xenxander

Join Date 03/2007

An Influence game

an alternate way to win

I decided to flex my wings and create a custom race that specializes in being both neutral and highly influential. I wanted a large population, a good diplomacy, and a high influence rating.

Starting picks, custom race:

Super Breeder

Population growth: Don’t ask

Luck

Creativity

Morale: Naturally Joyous (for unrest factors of large populations, it helps)

Can’t remember if there were any points left over, as right now I’m not at my PC, I’m on my laptop

Tech tree: Thalan (I wanted to play neutrality, and their +20% creativity is almost as good as the +25% creativity other races obtain)

Political Party: Universalists

I was debating on them, or Pacifists, as the Pacifists get +20 influence, but I decided that the +25% luck was a better pick and the population growth alone will help enough wit influence (but either choice works great here)

When starting out a game, I wanted a marathon, ,epic game, so I picked “Immense” for map, with:

Stars: abundant, tight clusters

Habitable planets: rare

Number of planets: abundant

Anomalies and asteroids: abundant

Extreme planets – lower chances

Number of races – 9 NPCs (random pics)

I realized though with this setup, you can’t play very well or very hard with influence. You need more planets, and more spread out stars, for easier chances for your high population to “do its magic” for you.

I’ve also realized that my starting buildings were limited to Embassies – that was it. I couldn’t build anything else. With creativity at +50% I did manage to obtain a lot of the yellow government and diplomatic techs very swiftly, allowing me to exchange techs with others, then taking those and exchanging them again, repeat. It helped me stay at mid levels, but I was really falling behind.

All other races decided to declare war on me, but a mega event, Dread Lords, showed up, and after that it was havoc.

It was a learning experience – what I hope to obtain is if anyone else has attempted to go with this type of game, and if so, to share strategies or just experiences in general?

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I haven't tried influence victories in that size of galaxy (probably never tried any beyond "large"); I can imagine it takes ages to expand your area of influence that far.

However from experience, you either need to stay ahead in military rating (can you say "SCC"?) to avoid having other races declare war on you or bribe others into going to war with each other. Diplomacy, alliances and tech routes also help a little in avoiding war.

It might be that you focused too much on embassies; crucial in getting your influence up is to expand fast and keep growing your population as fast as possible. Embassies can help if you build them at the border of your area of influence, to get your influence on AI planets above the 4.00 threshold. Inside of your empire I think it's better to focus on production (colony ships, constructors to spam influence starbases, military)

I often used the SCC to keep my military rating high enough to keep AIs from declaring war on me + trade routes + decent diplomacy + preferably a research alliance, then build a few influence starbases next to their capital, let it flip. From then on it's a snowball effect.

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Most Influence directed strategies in ToA that i have read about here in the Forum seem to rely on the MCC (Evil).

You need to flip planets quickly when they become susceptible. That's why it's a pain in DA, because the MCC is bugged, known to be bugged, and the Developers never fixed this known bug.

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what exactly is the "MCC"?

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Mind Control Center. It will immediately flip all succeptable planets on the first turn they are eligible to flip, rather than waiting for the random number generator to flip it whenever it feels like doing so. In DL/DA this ability was broken, so it gave 100% econ bonus (about the same as three fully mined econ bases, not a straight doubling). It also reduced the odds of planets flipping by a factor of about 10.

A few notes: DO NOT attempt this with the Thalans, as they do not have the MCC in their tech tree, and it's a real bitch getting an AI to research it for you. I find myself selling everything but diplo techs to the AIs to reduce the available tech options for them to research in order to force them to research things I can't get for myself. Terran morale techs, Korath killzone computers, farms of any type, ethics techs, etc. are all great to have but hard to get.

If you insist on ignoring that (as I constantly do, custom race Thalan tree is my usual setup), try to trade for factory and research techs as earsly as possible. Slave pits/canyons work great, even with the influence penalty.

DO NOT drop your matrix on your homeworld. Wait for a 300% manufacturing bonus tile on a good sixed planet, then use that to crank out ships. This depends on planet count and dispersal, of course. If you can't find a great planet, settle on a good one. Your homeworld will almost never be the best choice available.

Once you get there, manufacturing matrix buildings have great output, but don't bother building them until you get the third level. You may not want to build them on anything other than bonus tiles, the construction cost isn't really justified by the output. Slave canyons are best for the money.

Don't bother with the Thalan research buildings. The AI will generally get up to research academies pretty quickly and they are just as good as the third tier research matrix, but far cheaper.

Always buy as many building techs as you can get, even if you don't ever intend to use them. When planets start flipping all over the place, it helps to have pre-existing factories, research, morale, and econ buildings. Even crappy buildings will give some output, and you get credit for upgrading buildings rather than bulldozing and starting over.

I don't bother with nearly as much population growth. Since I play a custom I don't have to deal with the pop growth penalty you are starting with, but it still sounds like overkill. Super diplomat gives far better return, because you can trade more often and get better trades when you do. I use Technologist, but then I don't rely on creativity to do research, I just brute force it. Nothing like plowing through 10 shield techs in one turn.

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