Secret Projects - building and research (early game)

[jtsisyoda]

Yeah, the year where SP's are built depends on if you had extra CP's at the start, how good the terrain is, whether people have trouble with neighbors, etc. The 2130's might be as good an average as any.

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WP is pretty cool. With WP, we'd have the option of skipping Eco Eng and Env Eng in favor of DAP and/or Bio-Eng. With a condensor or two per base, you can pop-boom early (before Gene Splicing) and have lots of forest workers. This gives almost as many minerals and energy as having boreholes, but with less terraforming required. You can also have lots of specialists for making money or researching.

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I think it's more than likely we'll be the first to IA. This basically guarantees us the first SP. Most of us posting so far seem to agree HGP is the best first SP for us. Because our expansion will be easier and faster than others, we'll have more resources available to build the next one. When you have ten bases and the other guy has eight, you have a huge advantage in getting the expensive SP's like PTS, VW, and PEG. It takes ten crawlers to build them, so four to six turns at each base and you're done. Doubling your mineral and energy production will increase that advantage even further. Once you double your production, you can produce more than twice as many crawlers (=SP's) as the others.

I predict we'll build the HGP pretty early, then our better expansion will allow us to build an expensive SP right around the time the others are building a cheap one (WP, CN, ME). If we make our second one PTS, we'll be so strong, we can beat them all to VW. (If they made a concerted effort for VW, there will be a cheap one still available.) Then we can get PEG easily because the others will take a while to get the tech. (Especially if they're half our size. )

[Vander]

If we want to try to corner the energy market, we'll pretty much need the PEG...

[TheLoneAmigo]

I do hope we aim for energy market victory. My favorite kind, though a little hard to pull of sometimes. On the other hand, I normally play Uni, so it'll be easier with the Morgans.

Buy planet.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Economic is my prefered victory as well, Trancendence Second and everything else Tertiary

[jtsisyoda]

In single player, I'd have a similar outlook, but I think in MP, conquest is the way to go.

[TheLoneAmigo]

What is a possibility is conquering all but a few bases, then cornering the global energy market. Much easier.

However, we should still aim to collect as many credits as possible.

[arginine]

It looks like we are going to build 2 or 3 CPs to put us at 7 bases in ~9 turns. The new bases will each rush a former. (Maybe the 7th will hold a scout team). We then build a round of crawlers. At this point, we can:

1) build 2 more rounds of crawlers then CPs, insta-build the 2 SPs, then plant the CPs.
or...
2) build CPs, instabuild HGP, plant the CPs, 1 round of crawlers, then the second SP.

1) is slightly faster at getting the second SP down. Instead of building a colony pod, we build a crawler, which will go to the construction of the SP. It will also enable us to maintain an element of surprise against the other humans. It is worth noting that a new will start with 10 minerals towards a new crawler.

2) ensures that we get the HGP, and have all size 3 bases. May give slightly higher production.

A size 1 base with forest production is 3 min, 7 energy. 2 crawlers is 4 min. We might want to slow down our research rate to take advantage of our energy.

We will get the HGP first. The PTS is the favored second project. If we don't get it, we can get the weather paradigm, and if not that, the PEG or the VW.

I hope a faction other than the spartans grabs the CN to keep it out of Spartan Hands. What scares me is that the Spartans go fundy, have units build in a city w/ command center, then upgrade at monolith and then the units are elite, giving them 2 moves / turn. That scares me.