I think it is obvious that as far as buying colony ships and factories goes, some do and some don't. I think it can work both ways.

Map size makes a difference

On a tiny to small map I personally don't buy colony ships or factories early on. I set social and research to 15% and military to 70% this gets me a colonly ship evrey four or five turns on Earth. All colony ships are from Earth the new colonies start on constructors.

If I don't get most of the habitable planets and nearly all the mining resources with this strategy, it is not for lack of ships or production.

Design a fast colony ship and design a slow and cheap colony ship, don't use the basic colony ship, it has a middle speed which is usually not what you want, if you know for sure you are going to be the first on a specific planet, build/buy a cheap colony ship...if you race for a spot, build/buy a fast colony ship and claim that planet.

I have 3 designed colony ships and also can use the default one (very rarely), each with it advantage (good autonomy and decent speed is my 3rd, you know to go to FAR away places)

It should be set to %100 most of the time. There will probably be a couple of times when you'll have to drop it back down. After the initial colony rush, for instance, you'll have to drop it to maintain the many new planets you've acquired. During that time you should try to focus on researching techs that you can sell. Then, as you sell your technologies you can raise it back up. Eventually your colonies will be able to maintain themselves and you should be able to keep your spending up (although this may not be until after your first war).

My first game was easy/small. I played worse than your (Topic Creator) explanation shows you played, and I absolutely decimated the map - culturally.

Easy is definitely there for a reason, especially in a game where the AI is renowned for actually trying to beat you. That's a needless distraction when you don't even know what you're doing yet.

Probably should add also that I only had about 5 ships, I had colonies going out two by two with my flagship and a custom scout with upgraded drives going ahead of them. By the end of the map I hadn't had one hostile action from anyone, everyone was close-ish despite me being neutral-evil and two of the AI's being neutral-good.

Try the peaceful game, can be fun.

More advanced engines take up less space (and each new 'class' of engine is faster to boot). You can also research the miniaturization branch at the bottom of the tech tree to get more space on your hulls. Some races, such as the Yor, start with better engines and/or some miniaturization ability, so they can make some pretty quick colony ships right off the bat.

Hi Ghost Glove

To answer your question about balance, I personally tend to use a 3:1 ratio, that is 3 economic-based planets to one industrial and/or research world.

Generally speaking, due to the way morale works in both DL and DA, one doesn't need to have more than 1 farm on any planet since populations above 21 million are very hard to keep happy, basically it becomes cost ineffectual. Also most veteran players do not use the gold 300% farm bonus tiles, but depending on the situation they may still use the green 100% farm bonus tiles.

More people is the easiest way to get more money (more people=more taxes coming in), but there are a few other abilities and technologies that can help your economy:
Economic Ability: Either as a starting ability or through technology/improvements such as banks, this ability increases the amount of income per person that is received. Economic bonuses are one of the best ways to increase your funding if you have limited space to grow population (like in a tiny/small map)
Trade: Trading with other races can really help a struggling economy and trade income increases over the time that a route is intact. An added bonus is that races that you trade with have better relations with you, thus helping to prevent them from possibly going to war.
Morale: A double feature here- you can tax your citizens at a higher rate with less drawbacks with a high morale, and also where your morale sits affects the rate of population growth. At 100% morale you have double growth, and then it goes down from there at certain intervals where at belove 40% you can have negative growth (losing people, BAD!)
Population Growth: A higher growth ability means more people, faster and more people means more money.


One of the big issues that gets players into troubling is over-spending, especially early. Every manufacturing point or research point costs money, and so if you have every planet trying to research, and build infrastructure, and build ships, you can quickly fall into debt. Also be careful with leases; that cheap 500BC and 20BC/week may sound tempting but doing that repeatedly adds up REALLY quick and can kill your economy.

Again very useful tips. Thanks again.

But what are the power plants or the coordinators millertime335 above mentioned?
Most likely I have not yet to discovered such a techs...but just checking.

So if I have one industry and one research planet I should have 6 economy planets and in total 8 planets.... Quite high I think, at least in campaing scenarios...

And is it right tactic to not build infrastructures simultaneously on every planet? Or did I get it wrong? Of course this will depend on your starting treasury too...

But in general is it good way to go like having let's say those 8 planets at start and choosing two best suited for industry and reasearch worlds and focusing all the infrastructure development on those and let the other planets grow on them selves?

And have you build one or more factories on economy planets? Or starport at all?
Or should I fill the economy planets up with the market places?

Again mainly questions but try to cope with me...

For sandbox games, you can generalize your planets or specialize them. Either way works. I build mostly econ buildings, followed by factories, then labs. Your economy is going to dictate most of what you do in the game so that needs to have the biggest emphasis. You want enough factories to build the ships your economy can support so there's a balance there. It takes a while to get it dialed-in and how you find that balance depends on how you deal with your planets. Personally, I specialize my planets between production and economy. The higher class ones get mostly factories and the lower class ones get mostly markets.

Hope that helps

There's lots of little tricks you can discover that allow you to beat the AI on high difficulities.  It's what makes the difference.

Here's an example; Instead of building big expensive colonizers to travel rather large distances to colonize remote planets, build one fast one to get to a solar system.  Once there, buy a starport on the empty planet then build a tiny or small hull (depending on miniaturization ability) with only a colonization module.  Use those to colonize the surrounding planets.  Check the military empahasis on the new planet so the tiny colonizers build fast as possible.  Don't build anything on the new planet.  That can divert military production.  Alternatively, you can buy those tiny colonizers using the long-lease if your economy can support it.

Here's another example; Build your military hard and soon.  Use the Spin Control Center.  Get your rating up way above the other races.  Start a war and negotiate peace as soon as possible.  Provided your military rating far exceeds the opposing race, you'll find you can negotiate for a number of their planets in the process.

Here's the most extreme one and it's what I use.  Start the game with all races in a state of war with you.  Build small hull fighters with one weapon as soon as possible.  Create a perimeter around the area you think you'll be able to claim.  Blast any enemy scouts and colonizers that trespass on the stake you've claimed.  Build Eyes of the Universe ASAP (use the long-lease), otherwise you can't see them.  This tactic gets tricky and can be hard to pull off because the AI will soon come at you with powerful gun ships and transports.  You have to be in a position to negotiate peace before that happens (high military rating using the Spin Control Center).  I fight them off for a time doing upgrades on the little fighters, but at the high difficulties I can't do that for long.  I have to negotiate peace before they over-run my perimeter.  But, in the process, I've colonized easily twice as many planets as I would have otherwise.

Welcome to this great game! For new players I would suggest to first visit the Galciv2 wiki , which is a very good source of information. In addition, I would go the strategy part of this forum and read some of the excellent posts there. Perhaps go back in time a bit to see discussions when the game was just released to see how everyone discused the beginners issues. In addition the developers have also written some pieces with advice. They shouldn't be so hard to find. Finally, there are some great after action reports (AARs) that could give you some advice, if not plenty of inspiration. Have fun playing the game and share your experiences here!