Help with all labs/all factories/(all stock markets?)

I'm not an authority on the all-lab strat, but I'm pretty good at all-factories. Anyway, on to my opinions, which aren't neccesarily good answers:

I guess you could upgrade your space miner into another colony ship.

I usually make every world that becomes PQ18+ after all terraforming techs are researched, as well as every civ capital. Exceptions include if they have precursor mines or several other bonus tiles, or a manufacturing capital built by the original owner. This is probably a stupid strategy, but it works for my lazy ass.

I rarely if ever micro any ship other than a troop transport, which probably does hurt my performance, but it's more fun to me. And I never build dedicated explorers either.

All econ buildings? Really, ALL econ buildings? I've never read of such a strat, and I honestly don't see how it would work, unless perhaps you're trying to BUY the whole galaxy (which actually is a pretty viable strategy with a Super Diplomat race, imo). Still, I don't see how you'd get anything done except getting a whole ton of cash with it. Both the all-factory and all-lab strats are probably 80% or so economy buildings, though.
As for race, nearly every one of them is viable for the all-factory strat, as I've played them all at one time or another. I'm *guessing* you'll want to maximize research with the all-labs one though.


*ramble mode off*,
/
Xei.

It would be impossible to do much research with an all-economic approach. Would your approach be to buy an emerging tech from another race then trade it back to all the other races for cash? That would be a lot of work and still very expensive.

DL player here.

I've tried the all labs and all factories strats in the early game, but typically switch to all econ later. I could see going all econ from the beginning if the AI would sell certain techs, but there are some that it won't let go of, no matter how much money you have.

Still, you have my interest going. I'll try an all econ after I do a league game, which will be after my current empire game. Should I post the results here?

i don't believe all econ would work in DA unless you played on a special mode, such as battle of the gods. i've tried the all factory and all lab approach (well, mixing with econ in either occassion). i personally perfer all factories, especially if i select the hive super ability. but since tech trading was nerfed in DA, i don't think it'd be possible to buy everything you needed to win.

that said, some research and lots of econ might work. you could rush-buy anything you needed to build. it's really not very difficult to out research the AI if you can afford to support enough labs, and especially if you disable tech trading (well, except on the highest levels of difficulty where everything is hard), and if you try to max out your labs (that is, support as many as you can while breaking even econommically) you can rush through the tech tree at rediculous speeds, but i've found this only turns out to be a lasting benefit if research progression is set to slow or very slow. otherwise the AI can catch up to your tech level by the time you've put your techs to use in a fleet. but in one variant, i switched to all factories after becomming satisfied with my progress down the tech tree; the hive ability still came in plenty helpful.

An all econ strat sounds more like something that would evolve in the mid to late game. Without building something to increase output, either labs or factories, it seems it would take forever to even build your banks etc.

Now what I have done that works very well is evolve to all econ buildings by late game. Works great with Thalans, too. You build factories, which help you build econ buildings and allow you to research just enough to get by. As you need less and less factories and can buy ships and planets, you destroy them and build more econ buildings. Otherwise, it seems like you would get eaten alive waiting so long for things to get built. Also, having lots of econ building on smaller planets with low populations just cost more in maintanance than what you bring in anyhow, when the population gets high enough that the taxes outpace the spending then you focus on that.

You could use asteroid fields to build your econ buildings. But since buying stuff is pretty inefficient, I don't think it's a *great* strategy.

You're right all econ buildings worked terribly.

I think the best right now is either super hive or super breeder/custom or humans.

Both super hive and super breeder are really good because they decrease the amount of time before a planet becomes functional. The faster your population grows the more growth you get without having to lower your tax rate. If your tax rate for 100% approval is 24%. And your pop grows 50% faster. Then you get to have a higher tax rate per growth cost. Super Hive works by making a planet filled up with factories a lot faster, thus you stop spending money on social production sooner.

If you're not using super hive or super breeder there's no point in using custom. With super hive, it's really easy to move star ports to where you want so your colony ships get to their detination faster.

