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Running a democracy with an espionage malus is almost always a bad idea in moo2, and the accuracy reduction can potentially be fatal in an early war. Low gravity would have been a better pick, especially since you can cover most of its negatives with a fairly easy to reach mid-game tech. Also, I'd rather have fantastic traders with your setup than +1 research and large planet, but that's my personal preference. There's a lot of +research buildings, but getting double income from trade goods, and a boost to the already amazing trade agreements you'll be getting results in piles of cash. Go for research labs after the factories. While the boost isn't all that great with your setup, it helps get the ball rolling just that tiny bit faster. I don't know why you'd want hydroponic farms instead of biospheres, your race gains a lot from every extra unit of population, you really want to be maxing that out. e: Oh, right - reinforced hull. Double total hitpoints is nothing to sneeze at, and fighters just aren't all that great for non-creatives. my dad fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 01:06
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Hm... Now that I think of it, fantastic traders would actually be pretty bad with your -espionage setup. The 1:1 ratio when converting food and production to cash is still great, but bad espionage makes it so that it's better to avoid meeting other factions for as long as possible, which is the opposite of what you want to do if you intend to trade a lot.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:03
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nweismuller posted:My dad, I understand your doubts about my setup, but I ask that you simply wait and see. This is a setup that has worked extremely well for me, and I'd like you extend some trust that I know what I'm doing with it. I just said that one of my proposed changes wouldn't work with the rest of your setup.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:28
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Delay hiring the leader - Do get him eventually before the 30 turn counter expires, but no need to pay the upkeep in the meantime. Scout first, colony base second - Scouting is really drat slow in the early game, and but if we find a really good world before completing the colony base, we can always switch production to a colony ship. That having been said, the boon from that early second colony is pretty great, so it'll have to be a drat good planet for this to happen.
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Oct 1, 2016 13:32
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Hire Sparky Battle pods -> Spaceports Research
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Oct 2, 2016 06:35
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I mean, it's possible to just treat it as an indirect science boost. Keep the amount of production similar to what you had before, but move the extra pops to science. As important as that first pollution control tech is, it's expensive.
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Oct 2, 2016 08:21
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Battle pods are a good way to make sure you don't need survival pods. 
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Oct 2, 2016 18:01
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Why would you ever build trade goods on an undeveloped world? No, build more housing instead. No need for physics just yet. Grab the Robo-Miners, soil enrichment would free up less people than they would if you aim to keep your production level the same but want to produce more research. I don't think you'll have the production to think about colonizing just yet, but Kelev is the least bad option right now. nweismuller posted:I am... not even sure what in the world you are talking about. Beginning writeup of the next update. You keep one unit of population on a planet with at least abundant minerals and all the production boosts you can cram in there, and have it build housing forever to get a growth rate of about 250k per turn. Whenever it grows to 2 pop, transport the extra pop to a more useful planet. (This is why I think that biospheres are more useful than hydroponics, by the way) habituallyred posted:Also what would you say the worst way to spend at least 10 race creation points would be? I am pretty sure trans-dimensional is at the top of that list. It's not that bad. It's surprisingly useful early on while your drive tech is still slower than molasses, a speed boost is also a defense boost, and I had a gimmick game where I planned my build around the "hyperspace flux" random event, and then ruthlessly exploited the fact that my fleet could move while the enemy fleets couldn't.
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Oct 5, 2016 09:26
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Fame also helps attract better, more experienced leaders. Hire the leader ASAP ABSOLUTELY GRAB SOIL ENRICHMENT I actually prefer augmented engines to fusion drive, it's surprisingly useful in battle since it's not just a speed boost but also a defense boost. I absolutely understand not wanting to have lovely strategic mobility for a long time, though. Ugh. Kelev, I guess? With 2 production-boosting structures, we can make up for low mineral deposits, but without biospheres, we can't make up for lack of space in the other system. my dad fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Oct 11, 2016 |
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Oct 11, 2016 02:29
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Gravity generators mean you can have gravity as high or low as you want (within reasonable limits) anywhere on the planet. In gameplay terms, you can have different species with all 3 gravity preferences on, say, a high gravity planet, and they'll all be able to function normally and at 100% productivity.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:11
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I'd advise against using feudal on impossible. I really like it, but it requires a very specific playstyle, and a set of traits that lets you get around its biggest weaknesses. Try out custom humans with the subterranean trait added, and take the minuses to combat skills, it can work out surprisingly well. Even if you can't negotiate with the likes of Silicoids, charismatic helps give you time before they decide to invade you, and subterranean allows you to make far better use of planets than you normally would, while not making your game a gimmick run.
