Purge

Join Date 05/2006

Detailed Suicidal AAR for DA

Technical walkthrough Suicidal DA Large map AAR

This AAR is different from the typical AAR. There is no story line. It’s 100% about game play and decision making. It’s all about how to regularly and consistently win on a Suicidal large size or larger map. I used no uber-cheese. It had been a couple of months since I played a full game, so my timing was a touch off here and there, making it all the more useful as this strategy does have some play in it. I had the game well in hand by end of year zero, before the first war was ever fought. I built no morale buildings and almost no economic buildings. It includes links to saved game files for all stages of the game, so you can actually run the game, stepping in at any point you desire. I took shorthand notes as I was playing it, expanded those notes into a running commentary and posted them up in the Galactic Diplomats private forums as a play along with me game. I have now trimmed them a touch and reposted them over here.

I updated to 1.7 beta 1 before the end, so earlier revisions might have some problems with some of the saves.

At the bottom of the OP are a set of file links. Please feel free to download them and see what I am doing or pick one up and play the game from there.

DA Game.
Suicidal, Large, abundant, all map with military only victories allowed and surrenders turned off.
Very fast tech.
I used my custom Alpha race that I last used in my 900K game...So I'm pretty sure it's a good racial combo!
Econ +30
Morale +20
Soc +50
Mil +30
Federalist +20
Superbreeders.

New propulsion
Hyperdrive
Ion Drive
Xeno Eng
Stellar Cartography

All races set to start friendly (except Krynn - Mistake #1)
Nine minors.
Factory strategy.

First save file is just turn one so you can see where I am starting. I also make my second mistake on turn one, though I don't realize it till later. One of the advantages to this racial setup is that you don't really need to buy any factories on the starting turns. Just move up to 100% social and you can immediately build a factory in two turns. I end up buying one on my home planet and one on the first planet I colonize (the high PQ Andromeda that is immediately visible). I shouldn't have done this. That almost 1K would have been better spent later on. I only run at 100% approval the first turn. On turn two, I move down to 50% approval and stay there for a while. I want to get a few planets colonized and then burst them all up with the superbreeder ability, so I'm conserving every penny until I can do so. As the game goes on, you can check the population history chart to see where I do this throughout the game. Being able to see a class 15 that I can immediately colonize is a HUGE advantage that I rarely get. I immediately plan to make this a factory planet for a second source of colony ships and, later, building wonders; it's priority #1.

Feb 1 - Start research focus on Beta. Priority on all research that has innate bonuses for social and military.

These are followed by research with innate economic and morale bonuses. I pick Feb 1, because this is the first date where I can do the focus and keep building the basic factory in one turn. Note that putting just 1% in military changes it to two turns, so 100% it is.

Feb 15 - rebalanced sliders to build a colony ship on beta in exactly 3 turns (72/28) and set to social focus on Andromeda. Rearranging focus is a critical part of my game. It's very rare to have a planet without focus in one of the three categories for me. When I do, it's usually because I just forgot to adjust that planet. Doing things like setting new planets to social focus really helps get them going when you are fiddling with the other sliders for your main planets. This also marks the start of my continuous fiddling with the military/social bars to try to maximize my results.

Aug 1 - I've basically reached the point where I am ready to go to full scale colonizing. Up to this point, its been a colony ship here and there. Now I can push them from many planets. Good thing too! About June/July the game looks hopeless on the mini-map as I am barely growing and the AI is going everywhere. Now it's my turn.

While starting out the colony push, I immediately start doing everything I can to shore up my economy. I know this will break me if I don't. I make one more mistake here. I should hit the first sensor tech and set aside a planet or two for survey ships. I hit some of the other economic techs first. I make this mistake mostly because I haven't played a game in three months....Oh well, I just end up having three/four turns where I turn down some factory builds and ship builds. The survey ships make it out the block in October.

Nov/Dec pretty much finish up the colony rush. I have enough planets that I can build a decent economy. Two galactic resources (Mil and Econ) are available in the north that I can claim. Otherwise galactic resources haven't been that good. The Carnoids are sitting on two (Morale and Econ) that I can easily claim as soon as I can get around to it. In total, these four will make a winning combination.