I don't really like the speed boost anymore. I just think it's over costed for it's effect.

The following picks are set in stone:
Max Econ
Max Morale
+10% Planet Quality

Should I take a diplomacy boost? A research boost?

The goal is just to stay afloot long enough until you can start trading for the all powerful economics treaties. So you need sufficient tech to be able to trade as soon as those treaties are available so others don't snatch them up.

Which picks are the best for this? You also need to find as many races as possible once the econ treaties are available so again you can get as many as possible.

So what's the best race picks/research order for this strategy?

I personally like max econ + superbreeder on an all factory strategy. The max econ + superbreeder reduces the pain of building all those factories, and you can put more down. I don't really see the hive superability as all that useful for an all factory strategy, as one of the big strengths of the all factory strategy is your ability to go to 99% social and push through all of your factory builds very quickly....So the limiting factor ends up always being your underlying economy.

To address some of the other OPs questions (play gigantic maps):

I put a starport on every planet. I also, eventually, put at least three factories on every planet. If I really start to get in economic trouble, I will go through and set the shipbuilding to none on all planets that don't have significant amounts of build time into their current ship construction. However, I have found that even a planet with only three factories is capable of producing useful ships in fairly short order once it has nothing else to work on. This also lets me make use of all the inherit manufacturing capability represented by the initial colony squares.

I will semi-manually manage the very first survey vessel. My goal is to make sure it stays along my colony wave front IDing new planets to colonize, while avoiding picking up wormhole events. I do still use the auto-survey function to find the next item to explore. After I reach the point where I start pumping out my own extra survey vessels, I stop doing this...Usually the first two or three survey vessels I produce immediately head for a wormhole and get scattered across the galaxy. This tends to be more useful than you would think as they often reveal important strategic information on their way back to my space, so I'm alright with it as an exploration strat by this stage. If I can get the eyes of the universe built around the same time, it's even more useful...Often giving me a direction to rush for a galactic resource or two.

I don't build scout ships at all. I just use colony ships for this function.

I found that the best way was with humans and to max out diplomacy(pick the populist party). You build all labs and focus on production. First, you trade for your enemies scout ships. Then you use these ships to find other races. You churn out colony ships at your home world after you've built basic labs. Then you trade for research treaties. Then you start trading for worlds. After you start trading for worlds then you take your space port off your homeworld and just start upgrading to xeno labs.

Then you just keep trading for worlds and fighters. Just research whatever techs are cheapest. For trades, I only try to keep it one for one or one for many unless I'm just starting the program out.

Now that I've figured out this strategy the game is starting to get really easy on Tough.

I should point out that one's FAVORITE strategy and one's MOST SUCCESSFUL strategy are not the same thing. My favorite strategy, for instance, is Korath and all-factories. Thalans are pretty fun, too. But my most successful is Super Breeder w/ Speed bonus. I could very well see someone's favorite strategy be an all-labs approach, but I have a hard time seeing that as the most successful. I don't see an all-money approach being either, because of the way the morale & population system works. It takes all the fun out of it.

Hi!

AFAIK Mumblefratz uses the "all-econ" approach in his gigantic games, but he plays one game for several months. IIRC he stated he needs several hundreds of thousands of profit for this strategy to start working. So it seems that for the all-econ strategy to work, two additional conditions should be met:
- LOTS of planets for the player (significantly more than 100), to generate close to 100,000 of profit; and
- LOTS of time and endurance: everything must be bought by hand - each upgrade, each building on every owned planet, each warship and constructor... by player's own clicking.

From my POV - if I can generate 100,000 BC of income, I've already won the game. If I'm not in a won position, I've done something wrong.   

BR, Iztok

As noted previously in several other threads and by reference above, this strategy is more viable the more planets you have in a star system. If the random generator kicks out rare stars, rare planets, and rare habitable - you've got very little chance of getting this strategy to work. However, Mumble made me curious, and you CAN get this to work with as little as 200 planets on a medium sized map. The key is to be smart with your money, and focus on tech.

