Svensgaard's beeline

[Iskandar Reza]

there has to be a better beline for this guy. Being the most mineral poor faction, you can forget snagging all the really good early game projects (HGP, WP...)

It seems that by the time you do get IndAuto to increase your minerals, the AI's already built that project you wanted. Solution : annex the AI's SP base. but that will be later.

Sure, you could try building your SP base where there's two mineral bonuses, and mine them to get an extra mineral from each (you can change them to harnesses later), but how often do you arrive to that situation?

So what's the best beeline for the pirates?

[Skanderbeg]

quote: Originally posted by Iskandar Reza on 04-15-2001 09:20 AM Being the most mineral poor faction, you can forget snagging all the really good early game projects (HGP, WP...)

That is certainly NOT right! Yes, Sven is, in general, weak in minerals.
But in the early game, each worked square gives him at least one mineral, even if the square isn't terraformed, and he has a pressure dome in every base, which gives him another mineral. And because his fast growing (lot of food from kelp farms), he works a lot of squares with at least one mineral.
So, for my experience, the Pirates are the faction with the best chances to grab most of the early SP's! Additionally, Sven has the money to rush-buy the SP's if necessary.

[Iskandar Reza]

I've been experimenting a lot with this guy, and so far, this is what I've come up with:

1. The pirates are weak mineral-wise
2. Their strength is sea-bases
3. Sea-base's strength are high energy and easily high food production(kelp farms spread by themself).

Therefore, forget IndAuto. Get restrictions off first. After that, IndAuto isn't that far away (3 more techs, InfoNet, PlanNet, IndAuto)

With your pop suddenly skyrocketting and your cash "cha-ching"ing, you don't really need a good industrial capacity, but it will help to have several small islands nearby, better yet within city radius to borehole.

And get air-power. It's your only defense, other than a large fleet of probes.


What do you think? This beeline works well with the pirates?

[Sikander]

The Pirates are an intersting faction to play no doubt about it. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

Advantages:

As Skanderberg pointed out, right from the starting line they should be able to equal or outproduce other factions in all categories due to the pressure dome. This advantage will quickly melt away unless they select Centauri Ecology as their first tech and start forming the squares in their base radii.

The Pirates are immune to attack in the very early part of the game, until other factions can produce ships.

The Pirates have a wider selection of base starting positions due to the high movement of their original sea colony pods.

The Pirates are in a good position to meet their neighbors faster than other factions due to the high movement of their gun foil, and the fact that it can move between continents. This often can put them in the position of 'tech broker', where they can trade themselves into a decent tech lead by trading techs with several other factions, each time acquiring a freebie for themselves.

Later on they can build bases in deep sea areas, which other factions will not build in.

Disadvantages:

The worst of their problems are not minerals (there are solutions to this which I will mention later) but their -1 growth and -1 efficiency. Fortunately the Pirates can use any SE settings, and very early are able to produce large quantities of nutrients. Between these two things, the Pirates can overcome these disadvantages, though at a cost.

I usually play the Pirates in the following manner.

1st tech - Centauri Ecology

Build a transport and scout patrol in each base, then a sea former, then a land colony pod. The transport is used to pick up pods (always hoping for an AA). The former begins to improve the base area by building kelp farms and tidal harnesses. Use the Gun Foil to scout around, looking for other factions, pods, and any islands or continents which appear to be good candidates for colonization. Once the first two bases produce their colony pods I set them to work on the HGP (my second tech selection) and another SP (WP, VW, etc.) I really try to get the HGP as it really helps the Pirates get GAs, which allow them to pop-boom.

I don't make it a goal to get SOtHB first, but it is handy to get it fairly early. Both of the prerequisite techs are useful, and the trance ability comes in handy defending against those IODs etc. I usually try to find some good empty land to do my expansion on to. I can crank out those land colony pods more quickly, and transport them quickly with my transports. This takes care of the Pirates problem of getting high mineral bases early on, since land bases don't suffer from difficulties getting decent minerals from small populations like sea bases can.