Jan 1 - Colony rush is over. Check the population time line. The power of the superbreeder...I'm running a huge deficit in anticipation of getting to the MCC. You will notice I have completely ignored huge portions of the tech tree at this point in the game...My focus has been solely on developing my planets. The only military tech I have is via trade with minors.

Clearly my first war will be against the Yor or the Krox. I have been mentally looking at how to take them out. Right now I favor hitting the Yor, just because they have planted a goodly number of colonies that I can reach without warships. I am looking to gain tech from the first war. I am especially looking for weapons/ship building tech jumps and environmental jumps.

I get the MCC tech and lease purchase it on Feb 1. This starts a major factory build up on my planets. As the factories get laid down, I should be able to significantly increase my research via focus. The goal is to start a war as soon as the newly increased research via focus slows down.

Feb 22 - I have received a few demands for cash. Paid the small ones and refused the large ones. It’s starting to worry me though. The AI can't actually fight a war yet, but I don't want to keep taking hits to my relations...It could spell multi-front war issues later on. So I bribe the Yor into war with the Humans. Costs something like 2K and a few techs. Bribe the Krox to attack the Krynn, costs almost nothing. Get a bonus the next turn and the Iconians do a "we must stop the Yor" declaration of war. Messing up these relationships now will pay for the rest of the game.

Also decide to get a couple of crap ships built during March just so I don't look like a freebie. The artificial slave center is getting built during March as well. This means I'm ready to turn the war machine on ship production wise.

April 8 - Game crashed, so I'm doing the write up here and stopping for the night. Factory buildup has been going well. I have enough to start a war as soon as I get through more tech...Star democracy at three turns was too good to turn down. At this point I can cycle back and forth between Morale/Econ boost and factory building. It's a decent way to go as it keeps forcing the tech dev time frames down. I didn't build any economic builds until the end of March/start of April. I only built those because I'm concerned about building too many factories and shutting down my economy....And I want three plus factories on all planets. So I went ahead and built a few economic buildings on some of the middle ground planets that had empty queues. This is probably unnecessary caution. Especially since I've turned up a second Galactic economic resource that I think I can claim up along the top of the map.

I'm currently guessing three months or a touch more before I start a war. I could fight one now against either of my neighbors in a month (planetary invasion is now two turns!) and win now though.

Aug 1 - Took the two galactic resources from the Carnoids. I now have 3 Economic, 1 military, 1 morale. I've also quick purchased a handful of galactic wonders. I did do a little trading with the AI for engine tech and invasion tech. Deals where so-so. This is fairly unusual and I think only the second DA game where I have done a later game trade with a major. I don’t normally do any trading with the majors because they are so unreasonable.

My planets are now almost all full with manufacturing centers, while I have a nice sized economic surplus and I can run a 80 percent tax rate until I need to grow population. I started having all my planets build ships. There is quite literally nothing else for them to do. I would like for my ship quality to be a bit better, but it is now the equal of any AI and I can push out medium warships in just a few turns from all of my planets. It looks like the first war will be against the Krox. They are just simply too weak to not attack them. I've set up a north and south staging area to gather ships. In a turn or two, I'll switch a good chunk of planets to transports. I should have the no mercy invasion center finished before the war. I expect my current rate of progress up the tech tree will obsolete my ship designs pretty regularly for a while.

A couple of AIs made peace. Bought a new war between the Iconians and Humans. The Humans look to be the stongest AI this game.

Sept 8 - Start Krox war. I don't even see any fleets. I expect a blow out.

Sept 22 - I had another computer lock up. That worries me a bit, because I've found early lockups sometimes lead to games that I can't play forward later on.

Nov 1 - Somewhere in here the Korx must have knocked off my morale resource. Bizarre because I still had a ship sitting on it and I never saw it happen. I noticed early enough that it's not that big of a deal. I have picked up significant auxiliary tech from the Krox. They only have four planets left. The Krynn and Iconians are clearly behind me now in tech and everything else that matters. The Terrans are about even, but they don't seem to have anything worthy of the name "warship" in the sky. The Yor are still ahead. I'm making plans to take out the Kyrnn next and secure the whole 2nd to 3rd base line. They should be about as easy as the Krox. I've also gone back into 100% population growth. I figure about three turns to rebuild all my population on my original planets and get decent sized populace on the new planets. I restarted the Terran/Yor war, so that they will hopefully fall behind me. I think it's amazing to browse the new Krox planets and see just how few industrial buildings they had compared to me. I probably had close to five times the industrial might, discounting the Suicidal bonus they get. It should be all clean-up from here.

