Are you finishing your games on April 8th Snarkotamus? That is a major factor in getting a high score.
How do you guys manage to hit april? It always seems that when I get there with my transports the AI has just snuck out a colony ship and got one planet elsewhere. I then I get there around June.
I have been using the Drath tech tree and I dont go against Thalan. Is that a major Factor?
I do my ZYWs with DA, so its going to be different. But I take the first level of speed bonus so I can get to the enemy homeworld by APril 8th, and I use spore instead of transports. That way you can set your pre-spore ship moving towards the enemy homeworld on turn 1, and upgrade it to Spore once you get there.
Here's a quick tip. Don't use transports. Use Spore ships.
Ok, I'll give that a go.
But do you guys usually have to chase colony ships or do you eradicate them before the AI has a chance to colonize another world?
Nope. With the settings I play (giga all-rare) they dont have anywhere to colonize. I also play against the Thalans so they have no secondary to colonize.
Under most circumstances, with rare everything, even in a gigantic or immense, there simply shouldn't -be- any other planets for the AI to colonize. I had a gigantic rare-everything DA game somewhat recently just for fun (not intended to be a ZYW), and I found that the game had even slapped multiple minors into the same system because of how few stars it had generated.
Hmmmm, I have been doing the ZYW thing on small maps with rare everything but the AI still has manages to get a planet. I have been using transports and not spore ships. Maybe its just quicker with a spore.
I have been doing ZYW WITHOUT using the longest lease possible. I have been keeping my economy in the black the whole game. That is probably slowing me down.
The larger the map, the higher your tech score will be, because there is a scaling effect. Since the game will only last 3 turns, I dont worry about long-term economics at all.
Are you finishing your games on April 8th Snarkotamus? That is a major factor in getting a high score.
Anyway, I try for April 8, but the 15th is my earliest so far. I may be putting too much effort into tech and not enough into population.
For gigantic ZYWs I totally ignore the economy and population, and go for nothing but tech score.
Sentient species taste better...
