Crusade thoughts on the early game.

Great post.  Though, I soooo disagree with the first turn being to rush a shipyard. Depends on what's on your planet.

A user could just start out with a Constructor and then use that to build a shipyard on turn 1 and crank out a cheap survey ship if they prefer to old start.

The colony rush would disappear if there was an early game way to capture or destroy colonies.

Agree good post.

turn 1 - Mostly rush the ship yard unless i have a good spot for research. Always do "Artificial Gravity" first

First and foremost there is the 'Pragmatic Builder Tier 1: Constructive'- Not always first but v close.  Actually it is my first pick when i get the I points. Depending on # of near by planets my colonization event is driven by how good/bad each is. (typically play gigantic maps)

To the OP, what do I know?  You are as likely to have the game somewhat figured out as any of us right now.

It is still evolving, but this is my start sequence and thought so far.  15 opponents, Excessive, Abundant everything.  (Until I get a better handle on mechanics and can figure out what I can afford to throttle down)

Turn 1 Rush the Shipyard to open up the Ship Construction output.  Otherwise, I feel there is a lost opportunity in hammers not being used.  Manually build the first Colony Ship.  It can't be a minimum Colony ship because you don't know how close the nearest planet is.  I have a predesigned ship for just this situation, with just one engine and one life support.  That goes into the Shipyard queue while my initial Survey ship explores.  I am looking for planets and the Bazaar.  Planets are noted and compared for where that first Colony ship will go.  At the Bazaar, I am looking for either another Survey ship or a Scout.  Map information is essential to a lot of things.

I set Research to Colonial Settlements because I want Factories for my Space Elevators.  As soon as possible, I am taking the Benevolent perk "Enlightened" as described above.  That will get me Artificial Gravity and Interstellar Travel, and some of a third tech.  I don't have a fixed choice for that yet.  

This map encourages, actually requires, a Colony Rush start.  For one thing, you usually have to go out and find each other.  This allows you to concentrate on the Colony rush and expansion and let Military take a bit of back seat.  If you have an AI faction spawn close to you, all this gets thrown out the window and I do whatever seems necessary.  Because of the Colony rush, the early game is a lot about managing Administrators.  You have to balance your greed for planets with your need to get Relics, which a very useful for Wide empires.  You cannot focus solely on Administrators.  I usually settle a Worker on my home world for +30@ Social Construction to get it going and train 2-3 scientists to settle on my Research world when it gets going.  I can claim about 25-30 planets and a dozen or so Relics before I feel I am ignoring other Citizen needs at my peril.  After that I will depend on techs for additional Administrators.  The AI is nowhere near as fanatical at Colonizing as I am, but they do a pretty good job.  Their expansion patterns in an open space are strikingly similar to mine.  So, you do have to work at it to out-expand them.  I consider this an incredible improvement.

I specialize planets.  It is not as useful or absolutely necessary under Crusade.  The fact that each output category gets full Raw Production means you can afford to mix things a little.  For example, if I have one isolated +3 Wealth tile on an otherwise decent Research terrain.  It does not really penalize to go ahead and put a Market on that one tile.  When you build one of the hub improvements, then you want to specialize all you can.  I build a couple of Farm planets to provide Food to the empire.  

Asteroid Mines are a key element to utilize.  If I settle a relic outside my Influence and its Influence contains Asteroids, those Asteroids get mined.  A fraction of a point of Production is still Production.

Early exploration consists of looking for specialization planets and relics and clusters of resources.  Claim those clusters early.  Think ahead to what your favorite weapon is going to be and start looking for that weapon's resource.  Claim it early and let it stockpile.  Your Admiral will thank you for that later when you get to advanced weapons and suddenly want bunches of that stuff.  For that reason I have found that Mining techs become crucial in later game.  The Mining techs enable upgrades that require Durantium and Promethion.  Actually, a lot of things seem to use those two resources.  You can find yourself stuck if you can't improve your weapons because of a shortage of Durantium to improve the mines you are depending on for your key resource.  Think ahead!  (which is probably an overall good principle for Crusade and its economy.

There is a completely different discussion you can have on Military.  My one point on that is, "Logistics is your friend."

I have temporarily run out of words.  It must be someone else's turn...

Ok. You are not an idiot. I disagree on a few points though.

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Obviously.