With most of my empire being built on the land, crawlers again become very useful. Thus I try to get them before I try to get restictions lifted. Planned and FM aren't that great for the Pirates for various reasons, but Wealth is useful as is Democracy. Even more useful on this research line are probes, which can be mounted on your foils and used to explore, infiltrate and steal tech. Eventually you will probably want to pop boom, but it will take quite awhile to make it worthwhile. A lot of infrastructure must be in place (CCs and drone control facilities and terraforming, probably tree-farms as well). This makes those drone control SPs all the more valuable, and the WP somewhat valuable though not critical.

I will only build sea bases initially when I discover a very good base site. After the first two SPs, my sea bases will concentrate solely on infrastructure while my land bases will industrialize, and then take over the burden of producing the SPs and military for my empire. Usually a good method to play a low efficiency or drone prone faction is to use specialists and crawlers. This is not such a good plan for the Pirates for two reasons. Firstly, the Pirates need to use GAs if they wish to pop boom, and in most cases if they wish to get +2 econ. Unfortunately, it is only possible to get a GA if at least half of your populace are workers. Secondly, the Pirates are able to get very good production from shelf squares fairly early in the game. (3 nuts and 3 energy and 1 min, or 4 nuts and energy with apprpriate facilities) Squares like these which produce a large amount of various resources must be worked to get a decent fraction of their potential. Thus the Pirate must make a concerted effort to keep his drones under control. This tends to be a challenge, especially when trying to create and maintain a GA. The Pirate's -1 eff really takes a toll here. Thus the earliest pop-boom possibility for the Pirates will look something like this:

Demo / Planned / Wealth / CC = +6 growth, -1 eff, +2 econ, -2 support, -2 morale, and about 20% (could be more) spent on psych. On the bright side, your sea bases should be producing 4 food and energy per worker, and that means that you can shunt your new citizens into being specialists, which means that it is easier to keep the boom going, and the specialists are not prone to losing energy to inefficiency. Land bases should be using boreholes, full formed shelf squares and the occasional forest square for their workers, and nuts should be crawled in from condensor farms where necessary. Your booms should be well planned, and executed only as long as necessary because planned is such an inefficient SE choice. Note that by running wealth you will be able to get the extra +1 energy per square, which should at least partially make up for the % spent on psych during the boom.

When I am not booming, I tend to run SE choices which accentuate efficiency. Thus Demo / Green / Knowledge is a favorite. This tends to allow for the maximization of tech, horizontal growth, energy retention and military morale considerations (all are not maximized, only tech, though the others are at good levels). A bonus here is that you can also capture native life, as well as receiving the planet bonus on the attack. Another bonus is that I can run labs at whatever % I wish. (Paradigm Eff.)

Tech Track:

Centauri Ecology
Recycling / HGP tech
Rec Commons Tech
Net Node tech
SOtHB (if no on has it yet)
Industrial Base
Planetary Net
Industrial ?
Crawler tech
Democracy tech
Restrictions lifted 1, 2, 3
Clean tech
Fusion, with the occasional stop for SP techs you want, or in case of a dangerous war, airpower.

This may seem chaotic, but the Pirates have more trouble beeling than most do to all of the pods they tend to pop, and techs they can trade.

[Earwicker]

Excellent analysis, Sikander. The Pirates are the one SMAX faction I have not yet tried (wary of their several penalties and not convinced their positives mitigate the negatives). Armed with this advice, it seems they could be a lot of fun.

Arrrrr.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

A couple of points. I'm in the camp of Iskander Reza. Pirates are slow out of the blocks. Slower than any land based faction save perhaps Santi and as a consequence more likely to miss out early important SPs than other factions. The exception to this is to build an early transport and hopefully snag a few AA's fromthe pods on the ocean. Else your likely to be behind the curve.