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Oct 13, 2016 04:21
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Hire the farming leader. At the very least, you'll be able to move a few extra pops to more useful stuff, which more than pays for its upkeep. I know science is insanely important in 4x, but I can't really see the Narestans doing anything but beelining economics, followed by consumer electronics. Grab the ECM jammer if they don't ask for anything important. At the very least, it'll save our space stations some missile-related headache. We'll get better stuff for regular point defence.
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Oct 17, 2016 02:39
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Wayne posted:I really should've taken your advice on Charismatic over Lucky, though. I only got 1 positive event (a 50BC pirate stash, woo) and the antarans have hit me 2 out of 5 spawns anyway, while the AI is really trigger-happy. I know it's Impossible, but the trilarians went from Peaceful to war in one accident, it's ridiculous. (I had a destroyer go through a wormhole and retreat from enemy ships there, and it took the long way through triliarian space instead of going back through. Ended up reloading and scrapping it instead. There's another benefit to Charismatic which people tend to overlook: You get much better leaders, including some that bring really awesome tech early on. Like, I've had games completely changed by getting early terraforming, autolabs, advanced government (which actually happened in nweiss' previous moo2 LP), and even a certain robot dude who can, depending on your race picks, completely change the way you play.
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Oct 17, 2016 04:16
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Wayne posted:Interesting. I grabbed that for the first time this game because Feudals are garbage at research anyway, so I figured I'd get research labs + autolabs and steal the rest (and then ended up stealing autolab anyway, heh). It was pretty underwhelming, and if you invest in androids later in the tech tree, it doesn't help them anyway. Supercomputers are actually, uh, super important for feudal races. That flat +10 bonus to research is actually really drat powerful for them. That's worth 5 extra feudal researches (if you include the research lab +1 bonus to researchers, even more if you don't) Flat bonuses are why autolabs are the holy grail of feudal races. Wayne posted:Sounds like I need to find a list of the colony leaders you can get, heh. I did get pretty absurdly lucky as it is, with Blackrazor and the space elf in a game where I'm spying all the time. I also got the ship captain with super Ordnance, that's pretty crazy with the Mrrshan! http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_Antares/Colony_Leaders
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Oct 17, 2016 17:58
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Wayne posted:Well yeah, but I really wanted to see if Holo Simulator was going to pay off and I planned on stealing/researching Autolab instead. If you're playing on Impossible and not cheesing a custom race, you're going to be way behind on tech anyway, so I figured I'd try new things while seeing what I could steal/trade for. The "uh" was my way of saying "pun not intended" The impression I get is that the AI has a sort of a priority list, and depending on the race picks, values some techs much more than others. However, the AIs are also a lot more egalitarian when trading techs with each-other, and also spy on one another a ton, forcing them to research less important applications to advance a technology level. I also suspect that there's a bias towards getting tech picks that the player doesn't have. In general, when I'm playing a race capable of diplomacy (or at the very least a production oriented non-diplo race than can spy well) I tend to focus on tech picks that give me an immediate benefit (or a component I can fit into a ship I'm building right now), and try to get the more long-term important techs (or ship techs that get applied retroactively) through other means.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:26
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cheetah7071 posted:Food is easy to move, industry is hard. Build on the barren world. Yeah. It should be really easy to use it to leapfrog a colony base to the terran planet as soon as the industrial base is up and running.
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Oct 19, 2016 20:23
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nweismuller posted:They're in different systems, I want to clarify- I only discovered the ultra-rich in Yhe this update. But what's done is done, and Yhe is colonised. Replace "colony base" with "colony ship" then. That thing is easily going to become our homeworld's equal in production.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:28
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Consumer Optronics, improved security technologies (holy poo poo, do we ever need this) Do not trade a very valuable tech for something we'll get relatively soon anyway for less than a quarter of the research cost. We grabbed fighters, right? Get some carriers up and running as soon as our super-industry planet is operational. Heavy investment in manufacturing infrastructure is encouraged. Also, gift hydroponics farms to races that don't have them, to encourage biospheres research.
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Oct 21, 2016 02:34
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Mass drivers actually do 1 less damage than fusion beams on fighters. Something, something, hard to miniaturize as much. Still the best early ship-to-ship combat weapon, though. Also, I'd rather grab battle scanners than tachyon comms, but it's clearly not an option. edit: quote:Meded Foundation heh
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Nov 10, 2016 06:54
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nweismuller posted:Mass drivers should do 3 damage on fighters, while fusion beams do 1-3. Fighters mount standard PD weapons. And we already have battle scanners, we snagged them off the Meklars, I believe. The game lies. They all do (number of fighters times) regular, non-miniaturized max damage +1, except mass drivers which don't have the +1. It just requires the weapon to be capable of miniaturization for it to be a valid fighter weapon.
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Nov 10, 2016 08:47
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Nay on the tech-trade. Honestly, I'm still not sure if tier one shields are really worth the space they take up on the ship. Planetary radiation shields - their ability to deradiate planets combos well with terraforming, and they provide a fairly powerful layer of defense early in the game. Does any faction have biospheres up for trade? e: ^^^^ They actually add less science than research labs for a much higher cost. We're better off working on ways of maximizing population right now.
