Hi!

I have only DA, but most of game mechanic didn't change for TotA, so I can give you some advice.

You're in an extremely long game with those settings. Are you ready to send at your anemies 1000+ transports and repeat planetary invasion 700+ times?

With all-factories you'll want research bonuses - as much as you can get. So drop soldiering and Universalists and get research and Technocrats.

For all-fac's you want sliders at 1/99/0. Unused social production is diverted to military, so you're losing nothing. But you need that one percent in mil production to actually build ships. If it would be at 0, no ships would be built. And on ships-producing planets you should set focus on mil production.  That's especially effective, becaue the focus transfers double amount of "points" between social and mil production (at least in DA it worked so).

Don't use entertainment buildings in initiall phase. Drop taxes to get planets to 100% approval to have 8-times growth. In DA I've been running as low as 18% taxes in the opening phase of the game. With SuperBreeder you can afford to "jump" taxes up or down as you need, because they grow pop so insanely fast. If you get the Aphrodisiacs and those two(?) growth-enhancing techs, you can grow about 1B pop per turn on a 2B planet.

Same to you!

BR,  Iztok

I have a question, why putting racial bonuses in Tech when slider setting is 1/99/0?

I´d rather put all racial bonuses in Social Prod for a max effect, you can get +70% by choosing Industrialists + 50% Social bonus, and it´s just 1 point more then Technologist + Research. Unless I calculate something wrong that will yield a higher focused research output, as well as a much more higher Mil+Soc production.

Anyway, I am just curious, because I usually don´t go for the all-fac approach...

Yes, Research is the issue in all fac.  That's why I do the work-around I posted for the first dozen or so turns.

Later, once you've expanded, there's more than enough research flowing in with focus, just as long as you're using good factories.

There's several ways to look at this.

Consider that you are in for a lonnng game.  What % of the time will you be building improvements on any specific planet?  Or, once your Empire has reached its natural boundaries and you begin to gear for serious war with high-end systems on your ships, how many of your planets will be your main fleet warship source?  Or, how long will you be researching?  Eventually, you have gotten done what you need and shift away and almost totally stop researching.  I'll leave a planet with a specific research bonus on focus, maybe, and keep the treaties, and sometimes tweak the 1 turn left planets to research focus, but not much more.

It has seemed to me to be important to put the racial bonuses where I will use them all game and in aspects that are critical.  Social production is one place I almost never spend those precious racial points to improve.

Economic bonuses I always max out.  I almost always take Luck, as that helps in every combat all game.  I almost always take some in Morale.  Anything left generally goes to Research.  I used the Technocrat for a while to win, but like the Universalist for that extra Luck and other bonuses.  Once you've done all the Research, the Technocrat bonus is wasted, but the Universalist bonuses are helpful all game long.

The balance, esp in All Fac, is that there is a distinct "hump" to get across.  There are competing "needs".  You need to get diplo advanced.  You need to expand enough to get your fair share of the initial map.  You need not to be shut out of mining bases, as just one single Green with modules can help get you over that hump, and Red ones with modules can keep the AIs off your back a little longer.  You need a few survey ships.

The Research part of the hump is why I wait for All Fac until after I have gotten that first Research round done, and it is important to get factories one or two higher than the initial one.

One All Fac note - I never build Industrial Sectors.  I eventually research them just to get that last Starbase module.  However, I go around the Empire and turn off the auto-upgrade Governor before I do that research.  It is a real pain when I forget to do that later in the game or if one of my spies mistakenly steals it, and I find the Treasury just went a gazillion negative asall my planets stopped whatever ships they were building and shifted to "upgrading" hundreds of perfectly good Manufacturing Centers into those pieces of junk.  I already have to do that each time I invade, but deleting hundreds of upgrade commands one by one throughout the Empire is a major pain.

What is just bothering me is the 99 set into social, as well as the 40% to research. One way or another there is a huge loss of potential there, and there should be a better approach. Not that I am saying there is, just that I´d look for one.

I understand that the 99 social have the great effect to get new planets producing rather quickly, and once the queue is empty alot of Social power goes to Military. However still some points remain on social which won´t be used. Question: Does one have to pay for these unused Social points? One danger I see is if one isn´t able to raise a significant income per round from other sources (as e.g. Techbrokering, anomalies or tax) then it might mean the whole thing collapses because of the maintenance cost of the huge amount of factories. Couldn't the sliders be set to 100/0/0 - and focused on Social on new planets, and later on either Research or none. That way no unused points would ever be generated. Also, the weight of fast-growing maintenance costs would have been reduced, maybe halfed... I even think that initially all planets will allow for a greater ship-output.

