Why are my worlds so undeveloped?

What difficulty level are you on, and what race are you playing as? Those are two key starting factors, and there is a bunch of others as well. Just from what you've written I'd say that if you've reached Large Hulls and Drone Carriers but haven't been building your production boosting economic starbases till after that point then that certainly won't have helped your progress. But there are a lot of expert players much better than me who can give you great tips to get ahead.

Also what is your gameplay setting.

I put the Drengin on exceptional, same level as in my previous games. Then i put the other races on gifted.

I do that because i hate it when i get a really good game going and the Drengin manage to get beaten down by other races before i get to them myself! lol

I got gigantic map, abundant habitable planets (not that it fits the definition of the term 'abundant'!! Hahahahal). I am laying Terran.

Now let me stress that i only have large hulls and drone technology because of anomalies. As far as my own research is concerned.... not in a billion years would i have that technology!!!! my planets SUCK, seriously, they all sit there and don't want to do anything, lazy basteds.

Oh and i have not forgotten to boost population with farming which is a common reason for people falling behind in this game.

Actually, now that i think of it, what i said about my worlds 'suck'..... I think it's very true, but not in terms of game play, i mean in terms of random map generation.

Terrain - best planet is like 13, nothing more, tiles - I don't have any good clusters, its mostly all spread out, not many terrain enhancements, I don't have any good science world - usually you can find a 50% boosted science planet, but not here in this game. basically, its just crap all round.

I am thinking this is why everything went bad, just a really crappy random deal of planets.

What is your building strategy for developing a world? How many food, manufacturing and research buildings do you use? When and to which tier are you upgrading them? How many production starbases do you get for your worlds? How do you manage approval. Can you quantify how muhc better their worlds are?

You write, that this was your first game in this update, what was the last update you played on before? Have you familiarized yourself with coercion yet? Have you checked out the new bonusses from durantium refineries and thullium data archives?

The biggest maps I play on are huge maps, but this shouldn't matter if your problem is the world development against gifted AIs. Do you mean incredible by exceptional?

In your description, you mentioned trading technology not once.  If this is accurate to your course of actions, then your problem is right there.

To play with tech brokering on, you have to trade constantly to keep up because the AI will trade each other's research around and one or two of them will pull massively ahead of you on that alone if you don't.  Even with just tech trading on, frequently trading your research for others is mandatory to keep up with them unless you're doing massively better than they are.

also keep in mind that anyt texh you trade away is almost certain to be traded to every other ai within a few turns. Being able to restrict tech trading to allies and teams would be nice

In your settup options where you control your tech level is your gameplay controls it says gameplay. Speed that up. If i had advice otherwise i would advise to not build your shipyards on planet use constructure instead. You need two maybe three shipyards as soon as possible. Your homeworld make it a manufactering world.

Thanks guys... In that game i had tech trading and brokering switched off. I always seem to do really badly whenever i try that, ever since galciv2.

So what i did last night, i tried a new game with tech trading back on, and i reduced the difficulty 1 level.

I had significantly better worlds and soon ended up too powerful and now i am going to have to quit again.

Clearly the mistake i made in the earlier game was to have tech trading switched off, that is what destroyed me.

My usual strategy with tech trading on is to also have as many minor races as possible and exploit the shit out of them in addition to normal tech trading. Its amazing the amount of money i can get and rush buy stuff all over the place.... the same stuff that sat stagnant in that game with tech trading off.... that is where the big difference comes into play.

Oh yea, my planet build strategy....

First to build will be any science or production bonus tiles. then farms limited by morale, then same building for surrounding tiles of the bonus tile.

Everything else all markets, planets with no production or science bonuses - all markets, and farms limited by morale.

Thats early game build plan. I wont usually chose a production or science world specialist until i finish the colony rush (unless there is a clear winner planet that i found).

Sounds like you have a hole in your strategy if you can't stay even with trading off.  You don't really need to exploit the AI to pull way ahead if you build your planets well.

Very different from what I use to do.

For me there usually only are manufacturing and research worlds. My money income usually comes from trading and tourism and is more oriented to cover my expenses then to rush anything, except for a few really powerful things if I get to them (gaia project, research cloisters, etc.).

I guess I can't tell you how to do the money oriented playstyle better, I can only tell you taht there is a non-money oriented one that carries me up to genius. And I allways play without tech trading.

Also i had a good idea for that first game with the tech trading off...

The problem is that i have the ship designs to stop the Drengin, but i cannot build them, the production is too slow, so the only option is defeat.

Well that's what i thought.... but i had an idea that i will try.....

Those worlds that surrendered to me.... they are in a hopeless strategic location, Drengin ships all around... i will see if i can sell them and then use the money to rush buy the ships!??

Question? Which is better? Rush buying a powerful ship at the shipyard or rush buying a blank hull and upgrading it?

The small advantage of blank hulls is that i can send them out to defend strategic locations but if no enemy comes to that particular spot then i have saved allot of money on maintenance costs.

'Gifted' is quite a low level for me actually..... perhaps the lower level is more forgiving on finances, so you can afford that strategy?

Edit: sorry my dyslexia, i misread genius as gifted! lol.... now i forget what level genius is, have to go look it up....

I googled the difficulty levels of Galciv3 and all kinds of rubbish came up, nothing useful, weird.

My stupid basted memory wont tell me shit on the difficulty levels,,,, well ok, sure, i have only been playing this game series from just only 2004, so its understandable! (extreme sarcasm alert)

Edit: Wow, that's amazing, i just spent an hour looking for a list of the difficulty levels in order and found NOTHING! Its not even in the Galciv manual!!

