Tech Tech Tech

[Sikander]

Kirov is absolutely correct, early exploitation of the crawler is key.

[Kaosium]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Mind worms attack bases at a penalty before 2150, so anything at all but an unarmored probe team or artifact will likely win. After that, use formers for emergency defense if you're surprised.

I prefer to use unity rovers too--if I get them. However if I don't I'm not going to lose out popping goody pods so my guys will have to do it on foot.

Didn't know about the penalty attacking bases until 2150, I knew about the attack penalty before 2115 and I thought that was it.

I'm sure you and Kirov are right about IA, it just seems in a single player game I don't really need it until my initial expansion and pop booms are done. I won't be building crawlers anyway until I get all my colony pods out and recycling tanks/rec centers in all my bases. It just so happens that generally coincides when I want hab complexes so I get it right aftetr the pop boom and the increased cost of tech has been mitigated by my burgeoning population.

I'm gonna try a game right now and see how well that works, I can't recall off the top of my head when I usually get IA.

[Kirov]

Originally posted by Kaosium

I'm sure you and Kirov are right about IA, it just seems in a single player game I don't really need it until my initial expansion and pop booms are done.

All very true and you're perfectly entitled to do whatever you want in a single player. It's only that then there's no point in any discussion on strategy. In an SP game you can beeline to Adaptive Doctrine because you like the quote, or run for gatling laser coz you like the sound it makes in battle. You can refrain from using crawlers altogether, and even from terraforming, expansion (One City Challenge) etc. Anything short of playing blindfold gives you victory anyway.

Personally, I enjoy PBEM games because they give you a lot of freedom. Of course they make you do your best, which too often includes micromanagement, but they also give you the feeling that anything can happen - no action is stupid if it works. And, as CEO Aaron would say, "everything has its price. Even you".

If you give a wide berth to MP because you don't like ICS, simply avoid factions that reguire that (Hive, Morgan) and try those which favour bigger bases - Peacekeepers, one of my favs, come to my mind first. Maybe Deirdre with her additional nut from fungus.

ICSers always have it a bit better, but usually ca 15 bases is enough to give you industrial base, and from then on you can use diplomacy to make up for their raw force. It's very easy to isolate Hive or Zak and set up alliances that beat them.

[Kaosium]

Originally posted by Kirov


All very true and you're perfectly entitled to do whatever you want in a single player. It's only that then there's no point in any discussion on strategy. In an SP game you can beeline to Adaptive Doctrine because you like the quote, or run for gatling laser coz you like the sound it makes in battle. You can refrain from using crawlers altogether, and even from terraforming, expansion (One City Challenge) etc. Anything short of playing blindfold gives you victory anyway.

Yeah, good point, which is why I generally have 'blind research' on and don't even select a catagory so I get them as they come to me. Thus I had to play a game as I couldn't remember what happened with directed research. I got it at 2160, which worked out perfectly as that was the moment my pop was just running into the limits. I wasn't particularily lucky getting there, I didn't get a river, nor a monolith in any of my initial bases, and didn't get the option for Planetary Networks at one point and couldn't talk Roze into tradng it to me.

Here's what I wonder though: are you really that better off getting it all that much earlier? Those crawlers could only get you one or two nutrients/minerals a turn anyway, and aren't you expanding at that point building colony pods anyway? Colony pods and Supply crawlers cost the same, and I'd think your future growth would be better with colony pods until you get that second bureacracy warning. By the time I'm done with that I generally am ready to pop-boom, and with a little luck from pods and planet pearls I can generally rush my rec commons/creches in most my cities and start crawlers then and my pop ballons mostly for nutrients at first to keep them growing.

When do you start building supply crawlers? I think I'll try a game beelining to IA and try it and see if I'm that much better off. Since I've read so many people do it, I'm guessing there has to be a big advantage, I just don't see when you'd fit them in during expansion.

Originally posted by Kirov
Personally, I enjoy PBEM games because they give you a lot of freedom. Of course they make you do your best, which too often includes micromanagement, but they also give you the feeling that anything can happen - no action is stupid if it works. And, as CEO Aaron would say, "everything has its price. Even you".

I'm not familiar with playing AC by e-mail, which I assume is that acronymn means. Doesn't it take forever and a day to finish a game? How does that work?

Originally posted by Kirov
If you give a wide berth to MP because you don't like ICS, simply avoid factions that reguire that (Hive, Morgan) and try those which favour bigger bases - Peacekeepers, one of my favs, come to my mind first. Maybe Deirdre with her additional nut from fungus.