Side note: I have seen others post about the Krynn being good. I don't usually play against them...In fact, I think I have only included them once before. So far, they have been as big of busts as the Iconians (see freebie race!) tend to be. They may have just had a bad draw on this map though. They seem to be in sparse space. So far, the Thalans seem to be the AI race to beat in DA from my games. They are always doing great things in terms of getting factories laid down and always present the biggest challenge when I include them. Other than the Yor, whom I seem to always include, they are my favorite to see in a game.

Dec 22 - Massively built up my population. Made peace with Korx for all their non-weapons tech and some cash, allowing them to retain one planet. This will be turn 1 of the Krynn war. Note that if I use transports at their maximum reach first I can sweep everything to the east of the Iconian border in one turn.

Jan 22, 2228- End of night for me. The Krynn war has been a matter of how fast I can fly transports. They are already down to something like 20 planets. They should be a 1 planet rump state in about one more month. It's time to start planning the Iconian war. I expect it to be very short as well. The game is basically over now, just a matter of how fast I can roll it up. Turns are getting slower now too.

Feb 15 - Start of Iconian war. The Krynn war is still going, but most of their planets lay on the far side of Iconian space. Since the Iconians are weak, I figured I might as well conquer my way through instead of flying through. Note my attitude change! I 've started quick buying things. In particular, transports.

Mar 22 - I'm into the clean up phase of my wars. I've made the decision to pause before the next war. I want to:
1) Build up my planets a bit. Three fourths of them haven't really had much done to them since I conquered them.
2) Get some easy to reach and now cheap techs.
3) Make it to Positronic II. I should be able to get here fairly fast.
Under other circumstances, I might have chosen to move straight into the humans, but I simply had to weigh which would let me conquer them faster and be easier. Since I'm not reaching for points, the tech way is definitely easier and probably just about as efficient.

Jun 22 - Positronic II reached. I can build much faster and deadlier ships now. I note that the humans are still using mostly harpoons. Checking the tech tree, that is where they are really at! I should be able to take out all but the large fleets with new singleton ships. Not quite all of my ships have managed to move to the human border in the last two months, but most of them are there. Back to full bore war production.

Jul 1 - Got the Carnoid planet and all their money for peace. Patience does pay sometimes.

July 8 plus the next couple of turns - Human war begins. It's only two weeks since the last save, but this really shows how my civilization can now turn on a war machine. Where possible, I am using massed old ships against human fleets. Let me praise the Positronic II ships to heaven. They are cheap, so cheap I can treat them as disposable. They are also very good war machines. After reaching Warp Drive, I do a redesign with a game speed 17. The biggest advantage of this is just that I can get them to the war fast. I have to take one Positronic II off the ship, but now I have fast, cheap, disposable, and effective ship. I could lose masses of them, and the humans are only killing handfuls. I also build a faster transport, and do more quick buying over the next few turns.

Aug 8 - Planning Yor war. You will note that I always try to plan the next war before the last war is finished. I'm looking for the point where I feel comfortable sending no more warships to the current war. This lets me get the next war started a bit sooner. One thing I have noticed is that now that I am powerful, the AI will not go to war with me, despite my parking transports next to their planets all over the place throughout my territory. This is very different from early game, where the AI is notoriously touchy about anything being close to anything it owns and going to war for really no reason.

Aug 22 - I'm counting planets remaining and transports already built for end game.

Sep 15 - I start the final war against the Yor. Frankly, I fight it in a pretty sloppy fashion. Since I'm not going for points and I have an excess of ships, no reason to be neat.

Oct 22 - War can be finished next turn. The Yor have no ships left and I have a stack of transports that just needs move. There is one Krox planet up in the north. I also have one ship and one transport up there.

Summary: My final tally is 87,500K in less than two game years posted under Junta Clown (my messing around character). Based upon my gigantic map experience, it would be worth between 200K and 250K if I played it all the way out for points. That might not fully translate on a large map though. I never built a morale building the entire game. Besides a very small number of economic buildings early on, which I ended up not requiring, I didn't build any economic buildings until the very end (while fighting the Yor). Even then, I could finish boosting my population back up and I would need very few to have a balanced empire. I discovered sixty something techs and stole sixty something techs...But many of the techs I stole cost more to research than those I discovered. I'm sure I captured more RPs worth of tech, than what I developed. I also avoided all the uber cheese and played this game fairly straight.

