Oh yeah, if you run out of money, the game will automatically set your economic slider to all wealth.  When that happens, just turn the slider back to whatever state it should be in on the next turn.  

There's a few factors:

1) no matter how much production you throw at a task, any queue can only do a maximum of 1 thing per turn. This makes the phenomenal output bonuses from buildings completely meaningless by about T3, and adding any new buildings past the 1-item-per-turn limit is pointless.

2) Colonizing another planet is, by far and away, the fastest way to grow your total population. Every planet grows by +0.1 pop per turn. Buildings to increase this number increase it by a very small % of 0.1 per turn. So if you build a hospital, your colony grows by 0.11 pop per turn; if you build a colony (for a similar expense), then you'll get 0.2 per turn.

3) Large Empire Penalty is hopeless at containing expansion. The approval penalty is far too low to actually hurt expanding empires, and simultaneously becomes too expensive to counter at a ridiculously low level - around 20 colonies. So there's effectively no penalty past 20 colonies, and the sooner you get there the better.

4) Trade resources (the ones that show up on planets) are overpowered, and stack. Same with artifacts. By getting 4-5 of each, you can give every planet the equivalent of multiple buildings, for free, automatically.

5) Buildings cost maintenance, colonies capitals don't. Colony capitals are way more powerful then any building, however. So you can either build buildings, and so be forced to generate and spend money on maintenance, or you can just keep adding colony capitals to gain huge amounts of free production which can all be directed at manufacturing, or research, or economy as needed.

These all combine to make 'tall' (highly developed) empires massively weaker than 'wide' (lots of poorly-developed planets) empires. Basically, you may as well check the number of planets everyone has by the end of the colony spam phase (roughly 20 turns * map size) and just declare whoever has the most the winner, as they should have an insurmountable lead. The fact that they sometimes don't is usually down to AI incompetence; if a player has the most planets when there's no more left to take for free, then the only thing that can stop him is an alliance of other players with more planets.

Mari has been pushing this for a few months now. This method currently works. It does not mean it will always do so. There are many ways to win and its your job to figure out how to do so.

Build a few colony ships, build some constructors to extend your range. If you run into pirates build some Cutters.

Also how you build your galaxy has a HUGE impact on how you play. Marigolds version of things DO NOT work on an insane map with all habitable planets set to rare as well as resources. Its a vastly different game. I play completely different then most on the forums and have an AWESOME game each time. Remember that techs you choose not to get can be bought from the other AI players later on.

Quoting janhardo,

reply 29

Thanks!

Amazing background information...don't understand not fully all points yet. 
I will try to play this strategy

Be warned - Marigoldran's strategy is very effective, but also intensely dull to play. You'll likely have 3-4 times as many planets as any rival by the time you meet them, and can build a fleet equal to anything they can put into the air in 4-5 turns. And all you're doing is constantly colonizing and setting repeat-build on shipyards. I doubt anyone playing this way would actually ever bother to complete a game; I further doubt that Marigoldran has ever played vanilla past around turn 100 or so.

The AI also has no potential to counter it, and in fact due to the imbalance between tall and wide empires the only effective counter to the strategy is doing exactly the same thing for most of the game. Moving from colony spam to building up for war earlier than the other guy is only useful if the number of colonies the other guy will acquire while you're militarizing is a fairly small proportion of your current empire's total size, or else his larger industrial base will cancel out your military head-start fairly quickly and leave you incapable of causing enough damage to him before he equalizes.

Colony ship spam hit a wall in GCII about 50 turns in due to lack of economy. Several good modders here have created a smiliar game and modded or changed LEP. This encourages TALL which I love. 

Playing on insane with few hab is basically a Tall game since every planet you get is a precious jewel that forces you to decide if its production, banking, or research. On those settings by about mid game I have about 30 to 50 colonies. At higher difficulties the Ai will also have about the same. This easily puts the ai on par tech and production wise with the human player. Also the ai will tend to have an initial larger military and will usually DOW you in a few turns after contact. 

Vidz better wartime mod really helps the ai build better ships and make many transports to use against you. As you play some games will be easy and some will be like 'Oh wow I need to design good ships to survive' <<<< those are the really fun games. 

Glad to hear you are having fun. 

I try now to play the marigoldran strategy ...expanding with worlds surrounded by 3 or 4 economic starbases with the colony ships and meanwhile getting the right strength with militairy ships

Well it is not that easy this strategy to perform in the game itself, but expanding with shipyards is new. 

Second that. That's a design flaw. A game, any game, shouldn't have a rule setup where you can beat the game with The One Optimal Strategy that overwhelmingly dominates all the other choices. If that strategy also happens to be dull and mindless, it makes it worse. After all, the main objective of a game is to have fun and that usually implies being faced with a challenge.

SD really, really, should put thought on how to resolve this issue. GC3 is a good game and has plenty of potential to be a great one. It just needs to fix the major things that are keeping it down, mainly colony-spam and its not-working-at-all-solution (LEP) and the strategic AI responsible for military actions and social building.

Anyhow, when you have colony-spammed to smooth victories enough to satisfy your first appetite of winning try playing with "sparse" maps. That is, choose less stars and about less everything in the game options. When good colonize-able planets are few and far between, it makes you actually think about those worlds and improve them. Mind, you still will get insane amounts of production out of them in the end but that's another issue...