I even did a search in the forum, again, NOTHING.

I am using all kinds of variations of the search terms... list of difficulty levels, difficulty levels for galciv3, difficulty levels in order, etc etc etc

Nothing nothing nothing nothing, so weird, hahahaha

Sure i can go play the game and find out that way, but its useless, five seconds after exiting the game i wont remember, not even if you offered me a million dollars.... that's how fxxxxxx dumb my memory is.

google: "galciv3 difficulty" first link for me:

http://galciv3.gamepedia.com/Difficulty_Settings

It sounds like you are not specialising your planets.

What race are you playing?

Try using iconian or Thalan  tech tree. Thalan  is best early game, but iconian  has the best tech in the game - living ships, once you make it past age of war. Iconian is also good early game- just not as good as thalan.

Oh nvm I read you are playing terran.

Try swapping race to iconIan- or build a custom terrain race with iconIan tech tree

If you were going to use terrain techs and wanted to be stronger just change the power plants bonuses from from total manufacturing to raw production. Then the thalanswould be more flexible not stronger than the terrans. It is important to change your shipyard sponsered planets into industrial worlds.

Thanks for those tips.

Ok here is what happened.....

Regarding the earlier idea of selling the worlds to build my ships.... did not work, AI wont give hardly any money for the planets, game over.

Started a new game over the weekend... terrans, gigantic map, tech trading and brokering off... Drengin on Genius level, Alterians on Gifted, everyone else on normal level. Ok so the game went fairly well, however not because of my own good strategy. The Drengin happened to be over the other side of the galaxy with other AI races inbetween. if they were closer, i could not have survived, that's a fact. It just takes to long to drag my planets kicking and screaming towards productivity.... that's the big problem.

Anyway, i managed to achieve some good productivity FINALLY, but its way too much!! Its like i am starved starved starved all the first period of the game, then suddenly in a short period i am flooded with productivity and realize the game is pointless because i am now way overpowered for it to be a challenge.

So with tech trading off i am going to be ridiculously under powered and if i survive that i quickly move on to be ridiculously overpowered, what a shit, honestly, what a shit.

This is all about having tech trading off..... whenever i have it on, i can do supremely better because i can get something called 'credits' and use it to rush by stuff that wants to take billions of years to build naturally. I can rush by on my specialized worlds - manufacturing and science. Especially manufacturing, i can get my manufacturing capital building military vessels in reasonable time period much earlier on on the game with tech trading on.... oh also when tech trading is on, i usually end up obtaining allot of military vessels from AI that are too poor to afford my techs, that boosts my power rating to deter attack to much later in the game. Whereas with tech trading off i seem to get attacked much earlier in the game.

Anyway, this looks like the first tech trading off game that i have ever survived to this point, so i will continue on just to see how the rest plays out.

You know what would be a great feature in this game? 'Timeline difficulty levels'.... the first part of the game, the difficulty is low, then by mid game it automatically increases the difficulty level, then again towards the end of the game.... damb, that would be fun! Knowing you have a challenge to work towards even after you have achieved a superior position in the game.

So i am still wondering why my planets develop so slowly early game?

The AI seems to have a big advantage on speed of planetary development?

Perhaps i am thinking too much with a mind from Galciv2?

Because in galciv2 i am changing the universal production settings quite dramatically...

Gov spending on like 99%

very early game i have military production on zero or 1% if i want to rush buy a survey or colony ship.

Once i get a few key technologies i am putting science quite low as well.

So i am used to all that boosting going into planetary production, and used to keeping up or getting ahead of AI on planetary production. I am not used to how slow planetary production is in Galciv3.... tech trading and rush buying covers up this problem for me to quite a degree, but take away tech trading and i am fxxxx big time! lol

Edit: i don't touch the universal production settings in Galciv3, it stays on standard, i see no use for it at all to be honest.

Are you experiencing coercion penalties?  They show up in Raw Production and Approval for planets.  If you are doing extreme adjustments, that can lead to extreme coercion penalties, which will affect all aspects of your planet's output.

First the Alterians and drengin get economic bonuses on your settings. Second this could be fixed by changing your gameplay to fastest at startup. Your insistance on not using factories wouldbslow you down. The Terrans don't  have the best tech tree. Also one way to counter coersion is high morale, and starboard.

No im not changing universal production settings in the game, so coercion wont be an issue.

Not using factories..... that is a good topic? I always understood that factories burn money into production, so their not really benefiting you much unless you take advantage of bonuses and adjacency?

I know for certain if you build more than five factories early game in Galciv2 it sends you broke.... especially if anomalies get in that mood of starving you of money rewards which they like to do on occasion.

Update.... back at that game where i thought i was getting too powerful.... i had nice carrier fleets, churning them out fast..... except when it came time to go into battle, guess what? USELESS!!! hahahaha Possibly because my logistics is 30 and theirs was 70! lol

When I started playing gc3 I wondered if a pure dredits build works. I didn't try for long, because I felt my early game was so much slower. If you don't want to develope economy worlds there are things you can do. Build a trader or two, unlock tourism, build a faction that has handy +1 or +2, trade strategic ressources, get some economics through starbases later, ...

Usually there is nothing wrong with going broke. If you go negative in credits, all your buildings shut off and you are producing only credits for a turn and are fine again for another few turns. Only if the income you produce after this is still negative, you are getting into trouble.