Caveat Emptor: I make no claim to any great insight into this game; my primary goal in outlining my early game strategy is to elicit response and critique from more experienced players (pretty much everyone). Also note that I've mostly played the Drath who start out with good bonuses and a good mix of starting techs. Other races may need to vary the initial tech research order consistent with their starting techs. I reset the default abilities and use the 10 ability points to get the 30% economic bonus, spend a point on luck, and divide the rest between pop growth and research ability. I also select the Federalists and the 20% economic bonus for a total 50% economic bonus.
The intent of my strategy is to get significant production, research and income bonuses as quickly as possible. Development in this game is exponential, therefore the earlier you can get a bonus, the more effect it will have. The quickest bonuses available are the ones for Manufacturing Capital, Technology Capital, and Economic Capital. Also economic starbases should be used early and often to augment these bonuses. The best source of civilization wide bonus is higher forms of government.
As far as the Capitals, I feel that it's better to make the best reasonable choice of planet ASAP instead of waiting to find the perfect production or tech planet. I know there are downsides to making your home planet the Manufacturing Capital but since almost all of early production comes from your home planet I think it makes sense. I simply buy a factory on a 300% production bonus tile (no 300% production tile = Ctrl-N) and start building the Manufacturing Capital and producing my first custom colony ship. That's all the development I'll do on my home planet (sometimes I'll add a 2nd factory) until the colony rush dies down and then I'll fill it entirely with factories and wait for the terraforming techs (or I decide to go neutral) to add space for farms/entertainment.
As far as ships go, I immediately obsolete all core ships as soon as they become available (taking care not to destroy my free colony ship). With the Ion Drive starting tech I design a speed 4 capacity 500 colony ship, a speed 3 constructor and a speed 4 sensor range 6 scout, however it takes awhile before I build anything other than a colony ship.
I put my free colony ship into orbit to fill it up to a total of 500 colonists and then send it out towards a nearby likely star while my flagship checks out other nearby stars. Meanwhile my home planet is producing its first colony ship (takes about 5-6 turns). I want the first two planets I colonize to be my tech capital and my economic capital and be capable of producing colonists ASAP. I look for pretty much any class 12 or above planet for each. The econ capital doesn’t need (or really benefit from) any bonus tiles but it’s certainly nice to get some research bonus tiles on your tech capital. On each of these planets I’ll buy a factory and start building an advanced market on the econ planet and a xeno research on the tech planet followed by a starport on both. If there’s no production bonus on the original factory I’ll also add a second factory. As soon as I get the technologies that enable the appropriate capital I build it (see my research order below). Once these planets are up to a pop of 5.0B, I have them start producing colonists while filling the remaining tiles with markets/research buildings.
When selecting these initial planets I try to pick them so that I can build as many economic starbases as possible whose areas of influence overlap all of my capital planets and as many other planets as I can manage. In this case I’m using a strategy similar to the following thread on The Uber-Research Planet by Killzone.
https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=346&aid=122426#953561
While this is going on my home planet is now a manufacturing capital and can pump out a new colony ship every other turn. To keep up the pop to support this rate of colony production you absolutely need to keep your approval at 100% for the pop bonus. Do this by deficit spending from your initial 5000 bc. I usually set the allocation at MP 30%, SP 30%, RP 40% but these ratios can vary with taste. It is important to keep spending at 100% with the tax rate as high as possible while keeping approval at 100%. As you colonize planets this changes so you potentially need to adjust this every turn. Even so, you might need to produce a constructor every once in a while to let your home planets pop recover. Use it to start building the above mentioned array of econ starbases. Also keep an eye on your home planet’s approval, you can be 100% approval overall but your home planet might be 99%. You need 100% approval on your home planet at all times. With the occasional 500 or 1000 bc anomaly you can keep this up for almost the full first year.
Other than my tech and econ capital I don’t buy any building for any other colony so as to maximize the length of deficit spending that allows me to keep 100% approval. I have been starting them off by letting them build their own first factory but I’ve since been thinking that it might be better to start them building advanced market since it improves their income but requires 0 maintenance. I’ll try this next time.
Sooner or later it becomes apparent that the end of deficit spending is approaching. You can extend it a bit by lowering your total spending but I think this is counter productive. At this point I increase my tax rate until I’m at 75% approval and hopefully I’m at or near complete researching Star Democracy for the 50% bonus. Once I reach this my economy starts to take off and I go back to all my colonies and I start buying them the buildings they need to become productive.
The colony rush (particularly on Gigantic) may not yet be over, however your home planets pop won’t be able to keep up with a colony ship every other turn so alternate a colony (2 turns) with a constructor (3 turns) and use it to fill out the econ starbase array around your capitals. Certainly by this time, your econ and tech capitals will be contributing colony ships, though at a 5-6 turn rate.
The following is the sequence of techs that I research to fit in with this strategy.
Starting Techs (Drath)
Galactic Warfare
Hyper Drive
Ion Drive
Xeno Engineering (SP +10%, Mining Center)
Xeno Industrial Theory (SP +10%, Factory, Manufacturing Capital, Adv. Starbase Factory, Mining HQ)
Stellar Cartography
Research Tech Order
Xeno Research (20RP, Xeno Lab)
Planetary Improvements (100RP, MP/SP/RP +10%)
Xeno Economics (100RP, Income +10%, Advanced Market Center)
Advanced Computing (100RP, Technological Capital, Smart Drones)
Xeno Communications (30RP, Diplomacy +5%)
Universal Translator (25RP, Diplomacy +5%)
Diplomatic Relations (100RP, Diplomacy +10%, Diplomatic Translators)
Trade (200RP, Diplomacy +10%, Economic Capital, Restaurant of Eternity)
Interstellar Governments (200RP, Diplomacy +5%)
Alliances (300RP, Diplomacy +10%)
Interstellar Republic (800RP, Diplomacy +10%, Influence +5%, MP/SP/RP +25%)
Star Democracy (1500RP, Diplomacy +10%, Influence +5%, MP/SP/RP +50%)
If I can also get Xeno Factory Construction then that gives me Enhanced Factories and gets my econ starbases up to the 14% level. Also this sequence picks up a fair amount of Diplomacy which doesn’t hurt. I tend to avoid tech trading because I’m not good at it, but whatever you do, don’t give an AI a higher form of government, they really don’t need an extra 25/50% advantage. Sometimes I try to stretch this to get to Star Federation, but it generally gets me killed while researching the extra 5000 RP.
Usually I can finish these up before someone comes around demanding money to not kill me. I usually pay them off the first time. Then I start researching weapons (usually beam up till Phasors or Psionic Beam if evil). You should get two or three of the early techs per turn, the final two might take two turns each. I then research to get medium hulls, impulse drive, a miniaturization or two, and the complete planetary invasion tree including building Tir-Quan Training. The next time someone asks for money or tech I tell them to go pound sand. I usually have 30+ planets already building Beam 12 (or 24 if evil) Medium Hull fighters. By the time they show up with their fleets of Mass Driver 4 Small or Tiny Hull fighters I’m set to go with my fleet and have transports in the que.
This strategy has been effective at crippling and has gotten me through eliminating my first race at suicidal, however I have a long way to go yet and the AI at suicidal is pretty scary (to me at least).
I welcome any and all discussion, comment and suggestion.