(VDC): Unification Android Strategy in VDC

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Alexfrog
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Joined:Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:05 pm
(VDC): Unification Android Strategy in VDC

Postby Alexfrog » Mon Jul 12, 2010 8:48 pm

MOO2 Unification Android Strategy (VDC mod)

The following is a strategy guide to the Unification Android strategy in MOO2 VDC (VDC 27d, with version 1.4 of MOO2).

Save Files:
Here are the save files:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/m3zqmtymlh0/SAVE1.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0nqnndmdaen/SAVE2.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/mitznmtt52z/SAVE3.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/yryyhndymtz/SAVE4.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zjyy3ytl4gq/SAVE5.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/mzaheehcwro/SAVE6.GAM

Copy these into your MOO2 directory and then you can see the six saves I mentioned, they are in order.

Introduction:

This guide is specifically for VDC and this strategy does not work in standard MOO2, as it relies on getting both Android Farmers and Scientists, as well as having them at available at a cheaper research level.

This guide assumes the following standard settings, which are most commonly used for multiplayer games:

Average start, Organic Rich, Large Galaxy, 2 players.
vdcgm2 /minstart /nowh /nobh /planets=5 /nosplint /noorion /nonebula /noreport /monsters=0
mapgen.exe -ttiny -tlowg -ttoxic -tupoor -tfixedhw -sarti

The most important factors in this start are fixedhw/planets=5, which result in all players having a starting home system with 4 uncolonized planets that are: Large Swamp, Large Tundra, Medium Arid, Small Gaia. Playing with monsters on would change the strategy somewhat (instead of scouting with the colony ship early, it must wait, and it can be beneficial to attack monsters early on for your 3rd and 4th colonies.


The Race:
The race is:
Unification
Subterranean OR Aquatic (Subterranean is stronger in the end but slower to start)
Industry+2
Population +50%

Repulsive
Defense-
Spy-
(other combinations of negative picks are fine, but this is my preference)

Turn 100 Objectives

Our goal for turn 100 is the following:
250+ Population
1200+ RP
10-12 Systems
20+ Planets
Either researching Autolabs or Military for a rush, with the following techs researched previously: Robo Miners, Supercomputers, Android Scientists, Pollution Processor, Ion Drive, all techs costing 250 or less.

Explanation of Race benefits:
This is a production race. It aims to keep up on research with a research race by creating more colonies and higher population, as well as through the use of Android Scientists and Autolabs. This race is capable of keeping up in tech with a Demo or Dict/Lithovore race, while having good production capacity. This race is competitive with the best Democracy and Dictatorship races, such as:

Demo/Aqua/Pop100/Money0.5/LargeRich Homeworld
And
Dictatorship/Lithovore/Subterannean/Pop50/Rich Home


I have tested this race in comparison to a variety of other Unification races, such as ones with Pop+100, Artifacts Home, LargeRich Home, etc, however this race ends up outperforming all of them.

Race pick importance:

Unification: This is a production race.

Subterranean OR Aquatic: A critical pick which gives us a population boost and with aquatic, a food boost. Aquatic is slightly faster early on due to extra food, and requires less freighters and farmers (prior to android farmers). However, subterranean is stronger in the end as it allow slightly higher maximum population. Initially I leaned toward Aquatic but I now lean toward Subterranean. Both are good.

One essential piece of strategy is that is you use subterranean, then as soon as you get your first colony base, colonize the Gaia world and switch all but one population to it. Pretend its your homeworld now.

Industry +2: This ends up being superior to all other combinations. It is better than more population growth, rich home world, artifacts homeworld, or any other pick. The industry boost ends up giving us a significant population boost since we will do a lot of housing early on, and it results in the fastest production of androids, colony ships, and military later on. Note that for our Unification race, Industry+2 is much superior to Industry +1. Ind+1 results in the first worker making 6 production on an abundant world. But Industry +2 gives 7.5 which rounds up to 8 on an abundant world, which results in significantly more population growth when performing housing, and faster early builds of buildings such as Automated Factory.

