Don’t know if anyone is playing the game or not but I bought it via the internet (you can purchase and down load it directly from the developer) and am having a hell of a time winning on any but the Beginner level. The game is HARD. So, I’m looking for tips and strategy advice.
-XT
I’ve been doing well by quickly colonizing as many worlds as I can (without worrying about garrisoning them), starbasing everything, snatching all the anomolies I can find, building lots of research tile improvements right off the bat, researching soil improvements and trade stuff, terraforming quickly as possible THEN lastly researching better weapons and ships, avoiding ALL conflict early on. Admittedly building no defensive ships to guard planets since I’m in such a rush seems risky, but so far so good. I’m generally agreeable to technology trades and tend to make a lot of neutral morality decisions as well, which seems to help keep the heat off me for a while. Haven’t finished a game yet, heh, as I keep tinkering with different galaxy configurations after I’ve taken over about half the star systems.
From what I hear, it’s a good plan to make friends in this game. The AI is not shy about using and abusing you or other AI, so get a strong ally and use them right back.
I’ve been essentially building star bases all along the fronteer…the cultural ones (I don’t remember what they are called atm…I’m at work). This seems to have the effect of allowing me to win culturally, at least on the beginner setting. I haven’t tried your research pattern except the first game…and basically I got attacked by 2 races at once who wiped me out in fairly short order. I might give it a go in the next game though. Have you played on the higher settings yet?
As for the rest you and I are playing about the same…I go for as many planets early on as I can…anything that colonizable. I just use the buy now button to buy colony ships as soon as I find a new planet that can be colonized. I also pretty much trade tech whenever a civ asks me…though I don’t give away the long research stuff like larger hulls or more advanced diplomacy…or higher weapons tech if I have the advantage. So far I’m generally ahead of the other civs out there technology wise…for some reason, at least on beginner, they don’t really take advantage of things like larger hull size or their most advanced tech to produce optimal warships. No idea why, though I suspect this won’t be the case at the higher level settings.
I haven’t really figured out the morality thing yet. I generally wind up evil so far, as I usually pick either neutral or the devil selections…devil ones when they come up as research and when I have billions of citizens and will ‘only’ lose a few odd million. 
Its definitely not shy about abusing you…or stabbing you in the back if it can get an advantage. I’m having some difficulty so far getting allies…at least until I’m so overwhelmingly in the lead that I don’t really need them in any case. Probably its the whole morality thing that I haven’t quite worked out yet.
So far I have to say that I’m really enjoying the game. Its not as flashy as other games, but I REALLY like the way you can customize your star ships. I just wish they had a tactical turned based battle ability so I could fight my star ships that way. There was a game out years ago that had this feature but I don’t remember what its called now. It was made by Stardock also IIRC (not GalCiv I btw…it was something else). Other than that I am definitely enjoying the game a lot…much more that Star Wars Empire at War which I bought a few weeks ago.
-XT
I’ve had a little difficulty even on “normal” hardness, or whatever the next step up from beginner is. I’ve eked out a win my last couple of games, though.
The first two turns I buy two scouts, and manually explore all the close star systems looking for the juicy planets. I set the flagship to auto-explore and auto-whatever causes it to check anomalies.
On the third turn I buy a colony ship. Sometimes I buy another on the fourth. That pretty much drains my seed money. I then set my colony to pump out more colony ships.
The key is to grab as many planets as possible early on. I try not to colonize two in the same system until I’m out of systems. That way I get my influence as large as possible. I usually end up with one or more of the other races sharing a system with me, but then I can start the influence war to take their planets.
I try to get a few constructors built early so I can take the resources. These can make a huge difference in the game.
At first I was having trouble because all the AI players hated me. I found out the key is to dump some research into diplomacy fairly early. The other key is military power. One bad thing about the game is that the AI only cares about how many ships you have (or total logistics for all your ships I think), not really how mean they are. This can be to your advantage, though. As soon as I have some good manufacturing worlds going I start pumping out a very basic fleet. I watch the military graph like a hawk trying to shoot to the top early. When you have decent diplomacy and a good military rating, the AIs want to be your friends.
