quote:
Originally posted by augustinetorres:
This all may sound obvious, but I'll give my 2 cents anyways.
SEIV is like any 4X game it's just a huge land grab. The key to winning is to expand, expand, expand. The best tactics won't beat an empire that has a larger economic base that can outspend and outresearch an opponent.
Build colony ships with your home planets almost exclusively. Switch to defensive ships when you have first contact - but continue to grow especially if your opponent is friendly - in a game with humans this almost always the case. The computer will invariably attack you until you get a treaty.
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I agree. Expand. I often build 10 colonizers the first 10 turns using emergency build. After that, I scrap my shipyard and build a Mineral mining facility with my homeworld at slow build.
Someone mentioned build defense first thing on a new colony. That would depended on number of players and galaxy size and if I can guard the planet with warships or not. My typical first builds are often Weapon Platform with Missles and a Shipyard.
You want to build shipyards so you can spend resources and build more colonizers. If you feel defenseless, set your colonizers to Ram. Colonizers usually win ramming with Escorts, especially scout types with only one weapon. If you see a Frigate or better, you are probably dead, might as well cripple them before you get shot down.
Once you get shipyards at your second tier worlds, start building colonizers at normal build (two turns). Depending on your production rate, you might only be able to build one colonizer a turn at your homeworld since you have population bonus there. If you cannot build a colonizer in two turns, redesign your race.
With your third tier of planets out from your homeworld you are probably getting close to someone. After you build shipyards, start building some armed ships at those.
When you start need more resource, use one of your shiphards to build a space port, if you can do it in two turns. Otherwise, any world will do.
Once you get one colony in a system, leap frog it with the next colonizer, Let the shipyard there seed those planets. It can build cheaper 3 or 4 engine colonizers to get to those planets quick enough.
Subsequent colonies in a system can build resources or research facilities. Extra shipyards if you are near someone.
Once a shipyard is no longer on a frontier, it can start building other facilities or orbital shipyards.
Around turn 20 or 30, you need to start building more warships and escorting them as there will be lots of dangeours ships out there by then.
As for research, I have found that Point Defense are an early must, in case you meet an agressive race early on. Missles + point defenses allow you to build Weapon Platforms that make planets costly to take out. ECM I is good to have early on too. Prop 3 will make your ships cheaper. Escort and Destroyer tech are good. DUC III+ are cheap to get weapons worth going for, unless you are going for missle attack ships. You can skip the weapons/arms stuff if you think players are passive and go for Research II, Solar Panels. Construction|Mines can be achieved rather quickly, which will defend your planets even better than weapon platforms. However, that will not give you warships capable of escorting colonizers once you meet a competing race.
Something new I have been toying with, but I am not sure if it is worth it yet. A colonizer with a Cargo II component can carry a Weapon Platform with it. That saves building one the first turn of a new colony.
Trade Colonization Techs with the first race you meet. This will give you more worlds to colonize.
If the first facility you build in a system is going to be a shipyard to seed the others, consider colonizing the lowest facility world first as that colony will be too busy to build other facilities.
One final note. Cargo Specialists can maintain the population bonus while skimming off colonists for each new colonizer. You can play with a smaller construction bonsus to build 10 colonizers in 10 turns with these races. Better be sure what your starting homeworld size will be before optimizing for these.
Some advocate building orbital shipyards at your homeworld instead of colonizers. Here is the problem: It will take 2 or 3 turns to build one of these. Then it will take 3 to 5 turns to build a colonizer at one of these. That means your first colonizer leaves your world at turn 6 to 9. By turn 9, I expect my second tier to be producing colonizers already.
Re: Opening Strategies
Hybrid Mode
