Also on start try to build some full ofense ships.

Like corvetes with 10 kinetics gun.

On start wepons are better than deflectors and you just shoot enemy in the face with easy.

There are a number of good threads on how to expand linked at the bottom of my known bugs thread. I know I have gotten a lot better as a result of reading them. I have recently moved up from normal to hard, but my first few games on normal were similar to yours.

It may be somewhat luck of the draw. I have been playing in a similar size galaxy and only after about turn 60 am I running into trouble. Mostly my fault for not researching any ship improvements for combat.

Great advice guys. I'm currently on my third game and it's not looking good. The first game I just sucked as I was learning the ropes. Soon I learnt that each planet and have it's own upgrades and soon after i noticed you can just colonise other planets once you have one planet already there. I was manulaly building and sending colony ships to do the other planets. thsi tactic is not good. My latest gaem seemed to be going well. I have a half a galaxy to myself and pirates and the United race on the other side of a wormhole. I had tried to build up to some decent big ships with a high level of kinectic damage. This was allowing me to dominate for a while but all of a sudden the other civ just had all powerful lasers and now have a foothold in my system and wiped out my fleets. They also have a staggering amount of ships. I'm not sure how they got this far ahead. One thing I found also is that their influence is massive. even though I've tried to get some of the right techs and actively tried to increase my influence the computer player just seems to somehow increase thier influence more and also create a large strong force at the same time. It's a bit shit. I want to win damn it. At the moment I've got peace but it won't be long before I get destroyed. For some reason it would seem I haven't enough resouces to build my big ships, even though I do have some sources of the resouce they seem to be used up somehow. not sure since all my ships have been destroyed, does queuing ships use resources like in civ 5. i didn't seem to have this issue in my other games but i may of had more resources. I'm not sure if resources are a finite number and each ship uses the available resource as in civ 5. Anyway will battle on and try to do better.

Novastorm wrote:
A few things I have learned, so far I have made it to about turn 180 before being overran.



Now for the record I am playing huge galaxy with 5 AI opponents (1 of each race), and haven't been able to try anything but the human. If someone could tell me how to switch the race I would be greatly appreciative.

click on your race image during set up

Get a Heavy Isotope Refinery, they boost industry a great deal. You'll want a handful of defensive ships early. I grab one or 2 military techs, and upgrade my basic ships. I have no problem fighting off pirates, and was able to dominate a nearby neighbor as well using laser tech and a strong fleet Hero.

The use of "cold war" in this game is appropriate. As has already been stated, one should try to maintain a steadily growing (in numbers or technological power) army to maintain peace. I tried to play nice with everyone in my first game and then was swatted around turn 40 because I was regarded as pitiful. I was able to turn the first war by simply concentrating on weapons research, but then the Horatio arrived and crushed me with a more powerful industry, teaching me the second important thing - the game favours heavier production and expansion in the first ~100 turns.

After that, cultural influence seems to become equally important.

Try to build army , so you have more allies , than you will have a chance to upgrade yourself as you won't have any enemies ^^

Failed myself about 4 games . First one i was too slow , second i upgraded only financial structure so i got destroyed fast , and the other 2 were basically the same.

Try playing on larger maps with fewer players. Should decrease the chance of you getting attacked early in the game.

Also, the answer much be much simpler. My first few games I got destroyed early, but as I play more I realized that I had some really really really bad starting locations. Now that I know what to look for (somewhat) I can start a new game right away.

So the AI, are they cheating or what?

I've been playing normal difficulty on 4-player spiral map, and by the time I get a few protectors built, I get invaded and all my ships destroyed by superior firepower.



I'm executing a plan which seems to me should work, exploring, colonizing the first promising world I find, researching defensive tech, and picking up heros to govern my systems as soon as I can afford them. Invariably by turn 30 or so, all the AI players have twice my score. It's more than a little frustrating.

Yup, left tech tree is very important too.

You get the use of the luxuries, you get the diplomatic options, you get the command points upgrades and you get the satisfaction upgrades for your faction.



Another thing .... begin to build up a fleet early, the computer will then hesitate to attack you as it will see you as powerful. Not having a ready fleet when the aliens come knocking on the door is a sure way to get killed...

terricon4 wrote:
Something that I don't see mentioned here so far, is to put a bit of extra work into the left tech tree. If you get a couple ships and systems early on so you are not seen as pathetic by others, you can try to make some peace treaties. Keep building on that with the odd little bit here or there and you might very well have a giant bullet sponge covering an entire side of your empire. And with open borders they occasionally might send help in to fight off people in your closer systems. If one ai ever seems to be getting notably strong, gang up with the other AI against it, your goal is to always be on top, by any and all means necessary, not just trying to throw ships at whatever ai looks the most threatening at the moment.



Also, be sure to read each upgrade carefully, there are lots of system upgrades that will, in some of them, do more harm then good, try to keep everything working smoothly and your people happy, a happy populace can increase you production of everything several fold. And having allies can help the happiness levels, rather than just enemies that you are at war with.

Something that I don't see mentioned here so far, is to put a bit of extra work into the left tech tree. If you get a couple ships and systems early on so you are not seen as pathetic by others, you can try to make some peace treaties. Keep building on that with the odd little bit here or there and you might very well have a giant bullet sponge covering an entire side of your empire. And with open borders they occasionally might send help in to fight off people in your closer systems. If one ai ever seems to be getting notably strong, gang up with the other AI against it, your goal is to always be on top, by any and all means necessary, not just trying to throw ships at whatever ai looks the most threatening at the moment.