I think I picked a reasonably balanced group of races across ethics (I started as neutral) and difficulty, although I might be a little light in terms of strong AIs. To be more balanced, I could have nixed the Krox and thrown in one more strong non-evil AI, like the Altarians or Thalans, since I intended to go evil. The only thing I would really have done differently then, would have been to get one good on good or neutral on neutral war early. The permanent historical animosity flag is enough leverage for manipulation. In a perfect map, the Yor would have been in the middle and I could have arranged a dog pile war on them (assuming they were still significantly stronger than the other AIs). With their superability, other AIs have a very hard time conquering them.

Links to download site:
All Demo Game Saves.zip
Demo 1 Jan 2226.zip
Demo 1 Aug 2226.zip
Demo 1 Jan 2227.zip
Demo 8 Apr 2227.zip
Demo 1 Aug 2227.zip
Demo 8 Sep 2227.zip
Demo 1 Nov 2227.zip
Demo 22 Dec 2227.zip
Demo 22 Jan 2228.zip
Demo 22 Mar 2228.zip
Demo 22 Jun 2228.zip
Demo 8 Jul 2228.zip
Demo 8 Aug 2228.zip
Demo 22 Oct 2228.zip

If you dump this in the metaverse ships directory, it makes the ship designs available to you in the shipyard. If you try it, I would suggest saying no to overwriting any existing files....
All Ship files.zip

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drool

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Amazing work! Good show indeed.

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Thanks for this. I've got to study it and try to implement some of this because I just go bankrupt if I build anything but economy buildings. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong and your write-up should help.

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Purge,

Where do you put your overall sliders at the start of the game? It looks like you start your homeworld off with your planetary production set to a Social emphasis. Do you leave the global sliders at the default 33/33/33? Or, are they set to something like 50/50 (military/research)?

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I run at 100% social at the start (well sometimes 1/99). Feb 1st and Feb 15th respectively, mark my first research and military spending.

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I get the MMC tech and lease purchase it on Feb 1.

Did you mean MCC (Mind Control Center) instead of MMC?

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Ah. That would be yes, MCC. I fixed the OP.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

You know this is a beautiful writeup that can possibly help a lot of people. However like any strategy that I've had descibed to me or that I've attempted to describe to others, the devil is in the details and the details are just too numerous to fully explain and elaborate on. Not only that but each game is different and there are unspoken and potentially even unconsciously used contigency plans that the attempt to directly implement even a strategy outlined in such detail is virtually doomed to failure. At best usually you can take a few key principles from such a description and apply them to your own game style with somewhat limited success. If someone can gain that much from something like this then that's victory enough because far more will not even gain that much.

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Thanks for the complements all!

I agree about the devil is in the details comment. You are right that I do have contingency planning in my head that just didn't happen this game...More than I can describe in a practical manner. Even with this rather long write up, I can't give a lot more than a general sense of what I'm thinking/planning. For instance, it might have been nice to actually get an AI declaration of war on me, so others could see how I deal with it. I'm hoping the saved game files will help out some on the details since it gives an opportunity to browse the situation and see the same things I was seeing at that moment in time, along with my reaction. I also tried not to do anything that I knew would be extremely difficult for other experienced players to arrange/pull off and I expect different people to get differing use out of it. This is also(I think) a good example of dovetailing game play around the racial setup.

At best usually you can take a few key principles from such a description and apply them to your own game style with somewhat limited success. If someone can gain that much from something like this then that's victory enough because far more will not even gain that much.

To quote you a second time...That is eloquently said!

In addition, nothing is a substitute for actual game play experience!

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Just wanted to add that it's indeed very, very nicely done, really interesting to follow your strategy in particular on such difficulty level.
Excellent idea to include those save games, allows us to see much more of the details that are impossible to type out fully.
I hope I'll pick up some ideas to improve and speeden up my early game strategy.

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Ah. That would be yes, MCC. I fixed the OP.

