Well the Altarians start with basic factories, labs and economic builds, too. I only like playing them because the three (in my opinion) best traits--Morale, Research and Economy--are concentrated on by Altarians. On the downside, they get no social or military production bonuses and so you sit there waiting for hell to freeze over while your factories get built, your influence is actually a gas cloud brought on by excessive flatulence (a small cloud, but still), and everyone hates you because you're so good (99 I think). I've found that research things to get +10 in diplomacy makes even the nastiest aliens like me better without even having to speak to them. Kinda funny. But their SuperPower is probably the least useful in the entire game. I have yet to form any alliances and I'm not even sure how you go about it, and while all the aliens in the galaxy come to me for help, they are never there when I need them. Unless I pay them. Scum.

Super Organizer is an iffy trait. How good it is really matters as to how many other good-aligned civs are in the game with you. When someone attacks you (and I think when you attack them) then every civ that shares the same alignment joins in the war. Super Organizer turns a little scuffle into a galaxy-wide war.

I agree, Super Organizer isn't going to help you early on... but it is a powerful ability not to be underestimated. It works like this:

When someone declares war on you, all civs that share your alignment will declare war on them. Automatically. With no choice on their part whatsoever.

This means you don't need alliances. This also means that switching your ethical alignment can make this ability more powerful, just match your alignment to the strongest militaries in the game, and watch all of the more powerful empires become your pawns.

If you declare war, it is no help. If there are no civs left of your alignment, it is no help. But come on, the AI has gotten even more touchy about declaring war now. Shouldn't be hard to provoke someone into attacking you...

Hope that helps.

Well, best I can do here is tell you how I like to play, I usually play at Crippling altho I can handle the AI at harder levels (I just dislike the idea of them getting so many bonuses over me). Here is a quici compilation of tips:

- First, realize that everything you add onto a Colony Ship jacks up the price. The cost you see in the Shipyard screen is multiplied by 10x (I think) for Buy Now.
While I eventually upgrade my propulsion on my ships, thats not the best way to do a Colony Rush in my experience, granted the map can alter that.
Instead, I build a Small Hull Colony ship that costs 69 instead of 114. On the Buy Now thats 690 instead of 1140 and it can hold the same 500mill population. I build these and only build more advanced standard Colony Ships when I need to expand my ship range so my little ones can get there. Send out all Colony ships with full 500mill complements, INCLDUING your start ship (land it, load it, launch it). Regardless of whether you are building or Buying, it is cheaper in terms of time and money you can get out alot more ships. I can usually hold my own in the initial Colony Rush and have at times beat down the AI with the sheer size of the empire. Anyways, I do not use the initial Colonyship for the PQ4 planet, I send it out in the direction of a large star cluster with my lil ones trailing (they grab everything nearby the first for a good coherent empire with solid borders); I usually do not colonize the PQ4 until about the 5fth COlony ship (pretty quick as at 690 you can buy alot of em).

- Second, while lots of people talk about the 100% Approval bonus, your pop growth is capped at 200mill per turn I blv, so its limited. As someone else stated, there is a difference between 75% Approval and 50-74%/ I keep my Approval at 75%+ in the early game so as to keep up moderage pop growth; I ALSO keep my pop on my homeplanet breeding by constantly shipping out pop via colonyships to alreayd established colonies ( I usually build one Colony ship to act exclusively as a ferry).

- You really do not need to spend 100% on research; think about what you are doing. You are blowing all of your cash on the research that your capital's Capital Colony and any Initial Colonies can produce. These do not generate RPs efficiently compared to dedicated research buildings. I usually set my sliders to 20M/40S/40R, I go for PLanetary Improvements as my first tech (too good to pass up imo, +10 S, +10R, +10 M), Fertility as my second tech, Econ as my third.
At the least, if you are taking this route, Buy a research building so you are getting effective rsearch; I usually buy a Res building if I get a Res Bonus tile.

Re: Homeworld Dev, I tend to play the map so to speak, especially when I start with special tiles. If you start out with a triple Manuf bonus tile, playout the factory manual prodn strategy; if you start out with a 3x-10x research tile, go more heavy into researching to better tech. If you start out with farm stuff, focus on population and econ buildings (beware 3x farming though, you can get into trouble with this).

