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"

[Lemmy]

In my new game i wanted to make sure that i didn't share any system with allies. That usually ends up in war, so i made a bloodthirsty race with 5000 racial points and all five special tech areas.
There oxygen-breathing and have rock as home type

Here are some game settings i can remember :
no mods
large spiral galaxy
not all warp points connected, but i generated a map with all the systems connected.
warp points located anywhere in sytem
tech level low
tech cost medium
AI difficulty hard

I started in a system with only one warp point and four rock planets. So i started colonizing and exploring. The system next to me was a destroyed star with several asteroid fields around it and three warp points, one of which leading back to my home system.
No problem i thought, there should be plenty of planets beyond the asteroids....wrong, one of the warp point lead to another destroyed star with asteroid system, and the other to a nebula, so now i've discovered 4 system, and only my home system has planets.

then through the nebula warp point a Phong ship arrives, i quickly destroy it, before it finds any planets i want to colonize.
After i put some ships on the warp point to prevent any of his ships to sneak through. Now with that warp point secure i decide to explore the other side of the second ateroid system, which has only one unexplored warp point (you still following this ?). Finally a planet system, with , again, one other warp point, but that leads to another asteroid system with no other warp points.
So i have 2 systems to colonize and only one warp point to worry about, the one leading into the nebula. After colonizing all of the available colonies i decide to try to take over the Phong planets lying beyond the nebula, through the nebula and find that his home system is right next to it, with one other warp point. Beyond that warp point there are two other planet sytems, both with Phong colonies in them. After a long time of war and non-agression pacts ( i had to sign one, he was about to glass one of my key planets in his systems ) i finally have driven him out of the system, while still maintaining 2nd place. I've also met the Xi'chung (?), those insects.
2nd place with 170k points sounds ok, but the number 1, the terrans, have 790k !!and with all the nebulas and asteroids, my outer most sytems is 5 sytems away, with two warp oints leading away from my, one to a nebula, that is also the only way the enemy can come through (Xi'chung), and one to a black hole, it's a normal warp point and it brings you 2 sectors away from the center of the hole. In that system is another warp point but that one is weird, so i don't think i have to expect anyone coming through that one

so the morale of this story is, share the systems, and then when you're absolutely ready to take everything over, declare war and take everything fast.

[This message has been edited by LemmyM (edited 05 June 2001).]

I make a point of colonizing at maximum colony ship range scattered all over the map (Ancient Race). I PREFER colonies in enemy systems, preferably home systems. That way when I blitz there is a dreadnought available for blockade immediately. See my postings in "Basic Stategy", "really big games" and "TDM-Modpack politics in really big game".