How do the other Aliens Colonize so quickly?

[Zoltan]

Its very hard to colonize new planets without destroying your economy. Yet all the other competing races colonize likes its so easy for them.

Are the other races going through the same as the player or is the AI cheating?

I keep my fleet just big enough to counter threats. It takes the main planet to grow enough to colonize the first planet.

What do you think I am doing wrong?

[Medway]

How many are you seeing the AI colonise and how early in the game?

[Zoltan]

I play a few games. Last one was with 11 other computer players and they all had most of the galaxy while I was in a small corner.

In the new game the first race I encountered already had 3 new colonies.

[Zoltan]

Look at the main planet they have 12 land brigades. That is not feasible to support.

So I guess the Ai is cheating even though I have all the races start at the same point as me.

[ZumZoom]

You could try reducing colony prevalency and/or independents amount, OR just reduce the colonization range. I play on Rare setting for both, 8x8 sectors on 1000 star galaxy with 150M colonization range. This makes it hard for both you and AI to colonize without invading. At the same time most AI's are able to grow (though some stagnate), but maybe it would've been hard for them if they weren't getting bonus income due to high difficulty.
If you play on normal, it's probably best to just reduce the colonization range (not too much).

[Radagar]

Originally posted by Zoltan:

Look at the main planet they have 12 land brigades. That is not feasible to support.

So I guess the Ai is cheating even though I have all the races start at the same point as me.

I have not been able to find specifics on the cheating in this game. The first game difficulty levels modified the player instead of the AI by reducing or increases your various incomes. If they followed the same scheme in this game then normal was even footing.

That said it can be difficult to say what's happening in your runs as there are numerous factors that can go into it.

What race do you play? Races have very different growth rates and desert planets are the most common in my experience. Government plays a part in income as well.

Are you colonizing planets below 20 suitability? That's generally a bad idea, especially early in the game. You can hit those lower planets later when you can absorb the costs + terraforming.

Are you researching the colonization techs that add suitability? These will not only make planets easier to colonize but will boost your income on planets of that type you already occupy.

Do you manage your funding levels to maintain full funding for colony development? Generally I have 0% reserve income and only take what is left after funding colony development then research. Even with 0 steady income you can function from bonus incomes like private economy shipbuilding/trade/tourism/etc... (Mainly the ship building)
Do you use the governing buildings? Reducing corruption and increasing development = more income.

You can survive at a deficit for quite awhile because of these bonus incomes, it's not the end of the world to have red numbers on the bar up top. I've survived for years with a deficit waiting for colonies to grow. It's never ideal, but it is doable.

It would be nice if the developers added the ability to invest your cash reserves into development in these scenarios. It's odd to have 500k in reserves but no funding for research and colony development because income is bad with way to invest that money into those areas. Maybe a pool we can add to as a mini reserve for those two funding lines.

Do you design your own large mining stations? The auto-generated designs are terrible. Weapons aren't needed as they aren't going to do anything of value anyway. Fill those general slots with as many small mining engines as possible. You will keep your colonies flush with luxury goods which = development which = income. Frankly the developers should either amend the auto-designs to do the same thing or they need to limit the mining engines as this is such a huge bonus over the AI currently (probably limit the engines as it does trivialize the resource economy entirely). As a bonus you will never know what a fuel shortage is.

This is through the viewpoint of my game settings though.

I always play pre-warp with very slow research on very hard difficulty on the largest map with max stars and rare/very rare colonies very rare independent worlds.

Other starts could likely change the experience a great deal.

Indie colonies are very powerful to capture/colonize and the AI beelines for them for that reason. Having multiple species with different planet type habitability options is a massive boon.

[Zoltan]

In this game there are not a lot of good planets to colonize. But this is my play style

Only colonize 25+ feasibility
Keep main happiness to +5 and small ones at 10+
Colonize independents first if possible
Don't build more ships or ground units if anything is in the red.
Only build mines where you need the resources or expand area

For this game how you get started means everything to survive mid game

[Zoltan]

When I look at the AI of the other races the math does not Make sense. The AI is not playing by the same rules as the player. That does suck

[ZumZoom]

Originally posted by Zoltan:

Keep main happiness to +5 and small ones at 10+

You stunt your growth if you set happiness goal to 10 for small/medium colonies. For maximum growth it should be set to 40 for small and 30 or at least 20 for mediums.

