Must make a slight correction. It is a large galaxy, but the setting are:
common / occasional / common
scattered / abundant / normal
That being said, on with the game.
I decided to jump right on the factories and focus on getting homeworld infrastructure down. I figured my "fast colonizer" would make up for the initial turns lost.
Turn 1,2: With social production maxed, I was able to build the first factory in two turns (30 hammers per turn).
Turn 3: I changed the sliders to 50%/50% social/tech. The second factory would be done in one turn (56 hpt), and the tech done in 3 (xeno eng).
Turn 4: The third factory would get finished in one turn with sliders at 35%/65% and shaved a turn off the tech. I also found two new planets (5pq,10pq).
Turn 5: Next tech in one turn (xeno research) and a lab in one turn with sliders at 25%/75%. My exploration efforts have shocked me. Habital planets are everywhere! I decide to leave the settings where they were for jomt so I could do better research builds on initial placement.
Turn 6: With the initial base in place, I set the sliders to pump out fast colony ships in 2 turns, while still getting social projects done and some tech thrown in.
The ensuing colony grab was absurd. The game REALLY needs to give the player an option for a more "dangerous" start (comments reserved for another thread). I rushed far (right) until I ran into another civ (was not long). Snatched the best possible and back filled starting with the border moving inwards. I didn't get much chance to scope out north and west as all efforts were on getting the border lines in place. This gives me around 6 or 7 planets under my control. Before back filling the last planet I sent a couple of colony ship west to hunt for oppertunities. My flag ship was heading back towards that sector and fairly close, so there was a set of eyeballs bringing up the rear. There were 3 good planets in that system but the AI managed to get one of them (exact opposite of a system on the other side of the empire). Only a couple of dead stars were to the north followed by the humans, so no expansion that direction.
I had two colony ships left over from the rush and sent them out willy nilly with hopes of getting lucky. One did which gave me a monsterous range boost. The other missed a nice planet by 2 turns. I send that one out like a sliced shot and didn't care what happened to it. It eventually found a bonus resource the AI somehow missed (I really really HATE all seeing AIs) so I upgraded it to a constructor, kissed the 50 colonists goodby, and 3 turns later I get my ONLY resource (influence). Poor thing is out there all alone too, 2-3 sect from the nearest planet..
So that was the map start. The colony rush kinda killed my bankroll as I tried to get 3 factories down first on most of the planets. I had to insert some markets and tone down spending quite a bit. I was caught a bit off guard by the colony upkeep (still learning the game). I see my mistake in as much as I should have queued factory/market/factory/ect instead of factory/factory/ect. on the new worlds.
The western AI only has that one planet thats of any concern but is building a bunch of influence SB near it. I think i am going to have to have an early war with them and just deny them access to space, but that might be more difficult than it looks. The other two front are relatively stable for now.
Comments welcome (rate the play, how would you have done it, ect)
