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opening move question
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I try to keep my spending as high as I can while maintaining a positive income. It will vary a lot, so I don't worry if I start losing BCs for a while. I don't micromanage the spending slider like some do. Many times, I will crank the spending slider up to 100% and not look at it again for several years. The main thing is to try not to get under -500BC in your treasury, because then you can't build or research anything.
On resource starbases, I concentrate on building every module that increases the resource bonus. If the SB happens to be in a sector that has a planet, I will build production or trade modules as needed. I always build a starbase in the sector that has my best system and max out the production modules. Usually that is my trade base, too since trade is worth more when coming/going from your best planet.
Hope that helps!
          
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#2
by Citizen PirateRob - 2/13/2004 4:53:13 PM
Well, the opening move for ALL levels of play, "cake-walk" to "maso" is the same. The first stage of the game is what everyone calls the big land grab. Here, the typical strategy is to set military spending to 100%, set your spend rate to 100% and adjust your tax rate so that Sol has a moral of 100.. just barely. you want a 100 morale to get the 2x growth bonus associated with it, population growth is the KEY here. This will have your economy running in a deficit spending mode but your treasury has 1000bc in it so dont worry too much about it until you get down to arround 200bc or so left.
Have Sol build colony ships, and have your survey ship scout out likely star clusters for habitable planets. Ignore anomolies unless they are near your exploration route. Have your initial colony ship head for the nearest colonizable star if you see one. If you dont see a suitable star on turn one, send the colony ship to the nearest star cluster. (actualy, there are a lot of little decisions to make about exploration and where to send your first colony ship but for beginners, its probably enough to just head for the nearest likely stars)
When you establish a colony, have it start building more colony ships. Or alternately, you can have the first couple of colonies build scouts first then more colony ships. No more than 3 scouts are needed for most maps.. Huge or Gigantic you might build 4 scouts... maybe. Small or tiny maps, maybe just 1 scout. Once you have a scout or two, let the survey ship go bust anomolies.
New colony ships built at earth should pick up 200m colonists. Other colony ships built on the colony planets should only pick up 20m or 30m unless there is a real juicy target close by... then split the population in that case.
Continue in the colony ship rush until you have exhausted all available suitable planets within reach (PQ 15+). Usualy this is about the time you meet up with the aliens. Its OK to have a few extra colony ships left over in this case. You can use them to add population to some of the colonies that are low on population.
The next phase is research. By this time, you will be behind the AI in technology. Go 100% research and make a b-line for trade (4 yellow techs), then get the tech that enables habitat improvement (first 2 green techs). You can also go for the deflector technology if you think you need to build some ships.. defenders to be exact. (first 2 blue techs)
Now is the time to check for tech trades. Trade with minor civs first, then majors for everything you can get. If your lucky, you might be able to pick up everything the aliens know and be even with them in tech for a short while anyway. Care should be taken not to trade away any techs that allow building wonders or tradegoods unless someone else already has that tech. The minor races are particulary annoying because they have a tendency to build wonders and trade goods at an amazing rate 
After this research push, you can switch to 100% social spending and build all the PQ enhancing items (soil enr, hab improve) then moral boosters (entertainment center)
Next phase is 100% military build again. Build freighters for trade, constructors for starbases (for nearby resources) and defenders if desired. build at least 6 freighters. Trust me, you will be able to use them eventualy.. better to build them now and get them near likely trade targets now. Then when you get the tech, you can establish the trade route right away.
All during these phases, you should be tweaking your tax rate to keep 100 morale on Earth. Usualy this means tweaking down taxes until you start building PQ enhancers and morale boosters, then tweak up. Watch that you dont get any other planets below 54% though.. At some point, you will have to reduce your spending rate to less than 100% to keep your treasury from going negative. A bit of debt isnt too bad if your in the middle of building PQ or morale boosters though.. you will gain income soon enough to recover anyway.
There you have it, this is the basic opening strategy for most games. Of course, there is a LOT more to it in the details. You can certainly fine tune your spending rates to get maximum efficency out of every bc spent. Note that any bc's spent in "empty" build queues are wasted. Also, any bcs over what is needed to finish (or research) ANYTHING the next turn are wasted... ie, if you only need 5bcs more to build that colony ship but spend 10bcs... 5bcs go down the big economic black hole, same for research... so you can micromanage your spend rates to get the least waste if you want... and you WILL need that skill to survive at higher difficulty levels like masochistic level
Hope this helps.
Rob
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| You can also go for the deflector technology if you think you need to build some ships.. defenders to be exact. (first 2 blue techs) |
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Or want some juicy tech trade since the AI value this tech very high. IF there are some aliens (majors or minors) that don't have it but instead lots of others technologies
      
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just wanted to make sure everyone saw Theoden's post on opening moves started last summer. There is some good stuff here:  Link
  
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