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Turn 1:

It's not a useful category to think in (in my *cough* humble *cough* opinion). The difference of what you do in what order in the first ~4 turns is rather irrelevant. Due to balance you will end up with the same things anyway by turn 15 latest. A better category to think in is "What do I rush buy at the start?".
 - flat research: No. This thing does not snowball. Researching stuff doesn't make you research of produce things significantly faster.
 - flat wealth: No. It does not help snowballing, because ~5/turn is too low to get a rush buy train started.
 - flat all manufacturing: Yes. Accelerates building ships, accelerates getting the other buildings.
 - flat ship manufacturing: Maybe. If you got too much money, yes. But better build it with social manufacturing. Possibly before flat research, definitly before flat wealth.
 - shipyard: Yes. Builds ships. If you rushed flat manufacturing on turn one rush this on two. Since ship manufacturing is lost without it, this counts as flat ship building, too.
 - constructor: Maybe. If you did not take the double constructor start, rush this first. This gives you access to your systems asteroid mines. If you did start with 2 constructors and have another cluster of 4+ asteroids nearby, pick this over a colony ship, too.
 - asteroid mines: THIS. Your post sounds like this is something you are not doing. Try it out. Get asteroid mines ASAP. It just helps in all categories. Keep a reserve in your treassury to get these early.
 - colony ship: Maybe. What speaks in favor of it is ideology. What can you get from ideology, that helps you snowball? The free colonizer helps. The constructors help, if their usage conincides with asteroid mines. The research points are interesting, if you are really desperate for Artificial Gravity or an administrator tech. Everything else, does not really have a big immediate impact on your snowballing. The additional space elevator speaks in favor of the colony ship, too, but that's expensive. Asteroid mines do this better.
 - scouts: Maybe. It's more economic than scouting with colony ships. On the other hand they build so fast, it's rarely worth rushing these.
 - survey: Don't know. I prefer scouts, since they don't take up admin points and I fly to the next suns to find view what's in the neighboring systems. Searching anomalies is kinda meh.

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I agree on all points. I hardly ever start on a default civ, so I usually have something, that increases moves early on. With these it hardly matters at all, what tech I finish first.

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Ideology:

As pointed out above, for the initial snowballing (until about turn 20), there are really only 3 traits to consider.

However: Malevolent has two incredibly strong tier 2 and 3 perks: +10 all manufacturing and +100% ship construction on your homeworld. Sacrificing the three early constructors for this is viable too in my opinion.

On the map size I play the additional colonizer and planet are nice-ish, too.

The last benevolent research tier is awesome

Apart from this Ideology has very few "I need this!" moments anymore. Don't nerf these moments Stardock! Buff the rest.

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This actually sounds like a really good idea to me. Other than what improvement to build first on your homeworld, this actually is a choice which carries on for a considerable time of the game! I would really like to see a balance, which gets me a few more ideologies early on and offers more than 3 realistic options at the start.

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How do I put this...

Some of the new Crusade features promote wide over tall more than they did in vanilla!

- Going from linear population to production ratio promotes splitting up your population over as many worlds as possible instead of growing singular hive worlds.
 - Having colony unique flat bonus buildings as central economic element, effectively rendering other improvements virrtually useless without them... promotes getting more planets i.e. playing wide
 - making upgrades of these virtually useless improvements cost strategic ressources and still be virtually useless promotes... building ressource starbases or getting more planets instead i.e. playing wide
 - using player uniqe flat bonusses can be done regardless of colony count and thus promotes neither tall nor wide
 - Having asteroid mines provide essential economic bonuses promotes buiding starbases regardless of your colony count but still promotes building starbases i.e. playing wide.
 - citizens promote pooling your strongest buildings on one planet, which can be done regardless of your colony count, hence in the long run, they promote neither.
 - administrators limit your expansion and may force you to postpone economic citizens and thus promote playing tall
 - espionage can render single planets crippled and thus promote playing... wide
 - influence being localized around its sources (i.e. the time/influence it takes to increase the influence radius by one rises exponentially) promotes getting more spread out influence centers i.e. playing wide
 - wonders would promote playing tall, if less expansion meant faster production time for them, which however is being sabotaged by ressource costs, asteroids being essential, less than linear population to production translation and unused ship manufacturing not being available to the planet... not to mention their early availability.

I'm not saying I hate the current balance in those regards, some of these aspects I will not like seeing go away, but these are all things to think about, if you want more playing tall, dealing with the colony rush or starbase rush.

I am one of those Users who tends to play to what I want rather than what is necessarily numerically "best", however, I do tend to rush out Colony ships and I alwasy, always go for the 3 free Constructer ships.

 

After that it depends on how things go.

Hm, I could also write a long post here but right know I'd rather like to play instead of write

But some thoughts nonetheless:

- I play always the largest map (ludicrous it's now) with random type (star frequency common, planet frequency common, extreme planet frequency common, habitable planet frequency uncommon, pirate bases rare, resource frequency occasional, asteroid frequency common, nebulae abundant, precursor relic frequency rare, ascension crystal frequency none, black hole frequency uncommon, anomaly frequency common), all AIs on gifted, since Crusade only the Onyx (still see it as training sessions and since I have to restart every couple of days because of new updates I don't want to vary the base parameters too much), with 20 random opponents.

- I build/rush the shipyard early because I don't want to waste production and I like to colony-rush myself.