Pop50: The best use of our remaining 4 picks, superior to Rich Homeworld. The population growth boost gets us going a bit faster early on.

Tech Order:
The tech order is critical to this race and strategy. The following order has been tested extensively versus all other paths and is superior for this race and strategy:

Research Labs
FighterGarrison/Hydroponic Farm (choice)
Automated Factory
Telepathic Training
Supercomputer (do NOT research any biology techs before this, it is inferior!)
Robotic Factory (in earlier versions this went Battle Pods/Robotic Factory but now Battle pods is gone)
Biospheres
Neural Scanner
Cloning Center
Microbiotics
Psionics
Android Farmers
Android Scientists
Tritanium Armor (note, this changes if going for a missile based military strategy)
Pollution Processor
Fighter/Bomber/Troop Pods or Missile Base (choice)
Robo Miners
Space Academy
Spaceport
Advanced Damage Control
Ion Drive (note: this changes if using a Torpedo based military strategy)
All techs costing 250 or less
Iridium Fuel Cells
Antimatter Drive
Military techs (can move earlier if desired).


The most important part of the order is everything up to Android Scientists. You can flip the order of Robo Miner/Pollution Processor, it doesn’t matter. Then you focus on military based on your preferred military strategy.


The most surprising part of this ordering is that it ignores biology techs until after supercomputers. For this strategy it is superior to get supercomputers ASAP, and not go for cloning centers first. Cloning first delays our development of androids and results in our planets being too full when we get androids.


Location of Colony Base and Colony Ship builds:

We will build new colonies at the following points:

3 Colony Bases will be built in the home system prior to performing any research.
1 Colony Base will be built on the second system before it builds research labs (if it can complete it on time). If might end up going Autofactory/Cbase/(Cbase)/Research Lab instead.
1 more Colony base will be built in Home system after Auto Factories.

2 Colony Ships will be built simultaneously in our two best production worlds immediately after Robotic Factories.
X more colony ships will be built in a variety of worlds immediately after Robo Miners/Pollution Processor. If going for a rush right no this might be 0, or if simply trying to max pop on t100 it can be a bunch.

When simply trying to max pop I build to about 12 systems by turn 100 with this strategy, but you may do a bit less if you fear a rush or wish to execute a rush by turn 100 instead of my usual turn 110+.


Military Strategies
The following military strategies are available to us:

1) Missile Strategy (Mirved Merculite Missiles):

This strategy requires the most deviation from my given strategy and is thus not recommended. Your chemistry path would change from Tritanium/Pollution Processors, and later Irridium Fuel Cells, to Deuterium Fuel cells, Merculite Missiles, Atmospheric Renewer, Zortrium Armor. You probably take Dauntless Guidance over Telepathic Training.

The problem with this strategy is that I would much rather have Iridium Fuel Cells and Pollution Processor, versus Deuterium and Atmospheric Renewer. Pollution Processor works well for this strategy as it is cheap and costs only 1BC upkeep, and builds fast on new colonies after Automated Factories (we ship many colonists there, so it needs the processor fast). Also, we are using tolerant androids on our planets so pollution is already reduces somewhat. I find the extra range of Irridium fuel cells is very beneficial tactically and outweighs all other considerations.

The missile strategy is also easily defended against, with many point defense weapons, interceptors, or Wide Area Jammer.

2) Torpedo Strategy (Antimatter Torps, later Photon torps).

This strategy sacrifices early Ion Drive (which I use to freight around colonists much faster and move colony ships faster), to execute the torpedo strategy. This would be a preferred military strategy for this race if you wanted to use –Attack instead of –Defense and –Spy. While this isn’t my top choice, it is a good curveball to throw an opponent who knows your standard military strategy, as defending against it requires very different techs than one would use to defend against a beam strategy. Torpedoes tend to be superior to missiles in that they cannot be shot down, and also they do not mess up our tech order.