[ERutins]

Originally posted by Zoltan:

Its very hard to colonize new planets without destroying your economy. Yet all the other competing races colonize likes its so easy for them.

Are the other races going through the same as the player or is the AI cheating?

I keep my fleet just big enough to counter threats. It takes the main planet to grow enough to colonize the first planet.

What do you think I am doing wrong?

The AI plays by the same rules as you. If you play on difficulties above Normal, then it will get advantages in terms of economic and growth and targeting/countermeasures bonuses, but it will still play by the same rules.

On Normal difficulty, it doesn't get any advantages. On Easy, the player gets advantages.

[ERutins]

Originally posted by Zoltan:

Look at the main planet they have 12 land brigades. That is not feasible to support.

So I guess the Ai is cheating even though I have all the races start at the same point as me.

How many troops an empire can support will vary greatly based on race/government combinations even in the early game.

There is also a lot of variability in terms of starting situations. Sometimes you get a great starting system and region, sometimes not. Sometimes you find some ancient abandoned colony ships, sometimes not.

[Wraith_Magus]

Actually, I find this very strange. What time period did you start in? My first game, I start at Pre-FTL, and by the time I see other empires actually colonizing their second planets (even though they have an independent of their own race within a single jump of their homeworld), I already have 10 colonies. I think the automation just isn't smart enough to know how to do basic things like immediately go for the second hyperdrive tech then go for the colonization tech before everything else. Do crash programs for them - past your initial couple explorers and construction ships, there's nothing more important than researching those basic techs ASAP. (The skip drive is well-named - the second hyperdrive is still dirt cheap and 10 times better. Don't even bother building ships with the skip drive and get that second hyperdrive immediately.) You want to keep $25k on hand for events, but beyond that, spend it on research until you have colony ships and some early-stage construction/cargo/commerce techs to bootstrap the economy. Military techs and military ships can wait - pay off pirates with protection money as soon as they show up. I had my first colony ship out by year 13, looking at screenshot logs in my first game, and I almost certainly could have speedrun that faster.

Absolutely make sure you put everything into exploration ships, and micromanage them early on so they don't waste time doing stupid things like exploring planets to veeeerrryyyy sloooowwwwly tick up an exploration % from 10 to 15 when the next item would be at 30 anyway instead of going to each planet to just look for the basic information. (Getting the second exploration tech is also an important early goal just to get straight to 15.)

In general, until you get some of the higher colonization tech, I'd absolutely put everything into just finding basic raw materials and independent colonies, then settling those. It takes decades for a 30M population to grow to an economically useful level. (Basically, you need 1 billion people on a planet before it's not a net negative economically, early game.) This means independents are invaluable because they save you seriously like 50 years of unproductive growth, so scoop them up as soon as you can. Remember: you can settle/steal independents from the AI territory if they haven't settled them yet, you only take a slap-on-the-wrist 5 diplomatic penalty for it, and that goes away at 1 per year. By year 50, you'll have half a dozen economically productive planets, including the independents surrounding the AI homeworlds who haven't been able to settle any colonies and are now cornered.

Beyond that, there's no significant difference between 25 and 20 suitability as far as I can tell. The growth % is a little lower, but not so much it's a huge deal. It's the difference of 60 years of unproductive colony versus 50 years of unproductive colony. Especially early on, they're going to be a deadweight on your economy either way, so just keep how much you expand with your economic situation in mind. Try to limit yourself to colonizing (without neutrals) just to cut the path of advance off so the enemy can't build mines (without declaring a war you're sure to win once your economy is five times theirs) for themselves until you can get at least the 50M colony component upgrade (which shaves like 10 years off the development time of a colony) and you have a bit more money to sink on unproductives. (Keep in mind that, without starports, they are only going to cost you like 1000 credits a year, though - the main strain is on your private sector having to supply all those colonies with resources.)