- The Cilizen mechanic as such is great, but not perfect. I tend to pile all citizens (and that are mostly scientists) for planetary bonuses on my home planet since there are some powerful buildings from the start and it makes no sense to put citizens elsewhere. Perhaps that would be otherwise later in the game, but then it's not possible to relocate the planetary citizens anymore. Since there is already the mechanic that citizens must travel to their destination so that immediate switching of priorities is not possible it would imo be good to be able to relocate them.

- I also don't play to exploit numbers, but to have fun (not saying that exploiting numbers may not be fun though ;)) and so I don't really plan what ideology benefits I get. But I rather like playing benevolent/pragmatic (if the choices don't entail to much penalties) so it's also often the 150 research points, the free colonizers or the free colony ship for me.

- I like to explore, so I need speed and prioritize speed giving techs at the beginning.

- To fetch the needed resources and to colonize planets I need a lot of administrators. As I said above, most of the other citizens become scientists on the home planet. When I meet other factions I train some spies, one to defend myself and the others to gather information.

- I also mine every asteroid mine that comes under my influence. But I don't use constructors to especially get asteroids.

- I build starbases on resource clusters, but also on single resources that I' in need of, what is often Durantium and Elerium at the beginning. Although I have nebulae set to abundant those still seem to small so that they not always spawn elerium and sometimes I have a hard time to find that resource. The same goes for Antimatter. In my current game at around turn 250 I was not able to find a single black hole, and in my games before Antimatter was also always difficult to come by.

- Apart from that I build starbases on Relics when I find some with my map settings and economic ones on clusters with at least two planets.

- I don't specialize planets very much since it's not really necessary. I try to make use of tile bonuses and I try to support hubs as best as possible. Some tile bonuses are quite useless though like +Resistance, or tiles giving +Food and also +Food on adjacent tiles since managing Approval is hard enough without spamming cities Whether that is different with the new city adjacencies I cannot say since the Onyx didn't get that change

- I tend to neglect my military until it's necessary so that I don't have to pay maintenance for a fleet of obsolete ships if I can avoid it.

- I try to get trade routes going as early as possible since they contribute significantly to my income. Especially in my current game where I got the event that increases trade route value by 100% four times already ...

- I use the missions a lot, mainly Treasure Hunt and Research mission (when I have the necessary resources), also Arnor Spice because I need that to improve my approval buildings and was always short on that resource.

- Planets that cannot build anything anymore do mostly Aid Research, only sometimes at the beginning Aid Economy since after a time my economy is good enough so that I don't need +50 credits from Aid Economy. By the way +25 Research from Aid Research is quite meager later in the game (as is the +50 points from Research missions) ... wouldn't it be great to have different kinds of research projects and missions that could later be fueled by resources but give higher rewards?

- On tall vs. wide: I want to be able to play wide without penalties. So to play tall you could implement other mechanics. E. g. own tech tree branches that provide new high level buildings that can only be built when the population exceeds a certain size. That would also entail other means for approval management, an example would be if those high level buildings apart from giving much higher yields of production/research/influence/income would also increase approval by themselves.

So much for not writing a long post ...

Hi,

You just have to relocate your capital before choosing the citizen and he or she appears where you want - the same applies to ships from the bazaar so you can generate your scout or survey ship at the frontier. (Not sure if this is what Stardock intends but it's v useful). 

Then you change back to the original capital - or I normally do (and while doing so can set the upgrade options for the home planet as you want if you've forgotten to do so earlier).

Cheers,

Jon

Ok, I didn't know that and strongly suspect that it's not what Stardock intended

But I will try it out when I play next.

The easy fix that I'd implement for this changing capitol exploit is to make it no longer possible to change one's capitol! You then can only name a new capitol if your's is captured or destroyed. I hope the devs consider this.

 

Ok Frog.  After playing around with it I have to say that your point is absolutely correct, and well-taken.  It's almost like you've played this game more than me or something..

Another interesting twist that a friend pointed out to me today is that on smaller maps, if you want to go full-on jerk mode, starting with the 2 furies and immediately attacking all of the AI's one runs into is a good start.  I would guess very competitive if small multi-player 'tournament' style games become a thing.

The constructor start is def pretty awesome tho..

 

I play with rare habitables and I have spent a lot of time getting that where I want it. This makes the colony rush less frenetic. I play with the trait that gives you a constructor as well as the surveyor and I also take the 3 constructor option first. 

Colonial settlements is always  my first tech followed by planetology to get food going. Artificial grav and interstellar is next. I also only load colony ships with the minimum.

The new hubs in Crusade are so great they almost make it possible to run a modest empire with your home planet alone. I spend a lot of time on placing things in the right place. Luck can play into it and if I don't get a good placement for my research hub, I often restart.

When you think about it the power of your home planet is very realistic in terms of a interstellar colony network.

 

Thinking about this a little bit more, it might be an interesting change to give the Furies +movement enough for them to actually outrun enemy civilian ships, so you can start off full-on sociopath mode..