3) Graviton Beam Strategy (Physics tree focus)

This strategy focuses on ships with Graviton Beams with 1-2 levels of miniaturization, and probably also incorporates Fighter bays, or alternately Bomber bays with Antimatter bombs. Once nice benefit of this strategy is that it picks up scanners and communications technologies as a side effect of getting the weapons. The main disadvantage is that Graviton beam is not point defense, so your fighters will be using weak weapons. It is also not autofire.

After your initial battles in the turn 110 range, you should likely follow this strategy up with a Transporters strategy, boarding enemy ships after shooting off their shield with your beams. For this you will research Transporters, Powered Armor, and up to Personal Shield. This is a deadly strategy against an unprepared or unexpecting opponent. If they expect this, a better strategy might be to go for a much better beam and computer instead.

My preferred picks for this strategy are Bomber Bays in construction, Fusion Rifle (for boarding later), Tachyon Scanner, Antimatter Bomb, Subspace Communications. Alternately, Fighters, Fusion Beam, Tachyon Comm, Neutron Scanner, and later Jump Gates.

4) Mass Driver/Gauss Cannon strategy (Force Fields tree focus).

This is similar to the Graviton strategy, but instead of picking up sensor and comm. Techs on the way, it picks up +Beam Defense, +Missile Defense, shields techs, and nice things like Warp Dissipator while it miniaturized its weapons.

My preferred picks are:
Mass Driver, Inertial Stabilizer, Warp Dissipator, Personal Shield, Wide Area Jammer, Gauss Cannon, Something, Class X shield

You can go for an earlier shield, and stop this earlier, but I like skipping shields for the first major conflict, going in with Mass Driver ships and Warp Dissipator, and then going in with Class X for the second big conflict, with Gauss Cannons.

What is best really depends on your opponents military strategy, whether you need beam defense, missile defense, shields or not, etc.

Like the Graviton Beam strategy, this strategy can also go for transporters later if desired.
Beams + Transporters + Ground Combat techs is a lethal combination, enabling you to pop down opponents shields and take over their ships.


TURN BY TURN GUIDE

Here is a turn by turn guide of the optimized build order for this strategy. This is the result of extensive testing.

NOTE: This guide was made using Aquatic. If you use Subterranean, then your initial CBases are slightly slower, but you have more maximum population later. I find that this strategy is a bit slower to get going but produces a slightly better economy in the very end.

If you go Subterranean, you must settle the Gaia world first and move all but 1 population from homeworld to it, pretend its now your homeworld.


Turn 0 (first turn, stardate 3500.0):

Sell your Star Base for 200BC.
Set your Homeworld to 2 farmers, 6 workers as Aquatic. (You are making 26 production and some pollution). If you are Subterranean, go 3 farmer 5 worker.
Redesign your scout by removing its Weapons and adding a Scout lab and Battle Scanner.
Send out your CShip and scouts to find a good world. If desired, refit one ship first (refitting two ships first delays the first CBase a turn which is bad). Note: Monsters ON changes this of course.
Queue up the following: Colony Base, Freighter, 3xColony Bases.
Set Research to Research Labs.

Turn 1-2:
Sell your Space Academy for 50BC.
Sell your Marine barracks for 20BC.

Turn 2-3: Continue Scouting. Your goal is to find a large abundant ocean/terran world. (Obviously a Rich Ocean/terran is best, but unlikely). A Large Ocean or Terran is actually superior for this strategy to a Rich medium arid! The first worker on a large ocean makes 8 production while the medium rich worker makes 9 and some pollution. We really want an ocean or terran world where we can farm, to avoid needing extra freighters later.

If you find an ideal system go colonize it, otherwise keep scouting.

When you spend your cship to colonize, put its planet on Housing and make the population a Worker. He is hopefully making 8 production a turn and generating a growth rate of 202k per turn (minus 50 if he is starving still).

Turn 4 (5 with Subterranean): Buy your CBase. It will be at 2BC per production now. Scouts that run out of area to scout return home immediately. Alternately, once you find the system you intend to colonize, scouts go home for refitting.


