to the settings:
Huge, 'cause I love huge maps
Very hard computer enemies, together with very easy aliens makes the computer enemies a little bit harder. Very hard aliens can kill computer enemies, and weaken them at begin.
Terra Salvum is imho the strongest faction
all technologies, 'cause I love to have all, but sadly you see then the whole tech tree.
I don't like the current victory conditions
Epic speed feels right for me
and I always play pangaea
Begin:
In my first games I build first a former and then some buildings and early colonizers, but that's a mistake.
First, set taxes to zero. This will increase the morale enoumously and allows to research/build faster at begin.
Lock Farmers and Miners, so that with a city size increase no one will assigned in this jobs.
Assign the first pop as worker and build soldiers. Later also buy soldiers. Until you have about 5-6 soldiers.
When you run out of minerals reassign the workers to scientists.
With all the soldiers explore. There is no need to let a soldier back in the city.
Explore mainly on land, and go for the ruins. Only in land ruins xenomorph drones can be found. And with this new units it fasten up the exploration of the map.
In the ruins there can be found enough food, minerals, money to not assign farmers,miners, and change tax with begin of t2 techs ( then the credits have been used).
In the first turns it's possible to run out of money, then increase taxes until you find a money ruin.
Every faction met will assign every treaty for free ( except alliance, I don't like alliances ), maybe the divines not. Because you have enough military power.
Research for factory and labs t1 and build them, and also some avenger tanks with hammerhead rockets in turn 100 are welcome.
Have 9 field training operations in turn ~80.
After ~50 turns all land should be explored
After ~60 turns the whole map shall be explored
You have now about 30 units.
Send for your 2 cities ( one colonizer you get for free ) each 2 units as defense, and all the other units to the first enemy you want to conquer. I would suggest to conquer the divines, as they are very aggressive.
In turn ~80 your SoD should stand before the divines second city (capitals get another 50% defense bonus) and now use all the field trainig operation to get lvl 10 units. Maybe you move the lvl 10 units out of the stack, while upgrading the units and begin to conquer the first enemy when 10 units have full hp. ( field training trains 10% hp, each time it's used on the units ). You will lose some units at the attack, but that doesn't really matter. And then conquer the capital. Again let 2 units back in each city.
Send the remaining SoD and the avenger tanks to a second faction you want to conquer, I would suggest Empire, 'cause they also like to dow you.
Within ~ 120 turns, 10 y from begin you shall have then conquered 2 factions, have 6 cities and be with research at begin of t2 techs.
There is no need to build colonizers as terra salvum (+25% habitat size), as another faction you may have to build some cities at begin of t3, to avoid overpopulation
summary : don't harvest food,minerals, tax at begin. Build/buy soldiers, explore the map for ruins, rush to conquer 2 enemies at begin.
Reassign all your pops when needed
T2 begin : now it's time to develop the cities proper and also have to harvest ressources, but don't drop below 3 military power points
T2 mid : Begin to clear the hives
T2 end : Cities are developed proper and your reseach excels the computer ones, maybe break research treaties and time to use cloning all the time
T3 mid : prepare for the end war and get units with hp ~ 40 and kill the 16hp sea aliens to get 25% power for heavy units
T3 end : Time for Conquest and 100hp+ units. In my game I conquered the last enemy city by june 2136 ( less than 30y, 360 turns)
To City development at begin with t2:
Effiecieny is king! Sadly you have now about 60% taxes and also already used all your minerals from the ruins, but still have food left. Probably your research will drop for some turns.
One former for 2 cities are enough. And especially make mines on mountain to have 3base mineral fields. Probably you are also forced to use fields with only 2 minerals.
Your Capital should have build nearly all buildings, and the other are rather poor developed. Now reassign in this cities all the pops to workers and build defense t1 first and then a factory and then mining building t1 and when researched mining building t2 ( espcially for the flat bonus). Then Farm building t1 to get some food. Maybe your capital is forced to only have harvesters in this time. Then get anti pollution building t1 and further the morale buildings.
Note, I'm always locking farmers and miners. ( and also scientists, until a city isn't developed) I assign them when needed. And in my developed cities I have as many workers as scientists.
At the end of this development phase of the cities the research output will increase within some turns from 50 rp upto 150 rp, and with the begin the of hiveclearing and bank lvl 2 the taxes can be dropped to ~25%. I never use money for buying buildings nor to upgrade units. Now it's also time to disband your first units.
Morale is very important as each point of morale boosts the efficiency by 5% (almost, flat bonus from buildings aren't effected, but the flat bonus gets less and less important by time ).
City growth : Unlike then in civ, the growth limits are global. ( Don't have correct numbers in head), but if you have cities with the size of 7,5 and 3 it also needs as many growth then a city with a size of 13 to grow. For each city size, the city gets 1 growth and until you have 18 pops you need 10 growth more for a pop grow, then it's flat 180 in each city. But each city has its own threshold and 'cause this a single city will always lead to a faster growth than many cities. In the above example ( with 7,5,3 vs 13 ) you have 3 cities with a treshold in sum of 390 vs 130, so its theoretically possible to have in these 3 cities 387/390 pop growth, while the 13 sized city is already 15.
Anyway, until you are not going to have morale malus in reason of overpopulation there is no need to build cities.
To Research:
You don't have to research each low level tech. Especially, when playing with seeing the whole tech tree. But even, when you are playing with none visible, you see the further link arrows. If I already have researched the 75% armor, then the 100% armor is hardly an increase, but maybe it's more important to research the 150% armor instead of morale building t2. Ok, that was a joke, morale buildings are more important
End of Guide
Thoughts about exploration and ruins.
