Tips for initial research points.

[Claymore Righ]

I have again returned to this question and I have been playing around with dumping all of my intital points into a new colonizing tech.

I am using the Proportions mod with a 3 planet start for players.

On turn 5 the number of planets I am able to colozines usually doubles (I select the tech based on how many planets) and I usually pick up at least 2 large or huge green planets.

Developing this planets seems to pay off in the long run of 5 turns behind in other tech areas.

Srooy that this is a bit incoherent. I am at work and wanted to get this up on the board for some feedback.

[oleg]

Your strategy can work if there are no aggressive neighbours around - however hard you try to make solony world productive, it will take time and if he/she invest in military stuff instead, you may be a history before your first megapolis is build

[MegaTrain]

If it only takes you 5 turns to research a colonization tech in the proportions mod, then GO FOR IT.

In the standard game, using 3 starting planets, it would take you 3.3 YEARS (33 TURNS!!) to research another colonization tech. This would slowly decrease as you build more research centers, but it would still stifle you incredibly at the start of the game.

Normally, I'll just explore and trade (or conquer) for them when I find a civilization that has the techs I need.

[oleg]

Originally posted by MegaTrain:
If it only takes you 5 turns to research a colonization tech in the proportions mod, then GO FOR IT.

...

There is a good catch here. In Proportions, the presence of a nice "green" planet near to homeworld may not mean much. To make it a thriving productive colony, you must invest a lot of materials (in the way of starliners maintenance), ship a lot of otherwise productive population, build a strong infrastructure and only hundred turns later rip the benefits of your hard labour ! In other words, you may be better off if you only have one good planet nearby then two Sometimes proportions is a very complicated game !

[narf poit chez BOOM]

yes, but in standard game if you have a 255 system map, even if you have a lot of comps, it's still better to research the planet tech, it doubles the number of planets you can have. although i only have regular; the ai may be better in gold.

[MegaTrain]

Well, AI's (even hostile ones) will gladly trade you colonization techs, although sometimes you have to "sweeten the deal" by throwing in 50000 resources or something piddly like that.

You can even offer a SHIP trade for one of his colonization ships, and trade him an empty cargo vessel or something. Then you analyze the ship for the tech, spread his population around on the appropriate atmosphere worlds, and you're set to go.

I don't think I've EVER actually gained colonization techs through research. (Although unchecking "allow tech trades" hampers this greatly--you have to steal or trade ships, then)