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Leapfrog - Starting Strategies Part 1
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by Diplomat Ralegh - 5/1/2003 12:59:22 AM
*** I play Gigantic at Crippling - you judge how much of this is relevent to you ***
(This is the first of three or four threads I will spawn over the next few days with some radical ideas I am trying out - comments very welcome!)
Major inefficiency in how I was expanding previously - Earth would send out colony ship after colony ship, while the new planets did other stuff. Instead, try this: say 2 promising lines of expansion - send half of earths population off in each of the first three ships, leaving only a few people. Then let earth build other stuff. As each ship arrives, have the planet build a new colony ship, and ship off all but a few population. Repeat.
Gains: all the time ships spent covering parsecs (sic) from earth that other ships had already covered are now saved - the wave front moves out MUCH faster. Instead of Earth to first planet (3 turns); Earth to second planet (3 more turns) we get earth to first planet (3), first to second (1), etc
Disadvantage: pop doesn't grow while you are inside a transport, and this strat leaves most of the pop inside transports for quite awhile. I don't care about this at the moment, since I don't find pop a limiting factor in the early game.
Expansion: Colonise straight out, ignoring side systems. Later, those planets you did settle can build colony ships to grab the planets you skipped during the rush.
Tech Note: for PQ15 planets, I leave 1 pop. For PQ 16-21 I leave 110 pop. (Get one more credit on those planets for the 110 million taxpayers.) Keep taxes down and approval over 90, cause this strat is vulnerable to shrinkage.
Remember: you build colony ships (and generate cash) mainly for the PQ at the start, not for pop...
         
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#1
by Citizen Liquid - 5/1/2003 10:40:30 AM
This sounds interesting to start, but once the rush is over, aren't you left with a bunch of 1 pop planets that will take FOREVER to grow? Have you figured out what any of the higher breakpoints for pop are?
V
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#2
by Citizen Def Zep - 5/1/2003 12:24:29 PM
#1
Ralegh,
An interesting idea, but two weaknesses you will have to counter:
(1) Stripping Earth can leave you without a sufficient production base to build many social improvements at all.
Even though it is many player's preferred strategy to set this spending to zero at start, at some point one is going to want to produce soil enhancers, etc., and to research. (The most cost-effective building in the game, imho, is the Research Lab; for the cheapest structure/IU cost possible, you receive a +10 to influence & a +25 to science. It is how the AI sprints beyond the player in both these fields early-game.) De-populating Earth to this extent strongly imacts your ability to do so once the initial coloniziation wave is over. GalCiv is not like the Civ-series (Civ's 1-3, SMAC, etc.) where there was an inherent production advantage in producing settlers and creating as many new cities ("colonies") as possible. Brad has tweaked GalCiv to balance this.
(2) You will have to land such large-capacity colony ships on rather good PQ planets; PQ-15 or PQ-16 just won't cut it. You will, in effect, be trading a superior planet (Earth, usu. PQ18-20; PQ22 with soil enhancement) for an inferior one - - and consequent loss of travel-time to boot! - - unless you are very lucky with your starting RNG set-up.
This can give an AI set to Genius or above a tremendous advantage in the first turns of the game.
But it is interesting. Please keep us posted how it turns out.
   