Ok, about ruins. Imho right now the ressources you get from the ruins or the units are too strong. And the ressource Bonus don't scale with game speed. So, depending on game speed, you don't have to harvest (much) in the first era and with the units you get you are able to kill 2/5 factions in the first 120 turns. With short gamespeed maybe only one enemy, but maybe with some support on marathon up to 3.
Maybe there are just too much ruins compared with huts in civ. Maybe reduce it to 1/5. Or make more rather senseless effects, like seeing the next 3 undiscored hives ( like barb villages in civ5) or see the surrounding map ( like in civ ... and see then what you already have explored ). Anyway for the rush problem 'cause of the drones. Drones maybe shall be less common and drones maybe can't enter the ruins ( like airplanes can't get the bonus) to reduce the exponential growth. Or Drones are only controlled by player for 10 turns ( no speed scaling ) until the join the aliens ( Terra Salvum 20 turns). Also, aslong as there is no need to have at begin a unit staying at home, the ai shall also start to explore immediately. To avoid to avoid harvesting in the first stage, the ruins maybe shall only give 20% ressources of the harvested ressources, by cities, in the last 10 turns. so when have harvested 20 minerals in the past 10 turns, then you get only 4 minerals instead of the typical ~20. ( Also game speed scaling ).
Imho the typical reason for exploration ( to look for good city positions ) isn't given. Less, but more effecitve cities are king. And a good location is a location without sea.( but mountain, at begin )
--> Exploration too powerful
Ressources:
Ok, about food. While I like to have do not have half of the population assigned as worker, I like it. 'Cause it's a futuristic society, but right now you don't have to be aware about food in the first stage and then the flat bonus of buildings is almost enough food for the empire and at the end with fungus 4 food you hardly need any farmers. Maybe cancel the flat bonus from food buildings or increase the demand through units. T1 units eat one food. T2 units are eating 2 food, and T3 units are eating 4 food. This also would prevent early rushes.
--> Food almost senseless
Terrain, tile improvement, former, buildings.
I miss rivers. Rivers should give the adjacent tiles 25% local effeciency and attacking malus for attacking over the river, except infantry and airplanes.
Sea tiles, they only give 2 food. That's not worse at begin, but later it's meh. Maybe each sea tile should give one morale.
I would also like to see 3 tiers of roads, farms, mines, forts, trees. ( road speed costs 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 ), turn to improve this tiers ( 4 baseturns, 8 baseturns, 16 baseturns )
Right now, it doesn't really matter if you have roads or not, and also worse, that an enemy could use the road. Enemies shouldn't be able to use roads.
Also 3 tiers of formers, not more hp, but with 2x improve speed and 4x improve speed would be fine.
Instead of the flat bonus of food and minerals building, farm building t1 should increase the output of farms and fungus by 1 and further farm buildings should allow to handle better farms and fungus output by 1 ( only one tier of fungus, planting/removing fungus always need 4 baseturns). So, on a tile with base food 2, with farm t1 would give 3 food, right now, and with farm building t1 then 4 food. The same tile with farm t3, but only farm building t1, would still give 4 food, but with also farm building t3 6 food. Same for mine. Flat bonus from factories,labs and banks changing to 0,25 production/lab/credits per pop. And maintenance costs should also scale. Morale building maybe should only give 4 morale, regardless which tier.
--> more tiers,ressource building changes
Growth, Migration, Borders
Except overpopulation there is right now no sense in building more cities. But I would like to see the whole map colonized. Maybe change the city growth treshold for smaller cities to a lower value. So, that the overall pop growth is significant higher.
Migration should maybe not only affected by morale, but also by how much living space is left. So that the migration in really big cities (40+) is far bigger.
The borders right now are too small for me. Not to use all the land, but I like to have big imperial borders, like in civ. So maybe we have the borders right now as core borders, which can be used by cities, and normal borders, growing by 2 tiles per pop for the first 6 pops(second ring), 3 tiles per pops from city size 7-12(3rd ring),4 tiles ... up to 6 rings. Alien territory can also lie in the normal border, but for core border from a city the same rules right now are used. Only a normal border tile can become a core border. Displaying the normal border as light color, as terra salvum for example light green and normal green for core borders. When Cities are close together then the maximum of setting borders is still limited up to 6 tiles away from the city, but it's reached earlier.
edit : normal borders = claim borders
Ai and Alien
Currently, the ai should explore faster. Also I have never seen, that they have built a morale building, but that's pretty important. In late game they still rely on weak units, in my latest game I haven't seen any enemy unit stronger than 20 hp, while I'm pretty sure, that they could have build stronger ones. But they still had all their 2-4 hp colonial soldiers. Really masses.
Alien aggression very hard is a good difficulty, but with begin of t2 they lose on difficulty. Maybe they should also develop somehow and get more organized by the time.
Technology
I like the random in the research paths, but I really dislike to have not all tech avaible when playing with less then all techs visible. Maybe an option to still have all techs avaible, also when none are visible would be fine. And also remove the research path arrows when playing with none visible. Maybe there shall be some small bonus, when researching all techs.
Endless tiers
It would be cool, if there would be never reached the end in researching, just giving another tier. Most stuff scales with each tier. So have a tank t4, a farm t7, a nuclear bomb t10 , ... , maybe there shall be no further morale building and fungus ressources in 2 out of 3 tiers. I wouldn't mind, if it would really be only called road t7, soldier t12, but maybe have 5 repeating colors : white, blue, yellow, red, green and white for t6 again. Maybe with repeating equipment tiers, like 50% def, +2 sight, or 200% move.
And the duration of EMP isn't effected by defense buildings.
Edit same settings, except that I have played with divine and a more aggressive t1 end has lead to total conquest of all enemies by september 2124, begin of t3.
