100 turns in.  I can finally build military ships, but despite two Farms my population won't increase above 3.  WTF?? 

There are no available Starbase output upgrades save defense.  SBs are basically stepping stones into the larger(?) universe? otherwise worthless.  I could use another Trade license, but that takes research, which, being pitiful, will be a while.

Planet is full.  Tax at 39% and still running a larger deficit than ever.  Without alien gifts I would be bankrupt.

This is supposed to give me the feeling that I might be successful in a real game?  If I had a little more snootful I might laugh.  Stardock, what have you done?

Farms produce food, Food allows you to build Cities which in turn increase Population

As to the rest, play without Retribution (its sucks b****, takes the game in a direction most old school players hate), the manual is upto date as far as Intrigue and worth a read, theres is a Lets Play series on youtube by Christopher Holmes, it is well wroth a watch.

I'm not playing Retribution.  I don't even have Mercenaries.

Cities aren't offered on the build menu (yes, I researched them).  Comments have led me to believe that one needs a certain population to make use of them.  Why can't I build Cities?

It dawned on me that Starbases aren't the "need a constructor to upgrade" style.  I wonder if the "free" builds increase maintenance costs?

A City has suddenly shown up on my build menu, but since the planet is full, what should I destroy to make room?  Or is it even worth building now, since it appears that I can't grow, being food limited?

• Capital adjacent to a Market.
• Three Xeno Factories clustered around a Space Elevator.
• Computer on a +2 tile adjacent to a Basic Lab. (Also adding +1 to a Factory)
• Isolated Xeno Farm
• Xeno Farm adjacent to a Space Port.

There are also two Economic SBs in range.

Social/Ship 12.7/8.6.  Research 10.5.

Deficit -5.7/week.

I have yet to see the purpose in Cities.  IMO, they are one of additions to the game that exist just to use up tiles.

Strange that 2.33 increases Population, tracking Food, which increases Raw Production.  Yet 2.33 has no Cities.  In other words, Cities add nothing functional to the base game.  They just occupy a tile. 

And, as it turns out, they eat Duranthium and Promethion.  Since there is no Promethion in the Tutorial, there is no way to build a City, so "Never Mind".

You did not mention you were playing Synthetic. Food is irrelavant for them . And yes cities require other resources for synths. Same buff thou (population) if you do not recive it,once your in a game where your able to build said cities then I'd post a bug report. (Not having Promethion may well be a bug in the campaign/tutorial anyways?)

I'm not complaining, I know how to make this work by now. But it seems that with regard to pop growth at least was consistent in making it ludicrously hard to understand what is required and make it work. And all that with minimal documentation and help, but plenty of balancing issues and bugs.

They'd better spend some time making the game mechanics consistent and user friendly instead of adding llayer uppon layer of complexity with every DLC without regard to people who won't buy them.

That is a bug, needs reporting. Humans require food for Cities synths require Durantium and Promethion.

Hi,

Yes Retribution is different and population is a real problem at the start but you can do various things to ameliorate this.

One is to go for Benevolent in which case you can get a free colony ship in the top line. You can use this to boost your population on your home planet and then send it on to do its primary task of colonising a new planet.  Two steps further into the top line Abundant gives you 3 pop on all new planets which means that if necc you can rush a shipyard and  then a minimal colony ship to colonise a nearby planet without running into the problem that a colony ship takes  a minimum of 1G and you need an excess of 1G (ie 2G if just one host) to launch it. 

I always (unless synthetic) go for Tyron's destiny which is a little way into the tech tree 

Discovery -> Colonial Administration -> Colonial Settlements   -> Planetology 

and gives you another free colony ship to rebuild your home planet's population after sending other colony ships off.

As to the economy I normally stay friendly with all as much as poss in the opening and sell them techs (obviously the least useful possible) to keep the coffers ticking over. I should say though that I disable tech brokering which certainly makes it an easier or perhaps less difficult game than otherwise. 

I play at Genius  on gigantic maps (much smaller than they used to be under the latest definitions) with about a dozen opponents which gives me some room in the opening and abandon fairly soon if it looks a total pain which is maybe 1/2 the time or a little more often. 

Once you get a decent opening tho' it's normally not too bad and a game with one of the stronger civs - especially the Ancient ones  which are incredibly powerful research wise once you get going -  should last between about 150 and 200 moves if you conquer everybody who's really disagreeable and then avoid the potentially rather tedious endgame by taking a tech victory.

Cheers,

Jon

I've changed my mind on Cities.  By requiring Resources, Cities can serve to throttle population growth, which has been excessive in the mid-game since GC2. 

However, having found 'High Output Mines' tech, I'm not sure how effective they will be at that.  (Interesting that no AI has researched that tech in my game(s).)  And by drawing on civ-wide resources, high populations can appear even on isolated barren or inhospitable worlds.  While I understand their purpose now, the jury is still out.

Artifacts, after the initial "cool new stuff" wears off, you realise they kill the game, some are so OP they act like I win buttons, others you just do not see the point of, all this would not be so bad if they were not so abundant, if you get a 1 for every 3 planets your having a bad day. The dumbing of the Tech tree is a 50/50, I can see why it was done, I also understand why other changes were made to it, alas some of the links and progressions simple make no sense. Feels half hearted tbh and that come across while playing. Hypergates, well, highways, they are simply that massive disapointment (no disrespct but I feel this was just copied from 2 other popular space games and was not needed in the manner they chose). This is space.....not Earth. (Hated this in both them other games too btw)