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This looks like a good strategy for back-filling, especially on tight clusters and a gigantic map. I've found that often Earth is not near the edge of my cluster, or that it is in a different cluster from my frontier. I find that especially on tight clusters, where you can often set up choke points at one end or another of it, filling up the stars at the choke-points before the AI can be difficult given the often great distance Earth is, especially if you have to expand in more than one direction.
It is also a good way to extend your range in a hurry, although you really want to limit the number of planets you leave a few people on in order to keep your expenses down especially since they're not going to be producing anything worthwhile militarily.
What I tend to do is adjust everything to keeping Earth at 100 morale (pop bonus), start off sending 300-350k per transport which grows as Earth's pop does. The colonies that are thereby founded can (depending on their morale) regularly churn out 100k colony ships (I'm changing that to 110 having read that this adds an extra tax credit for PQ16-20) while replenishing their pop. These smaller colony ships can help extend range/clog choke points and accelerate your backfilling.
I don't see the advantage of sending out a significant amount of Earth's pop, all you need is the 300k or so that can sustainably send out 110k colony ships every 7 or so turns. This maintains Earth's pop, which is useful for a number of reasons. Why would you need to have such a large pop on a frontier system anyway, when in my experience all you need is to send off the 300k or so that Earth can sustain (again, micro-manage each turn keeping Earth at 100).
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#6
by Citizen Def Zep - 5/2/2003 11:17:19 AM
Ral,
A big change to my starting strategy I have taken to doing is, only colonizing planets equal to or better than Earth.
E.g., if Earth is PQ18 (my average start), I will only colonize another PQ18 or better. I will pass on PQ15's, 16's & 17's, simply noting their locations for future use.
This has improved my early game tremendously. PQ17's and less are actually economy drags on Earth in the beginning; not having to decrease your taxes or spending to allow for their inferior morale's is a tremendous benefit to building Earth up. I now build more ships, produce more IU's, research more techs, finish more social improvements and spend less of my starting treasury, "cherry-picking" the stars I colonize.
It is better to have 2xPQ18+ planets, than 20xPQ15's, in GalCiv. Outside of slower influence accumulation, I have not seen any drawback to this.
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#7
by Veteran Za H - 5/2/2003 1:00:08 PM
Ralegh:
I don't think the principle of leap frogging isn't being applied to its highest effiency here. Why freeze your population in a colony ship when you can let them multiply on a planet and still move your colonization front faster?
You can expand your sphere of influence at the speed of your initial colony ship if you use secondary colony ships produced from Earth to extend ship range. Instead of colonizing the first habitable planets you come across, send your initial colony ship past them and let the population from Earth settle them instead. Not only will you cover more ground in the same amount of time, you'll also end up with more population since most of them are multiplying on a planet. Once you reach the border of another empire, plop down a colony to stop their expansion and start back filling with population from your new planets while Earth can go ahead and do what it wants.
Def Zep:
I'll take 20x PQ15 planets over 2x PQ18s anyday 
While the PQ18s may one day develop to uber planets, they aren't that much better than the PQ15s early on. If nothing else, the tax revenue from 20x PQ15s will allow you to purchase anything that could be produced on 2x PQ18s with some cash left over too. The quantity of planets you control is more important than quality during the early expansion phase. Your life will be a lot easier if you can control 40% of the systems on the map by the fifth game year.
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#8
by Veteran Za H - 5/2/2003 1:01:04 PM
Errr.... first paragraph: "... IS being applied..." instad 
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#9
by Veteran Doctahg - 5/3/2003 2:11:07 PM
This is all great until a few alien colony ships show up...thne you have problems...
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#10
by Veteran Za H - 5/3/2003 4:38:02 PM
Then you launch transports 
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Actually, I have found that colonizing less means more in the early game. This is because in the early game with 100% max spending one of the keys is managing your deficit. All planets that you colonize are in the red, the lower the PQ the more so. So the more planets you have the greater your deficit, even though revenues are up. A lot of planets early chews through your starting reserves in a hurry. And what do those smaller colonies give you in return? They're still taking forever to produce anything, and their pop might not sustain colony ships. I find that I do better shipping off larger colony ships from Earth to the max range in order to expand quickly and backfill later than if I fill up around Earth early. The extra 'production' of these new worlds doesn't actually produce much that is useful, and it's hasn't gotten me very far on the map. And because they chew through the money, you won't be running at 100% spending when and where you need it most, trying to fill up sectors far from Earth to cut off the AI.
Also if you're harmonizing tax levels to Earth's morale as I do, the other planets will tend to have lower morale because of lower PQ, limiting their growth and ability to re-spawn colonists. The point is what are you getting for your deficit spending? This is especially true on the biggest maps, when the expansion phase will probably long outlast your initial 1000. So you have to stretch it, and make the best use of it. Under such circumstances, I do prefer a few PQ18's to a bunch of 15's.
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#12
by Citizen Viandox - 5/5/2003 11:46:19 AM
A lot of good strategies here (and not as contradictory as it seems).
Here is mine.
- Send the initial Colony ship in the direction of the possible future border (being only 100M, its major purpose is to extend my reach
- Send the Survey ship in an other direction (also a possible future border)
- produce 1/2 scouts (depending on the configuration). The first one is sent in the same general direction that Col Ship 1. A side goal is to put the Survey ship into survey mode ASAP so it can grab free ships and Attack bonus (if lucky).
- Earth produce Colony ships of about 300M (1 every 3/4 turn) that are also sent as far as possible in the direction of possible AI.
- Settle ANY planet with PQ >=15 that extend my range (15 one sector farther is better than 18/19/20)
- When settled, new planet produce Cololy Ship (1 every 6/7 turn) with half their population.
During that time Mil/Soc/Tech is about 70/0/30 and I also micromanage morale to 100% as long as I can for the pop bonus.
(If I find a VERY good planet not far away from Sol, I can decide to ship half of Sol Pop to create a Sol Clone)
The big question is when to change strategy.
- Naturally, when you are alone in your cluster and you run out of planets with PQ >= 15 (the last Colony ships are used to "backfill"). Planets produce constructors
- You run into a major AI. It is now a rush to secure planets inside your borders and produce enough Starfighters to keep peace
- You run out of money (time to put some money in Social to build Banks and Soil Enhancement)
- You run in a minor (time to switch everything to go to Impulse drive ASAP and maybe Phaser if your Survey ship is not lucky and still Attack 0)
It is (of course and luckily) not a sure win strategy and I have often trouble at crippling when I don't switch from the "agressive expand" to the "Starfigther deterrent" strategy soon enough.
Oh and BTW, I think you've already guess that I'm choosing Speed+1....
 
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#14
by Citizen Viandox - 5/5/2003 12:28:29 PM
LDiCesare,
If they are in the middle of my empire I'd rather have their (usually) juicy planet(s) right away. And they are not a worthy trade partner being so close to me.
They are also usually rather difficult to absorb culturally later in the game.
Remember, we are talking "Gigantic" in this thread. Plenty of other minor can become my cash cows
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Viandox: Right now I'm funding my entire empire at 100% based on the trade with a minor in my back yard. Kid you not, 0% taxes, no tribute, and I've still got a surplus. It's nice having an econ base that just about nothing can mess with.
   
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#18
by Citizen Viandox - 5/9/2003 8:57:24 AM
Popup: Waow ! Impressive. I'll try that next time.
Too late for my current game (Gigantic/Masochist): I had to invade the last surviving minors before they were invaded by majors and I could not afford to provide them with ships as I was struggling myself to keep a high military level to prevent the "boosted" Arecean from declaring war.
A very interesting game where I am 2nd behind the Arcean that began with a fabulous starting position and have more planet/pop than me.
Also interesting is that I got both the UP event that enhance speed and the one that enhance constructor speed very early in the game. So the standard shock point tactics are useless (as my speed bonus...). It is an example of a very good event that enhance the replayability.
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Viandox: The trick is, with short trade routes, trade-enhancing starbases more than pay for their maintenance. I've got a minor two sectors away from my economic capitol, and 9 +50% starbases in each sector, and 9 trade routes back and forth. It's rather late-game, so I'm not sure that this would have worked earlier in the game (when there were fewer trade routes available).
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