Slow colonisation Idea

I'm not sure about these ideas. Your suggested slow colonization seems like it has a few problems. Someone that starts with a second system with planets in their home sector would have a huge advantage over someone that doesn't, and with the way range currently works in this game they might be able to use the second planet as a launching point towards a third system, increasing their lead. If the way range works is modified so colonzing a second system doesn't let you get passed your home sector, it seems like the game is going to go extremely slow, as it would take a long time to research huge hulls with only a few planets. The ai would also require a fair bit of tweaking to make sure it properly protitizes getting better colony ships.

The fast colonization doesn't seem to have to many troubles but feels a little pointless as the colonisation rush seems to end fairly quickly in my games.

I think that Dark avatar should help with reducing the importance of the colony rush. It adds worlds with special enviroments that need certain techs to be able to colonize, so I'm guessing that would diversify the colony race, as one might chose to focus on colonzing the worlds initally avilable, or racing for the technolgys to claim the other words.

What about contructors?

The slow colonization may unbalance the game in this way--whoever is first to obtain the extended colonization techs has a huge (and possibly unbeatable) advantage.

However, this seems like an idea that can be modded in.

Some possible alternatives to slow down or deemphasize the colony rush:
1) make colony modules hugely expensive
2) limit number of colonists to 100m or even less--this will slow down the new colony contribution to the tax base while keeping expenses as they are forcing a civ to consider the cost of carrying the new colonies for 50-100 turns before they turn a profit.

But is the colony rush "broken"? I think this would happen in real life under the same conditions. Simply look at the European "colony rush" when the Americas (North, Central, South) were "discovered".

I don't think the problem is the rapid colonisation so much as the initial range and the map sizes.
In the original GalCiv, you were pretty much limited to the neighbouring sectors until you began advancing the propulsion tech tree, even a small map size would leave around 25% or so of the map unreacheable. In GalCiv 2, on a medium map all but the far corners are reacheable from the beggining.

You could achieve a slow down simply by restricting the range further (perhaps adjacent systems only at first, growing with each propulsion advance). This would slow down the initial colony rush while still giving a fairly even start for all players. It would also make the life support modules actually worthwhile It doesn't provide too much of an advantage to those who extend range first (although since this would place them at a superior tech level then perhaps it should) - you can use starbases instead to increase your range to compensate. It would actually give a rather interesting dilemma - concentrate on propulsion research, or use starbases and hope no-one hits them.

You can use starbases or other planets to increase this range of course, but this leads to more strategic thought when it comes to colonising planets, rather than just grabbing anything with >0 PQ. Do you colonise the PQ 11 planet in the next system, or grab that PQ 5 planet to bring the PQ 18 planet into range.

I love the idea of a slower colonization rush. Got some good ideas there that could be built on. No need for a faster colonization rush though.

Yeah, colonization needs to be slowed some more. The shorter range idea is a good one. I still feel I need to rush colony ships at the beginning. An alternate idea is a smaller population at the beginning of the game. Perhaps enough to support 2 colonies, and that's it.

Perhaps if you set the starting conditions to the following you could slowdown the colony rush:
~Habitable Planets = Rare
~Planets = Occasional
~Stars = Occasional
~Size = Gigantic
~Star Formation = Scattered or Loose Clusters
~Reserach Rate = Slowest

This would ensure that there would be enough planets for a good game, but the stars would likely be far-flung enough that you need some life support to reach them, which would take a lot longer to research than normal. Stars being grouped in loose clusters would make them farther apart and ensure there was some overlap and border-pushing early on, too.

I think the expansion pack is supposed to address this, though, by giving planets with different habitats that need new research to be able to use.

I kinda like his ideas, to say that one person "might" have an advantage if they have an extra system at thier disposal is kinda silly. In reality it wont matter much. Already if a player has some nice planets nearby they have an advantage, so i dont see the piont of complaining about that. however it would be pretty tough to implement, possibly too tough. Also it took almost three hundred years for the europeans to even get a good foot hold in the Americas, there was no colony rush.

I like the ideas.
I agree that the colony rush is not "broken", it is fun as is.
A Slow colonisation Setup Option might make some of the early game planet development mix in with the midgame militarisation.
yeah you can probably already set up the game to slow down the rush a bit.
Small colonies (100M) and limited range sound like good and simple ideas (the simpler the better so AI can cope). you would have to wait for colonies at the edge of your empire became big enough to construct a starport and a coloniser before you could spread further. You would also have to provide military support so your colonisers dont get picked off. The Ai might not be able to do all this so well, so it might need some kind of compensation to be able to compete with the human player.

Cheers

If you want to slow down colonization, surely the simplest thing to do is just cut the starting bank balance?

~Star Formation = Scattered or Loose Clusters

Actually, if you make them Tight Clusters you can get a galaxy with pockets of star systems with HUGE stretches of empty space between them, and that can slow down colonization until longer range colony ships are built. Even constructor strategies need range techs in this set up.

Cheers,
Reaver