ruins and metal deposits. There is some extractable water nearby, thick forest/jungles 1 hex away, and a minor faction on the other side, also 1 hex away. This faction offered the peace treaty from the turn 1, accepted. But how do I go about my resources? Should I produce food and trade it for metal or what?
2) Reckon points. You all pointed out how critical it is, and I searched the manual several times, but I still haven't found how to generate those. I know it's to do with reckon units, but I still don't get the principle - how do I increase the reckon points amount on a particular faction? Spies only? How many I should send there?
3) How do I generate Industry Points without having resources in the beginning? It's not enough for Industry Construction, and some of you advised not to start with it, because I need a reserve of Industry Points for emergencies. So what should I do?
Expand your zone until you find some and make sure your governor has good prospecting skill. It takes time for them to perform the winning prospecting rolls that cause them to find mines. Could also call the Secretary to give Economic Director more funding then call the Economic Director and put more budget toward Economic Policies budget to try and generate prospecting stratagems. There is a prospecting report you can view to see if he has finished prospecting the entire zone. If he has looked everywhere and still found nothing then there is no choice but to expand.
If there is nothing close and you also have a Secret Service Council you can budget more to him and then have them focus on Spying Operations to get spy stratagems that will give recon to find targets for where to aim your expansion. You'll need at least 1 recon on a hex to see its assets. There are several factors to gaining recon on all the hexes in a zone which are described in 5.14.2.2. ZONE RECON of the manual. But basically you need to have 10 zone recon level to guarantee 1 recon on every hex in that zone and spies give you 1-4(dice roll) zone recon levels so you'll need 2-9 spies in a zone to see all its assets.
But it may also be that your dreams of becoming conqueror of this world are impossible due to lack of resources and that is fun too, seeing your society collapse.
1. You can use spies to locate ruins to direct your expansion. They also allow to locate minor regimes... to also direct your expansion there. Some are easy to conquer, like farmers, be it at gunpoint or by a bit of smoothtalking.
Generally you want to expand along roads, unless you located something worth (an isolated minor or a batch of ruins) to avoid having to buy them when you have no IP, which will lead you to minors, so you will solve population and resource shortages at the same time... Eventually.
2. Spies will allow to reveal the map and city hex but are fairly bad at generating high level of recon. In theory they give up to 100 free recon in a hex but it will be a few hex here and there unless you spam spies.
Well, it depends. If you want regime wide recon to unlock reports etc then spies are great, but not for recon for warfare purposes, ie. recon in a given hex.
For hex recon, let's consider an infatry OHQ. Each OHQ sub unit is made of 1000 infantries. One sub unit of infantry, ie. 100 infantry provide fixed recon points, which will be 1 at base research level but it can be more later. Let's say it's 1 recon. This is the recon they provide in all adjacent hex. Your 1000 infantries therefore produce 10 recon. Your entire infantry OHQ of 5000 infantry, if all sub units are adjacent to one hex provide 50 recon over that hex. Units also provide more recon a bit farther, 3 hex deep IIRC, but less than on adjacent hex. Some units will provide more per sub unit, like buggies or motorbikes, but generally you need to concentrate your forces to have good recon. In a world with jungles you really want to be cautious when splitting your troops because anything outside of desert or plains have hide points (which counters low amounts of recon). In jungle you will often be ambushed if you don't have good recon.
Once you have a good army, this passive recon is good enough. Early game it won't. One possible solution are ultra light recon planes. With just propeller you will probably have low range so it's hard to recomand too soon, however when there's major fighting it's worth considering spamming level 1 air bases to move along the frontline if you can make an ultra light tactical bomber, 5 or 6 range with the weakest precision bomb is acceptable to ruin steel light tanks... In plains/desert at least. Neither tanks nor precision bombs are good in jungles.
3. That really is the weak point of the game. You need IP to build everything, you need metal to build everything but particularly industry so as long as you have no metal you will run circles while going nowhere. I would suggest tech 4 starts as this guarantees a metal mine to learn the game and tech 3 for later if you wish.
In tech 3 anyway... Well, get more hex to prospect to find metal, or ruins. It's the key to win the game. A bigger population (anybody that isn't a public worker) will contribute to IP through service tax and you can increase a bit service tax yields through one of the 3 levels (civilization, etc) of your regime. From the top of my head it's the one that depends on BP production.
Public funds will help the private sector building private industry which provides trickles of IP.
Commerce profile unlocks the makeshift IP stratagem that allows to turn credits into some IP. It's pretty good early game, however it may be available a bit late due to the profile and credits requirements.
In any case, a short term goal should be industry 1. Industry and metal are the keys to exponantial growth.
