Let me just reiterate how absolutely crucial rapid expansion is. I have got it down to a fine art, to the point where I can crush the AI even on incredible (note: only tried duel on tiny maps). The AI cannot cope with a properly exectuted colony rush, at all. I am writing up a report of a game I played last night and I will post it (with plenty of screenshots) to demonstrate the power of XREX (extremely rapid expansion)

I do not use extra speed or rush buying of ships. I will post the basic strategy here, it will also be included in my report which I will make a separate thread for.

Game settings: Tiny map, otherwise default. 1 opponent, set to incredible. Relations are set to 'at war' and will not change, i.e. I refuse any peace offers. It is far too easy to exploit the AI otherwise.

Custom Race: +30 economy, +50 military production, 1 point left over, I tend to pick luck. Political party Federalists for a total of +50 economy. Techs: Hyperdrive, New prop techniques, ion drive, xeno engineering, xeno research.

Strategy:

Turn 1:Immediately buy a xeno lab, set spending and research to 100%, taxes to 49%, begin researching Impulse Drive. It should be done in 3 weeks. Set flagship to auto-survey and send initial colony towards the nearest system that will increase your range.

Turn 2: Buy factory.

Turn 3: Buy factory.

Turn 4: Impulse drive is done, you should be able to design a colony ship with an effective speed of 7 (no support) or 6 (with support). Create both variants.
Set military production to 100% and start building the longer ranged version. It should be done in 2 weeks (this is why we take the +50 mil ability).

Turn 5: Hope that you managed to get a good nearby planet with your initial colony, if not, keep it moving, it has plenty of range. Also hope that your flagship found some money. This is not vital but makes things easier later.

Turn 6: Send your new colony ship to the nearest star to the enemy homeworld. Depending on luck and starting positions you may get there in time. Note: if you see a really good planet (15+) along the way, grab it, but otherwise keep going. At this point you should have around 3700BC and be losing 35 or so per turn. You can keep pumping colony ships for quite a while.

Turns 7+: Keep sending your fast colony ships to unclaimed stars and look for habitable planets. Since you are producing 1 every 2 turns it will be very quick. Take planets near the enemy and backfill. Prioritize high quality worlds. If you see economic resources design and build a fast constructor to take them. The other resources are not crucial at first. Try to restrict the AI to 3 to 4 worlds. This is possible but requires luck. More likely they will get 5. Most should be shit though.

When you have colonised all you can, set social spending to 100%. Specialise worlds, but focus on economic improvements with a few dedicated research planets. When your treasury gets low, switch to 100% research and get economic + military techs - you will need them - the comp, even with 4 worlds to your 9-12 will still outproduce you at first. With the huge advantage you have from the landgrab, though, it is pretty easy to win from this point.

The economic bonus means that you will be able to keep spending high. This is essential. Try this strategy and I garuntee that with a little practice anyone can beat incrdible/suicidal

xml

Just changing the colony module cost in GC2Types.xml can make a big difference to the speed of the land grab. Right now, a colony module costs 35. Raising that price to 70 (2x) or 140 (4x) (or if you really want to make it a challenge, 10x) slows down the rate of construction and makes the cost of the buy now option a serious strategic decision. I would have to play test it a bit, but I think 4x might be a good number. That makes a buy now cost of 2100 (build cost of 206), instead of the default cost of 960 (build cost 101). That reduces the maximum number of initial colony ships that can be bought at the beginning from 5 to 2 without incurring a debt. At least as important as the buy now cost is that the higher build cost increases the time to build by 100%. That change might make a smaller land grab + economic spending a viable strategy to land grab.

Sure, you could build a bunch of warriors from your first one or two cities and go crush all other reachable opponents early on, but to me, that's just not an enjoyable game. If I want quick and constant confrontation I'll play RTS games like Age of Empires or Rise of Nations. But TBS games appeal to our desire to play for hours and days on end, cultivating our little empire over eons of game time... ...If the only confident path to victory is rapid early expansion then this makes a tremendous ammount of gameplay depth irrelevant. Why bother building up a small highly advanced, heavilly fortified, peaceful utopian society when it will simply be crushed later on because it doesn't contol enough planets?

Completely agreed.