Turn 5/6:
If Aquatic: Spend the CBase to settle the Large Swamp or Large Tundra, NOT the Gaia!
If Subterranean: Settle the Gaia and move 7 population to it. Pretend its your homeworld.

Note for why we dont settle the Gaia yet as Aquatic: The Gaia would produce 7 production and 1 pollution, but the large worlds make 8 production, and thus make about 20 more pop off of housing!
Buy the freighter fleet on your homeworld, spending 48BC for 24 production.

Turn 6:
You have probably used your CShip to colonize and your scouts are back home or heading there. Its nice to get the CShip used within the first 4 turns or so, the earlier it gets done the faster this new world builds its first cbase. We would like to have that get done before we research Automated Factories.

Refit both scouts as soon as they are able to. Once refit, send them out again to continue scouting.
Set the new colony from your cship to Housing/Worker as soon as colonized.

Your homeworld (gaia world if Sub) is still 2 farmers 6 workers. You have some starvation for a couple turns until it grows to 9 pop and gives a new farmer, on turn 8. You need 6 workers so that you don't delay your cbase a turn.

Turn 10+:

As soon as your second colony grows to 2 population, put both on workers and switch from Housing to Colony Base.

Whenever your home system colonies grow in population, move the population to be workers on the Homeworld. You will now be using 3 farmers on your homeworld.

Turn 11:
Your homeworld buys the second colony base. Note: If your scouting revealed a 50/100 BC cache, this purchase occurs a turn earlier.

Turn 12: use the Cbase to settle the other of the Large Swamp or Tundra. Set the worker to housing.

Turn 16:
Purchase the third CBase in your home system. (It will be at 1-2 turns remaining when you can afford to purchase it, unless you found a space cache for bonus BC).
If you cannot afford to purchase but it says 2 turns left, switch all but 1 worker to scientists. You will be able to purchase next turn.

Turn 17:
Purchase the third cbase if you didn’t last turn.
As soon as you purchase, switch all but one worker to be scientists.
The exact timing of this purchase and switch to scientists depends on if you gained money from scouting.

If Aquatic: Colonize the Gaia with this cbase.
Move some population from your HW to this gaia, so that both planets have 2 farmers, 1 worker, and the scientists are split among them such that you maximize total pop growth.
The Gaia begins storing production in a star base. Both planets have about 7 population.

If Subterranean: Settle the other large world. Instead of splitting pop between the ocean and gaia like you would as aquatic, you instead keep most of it in the gaia for now.

Continue moving population which is grown from housing on the Large Tundra/Swamp onto these two planets as soon as it appears, adding to the number of scientists.



Turn 21+:
Buy the cbase in the second system. Continue working on another cbase if applicable, or save production. The new planet builds housing.

Turn 23-25ish:
You get Research Labs. Set research to Fighter Garrison or Automated Farms, then later Automated Factory.

Switch production of all planets to Research Labs.
Move a second worker onto the Large swamp and Large tundra to make the rlabs faster.
Switch scientists to workers as needed to make rlabs faster. You want to have your HW and the Gaia build the rlabs in 1 turn. (Using many workers), then switch all but 1 worker back to scientists.

When rlabs are finished, build up production in star bases.
Save up money.


Turn 32ish:
You get Automated Factory.
Switch all production to Automated factory. Buy automated factories to speed up as applicable, and for 2BC per production. Focus on buying on the planets that you want to be making housing on first.
See first attached save from turn 30. I got autofactory on turn 30 due to luck with early research %age.

Set research to Telepathic Training.

Next turn:
Your homeworld completed autofactory, switch all its scientists to workers. Pump out the final CBase in your home system.

As the Large arid/swamp complete their autofactories, switch back to housing and move a pop back to homeworld or gaia putting them back to 1 pop. (Obviously, also complete RLab first if you didn’t already).

When the homeworld finishes its Cbase, set it to build a Freighter, followed by storing production in a star base. Move all but 1 worker back to scientists.
Set the new colony to Autofactory, Research Lab, Housing. Move a second population to it to speed it up.

