Hi,



I am new to the game, and I am playing as the Vaulters. I have tried various strategies, but have 2 problems.



Firstly, the AI players seem to overtake me for FIDSI fairly quickly. Is there a critical path? Something I am doing wrong?



Second, I find the nearby independent factions produce very large numbers of armies making it close to impossible to get a settler alive into an adjacent region to build a new city.



Any recommendations?



ALSO, I have an ASUS nVidia GTX 580 and nonetheless this game is overheating worse than many non-4X strategy games. I am not sure this is optimal ...

Concerning the overheat, if you touch the red limit (like 100°C or above), you could untick the Vsynch and manually set a limited frame rate, such as 30fps for example. This should give some break to your gpu.

Are you building burroughs? You should build a burrough every time you gain enough population. The AI has a tendency for rapid expansion, especially the necrophages so their fidsi counts are usually always higher than me. I tend to usually build my first city to 8-10 population before expanding as vaulters but everyone has different strategies.



As far as minor factions and armies, its good to try and pacify all of them through parley as you gain the most from it, it doesn't matter if you own the region or not you can still parleyw itht hem and make them friendly to you. If pacifying through parley isn't worth it then just kill their village off.