There are techs that increase fleet logistics.  

What turn are you on? A fleet of large scale ships should rip apart anything the AI has.

To actually take their planets you'll need planetary invasion.  But wiping out their space forces leaves their planets undefended and ripe for the taking.  

play further..

Quoting janhardo,

reply 41

I remember from one gameplat what has only one shipyard and the techs in the research tree for logistics done, that the fleetlogistic points are low..not more  then 4 large ships were possible (logistic number 7 for each large ship ? ) and a logistic max number of 35.
So i am curious how the fleetlogistic distribution is for many shipyards?  

Right now i am on turn 154, with 12 colonies ..i see large scale production tech is not reached in the research tree and also not the branch for the fleetlogistics ...all close to completition...hurry .. i think i set the research on 100 % till the techs are reached and then set theproduction to 100 % manufacturing for to build quick the large warships. 

Is it possible to bomb a enemy planet ? ..or is this not clever.  
I excited about the idea that my coming fleet can  

 

 

What size map are you playing on and how come you only have 12 colonies on turn 154? I get 12 colonies by TURN 15.  

How many colonies does the AI have? 

If the AI outexpanded you, you obviously didn't follow my directions.  

Did you rush buy colony ships at the beginning of the game? You did something very, very wrong.  (Or perhaps my directions could be better).  

It might not even matter though.  Large hulled ships will still destroy the AI.  

You need planetary invasion to invade planets.  But if you wipe out all of the AI ships you've effectively won. 

It ran very, very fast.  

Yeah, well, best of luck to you.  The problem is that from my perspective it's hard to tell whether you're pretending to be untalented at strategy or whether you're genuinely un-talented at strategy.  In the past I would have automatically selected the former, but experience has taught me otherwise. I've worked with some people who still don't understand fractions at age 16.  Trying to teach them the concept is... difficult.  And having worked with him I'm of the opinion that he is ABOVE average intelligence.  He managed to pass the high school Virginia chemistry SOL WITHOUT ACTUALLY KNOWING ANY CHEMISTRY.  I'm quite impressed with that, as was his chemistry teacher.  The Saturday remedial schooling might have helped, though that was primarily for math. As a result, he only needs to take Government remedial class over the summer. At least he knows what primaries are now. Nonetheless, I'm pretty proud of him for passing his chemistry SOL. At least he's learned how to BS relatively easy multiple choice tests. He is in fact above intelligence.  

It's entirely possible that you could be one of those types of people and so as a matter of fact I can't tell.  With those people the concept of abstract strategy and algorithms and percentages simply don't occur to them.  "Why is 'x' in the equation 2x=6 the same as 'y' in the equation 2y=6? Aren't they different letters?" When they say things like that, they're not kidding.  THEY ACTUALLY MEAN IT, AS IN THEY'RE GENUINELY CONFUSED. And if you think from their perspective, their opinion is perfectly sound. 'X' and 'Y' are in fact different letters.  Why should they be the same? On the other hand, they're generally pretty likeable people and will probably do fine in life (though NOT in school).  I tutor for a living. You could, you know, be one of those types of people and thus genuinely un-talented at certain things.  In which case you should figure out what you're good at and stick to those things. 

Either way, in the end I tell them three words:  Figure it out.  I'm not the one who has to pass the tests.  In the end it's their responsibility.  

And if they can't figure it out? one concept: McDonalds fast food worker.  Take that however you want.  

Yeah, well, best of luck to you.  The problem is that from my perspective it's hard to tell whether you're pretending to be untalented at strategy or whether you're genuinely un-talented at strategy.  In the past I would have automatically selected the former, but experience has taught me otherwise. I've worked with some people who still don't understand fractions at age 16.  Trying to teach them the concept is... difficult.  And having worked with him I'm of the opinion that he is ABOVE average intelligence.  He managed to pass the high school Virginia chemistry SOL WITHOUT ACTUALLY KNOWING ANY CHEMISTRY.  I'm quite impressed with that, as was his chemistry teacher.  The Saturday remedial schooling might have helped, though that was primarily for math. As a result, he only needs to take Government remedial class over the summer. At least he knows what primaries are now. Nonetheless, I'm pretty proud of him for passing his chemistry SOL. At least he's learned how to BS relatively easy multiple choice tests. He is in fact above intelligence.  

It's entirely possible that you could be one of those types of people and so as a matter of fact I can't tell.  With those people the concept of abstract strategy and algorithms and percentages simply don't occur to them.  "Why is 'x' in the equation 2x=6 the same as 'y' in the equation 2y=6? Aren't they different letters?" When they say things like that, they're not kidding.  THEY ACTUALLY MEAN IT, AS IN THEY'RE GENUINELY CONFUSED. And if you think from their perspective, their opinion is perfectly sound. 'X' and 'Y' are in fact different letters.  Why should they be the same? On the other hand, they're generally pretty likeable people and will probably do fine in life (though NOT in school).  I tutor for a living. You could, you know, be one of those types of people and thus genuinely un-talented at certain things.  In which case you should figure out what you're good at and stick to those things. 

Either way, in the end I tell them three words:  Figure it out.  I'm not the one who has to pass the tests.  In the end it's their responsibility.  

And if they can't figure it out? one concept: McDonalds fast food worker.  Take that however you want.