I have played my first game at an easy setting (not the the very first setting but the second) and I lost the game pretty quickly, even though I am a rather exeperienced GC1 player. I know I have not been playing in the best possible way and in particular not been very agressive both in:
- colonization
- military research
I played rather laidback, developping (economically that is) my few colonies and broadly researching technologies (i.e. not going frantically along the military trees -which I was discovering-).

As it happened, at least one of my neighbours had a drastic expansion program, colonizing everything he could (good for him), but also researching military technologies agressively and building the appropriate ships. Before I could awake, he had a fleet at my door (I did not even have the technological means to build a military vessel) AND downloading troops on my few colonies. I also noted that all my neighbours were colonizing like mad.

While this could be OK on a (normal ?) high level of difficulty, I was surprised in a low difficulty game.
It is not a good idea if all games have to begin in the same way, meaning:
- build factories (to improve your building rate)
- get colony ships like crazy (to be the first to find appropriate planets)
- climb up the technology ladder along the military techs
- build up your military
- now, because the only thing you can do to keep you in the race is to conquer the opponents, crush them (if you can... if you cannot, you're doomed anyway because you have no other alternative having put all your eggs in the military basket)...

Obviously, in a game where you have neighbours (small map or large map with many civs) this is the winning strategy (because NOT doing this is a losing strategy, somebody else doing it in your stead). The game should ensure there are other paths to victory. Some possibilities include:

- Do not allow colony ships to load billions at once AND ensure that a colony's production is in proportion with the population (which doesn't seem to be the case now) ; this would mean that extending your colonies very fast would result in a lot of low producing and vulnerable planets.
- Do not allow one troop transports to load billions at once. It lloks weird to see, at the very early stage of the game, a ship transporting 1.8 bilion people capturing a 8.5 bilion people colony. I know the logic of the game behind this (planetary assault is easy), but I think the bonus should be technology dependant. Thus, not only at these early stages, the attacker should require more that one ship (maybe one ship for 0.5 bilion troops), but he should be losing maybe 1 for 2 (still a very big advantage), unless he is willing to bombard the planet in some way (lose PQ/improvements). This would make early invasions a tricky business and prevent blitzkriegs...
- Do not allow newly formed colonies to extend your ship ranges, at least until some upgraded form of starport is built (something in the logistical tree). This would limit the initial extensions possibilities (including war) to what's in range of the initial system, or building appropriate starbases (which is, in itself, more costly than establishing a new colony with no return on investment).
- Place a cost to build a new colony, maybe dependant on PQ (but I'd say not dependant), so that after the third or so colony, you'll meet an economic strain (i.e. low treasury).
- Have a colony drain your treasury each turn until some level of development is reached (that's the way earth colonies went). This may also be PQ related.
- Make most low PQ planets undesirable for early colonization for economic reasons : If the previous cost suggestions is used, that is already the case (a low PQ planet will drain your treasury with no hope of having a positive return on investment before a long time (i.e. higher technology)). Other possibilities could include: limitations on the total population (which could limit the production), reduction of the population growth rate...

In any case, at a lower that normal difficulty setting, an alien civ should not be that fast on my tail: it should be on another AI tail (even if I am the weakest civ), if only because the difficulty level is low...

Yves