ICSers always have it a bit better, but usually ca 15 bases is enough to give you industrial base, and from then on you can use diplomacy to make up for their raw force. It's very easy to isolate Hive or Zak and set up alliances that beat them.

Ah, it was my understanding that if you had the Hive/Morgan/Believers in a game you kinda had to ICS or you'd be overrun. Even without them, I recall reading something from one of the better players here that convinced me ICS gave such a massive advantage if you didn't do it against one who did, you'd get crushed.

[CEO Aaron]

Those crawlers could only get you one or two nutrients/minerals a turn anyway, and aren't you expanding at that point building colony pods anyway?

When your nutrient surplus is 2 nutrients, crawling 2 more doubles your growth. When your mineral surplus is 4 minerals, crawling 2 more adds 50% to your industrial output. That's the terrifying power of early crawlers, and it's even more sickening when you can crank out the Weather Paradigm, plant condenser/farms and start crawling them for 4 nutrients before the per-square restrictions are lifted.
Also, crawlers aren't the only benefit of IA. Switching to Wealth as quickly as you can manage makes everything you build in your bases cheaper, including colony pods.

The bottom line on Secrets is that for most factions it's 3 techs off the beeline, and a fourth random one, that may or may not get you closer to IA. Each one of those techs successive increases your tech cost, as does the passage of turns while you research them. So, as a Lal player, you'll have to research 7 techs to get Secrets then IA, 6 if you get lucky and your free tech is one of the pre-requisites for it. That's going to put crawlers off for a LONG time, and if you're not hitting the bureaucracy limit in that time, odds are you're taking far too long to plant your bases.

What's your typical base spacing when you play? Are you trying to use a perfectionist layout, or are you overlapping your base radii?

Ah, it was my understanding that if you had the Hive/Morgan/Believers in a game you kinda had to ICS or you'd be overrun. Even without them, I recall reading something from one of the better players here that convinced me ICS gave such a massive advantage if you didn't do it against one who did, you'd get crushed.

Well, that depends on your definition of ICS. Generally speaking, the player that plants their bases fastest will come out ahead, but such a strategy doesn't necessarily mean that they'll pack their bases as tightly as possible. However, if you're accustomed to never overlapping your bases, you WILL be crushed in PBEM play.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kaosium




I'm not familiar with playing AC by e-mail, which I assume is that acronymn means. Doesn't it take forever and a day to finish a game? How does that work?

Yes -- a game usually will take in excess of a year although 4 player games where people get active and whip off a lot of the early turns or 2 player duels can be done in far less.

Most players will play multiple games at once ( I believe I have 4 at present)


I find it the purest form of playing and the most challenging. In single player I find I whip through the turns since you ALWAYS win. In multi-player victory is quite uncertain and the diplomacy aspects (done by email) can take as long or longer than the game turns.

[Aabraxan]

Wow, I finally looked more closely at a real tech tree and realized just how far off the IA beeline I've been playing . . . Even at my closest, I'm about 5 techs off of that beeline. I'll have to go back & see what it's like closer to the IA beeline.

[Kaosium]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the lesson. I'm going to try that strategy, and then to see if Lal going for Secrets first might work as well due to the fact they get a free tech for Secrets generally. That means more scouts survivng, and you've also got the basic drone inhibibitor too to allow easier pop booming which wuill increase your research due to more mass energy.

But first I'm going to try it with a straight bee line for IA and see where that gets me. Thanks for the advice.

Oh, and I'm not exactly a perfectionist, but i don't like much overlap. I will, however build bases even two squares away on occassion to ensure all the good tiles get used, like near Mount Planet or the Garland Crator. That's mostly my concern, to get all the best tiles employed but without much overlap so they can be monster cities someday. Hrm, I suppose with a park of supply crawlers they could be as big as I wanted anyway, even if it was 2x2 everywhere. I sometimes send out lots of sea crawlers to get a certain city massive so I know how that works. That is a lot of micromanagement with crawlers and formers which isn't exactly the highlight of the game to me.

It is kinda ugly too, and I don't like to look at it too much from an asthetic perspective--and the fact I can win without doing it because the AI is nowhere near as clever as a real player.

[Kaosium]

I think perhaps the Peacekeepers are uniquely suited to going for 'Secrets' first. I keep trying it, and I'm not seeing any advantage to going straight to IA. On average I might get it 10-15 turns earlier, and that's not helping much and I'm losing out on things.

Secrets is only two techs away, and virtually always nets you a free tech. Thus you're really only giving up one tech to get there, and that tech is awfully useful for increasing your research anyway by controlling drones. When I go for IA I virtually always end up later losing a scout that would have ssurvived to pop more pods, and I'm not getting any free recreation commons from material pods.

