Economy?

[fabio80mi]

Problems you're running so early in the game is definetly (and only) tied up with lacking of development on your homeworld (=lacks of luxury resources).

My guess would be you 1) dont have enough constructors 2) pirates managed to kill some of your gas/mining station and you didnt rebuild them yet 3) you dont have access to enough luxury, that is maybe you colonized worlds without luxuries.

Suggestions would be to have at least 5 explorers from the verty start and very soon move to 3 constructors, actually my very first start usually in my homeworld is :

colony
colony OR constructor
Research base (80k research on every field)
constructor or colony
constructor or colony
Resupply ship if needed or idle till i need either a colony or constructor.

[taltamir]

what version are you playing?
before v1.02 there was a critical bug in the AI that controlled luxuries that caused it to stop working. meaning your empire starved of them and your economy tanked.

[JudgeDredd]

My confusion here really lies in my lack of understanding of what is automated and what is not and where automation ends and my interaction starts.

For example, I have everything automated except fleets. I would assume that, because I have the other options on automation, that they would mine for my damned luxury resources.

I don't mind being wrong here and I know I'm definitely playing it like a n00b...but seriously. Please. If it's automated, then surely it's automated. If I am not responsible for building mining stations or construction ships...then how can I be responsible for making sure I've got miners going to get my luxury resources. The AI has been assigning them...it didn't appear as if I had to assign them!

This is where my confusion lies...where automation starts and ends. If automation is purely saying "We think you need 3 mining stations and 6 escorts" and that's it...fine. I know that's where the automation ends and I have to pick up what I do with those.

But that's not where automation ends, is it? It starts with ""We think you need 3 mining stations and 6 escorts" and then proceeds to allocate the miners and escorts. How am I meant to tell that I've got to manually assign those miners to go after luxury resources? It's been assigning the miners fine...the first thing I know that it hasn't been, is my economy has gone boobies up!

I'm simply confused by the whole automation thing and whilst I love the game, the boundaries need to be clearer...much clearer. Automation needs to end at some point and the user needs to know when that is so they can pick up the baton and run with it.

I'm just going to restart (-250k in the red and dropping -35k) and turn automation off. I'll decide how many destroyers, frigates and escorts to build. I'll decide when to create and disband a fleet. I'll decide when to create colony ships. I'll decide when to create mining stations and where to place them. I expect I'll have to start off small...but tbh, I was finding the 100 star system enough to handle anyway!

[JudgeDredd]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

what version are you playing?
before v1.02 there was a critical bug in the AI that controlled luxuries that caused it to stop working. meaning your empire starved of them and your economy tanked.

1.02

[taltamir]

interesting... when colonizing, have you prioritized colonizing planets with goods? or did you colonize a ton of planets with nothing?

[JudgeDredd]

I colonised what planets the AI found and asked me to colonise. Again...a misunderstanding in what the AI was doing. I thought it was recommending I colonise these planets.

[taltamir]

mmm... I manually colonize like crazy, my main focus is colonization.
I buy the locations of "independent colonies" from pirates and colonize those. I buy tons of explorers so that I have a huge list of good planets. Then I start off by colonizing anything with ancient ruins (this is really good) followed by planets with best resources.

There is a good chance that the AI recommended you colonize the "best" planets you had known, but due to low amounts of exploration vessels you didn't have many planets known.

[Barthheart]

Yeah JD, I find teh AI to be a spend/colonize crazy. I only colonize what it suggests if I'm making more +10K "credits"(whatever they are). Also only build ships if I think I can really afford them.

I find it useful to keep these on auto to point out that I have places to colonize if I want, as I usually end up putting the exploreres on auto.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I colonised what planets the AI found and asked me to colonise. Again...a misunderstanding in what the AI was doing. I thought it was recommending I colonise these planets.

You may have just rolled a really bad local area of the galaxy. It may be there are simply no luxuries to be had anywhere you've been yet, which means there is nothing you can do until you find some.

Either scrap the game and roll a new galaxy, or scrap your fleets and build 6-8 new explorers and hope you find some soon. I always queue up 6 explorers immediately in any new game I start, getting a look at everything near you is vital if your home world/worlds have no luxuries.

Jim

[JudgeDredd]

Yeah, I'll just have to chalk this up to a lack of understanding. I perhaps was expecting the AI was being clever enough for me (by assuming it had found a good colony) and allowing it to carry on it's merry way.

I'll be more penny-wise next time.

[Cindar]

Automation shouldn't do THAT bad, unless you just landed in a really horrible part of the galaxy. My first game I jumped in without the tutorial, automated everything, and just generally screwed around. Things ended up fine.

[richieelias]

Well, he didnt "fully" automate. Rather he left things on "suggest". I'm wondering if the AI would be smarter about restricting its spending while on full auto rather than suggest.
 
To me "suggest" implies that the AI throws expense out the window and tells you every little thing you might want while leaving you to decide wether you can afford it or not.

[JosEPhII]

I believe it does just that, "suggest" everything including the kitchen sink! Fully automated isn't as bad.

Use Suggest and you are flooded with suggestions and then because you feel rushed/pressured you make poor choices.