When the Gaia world finishes its autofactory, move all but 1 worker to scientists and build a freighter fleet followed by storing up production in a star base.


When the second system completes its second cbase, move all but 1 worker to scientist, store production in a star base. New colony also does Autofactory/RLab/Housing, with 2 pop until it reaches housing.

Continue buying things for BC when they cost 2BC per production to speed up production whenever applicable.
Continue moving new population off the housing worlds, spreading it around to maximize population growth of the other planets as applicable.

See my save #2 from turn 38, showing the setup once all cbases are built in the first two systems. Note that I just settled a Natives world, otherwise I would need another farmer or two and somewhere might starve a bit until a freighter fleet completes. (I settled the Native planet last so as not to throw off the result of this game very much from the standard. Settling it first would’ve been optimal and would allow slightly more scientists earlier, but I did it last for the sake of making this example more normal).


Turn ~42:

When your homeworld and gaia world get to about 3-4 population below their max capacity, move about 3 people off of each onto the swamp world. Don’t farm on the swamp world (unless you need to due to running out of freighters, instead ship in food). Set the swamp world to saving production in a starbase, and give it 2 workers, with the rest scientists.


When you finish Telepathic Training, research Supercomputers. It may be desirable to switch to 2 workers instead of 1 per planet on your homeworld and gaia world.

You will normally now have 4 colonies at 1 pop producing housing (2 per system). The others are saving up production in star bases, with 1-2 workers each, in order to later build supercomputers immediately.

Turn ~52:

You get Supercomputers.
Set research to Battle Pods, then Robotic Factory.

Set all worlds to build supercomputer in front of what they were building.

Move a second population to all housing worlds to build supercomputer faster (but they will actually complete robotic factory first).
On all high population worlds, move enough scientists to workers to complete the supercomputer this turn. After completing, move all but 1-2 workers back to scientists.

See the third attached save from turn 50.


Turn ~56: You get Robotic Factory.

Research these in order:
Biospheres, Neural Scanner, Cloning Centers, Microbiotics, Psionics, Android Farmers.

Put Robotic Factory in front of production queue of all worlds. The housing worlds have not yet finished supercomputers, put Robotic in front of it.

Switch your best two production worlds to all workers. Queue up a colony ship behind the robotic factory on each of them.

Your other big worlds produce Robotic factory, then go down to 1 worker and many scientists. Queue up a freighter fleet behind the robotic factory on each of these (non-housing, non-cship) worlds. When you get Biospheres, build them on the non-cship, non-housing worlds right away.

From this point on, don’t spend money buying things, we will later run into severe money trouble.


Turn ~61: You get cloning centers. Queue up a cloning center after supercomps on the homeworld system non-housing, non-cship worlds, and build them in all planets of the second system, with about 2 workers. Build about 5-6 of these total, you will not build any more later on. Soon we will get androids, and building androids will be more efficient. Later on you might want to sell the home system cloning centers.


See my 4th save from turn 59 when I get Cloning Centers.


Turn ~65: You build 2 Colony Ships.
When the cship worlds build the ships, send them out, and set the world to building biospheres followed by a couple freighters. Move all but 1 workers to scientists.

Ideally you are settling medium or large, abundant ocean/terran worlds in systems with 3 planets, or Rich planets of decent size.

One the new colonies, queue up Autofactory, Robotic Factory, 2 Cbases, Research Lab, Supercomputer, Biosphere.

Once the colonies are founded, ship off about 6-8 population to each one from planets in the home system, and possibly a few from your second system. (This is what you’ve been building freighters for). Continue shipping a few more population later to keep your home planets from filling.


Turn ~72: You get Android Farmers. Research Android Scientists.

Queue up 2 Android Farmers in each planet except the two new colonies. You will never again build housing on any planet (Androids is more efficient). Move about 5 scientists onto workers in each planet to build androids in 1 turn. Queue up an extra (third) android on about three worlds.

All former housing planets queue up Biospheres and Starbase after their androids. Other worlds make a couple freighters after their androids.

