The thing I've liked the most about the campaign scenarios is the need to adjust your strategy for the situation you are thrown into! Playing the different races in sandbox games requires that you make adjustments to your basic approach, but the same priorities and tactics seem to work throughout. I won a technological victory with the Arceans (tough, immense) before I understood what a huge combat advantage they had!
Salvation was the first scenario where I had to throw in the towel and start over after a significant investment of my time. I played on Crippling for the benefit of my allies, they have been much more helpful as I increased the difficulty level.
On my first attempt I immediatley decided I wouldn't be colonizing any uninhabited planets. I noticed the little red dot atthe bottom of the map and figured that was probably my target planet. I decided the constructors would have to be used to stretch my accessible space to reach Uthon once I had the technology to build transports. Then I started with my standard approach. I lowered taxes until both colonies were 100% happy and set production up to 100% (I'll deal with the money later). I bought a recruiting center and two traditional factories on each planet. I checked what my allies were researching so we didn't overlap, set up as many treaties as possible and began the co-operative tech development drill.
The Dregin and Yor had no military, so there was no hurry. All of my ships started out scouting, manually. Part of the overall plan was to research sensors and convert my scout to a survey ship when it was handy. After a bit I couldn't keep the happiness at 100% so I raised taxes to 49%. I kept my eye on my treasury, casually. When it dipped below 1000 despite all the tech sales I had made, I tried to adjust taxes and production to get things under control. Then I discovered that even if I set my taxes to 100% and production to 0%, I was still going in the hole at a dangerous rate. The Maintenance on my free navy was going to bankrupt me.
I put a rush on developing my survey ship, I hoped to pick up easy cash that way! I upgraded the scout to a survey ship with about 400BC left in the treasury. I finally found 500 BC on the turn my treasury would have gone negative! I converted a tiny fighter to a second survey ship and soon the cash crises seemed to be over. I was researching Planetary Invasion. The two starbases had been built and some of my small fighters hadcleared out the defenders at Uthon. Everything was cool. Then two DL escorts showed up. My Dreadnought couldn't even inflict much damage, much less win a battle (I did try three times to see if I had just been unlucky). They quickly tookout one starbase and were beelining for the other one next to Uthon. Then the transports started hitting Earth. I survived two but lost so much population a third would defeat me.
OK, let's try this again. I probably have no more than 15 months to win the scenario. I have to have Planetary Invasion before I can produce transports. I have to stay financially sound. I have to have enough population to send at least 2B off without destroying the economy. So, let's try this:
Research Planetary Invasion from the beginning. I was able to get it down to 52 weeks and leave a bit for social production. Surely with 25% Creativity it will come in time. If not maybe building research buildings will do the trick.
Buy the recruiting centers but not the factories. Increasing production from 24 to 28 isn't that big a deal.
Lower the taxes for 100% happiness for only a short stretch.
Set and lock the military spending at zero.
Send the constructors and battle axes toward the bottom of the map immediately.
Hold the small fighters near Earth to intercept DL Transports, The Dreadnought will protect the transports when the time comes and the three tiny ships will explore now and ,hopefully, be converted to survey ships soon after Planetary Invasion is researched.
Worked like a charm. Of course, it didn't hurt that I got the Creativity bonus on the 4th turn. About the end of April I decided Ihad enough poplulation to build my first transport on my second planet. I bought an empty cargo hull and then upgraded it to save, I'm guessing, 400 or 500 BC (my special transport had two troop modules, an engine and three support modules). It was 492 to buy the empty cargo hull and over 1700 to upgrade it. I loaded it up and sent it after the battle axes.
The first transport was about to pass Earth on August 8. I had two previously purchased empty cargo hulls there and upgraded them for 337 and 23 per week for a very long time. I assumed that if I took more than another 30 weeks I was cooked anyway so that saved another 700 BC or more on each transport. Once those two transports were upgraded I still had over 4000 BC in the treasury. My three survey ships had been very busy.
On December 22 the first transport conquered Uthon. Lucky, but I think I could have done it as long as I got Planetary Invasion in the first 6 months.