JosEPh [;)]

[lordxorn]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I colonised what planets the AI found and asked me to colonise. Again...a misunderstanding in what the AI was doing. I thought it was recommending I colonise these planets.

You may have just rolled a really bad local area of the galaxy. It may be there are simply no luxuries to be had anywhere you've been yet, which means there is nothing you can do until you find some.

Either scrap the game and roll a new galaxy, or scrap your fleets and build 6-8 new explorers and hope you find some soon. I always queue up 6 explorers immediately in any new game I start, getting a look at everything near you is vital if your home world/worlds have no luxuries.

Jim

Jim has a good point. I understand Judge that you going into DW thinking automation will handle everything for you. However, I think it is understandable to expect the AI to work with what it got. Your starting locale just happens to be Luxury lite, so you have to manually go out and see where you can make this up.

It may be that the AI Empires already gobbled them up, and you should have declared war a long time ago. This is where the game is fun! I eluded to my CIV4 example of Oil, without which your late game is over. Oil is a resource in CIV4 that you declare war over.

I think it is fair to say that Luxury resources is the same thing, and when you first start a game follow my tips I posted above so you don't find yourself in the same predicament. The expansion planner really makes this easy, plus when you have resources it says how many sources you have. So nifty!

So yes you are correct from the point that you failed to understand that Luxury resources are very much like strategic resources, in the respect that if you lack them your empire's security is at risk. Therefore they should be something you have to fight for.

Start a fresh game tomorrow after the patch, and let us know how you do. [:)]

I forgot to mention, I have seen my own freighters trade away Luxury resources. So it may be if you maintain good enough relations with other empires you can survive off them selling the luxury resources to you. However, in your game it doesn't appear to be the case.

When you click another race it says whether or not they will trade their luxury. If it says WILL NOT, start buttering them up. Of course that is hard to do with negative cash, so maybe offer them a colony. Or some tech. Maybe only way to save your game.

Judge I am interested to play your save, can you upload it to Matrix ftp??

[namad]

i am fairly sure that the ai doesn't play the way you think it does...

i am pretty sure that fully automatic doesn't follow 100% of it's own suggestions and that it doesn't expect you to either...

i mean... you very literally are not fully automated those are not the settings for fully automated.... so your assumptions and premise are incorrect...


also sometimes the ai doesn't play super duper well... when you start up a game there are usually several 'great' ai empires and several 'shitty' ai empires...  so even if you were fully automated you would have some problems....

also space port income is HIGHLY flux  i've had an empire i was micromanaging the crap out of go from in the red a bit to majorly in the black and back and forth more than once per year!!!

[JudgeDredd]

I have AI empires off (for alien races) and only 2 races in a 100 star system.

I'm chalking it down to bad play now after speaking to everyone. I don't think I'll let the AI control anything though - maybe it's struggles in a small system as it seems not to be able to mine/find luxury resources.

[sbach2o]

Maybe you should check out what luxury resources are available on planets you have explored, and what mining bases have been build?

In my games I make it a priority to control the constructors to build stationary mining bases over planets with luxury resources that I cannot colonize. The next priority is gas giants with Caslon and Hydrogen fuel (initially only Caslon is really relevant). Such mining bases often become targets for pirate raids.

I find that the AI can alleviate luxury resource shortages on its own to a degree, as it starts building mining ships. Constructors on automation aren't too dumb either about picking good locations for mining bases. But maybe the AI is just reacting too late to shortages, so manual control seems preferable.

Another priority is to buy information about independent colonies from pirates. For this you need pirates in your game and contact with them. Independents often appear on planet types you cannot colonize (yet) and then are likely to have luxury resource types not easily available to you, without being vulnerable to pirate raids as mining stations are.

The last early game priority is to clean out all space monsters near my colonies that I detect (besides defending my mining stations against pirates). Am I missing something, or is the game not perticularly helpful in letting me know where they are? Most of the time I am taking note of them when they are chasing one of my explorers away, or civil ships or a constructors, or worse: killing them.

Oh: and I expand like heck! I usually overbuild on explorers early and get them moving.

i am fairly sure that the ai doesn't play the way you think it does...

i am pretty sure that fully automatic doesn't follow 100% of it's own suggestions and that it doesn't expect you to either...

I have speculated that also, I surely don't get as many declarations of war as the AI is suggesting I deal out.

Apart from that, JudgeDredd's small empire looks very much like what I usually see with the AI empires. I don't have their economical data then, though.

[Cindar]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
I'm chalking it down to bad play now after speaking to everyone. I don't think I'll let the AI control anything though - maybe it's struggles in a small system as it seems not to be able to mine/find luxury resources.

I highly recommend, at the very least, you leave troop recruitment and tax rate management on. Those are little things you WILL forget to track constantly, and the AI handles them fairly well. You may also want to automate AI agent recruitment/management if that isn't your cup of tea. Suggest for other things isn't horrible, but keep in mind they are just suggestions from an AI that isn't too smart. Don't buy 50 colony ships to colonize after declaring war, etc.

You may also want to make sure your home system is set to excellent quality from the start to make sure you have a pretty solid base to work from.

[BigWolfChris]

I think the AI might be programmed to make mistakes for a little bit of realism
Of course, that's just a maybe and it might simply be unrefined programming