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Another Setseke trick: resettle in place, basically only losing one turn of production to 100% guaranteed bounce any enemy spies to their respective academies. Resettling in space also lets you relocate all districts, which might come in handy sometimes.
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Dec 29, 2017 02:06
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Lichtenstein posted:When moving a settler to a far away land (i.e. the second he leabes your borders), keep planting cities wherever at the end of the move and setseke immediately - that way, as you move you pick up a few apples and dust, while also keeping your little dude a bit safer. Ooh, thank you very much. This should make for an interesting change of pace, tho naturally I'm balkin' a bit at the micro recommended after getting to just auto-resolve with Necros. I'll miss seeing four+ armies with over 20 units each just carving things to pieces. Edit: also lol "You have the best settler in the game" well there's a sentence I didn't ever expect to read. Rhjamiz fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Dec 29, 2017 |
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Dec 29, 2017 02:07
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Lichtenstein posted:Privateers kill cities TODAY I LEARNED SOMETHING (holy poo poo, this solves so many warmonger issues I can't even describe it)
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Dec 29, 2017 02:54
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Rhjamiz posted:It will tho? It will form a layer like 12321 more or less. code:
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Dec 29, 2017 04:14
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Also it is very important when playing roving clans to find as many animated gifs you can of the money nerd from kill la kill throwing fat stacks of money around and buying people and shooting money out of his guns and smiling his lovely golden teeth smile and the teeth spell out money, just as you are sticking the boot in and destroying someone's capitol with your market mercenaries. Just slide those into discord and say hey man you asked for this war.
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Dec 29, 2017 04:52
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Spanish Matlock posted:Now why is method two superior? Well first of all, the first structure is 7x2, but the second structure is 5x3, so consider that. Also consider where in the process you're going to insert whatever legendary buildings you can research, because those also level up to level 3. Of course the level 3 thing only matters for the cult, and generally speaking if you're playing anyone else you're not going to be building 13 tile cities anyway. The two outer hexes on the middle row of method two are only touching three districts, so it actually looks like this: code:
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Dec 29, 2017 08:09
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Avasculous posted:Wait, your objection is literally that units/armies get destroyed in combat? Are there any 4x games where that isn't the case? A lot of Paradox games have morale systems that attempt to simulate this and they are plenty of fun. Generally there is some trick to annihilating an entire section of their armies that will involve not allowing them to properly regroup, encircling them, etc. but normal combat rarely has entire units just ceasing to exist after a loss unless there is a giant disadvantage.
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Dec 29, 2017 09:30
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HundredBears posted:It's much worse for the Cultists and somewhat worse for the other factions (more by virtue of exploiting fewer hexes than the lower district levels). It does let the Ardent Mages get slightly more out of their pillars, but not only is it questionable whether that's enough of a benefit to justify the hourglass, they're also going to struggle hugely to get the population for a city with thirteen districts just as you said. Hm, fair enough, I am defeated. It's been a while since I've played, so I'll have to give the line method a shot the next time I get around to it, I still feel like it's going to be easier to get the city center and megapole into the level 3 zone in the pyramid somehow, but I'm willing to try new things.