Your first Colony, unless it is laoded with specials, focus on Econ. When you get to colonizing more planets, alternate between Econ and Social production planets; I like using a farm on every planet (overall tax base) with a morale booster (last item on the planetary que).


The early game is all about colonization then economy management; usually what happens is you go out, colonize 5-6 worlds, and then the improvments on those worlds break your bank as those colonies are not generating taxes to support their building maintenance for all the improvements. You need to head this off by building an econ base bigger than your homeworld; in order to ahve planets left over for research and miltary, you need to expand.

Early game econ is pure Taxes with some tourism coming from your influence radius; expand both by shipping more colonists form homeworld out into the final frontier. The pop growth chart is a curve; the sweet spot is around 4-5bill in the early game as the pop base is large enough to repopulate very quickly without running into approval issues (larger pop causes approval problems, below 5b ppl are happy and reproductive = keep your pop below 5b by moving them out into the stars, the repro at a high rate which can be used as people farms to populate the galaxy with taxpayers. Keep your taxes to try and keep your finances current, but realize that a larger pop base is the long term goal, so do your ebst to stay above 75% apprv even if it means a small hit. THIS IS AN EARLY GAME STRAT and has less to do with things once the Colonization rush is over and your pops are capping out at the top ends of the bells curve.

Yes - colony, trade and constructor modules can fit on small hulls.

I have started using these in DA.

You can't put engines on them ...and only room for one or two life support modules initially. If you pick the Speed bonus ability at the start of the game, this means that those ships will be able to move 2 or 3 squares without engine modules. But since speed has been nerfed overall in DA, this is not that big a deal. The Ai is slow too...You can research Engine techs to increase their base speed also.

There is a great post about this strategy in the AAR or Strategy forums.

I saw this post earlier and want to second it...for me, to hang on to the game and learn it, i started at a very easy setting...fool opponents and worked my way up. It got me learning the basics and what the improvements were and I was able to do entire games and win. Probably a hollow victory, but rather than winning, i was learning the game, all the way through. That was the value. And I would suggest to Mr. Burks that you learn it first then you work it.....knowning as much about it is what's valuable, because if you play varied games you will be fighting differnt hurdles each game. And applying what you know will be what makes you or breaks you.

That's what is so neat about the game. I played Moo for years and years. Bought 2 cd's so I had a back up in case the first got worn out. Finally, the new computers wouldn't run it very well. Thank heavens I found this game. Its my modern MOO. Thanks Frogboy for saving the computer for me. What a treat!

You might find that high-quality planets make better economy planets, actually. With more spaces, you can plant more farms to build up the population (though don't build too many) and more economy buildings to take advantage of the higher population. My highest-quality planet I leave a few spaces open for things like Economic Capital and Political Capital (which also takes advantage of large populations). I don't usually build starbases, but I might start doing that, as eco planets do make good places to recruit troops from, since the planet will repopulate quickly, unlike some production worlds.

I use lower quality planets for production or research, depending on special tiles. A planet with a bit more breathing room, but not big enough to be an econo-world, I leave reserve a few spaces for things like Technological Capital.

Another caveat, if using DA, a Barren world will start off as a lower-quality world but might eventually become one of your highest. So, often I will reserve these worlds for economy as well. Really, the more econo-worlds, the better.

I've read this chain with interest because, while I consider myself to be an experienced player, I have not been successful on DA and have gotten increasingly frustrated. One common thread of advice here has me scratching my head and may be where my strategy is failing -- the comments about colonization techs. That really surprises me. I generally play on higher difficulties with lots of major and minor races. For my beleaguered civilization, there’s a common storyline in my games – I rush out and colonize any normal nearby planet with a PQ of 10 or higher, but there simply aren’t that many of those planets in the general proximity of my home world and nearby high-PQ aquatic, barren, etc. planets sit empty. Meanwhile, the zones of influence of my adversaries expand ominously in the mini-map. Before I know it, my colony ships are advancing into systems already controlled by other major races and their colony ships are settling on those high-PQ planets within my sphere of influence. Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, I find myself hemmed in on all sides, with nowhere to expand save for a few crap PQ planets.

