Planetary Invasion.


Personally, I have a hard time seeing many situations when its really worthwhile researching colonization tech at all, instead of just teching up on weapons (which you always need the entire game regardless of the game philosophy your pursuing), and planetary invasion.


The colonization techs are time intensive to research, only useful in rare and specific situations, and the AI wont trade them (generally speaking), so I say let someone else do the work and gimp their own research que. As long as the issue isnt going to be forced (as long as there are free planets to be had and colony tech isnt mandatory), in nearly any scenario I can think of youd be better off getting a jump ahead in military tech instead, let someone else colonize and build factories for you, then take the planet, get the base colony tech for free, then researching the second half of that specific colony tech to remove the penalties at your lesiure.


Of course, Im given to understand that some races prefer not to conquer their neightbors, and while I cant understand that particular philosphy, do appreciate that some people might not opt for the invasion route. In which case, Id go for the class 18 planet( a single excellent planet is much more valuable than two average planets).

So true - they're very expensive and usually you only have one or two planets (until you start conquering) for which they're useful.



It depends what you offer. The colonization phase of my games usually has two smoothly-interlocking halves, joined together by a single session of tech trading.

Part 1 involves scouting the nearby systems and grabbing everything that isn't nailed down, even PQ 1 and 2 planets (they're SO useful later, after you've terraformed them to PQ 15-16 planets, and I like to get their population started asap).

On the turn where I've run out of habitable planets to colonize and my next colony ship can reach the best 'other' type of planet I plan to grab, I take a quick look at all of the other races' techs before deciding which one I want to trade with first. Once I've picked out that first sucker - the one with the most planet techs that I need, and the most other techs in a tie situation, I offer that faction a research treaty. Normally, unless my diplo rating is abysmal, they will cheerfully give me every tech in their posession, their space mining ship, and a few hundred bcs in the bargain. If I'm very lucky, sometimes I can get them to throw in a reciprocal research treaty (?!). Then I take all of the techs I got from that race and trade or sell them to all other races because hey, they're going to sell them anyway, so I might as well get the cash instead.

Then I usually have no trouble gobbling up whatever other planets I need or want before I switch over to industrial and military buildup.

I've gotten used to playing with tech trading turned off, because of the way the A.I. traded amongst itself. Has it been tweaked so that it's now worth leaving on?

I should add that I've been playing in small and medium galaxies where there isn't as much time to catch up to the ai without some tech trading; that mid-colonization trade session is usually the very first trade I do during a game. Also, at that size it's impossible to get enough straight-up habitable planets to make a go of it when the AI factions can put out colony ships twice as fast as you can.