DG Strategy Discussions

[Sharpe]

How about the ministers decide on what to build and a recommendation on how to destribute workers (farmer,worker,scientist) and then as many as they want join the President in a turn chat on IRC while he plays to give advice re where to explore, whether to hire any leaders that pop up, etc.

And then stop playing for an AAR when the first few builds are done.

[Harry Seldon]

The only problem with chat is that the ministers and I are from different sides of the world and it may be hard to coordinate a time we can all be online. Someone had mentioned doing five turns a week later in the game but I don't see why we have to in the beginning. Why don't I just do ten turns a day and post the game until we get to some good stuff?

[vmxa1]

Harry, play out 10 urns and see where that puts you. If you feel it is too few paly 10 more and see. We can always back up if it is a problem. It is not like we are going to get any advantage if these first 30-40 turns.

[Iasius]

This reminds me of why my last LAN game of moo2 failed. We had someone new to multiplayer moo2 there and he was busy designing and naming ships on turn 1.
With a race like this we probably don't really need to discuss anything more than a basic outline for the first 50 or so turns.
We won't meet any races (hopefully, if I meet anyone this early, I'm usually dead with a creative race). Research could be areed upon earlier and shifting pop around is not a biggie either.
So I think we agreed somewhere on a basic research plan, why don't we carry that out until it's done or something important happens.
With such a strong research race, we probably won't do much else than research and build improvements for nearly 100 turns.

[Harry Seldon]

Just posted a save roughly twenty-five turns in. Left pop where they were, raised taxes to 10% per Pave, and researched Electronic Computers, Research Labs, and currently working on Biospheres. I'll pull reinforced hulls next, then autofactories. Production of houses but switched to Research Lab. We have a minister in the queue that gives a ten percent bonus to finances. I say we take him because he's only 30bc +1 and we can drop him later. Download this from the savegame thread.

[vmxa1]

Harry, just an FYI, but this is what I would have suggested:

T0 3/1/5 R-EC (if you elect to not make a CB
T4 R-RL
T13 buy RL and start R-hulls
T14 RP is 40
T16 R-AF
T20 hire Crassis
T21 buy AF and research Freighters (going to make that CB now

So at turn 21 I already have my AF up and running. Bio/Hydro can be done now if you wish to wait on the CB. The thing is you need to get the two colonies in motion, even if they are weak.
Actually one is huge and will eventually be very productive.
I did this with no pop shuffle.

If I go with CB, I would have founded III on turn 18. This is arguably better as you can buy an RL there and get that 5 rp every turn while it houses and sends pop to the HW to fill it up.
You could soon do the same to the other planet.

T22 save to check out:

[bakalov]

Vmxa, settling these planets is not a good idea because of the Heavy Gravity on the huge one, and the Poor on the other. With -20% morale you will not be getting more than one production point. Stick up with the homeworld, imo.

Taxing: taxing is not good idea, because it taxes the production, not the population. And the production is what is our weakness and we must not weaken ourselves further.

[Harry Seldon]

Pave is MoA so you'll have to convince him on taxes. I'd like to get some colonies going as well but I'm content to wait for now. Soon I'd like another if for nothing else pop points for invasions later on. The poor planet can crank out food and would let us push production up on our main planet.

V, too many acronyms but I think I get the gist of it. I'll download your game and take a look at it either late tonight or tomorrow (Matrix Reloaded's out today. Sorry). What would you suggest we do with the game I posted? It sounds like you're wanting colony bases, reinforced hulls, and autofactories. How does everyone feel about this path?

Also, what about our finance leader? Shall we pick him up?

[bakalov]

If you play it properly you should be able to research Supercomputers at ~T56 and build Robo Miners at ~T81
I suggest the following research path:
1)Research Labs
2)Automated factories
3)Biospheres & farms
4)Soil & Clonning (Clonning here because there are no pop farms in our system!)
5)Supercomputers
6)Robo miners

Then there are two options - to go for missile ships or to go for beam ships. Very good beam ship can be built ~T110. Such ship usually can conquer an entire enemy race alone.

[bakalov]

Pave, I think you have to reconsider your offer for 10% tax ...

[Pave]

Ok, taxes to zero. I would said that earlier but Harry already made the turn. I´ll also want to distribut population as Blitz style aka 3/4/1 (we do need someone to research) but after we made the Colony base we put population as regular aka 3/1/4 or 3/2/3.

Techpath I`d like to keep it as it is (we need some ships) but after that we could do as bakalov suggested.

If someone doesn´t like my plans, please say it.

Harry, can we play the turns after everyone has accepted it (aka president says do we play it and everybody says yes or no).

[Harry Seldon]

That sounds fine. I'm a DG newbie so stop me if I get excited. I may want clarification on my responsibilities. Do I just play the turns listed or can I make judgement calls as I see fit? Within reason, of course.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by bakalov
Vmxa, settling these planets is not a good idea because of the Heavy Gravity on the huge one, and the Poor on the other. With -20% morale you will not be getting more than one production point. Stick up with the homeworld, imo.

Taxing: taxing is not good idea, because it taxes the production, not the population. And the production is what is our weakness and we must not weaken ourselves further.

Taxes I would leave alone, I rarely use this, only when I am spending myself into a hole and only for a few turns. It will also hurt your morale.

Yes what you say is true, you can but the RL/AF and Cloner and it will be running fair. Then get Robo/Comp and it will be making a decent conribution. You will want that extra RP as the HW will have to do most of the ship building for a long time.

Anyway, I have no problem with the research first route. The thing is you will need some planets and you are not likely to get any good ones for some time. If you get started fairly early you can make the huge a solid partner. You will have bio/farms and them terraform, followed by a grav gen and it will soon be able to take over the ship building.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Harry Seldon

V, too many acronyms but I think I get the gist of it. I'll download your game and take a look at it either late tonight or tomorrow (Matrix Reloaded's out today. Sorry). What would you suggest we do with the game I posted? It sounds like you're wanting colony bases, reinforced hulls, and autofactories. How does everyone feel about this path?

Also, what about our finance leader? Shall we pick him up?

Yes, pick him up.At 30BC he will soon pay a dividend.
Come on the are easy to figure out.

He is my std list:
Worker dispositions are shown as x/y/z, where:
x= number of workers on food production
y= number of workers on industry
z= number of workers on research

R-abc denotes I started a new research project this turn and abc is the name of it.

AF= automated factory
CB= colony base
CS= colony ship
HW= homeworld
OP= outpost
PP= Pollution Processor
RL= research labs
SA= Space Academy
SB= star base
srt stands for started

As to the game underway, it does not matter to me. I just wanted to toss out one perspective for you to see. I know that Balakov was aware of the concept.
I just wanted you to see how getting the RL and AF first was very powerful. They will be adding extra production and RP for the rest of the game.
The idea of what next is up for grabs, but the first 20 or so turns is not up for grabs and really needs to proceed in either the Blitz or the std method. This would be different for a race such as UniTol. They need to go blitz and get scouts out to see where to send OP/CS

[Harry Seldon]

I've never played like this before so this is a bit of an eye opener. I've probably played this game a thousand times and I tend to research whatever I think I need at the moment. I never paid much attention to what tech I had except to see if it was top level stuff. Cool.