11-03-2003 10:09									#1
	My Early Game Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Hi,

I've tried this game quite a few times last week to learn some ugly features and jumped into serious game. Surely I know this game sucks (at least right now) but I wanted to conquer huge galaxy just once. I would like to hear any opinion/tip.

galaxy - Impossible, 3-arm huge, 16 opponents. no senate victory

race - custom Ithkul, so that I can ignore stupid foreign affairs things at all.
maxed out harvesting, mining, manufacturing, research, cunning cut off everything else to reach the bar.

first 20-30 turns - I let my rich home world built around 10 LR frigates as top priority. And sent them to scout and hold planets. I limited exploration to max 10 turn-radius area from home planet, because I could not control bigger empire. (hard to deploy defending fleets, AI-controlled colony ships are wandering pointlessly, etc.) I got only one magnate civ and sent initial colony ship there.
there were 3 entrance corridors to my empire so I deployed 3 frigates each to block them. Began to build systemcolony to fill my home system.

turn 30-80 - peaceful expansion. No military unit was raised except some ground unit and police ships. I did some micromanagement and let viceroy do only deploying colony ship and building DEA. (but I had to intefere to build more bioharvest DEA anyway) Just before my front-lline mobilization center was built, barbarian hordes crossed border and ruined that planet. I designed top-of-the-line frigates and built a dozen. My new squadrons easily drove out them and blocked corridors again.

turn 80-140 - finished expansion. now my empire have around 50 planets over a dozen systems, many well developed planets with mobilization center, enough ground units, and tech edge.

Now I'm going to build battleship armada. to assault my neighbors.

one question:
Is there any way to completely stop my viceroy from manipulate planatary military queue and budget while AI is turned on? If only I could handle the queue, I don't have to turn off planet economic AI and control misc things. I hate that slide bars.