Also, be sure to read each upgrade carefully, there are lots of system upgrades that will, in some of them, do more harm then good, try to keep everything working smoothly and your people happy, a happy populace can increase you production of everything several fold. And having allies can help the happiness levels, rather than just enemies that you are at war with.

It's true that missiles are powerful. In my first time playing I was naive enough to build kinetic defense, which worked great for my first few battles (0 hp lost). But then out of nowhere in the middle of a fight some missiles obliterated all my ships in one shot

I've smartened up and always get some flak defense before getting into a fight.

Novastorm wrote:
A few things I have learned, so far I have made it to about turn 180 before being overran.



Now for the record I am playing huge galaxy with 5 AI opponents (1 of each race), and haven't been able to try anything but the human. If someone could tell me how to switch the race I would be greatly appreciative.



(...)

Click on the avatar of your current race before starting the game

A few things I have learned, so far I have made it to about turn 180 before being overran.



Now for the record I am playing huge galaxy with 5 AI opponents (1 of each race), and haven't been able to try anything but the human. If someone could tell me how to switch the race I would be greatly appreciative.



1. Spread like the plague. I make it a point to grab every system that is in my constelation behind my wormholes. I never let the computer get a foot hold in my home space.



2. 10 Defenders, 2 fleets. The first 5 are to protect my colony ships as I colonize and when I have everything in my home colonized I keep to parked at the wormholes. Now these two fleets really won't protect you per se. But the computer sees them and it will buy you time before they decare war. Those 10 defenderes alone generally insure I won't get war dec'ed till after turn 100.



3 Techs: I always grab the innermost ring of all the techs first. Then I tend to focus on the bottom tree till I get to cruisers and most of the basic planet colonization tech. After that i jump back up to the top tree and pick up all the second ring ship techs.



4. Planets. If you starting area doesn't have the first two strategic resources, Hex something and the T-70 stuff, start over. You may be able to survive to turn 100 with out them. But I can almost garuntee you won't make it much further than that.



5. Building ships. Missles are God. Yeah they fire only once a phase, and fire near the end. But they do ungodly amounts off damage. Also when you do start fighting make sure you have dust saved up. Watch to see if your opponent is using lasers, kinitic, or missles (whoever declares wat on you first) and then almost immediately rebuild your ships with defenses to only that type of weapon. Pretty much I ut on my boats 2-4 defensive modules for what ever their primary weapon seems to be. Most time it is lasers. Then I fill the rest of the space with whatever the highest missle I have is.



Like I said I have made it to Battleships (though didn't get to use one) and about turn 180-200 so far. I still always get overran in the end, but least on my last go round It took 4 of them attacking me at once to finally have the power to overrun me. But i am refining my strategy with every go round.

If you're playing as United Empire, the negative planet feature is murder in the beginning, so try to get a home system with another planet with an industrial bonus (Jungle Worlds are great), or you'll be churning a bit slowly. Also, build that refinery system improvement for a nice industrial bonus.

Get the tech that expands your influence.

Thanks for the pointers. I haven't changed difficulty from Normal, and I haven't changed the pirate settings either. I think the only thing that I messed with when starting the game was the galaxy size and the races of my opponents.



I think perhaps I am not building up my industry quickly enough, because it is taking me a long time to build ships. I'll work on that.

Well, if you changed the pirate settings and/or difficulty it may get a bit tricky. Also on smaller galaxies with more opponents you are more likely to encounter them earlier in the game. Seems logical so far.



At the beginning of the game, most likely your colonyship and your scout are of no match for AI (both pirates and AI players). Of course it also depend of the race you've chosen to start with, but if you want some pieces of advice, here are a few hints that worked for me :



I usually scout and colonize the first interesting world within 10-15 turns (much faster if I am lucky) and then try to expand within those two systems (by researching food then expansion tech before I even think to build military ships or unlock military techs) till I get enough industrial power to build military ships in just a few turns.



Now the first researches you do will have a great influence on your start. Do not try to go for too expensive researches. If you are an expansionist best is to go for the diplomacy tech tree and get the first food tech "soil xenobiology" as it will greatly help increase your rate of expansion early in the game (if you are starting on a terran planet especially, otherwise the system technology will be your friend).



Pirates and AI are of little danger at the beginning for your colonies they are just an annoyance for lone scouts and colony ships, and I personally try to expand as much as I can before they spawn (pirates) or reach me (AI) because they don't attack colonies (though they may blockade them) and I wipe them later on. If you don't want them to survive first encounter on your territory, then you need to have a more militaristic approach :



1. build combat vessels and form up 1 fleet (idealy at least 2 combat ships, since the first wave of pirate will usually be 1 or 2 ships and IA will usually be only scouts)

2. research a few combat techs (guns are usually enough to take the upper hand) and upgrade your existing designs + retrofit the current ships

3. you can also do both 1 & 2



For exploration, unfortunately there is nothing you can do if you send your scout alone and step on hostile forces, IA tends to build combat ships early on, while pirates are combat ships by definitition (with superior fire power and often number to your scout). To save your scout, merge it in one single fleet with the combat ships you've built.