At first, I adjusted my strategy to focus on getting that additional +10 speed bonus in the hopes that my colony ships could reach more systems faster than my adversaries, but that didn’t work. Then I focused on getting the miniaturization tech that would allow me to put those fancy warp engines on a colony ship, but that took forever, even when I’d magically found some space anomaly to speed up my research. So I gave up on that to focus on getting a least one of the colonization techs, but generally that allowed me to colonize only a handful of high-PQ planets, which, because of the production penalty, took a long time to become productive colonies. And I can never trade the colonization technology with other races in the hopes of getting another colonization tech in return without having to give away every single one of my techs, treaties, the kitchen sink, the farm, my first-born, etc.

So I’m really intrigued by what I’m reading here. You folks are finding that you can take 5-6 normal PQ 10+ planets, build those up, and ignore encroachment by all of those dirty, snotty other races? Generally when that happens to me, I’m not far from losing the game, but maybe that’s because I’m overextended. Ignoring the colonization techs seems counterintuitive to me somehow, but obviously my strategies aren’t working…

On the contrary, I think it so much more realistic. I know it keeps it interesting, but the game often moves to fast, unrealisticly. i.e. You don't declare war and make peace three times in a year. And every week, population doesn't grow by millions a week, so I think slow population growth is much more realistic, although a challenge.

gotten planet pop to 100 bill, a max, but it took years and shipping of people.

Dear (Citizen)Roxlimn
April 27, 2007 04:18:05

I just started playing DA and I've been eating humble pie every day now for the past 3 days. All my DL strategies seem to need revising - there's a HUGE difference between Tough DL and Tough DA ... extreme colonization is a major headache for me at the moment. I used to rachet up my tech research whenever I researched the next higher level of tech building. However, now I'm getting smeared all over the galaxy before I can ever get close to finishing. The GNN & Quarterly reports show my tech at 150 to 200% and the AI just walks right in and has every freaking extreme tech already researched and every AI empire has them all - even with tech trading disabled. wtf??? I suspect he AI just steals it and that every AI empire is researching a different extreme tech, so I can never beat the AI. Maybe its more cost effective to buy spies and try to steal techs?? I dunno, but then again I'm trying to learn what the new techs do. I think I need more research before starting again. Playing Suicidal on a small map in DL was pretty much cake to playing tough in DA with max cpu selected, and modifying the races bonuses to make their high abilities higher. Of course playing a small map with 8 minor civs doesn't help either. Makes for a high paced, action packed, 50 turn game though ...   

Sorry, didn't mean to sound whiney, I was just commenting on how much more intense the DA experience is compared to DL. I prefer fast hard games, which is why I started a new DA on a small map with 8 major civs, all adjusted for max abilities, no tech trading, and AI resources set at 10% with all races intelligent. Also have random minors but never got. It wanted a set up with each major AI getting 1 sector, and me getting mine. Very interesting game. Turns out the Yor got to colonize the majority of extreme worlds and then became the first baddy. I was allied with the Alterians and they got a magaevent called godhood(?). Never seen that before, but it didn't help them anyway. They lost all their worlds to the Yor's influence and even when I built an influence starbase next to their last world and gifted it to them, they just scapped it and 5 turns later were absorbed culturally by the Yor. Now the Dread Lords have appeared and the Thorians were wiped by the Arceans and gave their remaining worlds to the Terrans. The Krynn gifted me with their best ship (a precursor ranger) to fight the Yor with. I also found one myself, so I have the best fleet and am slowly invading and capturing their planets. Because their influence is so strong I have have trouble keeping the worlds I conquer, therefore, when they start to flip I trade them to my allies for ships, resources, and whatever else I need. Now I'm allied with the Terrans and close to everybody else (except the Yor, and Thalins). The Thalins got upset with me building influence starbases in Yor territory and attacked, so now I'm getting ready to invade their last planet.

if you want to get more population build farms