But, of course, if you've tried it, you should know if it is a viable strategy. Was it for you?


What do you mean by inferior? All of the strategies have their strengths and weaknesses in different situations. Plus, just knowing how you plan to build your planetary tiles at some point isn't enough. I usually rebuild all of my worlds at least once, so listing a set "build" is deceptive because it is only a snapshot of an overall strategy, for instance.


you can still have it mine, upgrade it to a different ship, leave it in orbit to defend a planet, or even sell it for a few dozen credits. It probably will make very little difference no matter what you do - it's just one ship.




Another question with no right or wrong answer. I mean no offense, but I think you don't understand the depth that exists within an "all labs" strategy, or any of the others. There is much more to the game then deciding how to allocate your sliders. For instance, there are at least 4 different ways I play an all labs strategy - depending on the situation:
1) Build several labs (at least 3) on every planet, with stock markets on most planets, so that every planet can produce something (social or military) at all points.
2) Build a few dozen core worlds filled with labs (every tile save one starport), and have every other world in your empire be all stock markets to pay for the production.
3) Pump up your military and social production bonuses, and then fill the universe with 2-4 econ starbases per quadrant... but only build one or two labs per world.
4) Create just one system that will produce everything - with a large (PQ26+) planet that gets all the tech super buildings, and surround that system with at least 16 economy starbases. Nothing else needs to be anything but stock markets - but place your wonders on garbage stock market worlds, where they don't take a precious lab tile.

Each one of these approaches has different strengths and weaknesses depending on the number of planets you have available, the spread of bonuses you are using, the average number of tiles available on each world, the amount of surplus money you have, the number of enemies you are fighting, what you super abilities are, etc. etc. "All labs" or "all factories" isn't just one strategy. I'm sure there are more approaches I don't use, a lot depends on personal style and game situation.

You might as well ask: When building a mix of factories and labs, how many starports should I build? It depends.


Why are you using scout ships? IMO, that is a waste of an early game resource. As for survey ships, there are advantages to micromanaging it. Its up to you whether the "annoyance" of micromanaging is worth the beneifits, or whether Auto Survey is good enough for you. I could tell you my personal taste, but ultimately its a question you have to answer for yourself.

There are already some very good responses to your question by veteran players above. If you are new to trying these strategies, I strongly recommend starting with an all factory approach - it has fewer weaknesses and is easier to pull off. All labs is more powerful, but a lot tricker to use, and I definetly think is a more advanced approach. Prepare to fail the first couple of times while you work out the kinks. Very broadly speaking all factories and all econ are easier the more worlds there are, where as all labs is often easier with less planets. It depends on how much money you can make, what galactic resources are available, how many planets there are, how fast you need to produce anything, etc.

I'm not really trying to get all Zen on you here, but seriously, experience is the best teacher. Skipping straight to suicidal is, well, suicidal. You say you already play with these strategies... so figure out what works and what doesn't in the game environments you are generating. Unless you give a very detailed situation, the best people can do is wax poetic about their own favorite approaches in the game environments they create for themselves.

Good luck out there. If you have a more detailed situation you need help with, I'm sure there will be people who will answer any questions.

- Wyndstar

Absolutely, an economic strategy isn't something that you can start off the game with but it is something that you can focus towards from the very begining.

What I do is to do all of my colonization as basically all factory although I do put research buildings on any 300% or 700% research bonus tiles. In general I will strive to colonize about half the number of planets that the AI does. This is dependent on the number of AI's and planets in the game but I'll usually colonize about 25~30 planets. I will only colonize planets PQ11 and above for the morale bonus and since I don't colonize as many planets as the AI I will focus on making sure that my planets are strong and productive. I finish the 2nd half of the colony rush bussing pop from my home planet to some of my later (and hence least populous) colonies. I also make sure I build all of the *important* wonders, particularly the morale and diplomatic ones. Certainly a very early focus for me is xeno ethics up to concepts of malice to build the MCC (and get the 100% econ bonus) and the artifical slave center.