I would love to see some kind of Planatery fortification. Also I think some kind of tech like logistics or another that limits sets a base number of planets with some kind of penalties to all planets based on how far they are away from your home. Another option would be making the planet far more succeptable to influence. For population growth as a percentage rate instead of fixed might help. Also having to use colony ships to haul additional people to a planet to kick start things might be a good idea. Having population have some basic effects on productivity I think is also a good idea. I think that the game is great as it is but I just wanted to add some ideas for the future or future variations. I think this list is full of great suggestions and any of them would add interesting different strategies. I am sure most would lead to many complex problems for the AI to handle so most of these are not going to be implemented soon.

its easy to mod all those things in.
making colony modules hella expensive, making colony upkeep fees insanely high, etc.
There might even be a hook to tie colony upkeep to technology, I dunno, but the problem it getting the AI to figure it out.

with the expensive module it'll just spend eternity building colony ships when it should be focusing on science and social production.
with high upkeep fees it might starve itself to death

You just can't tech-up due to constant tech-trades. You put everything you've got on research, and research like mad, only to see other races have even more techs than you even on your chosen "tech-route" because of tech trading (or in same cases, due to intimidation, in case of the evil races), and that's just frustrating.

You can still use that strategy, but you need to trade techs like the rest of the civilizations. I have put massive amounts into research, and I always have a tech advantage, because I use my extra research and the tech trading strategy together. This game is different than most strategy games, because diplomacy is actually very important. So far I have won about a half a dozen games without even going to war, just because I was able to trade peacefully with the other civs. You just have to add diplomacy as one of the regular things that you do. Talk to the other civs often to see what you can get.

This game is different than most strategy games, because diplomacy is actually very important

I believe you're right. Ignore the AI, and it'll start to hold a grudge. The problem with me was that because I won my first few games just with diplomacy, I didn't want to touch diplomacy at all in my next games. And you just can't do that, since diplomacy in GalCiv2 is part of the game just like colonizing, researching and developing your empire. In my next games I'll try some different strategies while not neglecting my diplomacy, thanks

Guys, you can get a long way towards this kind of gameplay on your own by editing a couple xml files. First, delay when colony modules are available in order to postpone when the land rush occurs. Create a new tech in the TechTree.xml. Call it colony logistics or whatever. Then, in GC2Types.xml, make the colony module reliant on this new tech.

You could also make the module very expensive, which means not only will colonization be delayed, but it would be reliant upon a solid backbone of industry. Doing these 2 simple things will take you all of five minutes, and should produce the result you're looking for.

One thing I really dislike about the recent civ games is the artificial limits the designers put on expansion. I don't think the game should hamstring a well-run civ from expanding, so I'd hate to see that change in GalCiv.

I like all your ideas very much. Your ideas got me thinking of how to deal with the problem with what's already in the game and without requiring too much modification. We all are seeing a problem and solution at different angles. Rather than specific calculations I will outline what I think is fundamentally critical in balancing this problem.

[The Problem]

The game more relies on the initial land grab than on the strategies used in conjunction with the varied and interesting abilities of the different races to achieve victory. Why have all these interesting abilities and attributes if in the end, all that really matters is how quickly you colonize and how many planets you have? It doesn't matter how good you are at research, construction, trade, politics, or military. If you only have 2 or 3 planets and your opponent has 6 right off the bat then you're not going to stand a chance. This introduces a rigged game from the start based on chance and luck.

Instead of just finances to afford the star ships and buy them outright at the start, there needs to be other obstacles to expansion. The obstacles are there but are very easy to bypass due to several factors. You can reach the goal (a winning advantage such as most colonies) without having to deal with the obstacles. The amount of colonies is ideally balanced at the start, just one. It is the ease and speed at which imbalance can be reached in the game that is the problem. I can tell what kind of game I'm in for within the first 10 or so turns of the game. This takes out the mystery and strategy and puts you into trench warfare mode right away, especially if you sent your ships to sectors that ended up having no habitable planets. If you were the lucky one, then you can expect an easy game.

The problem I see is that the goal is reached too soon without much effort or time involved. We seize the land quickly, do not have to worry about planetary invasion for a long time, and then sit back and build our new territory without having to worry about upkeep, order, or invasion.

[The Factors]

1. Too much starting money eliminating the reason for each race having their unique approach. This reduces the strategy.

2. Deficits are easy to come out of.

3. Planets are too easy to reach at the very start of the game. Can't reach a planet? No problem, just build a starbase or some cheap life support.

4. Lack of effect for having certain traits and abilities. It seems that number of colonies will determine the outcome more than intelligent play and strategy based on your abilities and available resources.

