I've been trying to get him trade in the stock market with fake money so that he could get practice.  Much better to lose fake money than real money.  Didn't catch on.  

What he should do in the future is a serious concern for everyone involved.  My general opinion is that he should join the military, get the GI Bill, and then go to college.  That way even if he blows off his college courses like the way he blows off his high school classes he won't be wasting his parents' money.  And with the GI Bill he would also be able to avoid student debt.

The problem with that idea is that ISIS might attack the US in the next decade and the next thing we know we could be learning about him in the news as he's fighting ISIS in Syria and dodging IEDs and various other rocket propelled weaponry.  Of course you could get around that by joining the food preparation/logistics part of the military meaning that he'll stay on base the whole time.  But even that's sort of risky in Syria.  

Hello fellow players;

I've been playing GalCiv III for 2-3 days. I played SOASE, Civ series, Beyond Earth. I am kind of familiar to the genre. But as the topic says i am kind of lost in this game.

But thanks to replies, i started to improve my game and enjoy it.

I still dont know what i am doing. I just spammed colony and cons. ships at the beginning and i manage to grab more than half of the map. (i am playing normal difficulty in a small map with 3 opponents btw)

I am at turn 70-80 and still no war. My research progress is confusing. Little bit of that, little bit of this, mostly colonization and military.

I try to design a ship. Ok. Thats nice. But i use elerium (or it may be the other resource in red) for design. And i use the other one for build 1 ship. And thats it. I have no other resource left for building ships. I already mention that i have more than half of the map. Why there is so rare resources, is there a chance to multiply them. I can only build Snipers now and that sucks...

Thanks!

Well what went wrong?

Can't follow marigoldran about a person who i don't know..
Teaching also means patience and don't catagorize people at once.
A deadsin to say that a pupil is stupid..in teaching.. haha..deadly for for youngsters for their self esteem in their learning process 

I must figure out what are the startconditions for your type of strategy playing and try to follow your strategy again
I have tried to follow your instructions for point 1 till turn 30, but i ended up with 2 colonies, strange it goes wrong already on the point 1 and the introduction text 
I made a word document from the strategy..so i can read again

Rush buy shipyards with colonizer on all of your newly colonized planets --> once a a world colonised ...buy the shipyard ( i did not have done this )
Your coloniser should be set in random direction --> by  hand or automatic ( exploring) what works best ?    

What went wrong in the last game with 8 races? .. i set the 3 startships on exploring and forget to rushbuy a shipyard.. i presume i did the slider and wheel correct

There are people who are not good in math ..those people are diagonised a discalculi .. remedial teaching for those people
In fact i do have minor degree in mathematics teaching ( B Ed ), so abstract thinking / concepts  should be not a real problem for me 

Let me try it again to follow...i forget if it was for 4 races or 8 races game ?
Playing with 8 races with this strategy gives no colony/constructor spam..was it a strategy from marigoldran for 4 races ?
 

I think you broke him! 

I do hope stardock look to improving on other strategies rather than the colony mash it is now

Marigoldran plays insane maps with abundant everything. The more planets you can blunder into before you bump into a rival empire, the better the strategy works. 

ugh, this whole thread is just terrible... I don't know whats worse this poor op, or marigold and his strategy hes still pushing months later.

lol. Oh well.

The instructions were clear: you start the game with Colonizer and probably Patriotic, which allows players to rush shipyards on newly colonized planets.  Consequently you don't need to waste 50 turns building a shipyard.  And yes, you should be exploring with your colony ships BY HAND.  

If you aren't going to follow instructions then there's no point in explaining anything more to you.

Best of luck in your game and in your life.  

Janhardo, 3% of x is 8.  What is the value of x as a fraction and as a decimal? In order to understand this game, you need to first understand the concept of percents and fractions and be able to get at least a 500 score on the math section of the SAT.  If you did not master basic math, you cannot master this game.  This game relies heavily on the concept of percents and decimals.  If you do not know what those things are, then I would advise playing Mario Kart instead.  That game does not require an intuitive grasp of fractions and percents.  

On the other hand, if you're willing to learn math through gaming, I am more than happy to try and teach it to you.  BUT YOU MUST FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? 

EDIT: I'm not calling you stupid.  In fact I believe you're ABOVE average American intelligence.  There are people who are BELOW average intelligence and I'm quite confident you're NOT one of them.  See? This means you're smarter than most of the people around you.  I really do believe that and I'm not just saying that to make you feel better about yourself.  

You're doing fine.  The AI isn't smart enough to pose much of a challenge yet.  

Ok, that's promising.  

1. START A NEW GAME AND CHOOSE A CUSTOM RACE.  CHOOSE THE SUPER TRAITS COLONIZER AND PATRIOTIC.  SELECT THE NORMAL TRAITS FAST +2 AND MILITARY PRODUCTION +20%.  Ok? U MUST SELECT COLONIZER.  THE STRATEGY DOES NOT WORK IF YOU DO NOT CHOOSE COLONIZER.  ONCE AGAIN, YOU MUST SELECT COLONIZER OTHERWISE YOU ARE A BIG GIANT DOOFUS.

2.  Gigantic or huge maps is fine.  Change planet and star system settings to abundant/abundant/abundant.  Normal number of AIs. 

3.  That's it.  Now just build colony ships.  Every time you colonize a planet, rush buy a SHIPYARD with your COLONIZER trait.  IF YOU ARE SPENDING 30 TURNS BUILDING A SHIPYARD, YOU HAVE MESSED UP.  START A NEW GAME AND GET COLONIZER TRAIT.  Unless it's been patched the Colonizer trait SHOULD let you build a shipyard for free in ONE TURN on your colonies.  

4.  For ideology, CHOOSE THE RESEARCH LINE OF BENEVOLENCE.  

If you have any questions, ask.  IF YOU HAVE NOT COLONIZED 30 COLONIES BY TURN 30, YOU  HAVE FAILED AND YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.  

We can talk about percentages and economic management later.  YOUR HOMEWORK IS TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO GET 30 COLONIES BY TURN 30.  

I get 12 colonies now in 30 turns as first try ...probably the sponsorplanets are important for the home shipyard and rushbuy .. colonyships ?, maybe the searchpattern for the colonisers too?

You can spiral around the homeplanet with a colonisers and the scout by hand further away and the survey ship on survey exploration ( for treasuries)
The ideology can helps too for finding colonies...

Its trial and error again.. spiraling around the homeplanet is maybe a good idea to get the closest distance for the next coming coloniser 

Thanks

- No, i did not realize yet firmly, that i could use the starmap and must point the colonizer directly to the stars, because the stars are surrounded by planets to colonise.

- No, i did not realize to design my own colony ship... to improve the speed or range ?

- Yes, idelogy .one branch is focussed towards to colonising and this can be adventitious

Well room for improvement here..

Just figure it out.  Everyone else does.  

Now i get 12 colonies wit 8 coloniser left on turn 30 ... improving the building speed of the colonisers?