posted 05-28-99 12:25 AM ET            

With the different factions, remember two basic principals of war/strategy (it's really the same thing) "Reinforce success, not failure" (von Clausewitz) and "Apply strength against weakness"

In game terms, this means to use the factions whose strengths appeal to your playing style - if you try to balance their negative aspects, you run into problems becasue you can't do that and exploit their strengths.

For example, the believers have a negative research penalty, so thei ability to get a transcendence victory or be technological leaders is nil - their strength is in large numbers of less quality military units, which have that extra modifier, so don't build every research facility under the suns, crank out those Soviet-horde type armies, and take the techs you can't research on your own.

On the flip side, University gets a free network node with every city they build, so explore like hell and find those alien artifacts - you can get a whole slew of techs quickly, as long as you build cities and get an alien artifact back to each one, so you can get a crushing lead in economic, social and military development.

The Peacekeepers is a good starting faction, and still my favorite, since they have no real weaknesses - the negative efficiency is a non-issue, since by the time you are spread out enough for it to matter, you have the techs and base and social improvements to eliminate the problem.

With the Morganites, since they need the hab complex for their cities to grow, and that's expensive in relative terms, build lots of cities.

As a general rule, I go light on military forces early in the game, and crank out colony pods and formers prodigiously - you can get ahead technologically and economically early in the game only by rapid expansion, since the improvements that help you out aren't available until you discover the appropriate tech, and it takes forever to build them with your newer, small cities.
So early expansion always wins out over early internal development.