What I have found is that I run out of money fast producing Colony ships and only have about 3 or 4 colonies. I then spend the next 200 turns getting out of debt and not researching squat as I have no funds.
Around turn 200 +/- 20 or so, The enemy AI starts to take over my planets. This has been this way for all the games I have played. I have read a lot about the strategy of the game, but still find that I am lacking in ability to adiquitely get my empire off and running.
Then there are the people who cheat and post their empires to the Metauniverse. Come on guys, altering the game via a Hex editor (How you do this is beyond me) or by the use of a trainer, go cheat o matic, is cheating, and eventually the folks at GalCiv will root you out.
But I am tempted to use something just to make it past the first 200 or so turns without getting wiped out.
Great game, not as indepth or detailed as SE IV, but it has a lot of really nice aspects and some nice cut scenes. Excellent, thus far, AI, Diplomacy, Research, and such.
I agree, we really need to be able to zoom the sector map in and out, as well as having the game NOT display all of the star systems locations. They should be hidden from view until discovered much the way that BOTF did it.
Excellent game though, complete dipartcher from SE IV in a good way.