Those 10 or fifteen turns I might pop out a few supply crawlers that would increase my production perhaps 1-2, but even then it's generally one until I can get formers to them as I try to make sure to include all the unrocky 'rainy' tiles and bonus ones in my initial expansion. It's taking a while for them to get there too, so generally I might just have a crawler in place garnering maybe a nut and a min or two and that's not as helpful as having rec commons and an extra scout or two crusading against the 'black' and getting me goodies.

[Sikander]

Try going to FM asap using the IA beeline. Go wealth when you get IA. There are a few ways you can go from here. If you didn't get Rec Commons yet you probably want to do so or build the HGP or the PTS in order to take care of your drone troubles as you expand (quickly) to the 2nd bureau warning. Build crawlers and put them to work on forests where possible. I typically go for Centauri Ecology first in order to lay down forest early as well as roads to speed my colony pods to the frontier.

Do this and you'll find that your tech will come much faster. Not only are you getting the +1 energy per tile, you are reaping even better production from the base tile. Build crawlers and haul minerals. This will bootstrap your industry and pave the way for you to snag a couple (at least) of the early SPs.

[Leon Trotsky]

I think that some factions don't really benefit that much from the initial "build" techs, and you would be better off with the "discover" ones:

Deirde: Cannot run market, and Planned is not such a pain since the change from 2 to 0 efficiency is not nearly as bad as the one from 0 to -2. Mindworm preemptive strikes against would-be invaders should compensate the delay of synthmetal armour.

Yang: Really should not run market. Planned is a must-have. I find The Virtual World a bit more useful for the Hive (because of the usual lack of psych).
Does anyone know if the number of "probe" techs increase the cost of subvertion? If so, there's another reason for Yang to pick Planetary Networks first (due to the nature of his army, he is somewhat more vulnerable to covert attacks).

Miriam: Beginning research ten years latter than the rest of the Unity troupe, and at such a miserable rate, she surely needs to make up for that with Probe Teams. Also, I don't find early market good for the believers - early in the game they should be scouring the planet for victims. The additional penalty in psi combat makes it even harder to deal with the native element.
In a more risky stunt, you may attempt to grab the Secrets of the Human Brain first - beggining with one of the prerequisites somewhat compensates your -2 research, and you may actually want to run Fundamentalism (but only if you already have made contact with a neighbour by the time).

[Flubber]

Interesting to see the different viewpoints since you wouldn't see me beelining to SOTHB EVER. While trance is handy occasionally, on balance I find I want to be the one attacking the early worms to pick up the cash and the early worms are so freaking weak that usually I only lose a scout or two at most.

yes SOTHB can net you another tech but with most factions that means you are starting the IA beeline several turns later and to me, more importantly, at a much increased tech cost that will delay getting there even longer.

I can be convinced to deviate off the IA beeline for weapons or mobility in some limited circumstances but generally its centauri ecology-- IA and then you see whats next. But thats the beauty of this game, there are still different viewpoints after years of play

[Senethro]

If techs had a fixed cost then I'm sure we'd see Oracle style slingshots using SotHB.

As far as I can tell, the main post-IA tech goals are Env. Econ, Airpower and "Guns + boats". A small diversion for the PEG can be a secondary target.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Senethro
If techs had a fixed cost then I'm sure we'd see Oracle style slingshots using SotHB.

I agree. As it stands, getting 3 techs that I don't need that much early in order to get a free one, just isn't that attractive to me, largely since IA will take about 15 years longer minimumand I want to be in wealth as soon as I can.

Originally posted by Senethro


As far as I can tell, the main post-IA tech goals are Env. Econ, Airpower and "Guns + boats".

So true. Well you need boats to get to airpower plus genesplicing and eco eng are important techs in and of themself on the way to env. econ. The toughest decision is when and how much to go for weapons. Every tech in that direction slows your development of the industrial techs but failure to adequately prepare can be fatal.

Well I should make a distinction here. Against the AI I might ignore weapons, secure in theknowledge that the AI is inept and you can steal a good unit at a key point. Against a human though, you NEED some form of standign army. The ability to produce one quickly is not enough and you cannot count on a human to donate a good unit to your cause.

Originally posted by Senethro

A small diversion for the PEG can be a secondary target.

This is one I question myself about. As you know, I did this sidetrip in our "Love and War" PBEM and I am never quite sure it is worthwhile. Yes the PEG is VERY nice project but would a quicker trip to other tech be better?? I have never been sure either way.

[Sikander]

PEG isn't out of your way if you are running a forest empire, it is directly on the way to hybrid forests. Otherwise, it is indeed a tough choice with so many great early-mid game techs available.