Any fast expansion tips?

[Sabaithal]

It seems the AI is cheating, or its using a strategy I haven't thought of, so I need a way to counter that. I've come up with two strategies, with limited effect. The AI always seems to expand much quicker, over a much wider area, but I've noticed the quality of their systems stagnates often, and their military is usually lacking, largely being high in number, but low in individual quality.

To that end, my first strategy was to do almost the same thing as them. Expand quickly, but try not to go into the negative as far as resources goes. Basically aggressively pursue about 6 or so systems, then try and get them set up. The thing is, this usually takes too long, and your home system is stalled due to having to supply everything with food initially. So you lack a main powerhouse for a while.

My second strategy was to do the opposite. "play tall" reinforcing my home system, and only colonizing one valuable nearby system. This allowed me to get my pop count on my home system up very fast, and I was able to build improvements as fast as I could research them. The problem being, if you want a strong military fleet, you need to expand further because often those systems don't expand fast enough to get their income up to a point where they can keep up with your war machine, early game anyway. Doing this now. Expanding slowly, but steadily.

Still, I keep feeling like I'm wasting time and resources, what with the game already being at turn 150, and me still not having most tier-3 techs, and only 2 powerhouse systems, and one half-decent advanced fleet (tier 2 lasers, but tier 1 defenses, though still enough to win a war when the empire declared it on me).

[Sloan]

Use morale-enhancing laws.
Use Multi-Thread Management, allows Dust to be used to buyout items in the Construction Queue with Accelerated Production.
Аccelerated outpost completion

[basho]

which faction are you playing as?

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by basho:

which faction are you playing as?

Custom, but basically sophons (focus on tech) with a few food bonuses. Though that's changed quite a bit a couple of times.

Thinking of restarting and cannibalizing the tech bonuses for food bonuses instead to see if that will speed things up. Citizens also geared for maximum possible resource productions per pop overall.

[ElPrezCBF]

Easy question, but no easy answer. How fast you expand will depend on your chosen faction, whether it's cravers who must expand fast or die out, or Sophons where you can expand slower but still keep up due to your science advantage. It also depends on your chosen map. An old galaxy without arms will mean you could expand very fast if you're lucky to get a larger constellation or very slow if you're unfortunate to start on a small isolated one. It also depends on how near and easily available strategic resources are for your starting position, as well as whether your starting planets need lower or higher tier colonization techs to unlock. So again, there's no simple answer to your question.

[Danone]

Hello. I write it here just in case you did not know: there is no need to supply all outposts from your home system. You can choose the one from where the ships will be departing in the system view, and even change it later, in case for example the route is no longer safe, lack of food, another system is closer or with better food output, and so on.

[Sloan]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Custom, but basically sophons (focus on tech) with a few food bonuses. Though that's changed quite a bit a couple of times.

Try custom faction, focus on industry. Don't want to play standart factions?

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Danone:

Hello. I write it here just in case you did not know: there is no need to supply all outposts from your home system. You can choose the one from where the ships will be departing in the system view, and even change it later, in case for example the route is no longer safe, lack of food, another system is closer or with better food output, and so on.

Unless I'm missing something, one of your systems does still have to supply a food ship right? I didn't see an option to not do that.

Originally posted by frazy76:

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Custom, but basically sophons (focus on tech) with a few food bonuses. Though that's changed quite a bit a couple of times.

Try custom faction, focus on industry. Don't want to play standart factions?

I prefer tailoring factions to my own taste. Just a matter of preference. Though if I had to choose a standard faction, it would definitely be sophons.

[Danone]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Originally posted by Danone:

Hello. I write it here just in case you did not know: there is no need to supply all outposts from your home system. You can choose the one from where the ships will be departing in the system view, and even change it later, in case for example the route is no longer safe, lack of food, another system is closer or with better food output, and so on.

Unless I'm missing something, one of your systems does still have to supply a food ship right? I didn't see an option to not do that.

Hello, yes one of your systems must still supply the outpost. The default is usually the home system, or one of the best ranked anyway. In case one want to expand wider and supply multiple outposts at the same time, it is easier I think if more than one system can bear this burden, instead of just weigh all on the home planet. With two or more systems providing supplies, more outpost can easier be maintained.

[Sabaithal]

Ok, on another note, how to get rid of an unwanted pop that just showed up via random event (random my ass, I just reloaded the game five times and it still didn't go away!)? I don't want these garbage haroshems screwing up the economy of my systems.

They must go, but chain gang doesn't seem to work in removing them (the population of the system didn't even decrease, what the heck?) and I have no spaceport tech yet. I am willing to even edit my save game but THEY. MUST. GO.

[Danone]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Ok, on another note, how to get rid of an unwanted pop that just showed up via random event (random my ass, I just reloaded the game five times and it still didn't go away!)? I don't want these garbage haroshems screwing up the economy of my systems.

They must go, but chain gang doesn't seem to work in removing them (the population of the system didn't even decrease, what the heck?) and I have no spaceport tech yet. I am willing to even edit my save game but THEY. MUST. GO.

As far as i know, there are no other ways -without modding- to eliminate the specific population which hasn't been already said by you: shipping them far far away or simply keeping them deported inside a spaceport.
Chain gang removes a random one, some say it is usually the one which is more likely to increase as new type, but i am not sure this can be guaranteed.
The same for other specific races' pop actions, for example, Cravers can eat 1 random minor pop, Hisshos can sacrifice, etc. but there is no other known way to get rid of the specific unwanted pop. You have to deal with them as part of the management required by the game.

If you really want another "unorthodox", risky and mean way to try, still without a guaranteed success rate... you could volountarily decrease the food output and/or the approval rate of the system, by issuing unpopular laws, dismantling the approval buildings, even food production ones if necessary, and move some pops in the more harsh planets if there is room there, until you get the system Approval rate to Unhappy or Mutinous level and negative food output: people will begin to leave the system, and in that case you will see which one you are losing. It could be the Haroshems.
If you want to go with the "starve them" way, you could also choose that system to supply the outpost you have for 1 turn, in order to ship away more food and starve the population you want to lose - again, IF you will see that the population which is going to disappear is the correct one.

Needless to say, messing with the approval rate at empire level can have backlash in ALL of your systems, not just the one you want to target. In that case save and reload, as you say you have already done, you will be fine.

If successful, remember to fix stuff and build/buy again all food and approval buildings, and cancel the bad laws, in the next turn!

In the end, the safest, quickest and more effective way IS the classic one, to develop your economy to unlock tier 1 spaceport, get those luxuries you need, build that spaceport and keep them locked there, until you decide where to ship them.

I don't know if other players have better ideas.