In my case, I thought you meant Manufacturing Centers (the surrounding text didn't make much sense in that context, though). So, I kept pushing research toward reaching those. I was a bit worried since everything I'd read said upgrading factory-type buildings "too early" is a sure road to bankruptcy. I did start taking big financial hits for a while, but I survived. What's your research philosophy on that? Leave the basic factories alone or research/upgrade to some specific level? Is that upgrade path before or after your MCC build?

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

Is that upgrade path before or after your MCC build?

I suspect that Purge and I research these in a similar manner and so I'll take the liberty of throwing in my 2 cents here. Purge can certainly correct, amend or amplify any of the points I make.

I had recently posted a series of my save games from the last round of the Metaverse League at the Core. They can be accessed from the Mumbles save games from MVL round 2 thread for anyone that's interested.

This was a 3 year suicidal victory against 7 opponents in a small galaxy. The important settings were

Habitable planet's - common
Number of planet's - common
Number of Star's - abundant
Star density - tight
Anomalies - uncommon
Asteroids (DA) - rare
Tech rate - very slow
Disable tech trading
Disable Blind exploration
Enable Mega events (DA)
Disable Super Abilities (DA)

Basically Metaverse League games can be in DL or DA and my game was in DL. Anyway, there wasn't anything particularly special about this game although a few folks were interested in how I was able to win in 3 years. I didn't write up any accompanying text but did post the save games which were saved at each quarter.

However the point of this was a comment made by DethAdder after going through these files that relates to how you go about research and also highlights things that become so routine that you don't even think about it anymore.

The comment DethAdder made was "I did take notice of the way you researched directly towards a goal with little variation till you reached said goal."

Without this comment I probably would never even think to mention it. But basically at the start of the game I identify the critical techs that I want and research towards them without variation and without stopping to pickup a quick tech that may be a very useful tech at the time but isn't on the path to what my goal is.

The goal is different in different games. Very often it's a race to Concepts of Malice to be able to build the MCC and the ASC. This can also be combined with a race towards the SCC. Certainly once you've selected evil, getting to psionic beam can be huge as well.

The key is that if your basing your strategy on getting the SCC for example and it's going to take 20 weeks to research Total Majesty it can be very tempting to instead spend 4 weeks researching Warp Drive or Medium Scale Building but you need to resist these temptations and go straight for what is truly critical versus what is merely good to have.

So to answer the initial question, if I've pegged my strategy on going for the MCC early then my research sequence is straight from Universal Translator to Xeno Ethics to Good and Evil to Concepts of Malice and if Concepts of Malice takes me 30 weeks to research then I'll sit there for 30 weeks until it's complete.

With the above said I do have to add the following caveat emptor. Before starting down my chosen path for the game I do get a few low techs that give various SP, MP and RP bonuses, "low hanging fruit" as it were. Dependent on the race I play I may start out with some of these but I always get the following before I start down my selected research path. This is also the approximate order I follow although I don't think that's all that important.

Xeno Engineering (SP+10%)
Xeno Research (Xeno Lab)
Planetary Improvements (SP,MP,RP+10%)
Xeno Economics (Income+10%)
Xeno Industrial Theory (SP+10%,Manufacturing Capital)
Advanced Computing (Tech Capital)
Ion Drive
Impulse Drive (Speed+1)
Sensors (Survey Module to get those cash anomalies)

I also *always* buy my first factory and then build (not buy) my Manufacturing Capital on my home planet within the first 10 turns followed immediately by my Tech Capital.

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I do something similar, though I add:

Galactic Warfare (MP+10%)
Space Militarization (MP+10%)
Mass Driver Theory OR Missile Weapon Theory (cheapest weapons in the game, early military rating boost)
Universal Translator - you mentioned this earlier in your post, but it's important to start pimping out your techs early if you have tech trading on

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

Universal Translator - you mentioned this earlier in your post, but it's important to start pimping out your techs early if you have tech trading on

Absolutely. While I don't stray from my chosen path once I start down it I do try to use tech trading to not fall too far behind in other areas. However, I never trade my critical techs and I'm far more willing to pay money to buy techs to not fall too far behind the AI in other areas than I am in trying to earn money from selling techs.

The point is that you simply can't out research the suicidal AI due to the bonuses they receive, however they do tend to research things evenly spread out across the tech tree. This allows the human to gain a significant advantage in the small area of research that he's currently concentrating in. But the point is, if I'm trying to gain an advantage in a particular area it makes little sense if I'm going to simply trade what little advantage I have away.