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Dec 29, 2017 10:42
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Because I have too much time on my hands Pink is exploitation, blue level 1 district, green level 2, and black level 3. So, to completely overthink things: Lines with n districts have (for n>3) 4 level 1 districts and n-4 level 2 districts, for a total of 2n-4 district levels. For cultists, for n>7 lines have 4 level 1 districts, 4 level 2 districts, and n-8 level 3 districts, for a total of 3n-12 district levels. Lines have n+6 exploitations. A complete triangle with n districts has 3 level 1 districts and n-3 level 2 districts, for a total of 2n-3 district levels. For cultists and n>=10, 3 level 1 districts, 6 level 2 districts, and n-9 level 3 districts, for a total of 3n-12 district levels. A complete triangle with m districts per side has 3m+3 exploitations. Such a city has sum_(i=1 to m)(i) districts, and I can't figure out a good way to express number of exploitations as a function of n. However, 6 districts has 12 exploitations (same as a line), 10 districts 15 (one less than a line), 15 districts 18 (3 less than a line), 21 districts 21 (6 less than a line) and so on. The difference between triangle and line grows by m-3 when going m->m+1. So bigger triangles become less efficient. For non-cultists, triangles have one more district level than lines. However, they're a bit awkward to expand on and have less exploitation. I'd suggest not making triangles bigger than 10 districts. For cultists, lines get a second level 3 district a district sooner than triangles, and stay even with completed triangles after that. Lines seem to be strictly better. Getting wonders to level 3 quickly in a triangle depends on what point of adding a new layer the triangle is in. If the triangle is complete and the wonder is the first district of the next layer, It should take 5? more districts to get it to level 3. If it is the third, it only needs 2. If you left a hole for it and it's the fifth (or more), it will instantly get to level 3. For a line, you always need 4 districts more unless you left a hole for it. The design Spanish Matlock suggested last page is also pictured. It doesn't really work, as pointed out earlier. At 6 districts the triangle is strictly superior. At 7 districts the triangle doesn't get a level 2 district but increases the amount of exploitations by 2, so it stays a bit better. The 8th district only adds a level 2 and the amount of exploitations stays the same, so it's equivalent with a 8-line. The ninth district is the same, but additionally adds a level 3. It loses one exploitation compared to the line. The tenth district, of course, completes the triangle and adds two level 2s and an exploitation. It has one more district level and one less exploitation compared to the line, which seems a bit better. So the triangle design with <=10 districts is only inferior to the line with exactly 9 districts, and only by one exploitation at that. Triangles seem better for non-cultists unless you intend to make a huge city. Expanding into a line from a 6-triangle seems equivalent to a strict line, and a 6-triangle is better than a 6-line so this nail-on-a-board (can't come up with a good name here) design seems better than an actual line. Staltran fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Dec 29, 2017 |
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Dec 29, 2017 12:20
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Staltran posted:Because I have too much time on my hands You are strictly a treasure to the video gaming community.
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Dec 29, 2017 13:18
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Grinning Goblin posted:A lot of Paradox games have morale systems that attempt to simulate this and they are plenty of fun. Generally there is some trick to annihilating an entire section of their armies that will involve not allowing them to properly regroup, encircling them, etc. but normal combat rarely has entire units just ceasing to exist after a loss unless there is a giant disadvantage. The thing is in EL that units tend to get wiped out if they have 1) low max health 2) low defense 3) get ganged up by multiple enemy units which increases their morale 4) didn't use terrain to minimise damage and chance for crits 5) got run down after having retreated twice as a stack and finally 6) are vastly outgeared. It was maddening to see enemy stacks make it out alive from six turns of combat because of terrain chokepoints or having high ground forests on their side of the battle map. It is rarer for this to work in your favour. It is rarer still where a strategy lets you boom with little military research & build up and no consequences to follow. You need to balance expansion with a little extermination, always. If you're miffed by "annihilation combat" in strategy games that's a very lonely club of CK, EU, HoI and Company of Heroes. Men of War and many squad based strategy games are even more lethal than CoH. Stellaris generally boils down to either crushing the other side or losing a whole fleet if not in the first battle, then the second (akin to Total War and Age of Wonders) and someone losing outposts and planets.
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Dec 29, 2017 13:19
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Delacroix posted:The thing is in EL that units tend to get wiped out if they have 1) low max health 2) low defense 3) get ganged up by multiple enemy units which increases their morale 4) didn't use terrain to minimise damage and chance for crits 5) got run down after having retreated twice as a stack and finally 6) are vastly outgeared. Turns out that there is a retreat button, I just had to find it, and I'm an idiot for trying to protect a minor village and essentially fight a war in the early game. So, I'm going to give the game another try now that I have read all of the replies in the thread since it is now rather obvious that I was being a dumbass. Anyone have any pointers on what it is best to focus on very early game in terms of where to place your first city and how to develop it to not be a terrible shithole?
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Dec 29, 2017 15:46
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Industry is king early game, then transition to dust once you get both the -33% building cost and the -25% building buyout cost industry plans and preferably the tech too. Science is less important, don’t invest too much into food since pop food requirements are exponential. Also don’t fight Drakken early, they have strong units and start with the best combat hero in the game.