And about research, well, it depends all on the speed of the research-slider: If it´s set to fast or higher a basic research of all necessary techs can be made in time. But below, I wouldn´t bother. Because the AI doesn't wait that long with his colonial rush. I´d start instantly and I´d get all necessary techs by trade, I further would make tech trade/ brokering a latent source of my income, and a guarantee that all opponents spread around equally. I´d focus on the Yellow-diplo techs for this goal entirely, lease-buying the DiploTransl once they´re available. Luckily most of these are easily to research.

Maybe there´d be too much ship-output, I´d built blank hulls then because they are maint free - and they can be upgraded to whatever if the need arise. The AI won´t declare war until later after the colonial rush is over, therefore I never bother with even smaller warships during the early phases of the game.

What precisely do you mean by "all X tactic"? Like changing the tactic from this to that and else?

In a word, yes.  As you know, so does overspent military, only tech carries.

My slider goes to 90% social when I own all planets, but one.  Like you (I think) I pretty much do one thing at a time and that is how I set sliders and limit overspending.  Focus on research is by and large a requirement using all fac.

Racial points, IMO and style, are based on score.  In DL/DA I choose econ, morale and pop growth.  In TA research may play a far more important role.  With any game...very fast research.

I play all fac in only in DL and only because the Drath starting goooood ethic requires new planet colonization or pay out the ass for evil.  Diplo strategy and all Lab is my overwhelming preference.  After all, very deep in my heart, I am a diplomat.

Iztok -

I only play on Suicidal.

As jacklv already noted, researching out everything is routinely done in larger games.  For that matter, I have found it very tough to win at Suicidal with the largest all-abundant galaxies simply because the AI bonuses will take them to the Research Victory before I can exterminate them.  One long game I lost was when I was racing to kill off one enemy because I had gotten their 10-turn warning and, two or three turns before the race was going to be over one way or another, I got the 10-turn warning for a large Ally on the other side of the map.

Additionally, though you may be surprised, Technocrat gains you little at the slowest tech rate setting at Suicidal.  You will find that you may or may not be able to keep up in research, but all the AI bonuses everywhere else means they will probably bury you.  Better, I would suggest, is to have Technocrat and have the FASTEST research tech setting with the Research Victory off.

That combination lets you get all the Research done you want fairly early and you can shift your attention and all your resources to the rest of the game.  The key is to have a Research pattern based on your specific game settings.  For example, at Suicidal, I rarely bother with Extreme Colonization until I have stabilized my Empire.  The one exception is at highest tech research rate with a cluster of the same planet type where I have a decent chance to get at them ahead of the AIs - - very rare.

The Mumblefratz research pattern is very good, though I use various variants.

Are the Social pts entirely converted into Military pts once the Soc queue is emtpy - or will there be points left? I´ve just run some tests, but I come to the conclusion that the number of Social pts is false-shown when the Social queue is emtpy. For example, I had 18 Social pts that halfed to 8 pts after I focused on Mil - but added only 1 Mil pt.

I take that as a yes, although the wiki doesn´t say specifically "all" Soc-->Mil. But how is it then that the Mil pts will increase with focus?

In your 1/99/0 example a planets with a productional output of 24 will show 0/23/0 without any focus or production. If I then put a ship into built then numbers will change to this: 23/11/0. Then if I focus on Mil: 24/10/0.

Question 1 is: Why does "focus" transfer 1 pt? Because, there are 11 Soc pts, according the Wiki it should transfer 50%, which is 5 in this case. Which brings me to

Question 2: Where are the 11/10 from? How can the general planetary output be greater than what´s maximally possible?

Hi!

From wiki: "When a player sets a focus on social or military production, that field takes 1/4 of base research and 1/2 from base production of the other production field"

Please note the words BASE PRODUCTION: factory base production * sum of building bonuses + asteroid mines + focus. That's what is transferred from social to mil queue, or used when setting the focus.  

A question: does planet show 0/23/0 or 0/(23)/0 ? There's a big difference: in first case the planet is building a social project with all points from base production + social production bonuses, in second case it's already divering its base (23) social output to mil production. So when you put there in queue a ship, you get 23/11/0, because those transferred points are now used.

It doesn't. Put in queuen a social project and you'll see the difference. As for that 1 point of difference: the game does lots of rounding, and with focus and additional set of calculations. That 1 point could be from that additional set.

Like I said: put in queue a social project and/or/xor a ship and then play with the focus. Bigger numbers also help, because then the effect of rounding is smaller.

BR,  Iztok

Hi!

Quite easily you've found a display glitch, that wasn't reported yet, or I missed it in the time, when I've been absent from forums. Such glitches aren't really rare things, but they also don't effect the game mechanic (your soc queue is empty anyway), what you could easily prove by putting sth. in the soc queue, like I already suggested you. 

BR,  Iztok