Reasons are simple.

AS Sik points out the mineral production rate isn't the important thing. TO my mind the real order of importance is:

1. Huge cost of pods (60 onthe sea for sea pods is devastating)
2. Minus growth
3. Minus efficiency.

Math to illustrate how the Pirates are hindered.

Sea base newly formed (Pirates)
Free 10 mins
Free nutrients = 2 at size 1, 1 at size 2
Mins = 3 at size 1, 4 at size 2 assumes coastals
Nuts required for size 2 = 24
Mins required for sea pod = 60

Case 1 First build garrison then sea pod
turn 1 - garrison Nuts in tank =2
turn 2 start sea pod nuts =4
Turn 12 mins = 22 nuts = 24 size 2 starting turn 13
Turn 13 mins/turn at 4 mins at 26 Nuts in tank 1
turn 14 30 mins 2nuts
turn 15 34 mins 3n
turn 16 38m/4n
....
turn 22 58 m/10 nuts
turn 23 62 mins/11 nuts sea pod produced moved and base created

Land base - Rolling rainy
Free 10 mins initial
Free Nuts = 2 at size 1, 1 at size 2
Mins = 2 at size 1, 4 at size 2
Nuts reqd for size 2 = 20
Mins reqd for colony pod = 30

Case former first, then garrrison, the colony pod
Turn 1 - 12 mins towards former, 2 nuts in tank
Turn 2 - 14m/4n
Turn 3 - 16m/6n
Turn 4 - 18m/8n
Turn 5 - 20m/10n
Turn 6 - 2m/12 n - former complete and moved to forest site
Turn 7 - 4m /14n begin forest complet in 4 turns
8 - 6m /16n
9 - 8m /18n
10 - 10m/20n size 2 next turn and garrison complete/forest complete
11- 4m/1n
12- 8m/2n
13- 12m/3n
14- 16m/4n
.......
17- 28m/7n
18- 32m/8n new colony pod
4 turns to get in place base set at turn 22

So what I see here is in the same time frame you have produced a sea base and a garrison while the landlubbers produce and set a colony pod, a former and a garrison in approximately the same time frame. But the picture gets worse for the salty dogs when considering the next pod:

Sea base
Turn 23 3 mins/11nuts
24 6m/13n
25 9m/15n
26 12m/17n
27 15m/19n
28 18m/21n
29 20m/23n
30 23m/25n size 2 next turn
31 27m/2n
......
39 59m/10n
40 63m/11n sea pod built and set

Land base
turn 19 2m/10n
20 4m/12n
....
24 12m/20 nuts size 2 next turn
25 16m/1 nut
...
29 32mins/5 nuts colony pod produced and moved one square & 3 turns
to move into place and set by turn 32.


Conclusions from this exercise.

In the period of the first 2o ish turns what has each faction accomplished.

Pirates - Built a base and founded it complete with free pressure dome and a garrisoning unit. Not bad but...

Land faction - Built a base, a garrison unit, a former and have an additional four turns of production accrueing from the original base.


When attempting to build a second pod

Pirates - require out to 40 turns where as

Land factions set their pod down around turn 32 and have a full 11 turns of turn advantage in the originating base over the Pirates.

The same realtionship holds true as long as the pirates are building sea craft. Expensive pods, expensive former etc. make them less able to compete verses land factions inthe very early game. I do agree once some restrictions are lifted and especially once Pirates have fusion and hence foil chassis become a bargain. Until then though pirates are hamstrung as they are required to build expnsive chassis pod's and are least able to afford to do so since they are usually mineral poor.


Sik,

The tech beeline you outlined is exacly the on I use pretty much regardless of faction. The only dif is I may make a run to D:AP before fusion depending on the situation.