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Dec 29, 2017 22:33
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:They were slaughtering me at 1:3 odds. EL isn't my favorite game but this didn't tell you that you were missing something?
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Dec 29, 2017 22:37
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:
Things to look for: -Biome type. Each Biome has a baseline resource output for each hex. Generally, you probably want Food + Industry OR Dust for your first city i.e. stay away from Tundra. Note that a couple of races don't use a specific resource at all (BL: Food, Forgotten: Science), and there is no compensation for it, so as those races you probably want to avoid Biomes rich in those entirely. -Anomalies. The boosts from these are huge, especially if you're lucky enough to get several in reach of a single city. Look for +Happiness anomalies in particular. -Villages. Each Village you pacify gives a 'free' worker to a city in that region, so having more villages in a region is good. Also pay attention to the benefits of assimilating different minor factions. -Space. As the past few posts show, having space to grow is pretty important for your first city. Try to settle away from edges, and avoid being near Ruins unless you're Drakken. There's no way to clear them, and they'll gently caress up your districts if you're not careful. -Luxury/Strategic Resources. You can put this off a little since most races need techs to start exploiting them and they vary in usefulness early on. On the other hand, a couple of key ones can give you a really huge early boost (Spices). Because of the way boosts work, it's usually better to have multiple of the same type than a diverse set. Something useful to know that's easy to miss: you can build city centers/burroughs on top of these, and as soon as you get the tech to exploit them, you'll start doing it automatically without having to build an extractor. Can save valuable time, resources. -Water. Specific buildings, skills, and gear give bonuses to each Sea or river-bordering tile you're exploiting. I was going to put these in order of importance, but it really varies enormously depending on which faction you are, so if you tell us that we can give you much more specific tips. Avasculous fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Dec 29, 2017 |
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Dec 29, 2017 23:05
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In order of importance, in my humble opinion: You don't get many choices for your first city. I split the stack into singletons, hero and two units, send them out in 3 directions to see what the settler can find. Unlike Civ5, it's unlikely that you'll find an AMAZING spot more than a single settler-move away, and it's not as if you can scout that far yet anyways. So I generally settle turn1 after scouting. Priorities: I feel you really don't get a choice on your biome. For non BL/Forgotten, just take what it gives you, as above. Anomalies: are great, settle where you can rapidly expand into them with districts. Normally, each tile gives 3 FIDS, with anomalies giving variable amounts from +4 FIDS, or maybe +10 happiness. Rivers: Are amazing, but need forethought. They give a flat +1 FIDS (food, iirc) to the tile, but there are multiple improvements that key off of them, with an era1 tech for +2dust, and more (industry?) later on. Basically I just use the tooltip to give me the highest combined FIDS, with keeping an eye for further expansion into anomalies using the line pattern. If given the choice (unlikely), Industry is the normally most important by far. edit: the RNG can be really harsh/generous with your initial province. I once had a Cultists game where I had FIVE anomalies after placing my first district. They really should have tightened that up.
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Dec 30, 2017 01:18
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quote:Rivers: Are amazing, but need forethought. They give a flat +1 FIDS (food, iirc) to the tile, but there are multiple improvements that key off of them, with an era1 tech for +2dust, and more (industry?) later on. My earlier post sort of implied that Rivers and Sea were equally valuable. River tiles >>>> Sea tiles if you're not playing with Tempest, and even if you are, you probably only want Sea tiles for your starting city as the Morgawr. Serephina posted:edit: the RNG can be really harsh/generous with your initial province. I once had a Cultists game where I had FIVE anomalies after placing my first district. They really should have tightened that up. Yeah, that's probably the biggest downside of playing Cult in my eyes, is you are well and truly hosed if your RNG starting location is poor enough. There is a setting for anomaly frequency when you start games. I've heard that cranking it to the maximum is the best way to get the "Outscore Endless AIs x # of turns in" achievement.