However, I never bother researching the early weapons techs at all, although I will try and trade for them. Most often I will go straight to Concepts of Malice and while I'm in the process of building the MCC (I am genetically unable to buy anything on time and pay interest) I'll rush up the beam branch to psionic beams. Once there I can pretty much take on anything. I've beaten fleets of Black Hole Eruptor Dreadnoughts with fleets of small hulls mounting 2 psionic beams and decent logistics.

Of course I may have to pay off a few credible demands for tribute early because of my lack of military but I consider those early weapons techs a distraction and I would never waste time and resources building ships based on these early techs. Actually I think that's another area where the human can have an advantage. Let the AI build up fleets of 1 attack point defenders and gain that early military might advantage with ships that just become fodder. I don't build ships until they're ships that can actually conquer something and not be obsolete the instant that they're built.

The one exception to this rule is if I'm going for the SCC where I will use cargo hulls to build ships that I'll never use to attack anyone with, but even in this case I will wait until I have a credible weapon like psionic beam before I build anything. Even building ships with phasors are pretty useless in my opinion.

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Mumble is pretty much dead on. I do a couple of things different, but the basic idea is absolutely sound and absolutely critical.

I skip all research tech.
I go to Xeno Factory Construction pretty early.

This is mostly because I am doing the all factory strategy. In addition, with this particular race setup, it just doesn't take much longer to build the advanced factory over the earlier factories. Even on a new planet. I do a narrow focus as well (although maybe not as tight as Mumble), bouncing back and forth between economic techs (read morale and economic; don't neglect the economic bonuses for better government) and building up my factories. Getting Manufacturing Centers, the MCC and the ASC (Artificial Slave Center) are all very big deals. I don't bother with Industrial Sectors, as I find them to be overly time intensive to upgrade. (and nerfed in DA) You'll note once I have my three critical techs, I flip to full war mode and never really turn back. Even then, I have very narrow focus. I never researched any weapons or defense techs except for missiles and I considered the missile tech tree complete at Positronic II, as I don't use BHE's for war (for points on gig maps, yes, not wars). I also never researched a miniaturization tech (got the early ones from my first war) and I think I only researched the first logistics tech (to get to medium hulls)...Although I do research them in some games where I can't easily get them from the AI.

Having said all that, I saw DethAdder's comment as well and really keyed in on that as something I hadn't consciously recognized. To reverse it a bit, I look at the tech tree and try to figure out every tech I can do without and I am always looking for more ways to reduce the number of techs I need to research! I also look at the buildings on planets and do the same thing. My planets are much more homogeneous than the AI planets...But they are also much more useful. This is why I flagged the note of looking at my base of native planets that I built, compared to the planets I took in my first war from the Krox. The Krox builds are completely unfocused by comparison and this is where I really beat them. They kindly backfilled most of the tech I had skipped.

I used to also be constitutionally unable to buy on credit...But eventually figured out on larger maps the MCC pays for itself almost instantly and the ASC is also a good deal on credit. Go ahead and do the math on the MCC Mumble; It may feel wrong, but the numbers are hard to argue with compared with the gain on big maps.

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Ah. That would be yes, MCC. I fixed the OP.

I think I hit most of this in the post above, but there is one more thing I should add. The Manufacturing Centers usually end up being after the MCC. My whole decision tree on this is mostly based on economics though. Whenever I have any spare cash it goes into either driving up my population with 100% approval, laying down/upgrading factories, or colonizing. I don't have any hard and fast rules about which to do. I just make my best guess as to which one will be the most useful. Sometimes I will toggle up the approval, decide it's not the best option and toggle it back down to do one of the others. The 100% approval is best for using up large cash anomalies in general though, because it can make use of all the cash instantly, whereas the other two are more small, but long term cash commitments.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

I used to also be constitutionally unable to buy on credit...But eventually figured out on larger maps the MCC pays for itself almost instantly and the ASC is also a good deal on credit. Go ahead and do the math on the MCC Mumble; It may feel wrong, but the numbers are hard to argue with compared with the gain on big maps.

Actually I generally have never taken more than 5 turns to build either of these but I would think that if you're going to buy anything on credit that the MCC is the one to buy. It's just that by the time I got the tech I usually have both a very good production that allows me to build it very quickly or I actually have the cash to buy it directly without interest. The ASC I let build up more slowly because I don't need it until I start producing ships and that doesn't happen until I get to psionic beam which of course is after I get the MCC. I'll typically have 10 to 12 factories per planet early.

