Firstly, I’ll summarize my initial settings. This is newest version as of 7/31/10, version 1.6.0:
Planet quality: normal, Independent alien life: normal, Expansion: starting, Aggression: restless, Research speed: very slow, Space creatures & pirates: normal, Irregular galaxy with 700 stars
Home system: normal, Size: starting, Tech level: basic, Corruption: normal, Democratic & Human
15 empires at start (maximum is 17 I think), independent aliens can start new colonies is checked
Victory: 50% colonies, 50% galaxy pop, 50% galaxy total economy, game finishes after 100 years, 10 years before start applying VCs
I prefer very slow research development for three reasons:
1) I hate maxing out on tech advances halfway through the game which happens (unfortunately) too much in 4x games for my liking,
2) I like my new designs to last more than 2 months before they’re obsolete,
3) I don’t want to have to upgrade my ships every other month. Ship designs that have a longer lifetime before becoming obsolete are more desirable.
Aggression on “restless” is equivalent to hard, which is one tick above “normal” difficulty. Eventually, I want to beat the AI on the most difficult settings. I also prefer starting at very basic level, if I could I’d start the game with no ships & only one planet at the lowest starting tech levels, but at this time that option is not available.
My basic strategy is to win through military conquest. How I plan to do this is as follows: start building a lot of exploration ships in order to find the valuable continental worlds to colonize and especially the “rare” luxury items (Loros fruit, Kaladian spice, and Zentabian Fluid). I don’t expect to find these at start. But, probably toward mid game once I’ve explored 40% or so of the stars, I should stumble on the first of these essential planets. I also plan on switching to “way of the ancients” government type as soon as I find it, as well as rapid construction of “world destroyers” using c-ships once I find them. I plan on destroying any AIs without hesitation, regardless of friend or foe or current relationship if they occupy the “rare” spice planets or are working on the “world destroyers”. Short-term finances will be improved through colonization of continental worlds, the more the better. Many exploration & colony ships will be needed to support this plan. I don’t plan on paying off pirates with money, rather with bullets. I plan on destroying them, their bases, and assimilating their fleets & deconstructing their ships to get the tech advances in research from so doing. As a result of my “anti” pirate strategy, I’m going to need more combat ships at start. I’m not liberal, so I’m not going to be open to a “friendly” coexistence approach to the galaxy and its peoples, but rather speak softly and carry a big stick of combat ships that cuts a wide swathe of pain.
As far as finance goes, I’m not looking to completely maximize profits. I just want to stay in the green while supporting as many ships as I can, and also minimize taxation (no more than 15% on non-homeworlds) in order to keep my population happy and avoid revolts. I plan on using transports and invasion troops instead of nuking populations from orbit in order to prevent planetary revolts. The very last thing I want to happen is for my empire to split due to revolt. This is the worst possible thing that could happen in terms of victory conditions, not to mention everything else. Hence, I plan on using a “Frederick the Great” as opposed to “Hitler” method of warfare: i.e. I’ll take advantage of alliances to declare war on enemy AIs & take some of their planets through invasion, but I don’t plan on exterminating them (via orbital nuking) or “completely” conquering them, as making peace gives me the opportunity to offend my previous “allies” and make war on them. Theoretically, I’ll only be involved in small regional wars against 1 to 4 AIs (at most) at any one time. It doesn’t matter to me who my friends & enemies are. As peace & war shifts, so will my friends and my fleets (aka Fredrick the Great) to different areas and new enemies, each time giving me the opportunity to conquer new worlds through invasion.
The keystone to keeping my fleets big will be the rare luxuries. Each time I find one, my plan is to triple my fleet size at that time while still maintaining no more than 15% colony tax rate. Once I have enough excess cash (early mid-game), I’ll build 10 secret agents and put them on defense to prevent revolt. Cornerstone of my plan is to expand slowly, maximally, prevent revolt (reduce revolt-risk as much as is possible), and lastly keep my enemies (all other AIs) weak.
The first print screen below shows my starting positions, key points: I started with 2 construction ships, which I think is important, 3 military ships, 8 freighters, 1 explorer, 8 mining & gas ships/bases, and 1 medium spaceport, for a total of 23 ships.
I also had the following resources at start (* asterisk is luxury item: 12 of the 14 are available at my home system, two [krypton & argon] come from the nearby Yaga system where a couple mining ships were deployed at game start by the computer):
1 argon
2 steel
1 irridium
1 gold
1 chromium
1 lead
1 emeros crystal
1 nekron stone
1 hydrogen
2 helium
1 krypton
1 *yarros marble
1 *megallos nut
2 carbon fibre
(Figure 1) at start