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Dec 30, 2017 02:43
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Avasculous posted:My earlier post sort of implied that Rivers and Sea were equally valuable. River tiles >>>> Sea tiles if you're not playing with Tempest, and even if you are, you probably only want Sea tiles for your starting city as the Morgawr. The cult, and to a lesser extent, the Necrophage can get really screwed by RNG in another way, if you're stuck on a peninsula, with another civ on the mainland part of your continent, you're pretty much hosed. Both of those races live or die on minor faction villages. Necros are an incredibly powerful combat race, but they need to eat a lot to make that happen, and you're going to need to ransack a number of minor faction villages to pump your numbers up. Same for the Cultists. Even though you technically control only one city, you should consider any province in which you control the minor faction villages to be "owned" by you. If you have no room to expand by taking over villages, you're pretty much straight up screwed. Edit: The opposite is also true, if you start in a province with good anomolies and three villages of Kazanji (the giant fire demons) you've pretty much already won the game.
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Dec 30, 2017 06:28
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The starting region always has only one village, so you need to go wandering with your settler for that to happen. But it is very strong.
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Dec 30, 2017 10:10
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Staltran posted:The starting region always has only one village This thread is full of gold today, how cow. TIL.
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Dec 30, 2017 11:25
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Staltran posted:The starting region always has only one village, Is this definitely an always? I could swear I've had more than one sometimes. I know the vast majority of time it's true, but I didn't think it was written in stone.
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Dec 30, 2017 18:13
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Yeah I'm almost certain I've had three in my start region before.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:25
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Then you have moved the settler or somehow messed with the world-creation algorithm.
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Dec 30, 2017 19:41
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Thank you everyone for the replies about early game goals...that was much more than I expected in terms of detail, but it was really helpful. I ended up restarting a few times till I had a starting region with a setup I liked (cool minor faction, decent room to build a line-city, and some natural resources). I have a game off of the ground as the Wild Walkers. I am 49 turns in; my original city is now pumping out ridiculous amounts of industry and has the Industrial Megapole, Altar of Auriga, and Museum of Auriga, plus I have one other city. Should I start settling multiple additional regions as I start to have the ability to pump out military units? Will that tank my approval or anything? I guess now that I'm not making GBS threads my pants I am not sure what to do next.
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Dec 31, 2017 00:30
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:decent room to build a line-city  Did you start with a triangle and then transition to line-ish shape? I just spent an unreasonable amount of time (instead of sleeping) a couple days ago to figure out that's strictly better (anomaly location etc notwithstanding) than going straight to a line for non-cultists. At 6 districts you get one district level more, at 7 districts one more exploited tile, and at 8 districts or more they're equivalent. Plus up to 8 districts you're doing the same thing as if you were going for a ten-district triangle, so you don't have to decide until then. e: Also each city gives a "expansion disapproval" -10 (-25 for the Allayi) happiness penalty to all cities, reduce by an era III and an era V tech (-25% each) and a legendary deed (-50%, era V I think? I think it can be either have a city with 30 pop or a city with 15 districts, including wonders but not pearl districts). Some hero skills can also reduce or eliminate expansion disapproval generation on the city they're governing, and the palace in your capital (and conquered capitals as well) also eliminates it. If you have only one city, I think you should aim to settle at least two more cities immediately after the next empire plan (I assume normal speed, so turn 60). Empire plan cost is multiplied by the number of cities you have, in case you didn't know, and luxury boosters need 5 more resources for each city too. Staltran fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Dec 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2017 02:48
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Staltran posted:
 The red circle is the founding spot. I was going to go in a line to the right and down towards the coast, but had to go to the left and down because of that ruin. Now that I got to the sea, since the city is still growing, I decided to zig instead of zag and decided not to go for Triangle. No idea how bad of an idea this is but whatever, I am vomitting units and feel like I'm doing well so I dont care right now  edit: Oh and it seems I get Expansion Disapproval for new cities, so I shouldnt just...settle everywhere?