5. Planets are too easy to maintain and keep order.

6. No need to worry about Invasion for a long time after your colonies are established. If a civilization can build colony ships then they can build troop ships. These should go hand in hand. A colony and troop module should be one in the same practically.

7. No need to worry about aerial bombardment for a long time.

8. No noticeable effect on the home planet these colony ships are coming from. Production, morale, and taxes stay pretty much the same.

9. No noticeable morale effect when your population has an enemy fleet overhead or is invaded on the ground.

10. Fast population growth is achieved too quickly without the necessary techs or improvements. This eliminates the benefits of a fast reproductive race, further reducing strategy.

All these factors favour the initial Colony Ship search and expand mode.


[Ways to resolve the factors]

You should need to research, build, trade, use military force, influence and your political savvy, in order to reach these goals. That is the idea of the game but it is being implemented in an imbalanced way. The framework is there, and the game has some great ideas that make it fun. It just needs some thought and adjustment to balance it. This will bring strategy based on your civilizations government, attributes, and philosophy, to the forefront rather than as a bonus factor. Right now it's overshadowed by the ease of colony expansion and the consequent lack of usefulness of your abilities.

Everyone should be equal at the start like in a chess game. Each move you and your opponent make determines what kind of situation you will find yourself in. The game should be more about you and your opponents creating your situations based on your different strategies and focuses rather than working with a starting situation you have little control over and that negates the reason for having certain abilities.

The current setup is like finding yourself in a game where the pieces are set up randomly. You have more or less pieces than your opponent that had little to do with strategy. The one with the most pieces now has the ability to make his pieces stronger in less time than you no matter what strengths your empire might have inherently and the strategy you are using. Therefore each game is not starting even though it appears that it does; and each game is not so much affected by race attributes and governments though it appears that they are.

1. Limit the starting money or make colony ships more expensive.

2. Make deficits hard to come out of.

3. Limit the starting range of ships and make range extension more difficult to achieve. Perhaps you meet, trade, ally, and war, with a few nearby civs long before you meet the rest. As it is I meet everyone very quickly.

4. Make production and expansion more reliant on how well you take advantage of your particular race strengths, and minimize the weaknesses.

5. Make order harder to maintain and more penalties or events for ignoring morale. For example, a planet might revolt and become independent if you ignore it at low levels of morale for too long. It will then start to amass an army to defend itself and take things into its own hands. Perhaps it could start colonizing as well. That would be kind of interesting. You will then have to win it back somehow before someone else comes and takes it.

6. Invasion should be part of the equation from the start. Sure you can colonize as many planets as you are able and can afford to, but can you hold on to them? Right now it's not something that enters the picture. The aggressive expansionist approach wins out. No matter how good your race is in something the one with the larger territory can match or exceed your efforts since they have more to draw from.

7. Ships should be able to destroy industry and population right away. The larger your fleet the more damage they can do per turn.

8. The current scheme is alright it's just that population grows so quickly without the necessary techs that sending off huge colony ships loaded with colonists doesn't affect you. This amount is enough to get your new colony up and running quickly because of the high growth rate.

9. Bombardments should affect morale more severely as should invasions. Perhaps instead of sending in a massive army all at once you instead pick away at them to lower their morale and then come in with a smaller army later. Or, if you invaded them earlier, their morale should drop and influence the result of the second invasion. This would introduce more strategy. An orbiting enemy ship or fleet should automatically blockade the enemy planet. This would affect morale and trade. Knowing that an enemy ship hovers over you constantly would certainly damage morale to a great extent.

10. Make fast population growth only possible with the right tech, structures, morale, finances, and investment choices.



[What problems should be associated with Colonization?]

To answer that we need to look at what the individual colonist needs first to determine why we have upkeep costs in the first place:

1. Food

2. Shelter

3. Protection

4. Happiness

So now we know that these are the requirements and upkeep goes towards maintaining these requirements in better, more efficient ways.


[What determines upkeep costs?]

Formulas are fine for certain things, but let's try and figure out what creates the upkeep in the first place.


1. Food:

This is not part of the game, but I'll explain how the present farm structures could be enhanced to make it part of the game. In turn it will help alleviate this problem of unhindered early over-expansion. Presently, farming only serves to increase the population cap and does not affect the maintenance of keeping your population alive. So you can have a colony with 10 billion people and not have a single food producing structure. It would have been a better way to keep population growth and expansion in check. To make your population grow you need to be able to sustain them and this is where upkeep comes into play. I think this is the root of the problem and fixing this would help to make expansion more realistic. Farms are already in the game so it's just a matter of expanding their purpose and capabilities.

