n00b: trying to learn to play, help me out

I didn't realize that you could launch a colony ship with 0 people onboard... maybe 0 means "< 1mil" so the colony just starts of with a handfull of people, which would really slow down growth I imagine...

as far as using a colony ship to increase population on a colonized world, I think you should be able to do this. Jsut right click on the system and click on the planet as usual...

You don't have to buy everything, just build them normaly through production, that will prevent you from going into debt like that. And when you click the "purchase" button you are given 4 bids to chose from that have varying ammounts of money up front and money paid over time, but like I said, don't "rush buy" all your stuff, just build it normaly.

If you have corvette construction, you should be able to build corvettes, I don't think you need the pre-req techs.

I forget the name, but on the screen that allows you to buy from Mitrosoft (almost typed "M$" there ), there are three other companies to buy from. The top one is *very* expensive, but you get the ship/project next month (useful for Trade Goods and Wonders).

There are quite a few threads on the money loss issue, but basically it works like this: Don't build every project for every planet. The maintenance will kill you.

If the other players are threatening you, build some warships (you *did* research warships, right?). If your overall military might (listed on the Stat screen, under your Empire tab) is high enough, the AI won't mess with you.... and if they do, send 'em packin'!


~SDC~

Well, buying the soil stuff is not a good idea. I start my games most times buying colony ships as many as I can until I get to around 100 coin left. I ensure that my production slider is low enough that I have profit coming in. To launch a colony ship, as you look at the planet screen, click the "little ship" icon within the "star field box" on the right side there. Then with the "blue box" around it high-lighted, click the "ship" button further right with the green arrow to "launch" the selected vessel. When you hit the launch button, a slider will come up and allow you to load an amount of people onto the ship. When you have enough, click the green box that says "launch", and when you close the planet screen, your ship is waiting there for orders.

As for corvettes, they use a better "drive" system than what you start with, as weapons theory too. So without those two buying it is not much good. Save your cash.

Try to load about 20 million - 50 million on your colony ships, course as your planet's population grows, that gets harder, just try to do the minimum.

I start with the "tech" sliders of military 10%, social 20% and 70% to research, so you can get tech up and start to improve things. Military in the beginning isn't really needed until you can at least make a defender. One person suggested getting "trade" tech as soon as you can. Because even before you can fight you will want to trade.

I set my research selection at the top of the colume to "" as that allows you to work the tech that will take the least amount of time/buck.

I try to keep taxes at a point where I have 65 - 70% moral, so the people are better than average for happiness. I set my games (thus far) to simpe/beginner and as a matter of note, seems a good idea is to place bases out and around the boarder of your systems with mods for influence. As that keeps your planets from defecting to the enemies..

I am a noob too... Very important not to build every piece of tech on every world. Build things for population and moral on most, but research on the 17+ worlds and production on the 20+ worlds so you can produce ships. Those planets can then send the fighters/ships built quick to those worlds that would take months. I could write more, but I am sure as I write this other's are typing too..

Bugger!! There was supposed to be a word between the quotes after the ... Top of the colume to: Months.

I also will only "buy" a colony ship when they get cheap enough to, like when they have a few more months to go and I find a 20+ that I want to grab really quick.

I play, and generally win, on Intelligent AIs so I like to think I know what I'm doing.. but I'm sure others have better methods. Here are mine:

Turn 1:
Send your colony ship in the direction of the largest number of stars that are close to each other.
Send your survey ship in another direction to scope out some planets.
Buy a colony ship.
Set research to 65%, military to 35%, social to 0%.
Modify your economic sliders so that your people are in the 90% range (this dramatically affects population growth in the early game).
Start researching towards Trade (this will get you communication also).

Turn 2
launch the colony ship w/ 250 million people to the second most densly populated star cluster.
Buy a scout.

Turn 3
scout around
buy a colony ship

Turn 4 - 6
Buy another colony ship each turn. Send it somewhere (you should start to be seeing the first stars by now). Keep an eye on your money. It's ok to go into debt, but just don't be losing more than about 20bc per turn.

Turn X
Once you get diplomacy, immediately get out of debt so you can buy diplomatic translators. This will dramatically help you sell stuff the whole rest of the game.
Start researching the propulsion techs. One you get controlled gravity, immediately buy gravity accelerators.
Once you've gotten a few planets, start taking note of the resources. My favorite are military and research. These seem to have the biggest impact in the game and should be acquired as soon as you can (I will often go into debt to buy a constructor to secure them).

From their the game gets more complex.. good luck. Eventually you need to start social spending (generally I get the planet upgrades before anything else). Sell everything you can to the minor races as often as you can. You can easily pick up a few hundred bc per turn from them by early mid-game. Trade is critically important.. use your biggest planets to build your freighters. Once you have your immediate area mapped out, use your survey ship to get anomalies. Set it to 'auto-survey' if this is boring. Don't touch it until the end of the game when it will be a super-mega ship. Pick your biggest planet to be your 'main' planet. Stick basically all of your galactic upgrades on it. Towards the late game it will be kicking out dreadnaughts every other turn or so. Also it will be your tech and economic powerhouse.

That's how I play and I'm doing ok. Some others are winning on genius settings that I haven't even tried yet.. so there's probably a better start, but that'll do you for a while.

I've been trying all sorts of things, but instead of going into debt I recommend setting your spending sliders to 100% military initially. You can pump out a few colony ships quickly (three turns each, I believe) without buying them and then settle into a more normal rythym.

Depending on your situation you may want to kick out a constructor or two first as well, to claim any nearby resources. Just be careful not to get too far behind in research....

If you build six Colony ships at 60/20/20(mil/soc/res) with 100% spending, then push Research instead of Military you can finish up several techs before you have to cut spending because you used up the $1000 starting bank and you'll have a head start on things like Manufacturing Centers.

~SDC~

Thanks, I will jump to it and give these a shot.