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Dec 31, 2017 03:00
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Should I start settling multiple additional regions as I start to have the ability to pump out military units? The usual strategy is to settle in waves on turn 20/40/60 etc. Be sure to choose your empire plan before you settle: the point of the strategy is to minimize the influence cost of your empire plan since each city increases it. It's ok to settle a few turns late if you can't quite get your settler out and to the necessary spot in time, though that's not likely to be an issue in your current game. It's also ok to settle a few turns early, put the workers in your new city on influence or science and then build 'Salt the Earth' one turn before you choose your empire plan in order to turn your city back into a settler, although that's also not something too important for your current game: it's more of a gambit to unlock and have influence for the plan that decreases the industry cost of your buildings by 33% at turn 20. You absolutely want more cities. Generally, 5-7 is a good number to have and they should go down right after the turn 60 empire plan at the latest. I personally tend to build two after the turn 20 empire plan and two more with the next one, but that's more of an approach for experienced players. Things can also vary a good bit by your choice of faction, the strategic situation and the availability of luxuries. Each city increases the cost to activate luxury boosters, and that's more of a constraint on expansion than approval in the later eras.
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Dec 31, 2017 03:07
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I in the middle of a Mezari game where no one bothered to expand. Six players, single continent, and I have seven regions to everyone's one. I thought I was doing well until I realized something must have bugged out.
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Dec 31, 2017 03:08
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Is that the megapole in the top left? This early in the game you probably want to get that to level 2 ASAP for the +25 industry, adding a district to its left seems good, gets you the level and two forests. The zig cost you one district level, not the end of the world. You can get it back with a cargo dock anyway. Yeah exercise some restraint in settling, and try to time new cities immediately after empire plans. Also you can settle and raze every turn while your settler is moving to its destination for some extra dust/science/influence, just make sure it doesn't screw up a quest to settle the region. Also don't do it with your capital at the start of the game, you lose your palace. Also the settler you get from salt the earth has no equipment, so you're stuck at four movement.
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Dec 31, 2017 03:13
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Here is a closer look at the city; yep that is the Megapole top-left-ish: So I should get my next district next to the 'pole. Also what are district levels, how do I see them, and what do they do? Feel free to point me at a wiki page if there is one - you guys dont have to keep going into such deep detail on my account. edit: Also, why can I build this "Abbey of Anomalies" as a District even though I cannot build a normal district? Does it still count for other District purposes in terms of happiness penalty and/or District Adjacencies for district levels or whatever it is that I do not fully understand? AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Dec 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2017 03:52
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Ruins not being buildable-over is so loving dumb.
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Dec 31, 2017 13:01
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:edit: Also, why can I build this "Abbey of Anomalies" as a District even though I cannot build a normal district? Does it still count for other District purposes in terms of happiness penalty and/or District Adjacencies for district levels or whatever it is that I do not fully understand? it's city districts themselves that have the happiness malus at level 1, not other districts like the megapole or the abbey or that sort of thing but yes the abbey counts as a district for district level determination. city districts need 2 pop per, whereas unique districts just need e.g. you to reach the right tech level.
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Dec 31, 2017 13:59
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Megazver posted:Ruins not being buildable-over is so loving dumb.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:06
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It's annoying, but it makes it far less likely for a ruin to be inside a city and inaccessible unless you control the city. If you were able to build on top of them, a lot of "search this ruin" quests might require you to conquer the city.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:12
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Staltran posted:It's annoying, but it makes it far less likely for a ruin to be inside a city and inaccessible unless you control the city. If you were able to build on top of them, a lot of "search this ruin" quests might require you to conquer the city.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:14
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True, but you'd need to check every turn (or whatever turn) that a new district hadn't blocked access to the ruin and spawn a new ruin for any quest that had it as a target. Might be unimmersive, but that shouldn't be a big deal. In general Lust for loot is basically the only even vaguely interesting ruin search quest too, and even then only in the early game. Sometimes you need to bribe an AI for border access/declare war, I suppose. Making district placement more annoying for a minor improvement to them isn't really worth it, so I guess I agree that it's bad design you can't build on ruins.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:22
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You could make the quests change... or you could just make ruins count as districts that can be developed, that you could still visit if a quest requires it, if you wanted.
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Dec 31, 2017 16:28
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In EL I see that my cities have Trade Routes and I got the tech to let me build Caravanserais but uhh, how do I Trade Route?
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Jan 2, 2018 01:09
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:In EL I see that my cities have Trade Routes and I got the tech to let me build Caravanserais but uhh, how do I Trade Route? Gotta build a road my dude
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Jan 2, 2018 01:21
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Beamed posted:Gotta build a road my dude edit: Oh, Imperial Highways tech?
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Jan 2, 2018 01:32
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