Not that all is bad withthe Pirates. In fact I do enjoy them. But, I really think the Pirates are a unique faction. They to my mind are a faction great to play if you decide to play a blind/double blind research game. Their ability to meet other faction realativley quickly and be a technology broker has great implications. Since any tech you get in Double blind is equivalent to having researched it yourslef their really aren't any downsides such as delaying your beeline run. Add to that the ability to search the high seas ASAP for AA's, perhaps placing a landing ASAP onthe Monsoon Jungle, and being the factionleast likely to be seriously attacked by the Aliens or other hostile factions in the early game and you've got a faction that has some plusses.

Jus' my thoughts

Og

[Sikander]

Ogie,

Good analysis of the turn disadvantage of producing sea colony pods. This is why I build on land after my first two sea bases are placed. There is still a cost of course, and that cost is building those two transports, which take time to build and cost 1 mineral apiece for a long time. I try to maximize their use by keeping one nearby (to transport those colony pods to safe land areas) until I can get a free unity transport. Then I send it out to pop pods while I keep the 'clean' transport home to move colony pods, units and crawlers. This still sets you behind, but not as much as doing your whole expansion at sea.

This paradigm assumes a Pirate building strategy. It would be interesting to hear from someone who plays the Pirates as a momentum faction. They start with ships and rovers, and thus strategic mobility, though their slow start seems to hinder a momentum strategy somewhat.

[The Commodore]

Of course, they don't allways need to Boom. Often the Aquafarms/Kelp will be enough to keep them racing up, pop-wise. Like Sik said, Demo/Green/Knol will give them Paradigm econ, and give you good IoD units galore. Basicly, use their navy to keep the others off landmark islands, and isolate hostile forces on their own land, laying claim to vast tracks of land and sea.

[Iskandar Reza]

Against the AI, it's not that difficult to run a momentum strat early on. All those unity rovers you get from pod popping really adds to your early game firepower. and freebie techs plus AA really help you get a tech lead for this.

not to mention the cash you get from pods. use them to upgrade your unity rovers to impact rovers.

and there you have a formidable momentum faction.

[The Commodore]

FM is powerful. However, seabases don't have as large teritory, so the pasifisim thing is hard. The factions I use FM with are the Cyborgs and PK's. It's a bit redundant with Morgan.

The Pirates can be played as a "momentum" faction. They are rather good as mommentum early, before the Cyborgs and UoP tech up. It's a pity that they can't easily pop-boom, but that's the ONLY reson why they haven't run away with the game.

[Earwicker]

quote: Originally posted by The Commodore on 04-23-2001 12:38 PM Of course, they don't allways need to Boom. Often the Aquafarms/Kelp will be enough to keep them racing up, pop-wise. Like Sik said, Demo/Green/Knol will give them Paradigm econ, and give you good IoD units galore. Basicly, use their navy to keep the others off landmark islands, and isolate hostile forces on their own land, laying claim to vast tracks of land and sea.

Having read this post, I finally tried the Pirates. Oddly, the above SE is the model I run for most other factions. However, I departed for the Pirates and ran them FM to ensure more econimic strength. The beeline in this thread is common for most games, and the main difference was that I went for D:AP and MMII before Fusion. I followed For the first time, I started next to the Monsoon Jungle, which helped a lot when establishing my land foothold.

Bottom line: this faction rocks! They started off slowly, as mentioned several times below, but really started pulling ahead after the first hundred years. Although the formers are expensive, the +1 mineral on shelf squares makes a considerable difference. 3-1-1 with minimal terraforming, 3-1-4 with a little more.

The other factions gave me a somewhat-harder time of things. I forewent the WP, which I usually try hard for, in favor of the ME (which for some reason I usually miss). I can't remember the last game where I two notifications of other factions starting the HSA. Ack! I rushed it (thanks, FM). Other factions were fairly peaceful (except for psycho Cha Dawn). Morgan loved my FM and has been my ally for ages.

Next time I plan on running them green most of the game and see how that works. I rarely play FM and don't like the -30% psi attack, but I do loooooove the extra cash.