Once I have a good ten to fifteen basic fighters and am hopefully the top military, I conquer any minor AIs in or close to my influence. Their planets are better than just about any of the others, and because they don’t colonize other systems, you should have them beat militarily. Conquering these very early in the game gives you a good boost.
After I’ve dealt with the minor AIs I move onto one or two of the major AIs. If I’m adjacent to the weakest one, I’ll take it as soon as possible. There just aren’t enough planets to go around, and you want to be the largest population from near the start.
In my last game I just kept at the military and never stopped once I started taking planets. This was an easy victory because if you concentrate on one tree of the offensive weapons branch you can get ships that overpower the AIs. I think they concentrate on a more even approach, so it’s easy to overtake them early.
In the game before that I stopped after conquering just the close minor AIs and two of the four major ones, and switched to trying for an influence victory. This didn’t work; it just lead to a huge military buildup. By the time I switched back to military conquest, I must have had 200 to 300 ships, and I was still slightly trailing the other big AI. My fleet max logistics was 36 by that time. I think I spent a good hour just reorganizing my fleets. It was fun when each turn had two or three battles, but it lasted a long time, and became a battle of attrition. Me and the AI went through three war-peace cycles as we’d battle each other down to almost no ships left, and then build back up, and then we’d do it all over again. I finally won because each cycle I’d take two or three of his systems, and I eventually had enough that I could out-build him.
My biggest mistake in my early games was to build myself into a cash-crunch. I would have so much manufacturing and research that I could only run at 50%. Now I usually end up with three or four of the economy bonus buildings on each of the big planets, and I dump of a lot of my research into economy tech. I also try to set up trade early, and put a lot of research into that branch too. One thing that’s helped is to only schedule one or two buildings at a time on any planet, so if I see I’m getting low on income I’ll start queuing up more economy buildings. If I have plenty of income I’ll do manufacturing or research.
I’ve had the best luck going with strictly offense on my ships. I don’t waste research points on the defensive branches. I usually pick one offensive tech (missiles) and try to get as far into that branch as possible until their ships start showing up with a lot of defense for it, then switch to an alternate (usually beam). Once I’ve caught up in that branch I’ll start researching both about equally and try to build both ships so their defense can’t be too outrageous.
This game is much more fun to play than MOO3. And I love the ship designer. I’ll probably spend more time than I should for the third weekend in a row playing this game.
Well, IMHO just about everything is more fun than MOO3. 
I’d say this game is nearly as fun as the original MOO though. I really like the fact that I can put all kinds of structures and such on my ships to completely customize their look. The first couple I definitely went wild with all kinds of things sprouting off at odd angles and lots of cool superstructure.
I think I’ll take your approach on research too…at least to try out. Myself I was doing a more balanced approach to weapons tech, developing basically whatever was the least time for the most part (though going early for bigger hulls). And I had been putting defenses on my ships as well as offensive capability. So far I hadn’t had many ships defeated (as the AI seems to go with the generic ships that you just get for the most part…least in the games I’ve played thus far), but then I’ve been playing beginner mostly. When I venture higher than that I tend to lose so far.
-XT
It depends if you are trying to win the normal games, or the campaign(freakin Dread Lords :mad: ).
The one great thing I am finding, is that the AI is so damn good, there isn’t a strategy to win. It’s all about recognizing your strengths, the particular situation of the universe, and the way the game goes. It’s a lot of counter-punching, and revising and refocusing, as the computer does as well.
Because of that, don’t skimp on espionage. It’s not all that expensive if you start pretty early, and you need to know what is going on in the world, it is not a “sit in the corner and wait till your ready” type game.
Has anyone tried out the multiplayer part of the game? Seems like it would be a LONG game playing against other humans.
-XT