Also, try to have a budget surplus. I know it's hard, but restrain yourself from big fleets, and absolutely make sure you manually build all ship designs. Pay very close attention to maintenance costs, and mark things like medium passenger ships as "obsolete" so that the private sector stops building them - they cost 50% more for absolutely no mechanical benefit if they don't have more passenger capacity and drain your economy. Likewise, get the upgraded forms of basic equipment like reactors instead of higher-performance models - they often cost 5 times as much for only 20% more performance. You can easily get ships with 80% of the performance for a quarter the cost if you strip back to basic equipment and judge things like freighters purely by hyperdrive and cargo containers on the hull (the only things that matter for a freighter). Look for things with maintenance cost reduction, like entertainment modules, and add them to everything. Do your explorers really need weapons, damage control, or anything but basic shields and engines if they're just going to sit in place using surveyor modules for 6 minutes straight? Medium explorers are straight-up nothing but a waste of money because the only things that matter for their job are the same, but the costs are twice as high. If you trim maintenance costs enough, you'll have a budget surplus that you can dump into "colony growth", and this makes a HUGE difference, because it drops the amount of time it takes to turn unproductive tiny colonies struggling to get established into economic juggernauts that roll the competition.

[Zoltan]

When you start and have 5 or 6 pirate clans all you can do is pay them off and no money left to grow. I keep turning down the pirate levels for each game but they are still in your face.

So this is more of a pirate game than a space colony game. I can manage the pirates, but it seems to be all about them.

6,000 to 9,000 at the start of a game is a lot out of your economy.

Even though I have pirate not set to re spawn all they do is keep respawning. Like they don't follow the same rules of gathering resources.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by Zoltan:

6,000 to 9,000 at the start of a game is a lot out of your economy.

I mean... it really, really isn't? Honestly, I find the protection money laughably low. $1,500 is less than the maintenance on the fleet it would take to fight them back, much less the money you save not having to build those military ships in the first place. (And it's especially ridiculous when you consider how successful pirate raids on a colony can take like $100k, but they're happy taking $1.5k a year regardless of how weak or strong you are.) You definitely shouldn't have 6 pirates on you before you can develop your economy, though. How long is it taking you to get out of your starting system? Looking back at my screenshot logs, I was around year 4 before the first pirates showed up, and I was basically completing research on the second hyperdrive. (This was on normal difficulty, and basically everything defaults just to take the temperature of what "normal difficulty" is considered, though...)

Remember that as you tech up, the private economy is going to dump its entire wallet into upgrading their ships, so you'll have more money than you know what to do with so long as you put everything into setting up a few mining bases early and letting your private sector bloom, such that you're getting tens of thousands more than the cashflow says you're gaining even early on. As others have mentioned, it's entirely possible to go for decades with a negative cashflow just because the cashflow doesn't count the money you make from the private sector buying/upgrading ships, and that blows the money you get from taxes (especially early on) out of the water. (Looking at screenshot logs, I was making like $50k+ just from private economy purchases in year 1 before I'd done pretty much anything, so $6k a year is no problem whatsoever.)

If you want to change some settings to make the start easier, it might be more helpful to instead look at that setting that changes how plentiful resources are in your starting system. All you need is to speedrun getting out of your starting system, so having more resources would be the biggest help there.

Also, paying off pirates means they go bug your rivals, instead. (They stop attacking you, and still are programmed to look for someone to attack, so guess where they go?) It's like having a discount raider fleet destroying all the opposition's construction vehicles or chasing off their colony ships for you, and you don't suffer any of the political consequences unless you actually ally with the pirates. It's seriously a joke how easy they make it for you. If you raise relation with the pirates enough to get to a non-agression treaty, they don't even charge protection money anymore, they only go out and fight your enemies for free (there's a trivial "you are friends with our enemies" diplomacy penalty, but it's like a -3). They even start offering to sell you maps of star systems when they're in a treaty with you, and you can "pay" in technology that will let the pirates upgrade their fleets so they're more effective at harassing your opponents. There's NO REAL DOWNSIDE to paying off every pirate you find. You're just gimping yourself not to.