From there it's beam tech up to psionic beam and once I have that on even a small hull I'm pretty much unstoppable. With two psionic beams on a small hull and maximized logistics you can beat back fleets of black hole eruptor dreadnoughts, as long as you can build enough of them.

I totally rebuild all of the planets that I conquer to 100% stockmarkets. Once I've conquered my first AI I probably have a total of 75 planets or so and I'm at the 100K per week income mark. From there it's really just a wipe up excercise although eventually you will need to research to the top line of a different weapons tech in order to finish the game.

While clearly this requires a certain amount of planets and economic resource mining to reach the million bc income levels the benefits of this strategy can be used in far smaller galaxies without coming close to those kind of income levels.

Basically, if you can have a 50K per week income when others have a 25K per week income then you have a tremendous advantage. I've used this strategy in both of my Metaverse League games that I think have resulted in higher scores or quicker games than I could have achieved without this strategy. The high income at the end of the game is actually an after effect of this strategy it's not the reason you won the game. The reason you won is far earlier where as I said because of focusing on income early you had a 50K income when others would only have a 25K income. That's where the game is won.


I know exactly how you feel here. Trying to give advice can be extremely difficult because although you can easily explain the basic concepts of any particular strategy what truly makes it work are all the details of precisely when and why to do one thing versus another and these things are in fact different for different people with their own slightly unique styles.

The best advice and the best strategy doesn't do anyone any good if you just can't make it work. The best advice is to listen and try everything but use your own judgement. If it doesn't work for you then don't use it, however don't completely forget about it either because you may find that if you revisit a concept or strategy a few months later you may have much different results. The reason isn't because the strategy or concept changed it's that you've changed sufficiently to be able to adapt the strategy to make it part of yours.

Yesterday I *barely* eeked out my first obscene win and I could write a book on just how much of a learning curve it's been just getting to this point. And that win was with extremely favorable conditions and likely a lot of luck. The bottomline is the advanced strategies are extremely powerful in that they will enable an advanced player to take advantage of favorable strategic conditions, but what separates an advanced player from a beginner is accurately identifying and capitalizing on those situations.

For instance in my obscene game I was going all labs and mid-game I had a VERY strong Drengin neighbor decide to exterminate me since my military was weak. I had jack for industrial production and although I had two very advanced small vessels, they could not cover my four colonies, nor could they hold off a full assault. My response?

My Altarian super ability got me 3 immediate allies. I then proceeded to trade a boatload of tech to three other civs and goaded them into attacking the Drengin. Suddenly the Drengin who were about to pulverize my weak little hyper-geeks had to go full on defensive. All they managed to do to me was kill a couple trade routes and one single assault destroyed one of my defensive fighters and they proceeded with a failed ground invasion. After that they nearly folded under the assault of 6 other civilizations and I made troop transports and took their 2 undefended worlds (was a small map, occasional planets), exterminating them without a single offensive shot fired.

I couldn't write a strategy about how to use a very powerful diplomacy score to manipulate the computer, but its basically how I won that game. I researched entire lines of useless tech just to sell for easy money. I CONSTANTLY started wars between folks who I had economy and research treaties with just to keep their tech ages behind mine as well as keeping their fleets small. The only time I got into serious trouble was when two civilization folded in a short amount of time and BOTH surrendered to the same race. I responded by sending my hyper-advanced large ships to take out that race's fleets of smalls, of course only AFTER draining their funds and buying many of their warships with garbage tech AND bribing two other races to attack them. It was pretty savage overall, but I had little choice if I wanted to win. I doubt, however, that I could pull it off on suicidal with my current level of skill. I look back and realized there were MANY holes in my game and MANY missed opportunities.

Ultimately my point is simple, the strategies are just the framework ... the skill is in recognizing opportunities and knowing not only the right answer, but the timing. A strategy just provides a foundation upon which to get everything else right.

