How hard do you expand?

[icevic]

Recently I have encountered a problem of over expanding. Over the Last 30 turns or so, I have conquered almost all of the known galaxy while holding 18 systems and 50 planets. What motivated me to agressively expand is that I have acquired my neighbor specie's colonization technology, thus putting me (gas giant) and them (rock) into a tight race for rock planets. With these many colonies around, I became overwhelmed by the size of the empire and regret about my overexpanding policy. My ally is nice enough to become a partner with me since the beginning, but they (Phong Federation, those yellow dudes) always try to slip a colony ship or two into my system to rip a moon or a planet away from me. Thus this created numerous packets of partner planets within both of our space. In the frontier things are worse. Usually I can outrun them with my superiorly powered colony ships, but they can always grab one or two planets in every system I rushed into. This created a mixture of frontier systems with contested space. Since we both have many planets within each other's system... it would be a total war if I try dominate all systems.

There are still about 10 or so systems to be discovered, and I am quite tired of these build-only-colonyships and the race to grab the newly discovered planets as soon as possible. Not only this making border defining difficult, it would also drag the two empires into total war in almost all of their systems.

Now my question is: in my new game, should I only occupy a certain amount of systems, while research mine-laying tech as soon as possible? I find my ability to oversee such many planets lacking and tiresome.

What is the safe range of systems to have? I think 10 systems should be enough for a player while research other colonization techs. Such effort would make a system over habitable for my race, because I would have the ice, gas giant, and rocky planets within a system as my bases. Such tightly focused empire is not only easier to defend than the usual all over the place empire, it would also create a focused border, a private space free of interlopers. After the three colonization techs, I would go for the atmospheric converter tech (by the way, is it in the planetary utilization tech area?)

What do you think about my focused system expansion? I think I will try that soon!

Guess I am not a qualified 4X player... since I get tired managing too many colonies

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a lot easier, because after each turn you are forced to deal with the cities individually... in SEIV... I have to click each system and check... arrgghhh! I am such a lazy emperor!

Vic

[Baron Munchausen]

Choosing whether to be 'friendly' and get along or fight for all the territory/resources you can wrench away from the competition is the essence of the game. It's not a question of "best" but of what you want to get out of the game. How do you WANT to play? For people who like ruthless competition it's easy to choose the xenophobic course and not make treaties and not accept other races colonies in your systems. For people who want cooperation, the AI knows what treaties ae though some races are less friendly than others. <shrug>...

[Phier]

The solution to this is quite easy. Place a planet killer type ship in each of the systems where you both share colonies and his defenses are weak. Gather a fleet near in his home system. Declare war and let loose the canines of conflict.

Soon you won't have to worry about nasty colonies.

On a related note, I do wish that trade treaties didn't equal a free pass into your systems. Just because you can trade doesn't mean you can just move in.

'Violence never solved anything?!?! Just ask the Carthaginians what they think about that statement.'

[dogscoff]

AIs are usually quite happy to trade planets. decide which "mixed" systems you'd lik to keep for yourself and select a few that you can afford to lose. Trade planets in your unwanted systems for Phong plants in the systems you want. This is a good way to consolidate after a coloniser race and has the added advantag of gaining you lots of Carbon Dioxide breathing Phong citizens. (only an advantage if you don't breathe CO2 already=-)

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but balancing a family and a career ... oooh, it's all too much for me. "

[God Emperor]

Icevic,
If you seek a little conflict, set up a game in which you manually select the Rage, Pyrochette, XiChung, Darlocks, Borg and Klingons (Jraenar arent too bad either). Most of these races seem to hate treaties and declare war pretty readily.

[capnq]

I'm in a comparable situation in one of my games. My Tictsin live on Icy worlds, and I've got Partnerships with the Eee, Cue Kappa, and Sallega. Something like a third of my colonies are in systems my partners claim, because I ran out of habitable worlds in my claimed systems. If I ever get strong enough to trigger MEE, I'm going to lose a lot of real estate pretty quickly.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"