I definitely do operate a bit differently because I don't use all factory and do build research buildings. I get Xeno Research mainly so I can get Advanced Computing and thereby get my tech capital. I do place a few Xeno Labs on my home planet and also get my tech capital very early. I think this gives me an early research advantage that whips through those early techs. But I may go pretty much all the way through the game with just a standard factory until I convert over to all income but then that's a whole different way to play.

I do absolutely hate Industrial Sectors and haven't built one in ages. The worst thing is to get Industrial Sectors when conquering a planet and then have to cycle through your industry planets deleting the upgrade.

As far as research it's mostly yellow techs and psionic beam and stockmarkets and then I'm done with all critical techs. I'll fill in everything else as an afterthought. Once I have two psionic beams on a small hull with decent logistics it's pretty much all over but the shouting. Once I have that I'm in conquer mode where every planet I conquer gets converted to all stockmarkets and I quickly go back and rebuild all my colonized planets to all stockmarkets as well.

But all of this merely points out the variety of methods that can be used.

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Purge, I've taken a look through almost all of your savegames. Very interesting, and educational to see that much activity going down in three game years. I would just like to ask you two questions. What factors go into your decision to build additional factories on a planet? And what do you do, if anything, if you steal advanced farming technologies?

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Yeah with these settings, I tend to view three game months as long term planning. Even when I was playing very slow tech, I don't think I ever had a game go beyond four years on a gig abundant all before it was really wrapped up. I know this is one of the big differences between how I do things and the typical player...I tend to sit on the other side of the mental fence wondering what people are doing when it takes some players ten years, on the other extreme, to play through a game and it's not for points. I know they are doing something, I'm just not sure what.

If I think I have any long term spare cash at all, I build factories. Even during colony rush, I tend to leave them queued up and just turn down the social spending. If cash gets really tight, I will turn the shipbuilding to nothing on the weaker planets, but if I am doing that, I went a little too far. When the MCC is in sight, I tend to go absolutely hog wild on building factories....I was up to a -5000BC per turn in one game just before I quick bought the MCC (I managed to never turn anything down that game). I know that's not super specific, but I'm not sure I can give a better answer.

I do absolutely nothing if I steal an advanced farming tech. I only worry about approval during election weeks and when I am trying to grow my population. I will often run some planets in the 20-30% approval range during the rest of the time. If I'm going for a transport build out, I tend to sort by approval and build them on the most unhappy, or most populous planets first to get my planets closer to a universally even level of approval. Getting those advanced farming techs is actually good, as I want my planets to have the largest populations they can sustain, regardless of approval.

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This thread has been very informative. Thanks!

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Hi!

I know this is one of the big differences between how I do things and the typical player...I tend to sit on the other side of the mental fence wondering what people are doing when it takes some players ten years, on the other extreme, to play through a game and it's not for points. I know they are doing something, I'm just not sure what.

Play some other superability than SuperBreeder and you'll very soon know what they're doing.

BR, Iztok

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I just finished a game based off this (though only a Medium map, Tough, and I went for Neutral orientation). I pushed my factory tech too fast and came close to bankruptcy. But, overall, it seems to work well. What I wonder, though, is whether succeeding with this is more a factor of your custom race or of the strategy itself (as Iztok just said, "play some other superability...")? I'm going to try your custom race with my normal (losing

) strategy and see if I do any better. I'll also try your strategy with a different race. But, regardless, I'd just like to thank you again for posting this. It's been a big help.

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My three year Altarian large DA game was done with the same basic setup and approach, although I did turn up the population growth bonus for them.

I'm just glad that people are finding use in this.

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Read your AAr with much interest and after a 2 month gap fired up DA once again. Played huge, Thalan, research normal. With huge and normal research speed it all takes more time. I also felt the need to build eco buildings in a large number of planets to keep afloat. Otherwise it worked out quite well.

I think Medium size is by far the most challenging as one is almost immediately engaged in a race with other civs whereas in a Huge one gets a lot more time to develop and consolidate one's position. The AI also seems less aggressive. Makes it much easier.

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Sorry to sound thick but i keep seeing a reference to a MMC, what is this please?

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