Okay, I've been experimenting more with 100% research is that when you focus on social you still produce some units even when in debt.

So how about only produce research production at the beginning of the game. You only make three colonies: Homeworld, one with the colony ship, another with the upgraded space miner. Then you produce research until you run out of money. AFter you run out of money, you convert the research buildings into influence buildings. You only build influence buildings using focus points. You get all your tech from the rps produced by research treaties.

If your opponent produces a galactic wonder then you trade tech for the planet.

I'm trying this strategy on suicidal gigantic, 17 major+minor races with humans. It's working well, it just takes a really long time to micromanage everything.

Did they ever change how reluctant any civ is to sell their own planets? I've never successfully bought a planet, but it's been a long time since I even tried, because it was so discouraging to be told No every single time.

It depends on the map size I think. I can NEVER trade for planets on tiny maps ... I tried to trade everything I owned including my planets and I couldn't even get a little crappy outpost colony from my enemy on suicidal tiny.

I don't think map size would be a direct factor in willingness to trade a planet, but the number of planets the AI controls definitely IS, so therefore map size indirectly affects that. Otherwise, the major factor I can see has an effect is population. Above 3b or so and they'll never sell it, below 1b and it's relatively cheap, 1b-2b expensive but affordable, 2b-3b it'll cost you an arm and a leg. Super Diplomat has a MASSIVE impact on planet trading, much more so than on just tech-for-tech trading, in my experience.

Bit of a thread hijack, but meh.

You only have to look at mumbles scores to see that his way works. Still for an (almost) all econ strategy - neutral might also be an option. I think you get a morale bonus and buying things becomes cheaper. Plus the AI is sometimes rather reluctant about giving away terraforming tech.

i've bought planets. it seems like it's dependant on how developed the planet you try to buy is (so planets with special buildings aren't usually traded) and also seems vaguely related to how desperate for resources the AI is... but that's definately just an impression.

So here is my dirty trick of the day....So, the AI just built some wonder you want? Often on the higher levels the AI puts them on very low population worlds (I think it is just buying the wonders outright in some cases). And as low population worlds are frequently cheap to buy, it's sometimes cheaper to just buy the planet rather than trade for the trade good. Of course, when you buy the planet you get the trade good!

NICE! i wouldn't want to go to a yard sale at your house, but you give dam fine advice for this game. it might even be better to buy the planet when it's slightly more expensive - you get a planet and you get to sell the trade resource to the other AIs.

Well, thanks to all the advice I feel like I've got a handle on all labs.

-All labs is better because you still produce social production in debt with focus points.

-Starships(the thing that all factories produces better) are not that important it's better to trade for them from the AI. Also, starbases are expensive to develop.

-Farms are sometimes good as planets often produce so slowly that by the time you get the farm you're at 6bill, but by the time all labs gets several planets to six bill the game is pretty much won.

-You pretty much want to produce Markets all the time except for Diplomatic Translators. You want to keep any labs on the planet and keep any starports that have a lot of production stored.

I feel like the game is unlosable with

Human 30% diplo, 30% econ, and 10% morale
Abundant everything/VF tech/ 8 minor/9major

The minor races are always abusable.

The major races you can get trade goods/low pop planets/research treaties/cash quite eaisly.

I will go into debt, I will get into war, but as soon as I can negotiate I just trade for my planets back(when your planets are invaded they go to low pop) and make the other races go to war for me.

It doesn't even matter that I can't research while in debt because the research treaties get me by.

It's just not very fun to play, I have to delete everything on a planet that's not a lab or market or farm(as farms don't require upkeep) or starport(that doesn't have a lot of stored production.

I have to trade with 17 races constantly.

It's just odd that Diplomacy is more powerful than combat although in MoO II Demanding Star Systems was very powerful as well.

I just there was some sort of automation, I mean if stored_military_production>x don't delete starport, Delete everything that's not a lab or a farm, build all stock markets, delete farms if social production per turn is greater then ten.

Any mods?