In the following I’ll cover the primary concerns of a starting empire. There are many important decisions to make as you start out in a new galaxy, not least of which are the Civilization Traits and the customization of your homeworld. You also have to determine your overall priorities for the empire, and how you’re going to defend your planets.
To my knowledge, there haven’t yet emerged a prevalent way to pick your civilization traits. Since most players are very secretive about their picks (especially if they’re still active in the galaxy, naturally), and since there are many different paths to success in CS, it’s very hard to make general assertions in this area. I imagine there’s a reasonable variety of traits from player to player, and even of the same player from galaxy to galaxy.
I have personally yet to find a set of picks that I know to be better than any other set, since the effectiveness of your picks will be greatly impacted by how you set up your planets and how you follow through with your initial priorities. You may, for example, have chosen very agressive picks (like bonuses to ship speed and firepower), but if you fail to build a big fleet or end up being forced to play defensively, those picks are not fully taken advantage of.
However, I will say that I nearly always choose to reduce the food consumption of citizens as much as possible. Another trait I usually up a bit is the income per citizen. I suspect these two, along with production bonuses, are common choices since they affect your whole empire, rather than for example just your scientists or only when you happen to defend a planet.
I could be wrong, of course; Gedrin has another approach:
I personally always set my citizens to earn less credits... the percent of credits earned by a citizen is small vs what you will need. 60% of an inadequate amount is not that much... I prefer Banker planets.
I’m not quite prepared to cede the point though. You’ll have to make up your own mind.
One of the most common set-ups is to maximize the planet’s size (nearly everyone does this), along with production, minimizing research and putting whatever is left into food production. The intention of this set-up is to grow your homeworld fast and use it for ship production. This set-up requires that one of your first colonies is tasked with research, or you’ll be hopelessly behind in technology (as opposed to just somewhat behind).
Another popular approach is to divvy out the points equally among the various options, after having maxed the size. This provides a nice well-rounded planet that you can use for anything, though never excelling at any one thing.
A third alternative, recently used by The Phantom (one of the best players around), was to ignore the planet size, and divvy out the points equally among the remaining options. This should give you a faster start, and you leave open the option to use the planet for research, but in the late game this planet will be less productive than the homeworlds that were enlarged. I’m not aware of other popular approaches in this area.
Whichever way you go with your customization, carefully consider the impact it’ll have on your plans for this galaxy, follow through on those plans to the best of your ability and don’t forget to avail yourself of the Doctrines. They’ll emphasise bonus traits or lessen the impact on any penalties you might have chosen.
The traits are perhaps the single choice with the highest impact on your empire. I would advice new players to be very cautious if adjusting any trait more than two steps in either direction.
guides\nongolfguide\customs.txt · Last modified: 2012/02/26 22:17 by jackjack