Let's say that each .1 Billion (100 Million colonists) require .1 Billion food units per turn. A number will indicate how much food you are making each turn on this planet. Perhaps the more you invest in social work the more food that is created based on the number of farms on the planet. A green number with a + next to this could represent the amount of surplus you are making. A red number with a - would indicate the deficit on the planet.

A new colony without the food structure should automatically start in the negative and require external support till it is established. A well maintained and established colony would most likely be in the positive. If your colony is in the negative then it will require external support in order to maintain. If you ignore your population at .1 for too long we'll assume they starve or scatter dissolving your colony. Your colony will then disappear from the map.


The food will need to come from within or from outside the colony. The logical way to go about it would be to have to build farms which would require investment and time to put in place as they do now. Farms are already in the game, so why not just make them dual purpose or expand their purposes? Until enough farms, and enough labor to run the farms are in place, you will have to receive support from your other colonies by way of transports delivering supplies. This would make a viable strategy for your opponents to thwart your efforts to bite off more than you can chew. In order to keep your quickly acquired colonies you will need a large fleet to support the transports in route. At the beginning of the game you don't have the means to research, create fleets, and construct structures, all at the same time. This will be an automatic limiting mechanism. What better way to limit things than by having the enemy AI's thwart your efforts of holding onto scattered and fledgling colonies? Eventually, with the right technology, you won't need farms for food and will get much more efficient at creating energy.


2. Shelter:

This is also not part of the game and is assumed to be automatic. Shelter requires social work. Something similar with shelter can be done as I mentioned for food. I think the food requirement is enough to keep things interesting and in balance. You can also throw them into the same basket and call it supplies. Either that or involve factories. The more factories you have the faster you can build housing to house your populace. The race growth factor would still influence your max growth and the amount of social work being done would influence if you could grow at your max or something below your max growth rate. It would be very similar to how food would be done in my suggestion.

3. Protection:

Maintaining a garrison to ward off attacks on land and in space. Researching and building structures to make this more efficient and powerful and to provide more troops. I think troops should have been done similar to ships. Since they are in solely as a numeric value of the population during invasions there is not much we can do about this unless more was added to the game. Ideally troops should be separate from population. The number of troops tied in to social work, population, and military production in a similar way to shelter and food. The quality of the troops would still be dependent on your race stats, technology level, and morale.

4. Happiness: Building a garrison or researching and building structures to improve it. As is done now with structures, taxes, influence. There should be the garrison option for Military Empires. They should get a bonus for keeping happiness with garrisons.

I agree that most GC2 games start with identical boring colony rushes, but it's not absolutely required. I had a bad start yesterday - Medium galaxy, 9AIs, Genius - and wound up colonizing no planets in the initial rush, besides the Class 4 in my home system. All the other stars were much closer to other AIs or had no habitable planets. The AIs wound up with 3-6 planets each.

But my homeworld had two specials (300% mfg, 300% research), and I had a nearby minor race to trade with, and I thought, why not play it out?

Long story short, I stuck with my one system for perhaps 100 turns. Kept research at around 70%, tech-whored like crazy. Rush bought the ships I needed. Eventually declared on my closest neighbor the Drengin, who had a much more powerful fleet - which I ignored as my faster ships took their four planets. This got me back into the game, and I eventually won with an influence victory.

Some observations:
(1) This only worked because it was a medium galaxy. My rivals were only 4x my size. If you have only one system on a huge/abundant galaxy, you're hosed.

(2) The medium galaxy also meant I had early contact with all 9AI + 1 minor. So when I researched something, I got a LOT of money trading it to everyone. LIkewise, I could trade for anything useful the AIs researched. So I had cash to rush-buy and didn't fall behind in tech.

(3) You can only play this way for a little while. By the time I attacked the Drengin, I had fallen far below the AIs in research and had already cherry picked most of the cheaper stuff on the tech tree. Buying my invasion fleet also took most of my treasury. If I hadn't attacked & beaten the Drengin, I wouldn't have lasted much longer.

GG2 is never going to have anything like Civ IV's OCC - you can win that game on Deity with one freakin' city if you have the right strategy! You need planets and population to win, period. But it's not total death if you lose out on or ignore the early land rush.