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Nov 30, 2016 23:39
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nweismuller posted:(I actually have a pet theory that the visual design of the Astro University as a structure is meant to suggest this, although I'm unsure if anybody wants to hear it.) 3 smaller structures around a tower, each showing similarity to a different structure associated with the production of the appropriate resource?
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Dec 1, 2016 00:42
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McGavin posted:How are you using all of that extra cash? Are you just buying buildings and ships as soon as they become available? The price per unit of production depends on how much production already went into building things. It's 4BC/hammer at 0%, and 2BC/hammer at 50+%. This gets ludicrously expensive when trying to outright buy ships. Obviously, nweis knows what he's doing better than I can try to guess, but he's most likely only outright buying automated factories, while everything else gets built halfway before being purchased.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:38
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Personally, I consider the best way to evaluate what to invest in is to think how much time is saved per credit spent. This is why production structures are prime targets for buying, and why I often spend more money directly on large but poor planets than I do on the rich ones, unless I'm specifically turning a planet into a shipbuilding (or with artifacts, research) center. The colony overview is pretty good for this.
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Dec 2, 2016 01:57
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Eh. More like Narestan Major General. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1dy44jV8EM&t=64s I am the very model of Narestan Major General, I've information enterprising, stock market, and liberal, I know just who John Galt is and I quote the books historical, From Atlas Shrugged to Fountainhead, in order categorical. I'm very well acquainted, see, with matters economical, I understand laissez-faire, both the gently caress you and got mine-ical, As for PMCs in the back, well, they're totally invincible. Now, here's some cheerful facts about the non-aggression principle!
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Dec 5, 2016 02:00
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My impossible diplo-runs tend to be with modified charismatic sakkra. Being really nice to everyone + cheaper colony ships + a metric fuckton of pops per planet does wonders for you during the vote.
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Jan 30, 2017 05:24
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I mean, it's a de facto government trait, since it has zero effect on the pops once they're in a different empire. More like, the faction does not recognize the legitimacy of other factions' governments. Possibly somewhat xenophobic since it also slows down assimilation. If I wanted to model revolutionary France in space, I'd probably make it a "repulsive" democracy.
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Jan 30, 2017 05:47
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thsgrn posted:You don't need charisma - I've done it as *repulsive* modified Sakkra without building anything except colony ships/outputs (and maybe starbases, I forget if you need that to make more colony ships?) Any planet can build colony ships. And yes, subterranean is one of my favorite picks for a drat good reason. However, charismatic helps keep the AI off your back instead of opportunistically pouncing on you if you get unlucky and run into a more aggressive one early on, which is a big issue on impossible. If your fleet is sufficiently small, and your relationship bad enough, even humans won't hesitate to stab you to death with space lasers.
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Jan 30, 2017 09:09
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CommissarMega posted:I usually give my race all the combat maluses, get creative and Democracy (along with whatever to fill out the points) start pre-warp and go on a conquering spree. Give subterranean aquatic democracy with either a rich or a large starting planet a try. Another fun gimmick is to play creative subterranean aquatic feudalism (possibly with) a large planet). Results can be... interesting.
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Feb 1, 2017 16:06
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ulmont posted:That one is hilarious. I find subterranean tolerant even more fun. As an aside, I really dislike tolerant when it's not paired with unification (the two taken together being the most powerful combo in the game) Too many points for what can be replicated with cheaper picks that don't become obsolete as soon as you get some anti-pollution tech. e: POOL IS CLOSED posted:e. I hope I'm not misremembering that! I do recall that landing Elerian ground troops gave you the option of mind controlling the planet. Their cruiser+ sized ships can mind control planets, and they take control over enemy ships as soon as they're done boarding them instead of after the battle. You still need to dispose of the crew, first, though. Less telepathic persuasion, more half-dead meat puppet sort of thing. my dad fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Feb 1, 2017 |
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Feb 1, 2017 18:38
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ulmont posted:The population bonus of tolerant doesn't go away, though. Most of the time, aquatic does roughly the same for half the cost. Maaaan, why couldn't one of these picks cost just 1 point less so I could take all 3 of them.
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Feb 1, 2017 18:50
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I often get plenty of decent tundra worlds. But I guess we have somewhat different priorities and preferences, and they sum up in a way that makes one the optimal pick for my playstyle but not yours, and vice versa. For example, I think food is A BIG DEAL in the early game, especially with a civ that gets so much population capacity. And those 5 points of difference can go on something really nice.
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Feb 1, 2017 19:19
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ulmont posted:Aggressive technology trading can mitigate a lot of that, though. Espionage, too.
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Mar 30, 2017 15:50
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