See my 5th save, from turn 74, after the androids start popping out.

As android farmers appear, move normal farmers to scientists. You now need less freighters as all worlds start producing enough food to feed people. Use your large fleet of freighters to ships tons of people to you new colonies. Also ship an android farmer or two to each of the new colonies.

After each world completes its 2-3 androids, switch all but 1-2 workers back to scientists for a bit.

As the new planets complete their CBases, move a few population to the new world, to get it going faster as well. Ship a few more population off of your homeworld as needed.

Note that your money problems have vanished and you are now producing ~50+ extra food even without any normal farmers. Feel free to buy the automated factories on new worlds when they hit 2BC per production. However, later we will face money problems again after we get Robo Miners. As soon as you have researched Android Scientists, don't buy things again.


Turn ~79: You get Android Scientists. Research Tritanium Armor, then Pollution Processors.

Switch some of your scientists to workers, especially if your research is at 100% for the next turn.

On all planets except new colonies, set Android Scientists to Repeat Build. Constantly ship out population to new colonies to free up space for the never ending flood of new android scientists!

A little later, ship out some android scientists to your new colonies as well. They are tolerant and reduce pollution, which will actually help these new worlds get all their buildings built FASTER! (But you want the initial android scientists researching until you hit Robo Miners to get it as soon as possible)

New colonies also repeat build android scientists after building all needed cbases, and buildings (up to supercomputer/biosphere).

Always make sure your colonies aren’t full, and can continue producing androids. When you get colony bases giving you a new world, make an android farmer and ship it there.
When you get pollution processors, put one at the front of the queue in every world (or behind auto factory in new worlds). Research Fighter bays (or whatever you want), then Robo Miners.

When you get Robo Miners, now switch ALL normal scientists to workers, and put Robo miners in the front of all planets, after auto factory and pollution processor (if applicable). Research Advanced Damage control follow by Ion Drives. (Ion drives speed up the freighting of colonists to new worlds).

For the rest of the game, except in certain circumstances, or when researching big techs later, your normal population will now be workers forever, not scientists.

After building robo miners, build MANY colony ships from a bunch of worlds. About 8 or so! Your 3 best production worlds should each build 2 C Ships, and a couple other worlds should build one. Other worlds continue pumping out android scientists, and once the cships finish those worlds pump out android scientists.

Ship colonists, an android farmer, and a couple android scientists to each new world. You will probably be keeping a fleet of 60-100 freighters busy shipping off people to the new worlds for a while.

After Ion Drives, research Spaceport, then everything costing 250 or less, then you go for autolabs or military tech. Build spaceports where you have many people (note, androids don't tax, so build them only where you have many normal workers).

Keep expanding and shipping out people and androids until around turn 100.

Turn 100 result:
See my final save (#6), from turn 100 (actually its 101).
I have 292 pop on turn 101 plus another dozen in freighters. 1500+ RP, 22 planets in 12 systems and a colony ship, and I am a couple turns from Auto Labs.

(Note: this result is stronger than my usual turn 100 results, due to good luck and good worlds. I usually have ~250+ Pop and 1200 RP and a few more turns away from Auto Labs).

Continuation strategies:

If you expect a rush, get a few military techs and build a couple star bases and battleships (or at least some smaller ships) just before turn 100, delaying a couple of the colony bases for a little later. On your outermost planets, build fighter garrison right away to defend the rush.

Soon, you will be able to put together your own rush, backed up by a very good economy and solid military techs.

You can forego some expansion to rush earlier if desired, but this is probably inferior against a top opponent.


Most likely, I am popping out some military ships around turn 105-110 and sending them towards my opponent with antimatter drives, while having crazy RP per turn with my army of android scientists.

This economy should be comparable in research and possibly superior in production to a Democracy or Dictatorship empire played by an expert player, giving you a reasonable chance to win.

If your opponent is not creative, you can take your time if desired, as your will be able to match them in RP. If they are creative, a rush by turn 110 is preferable, and you should keep up the pressure, as you cannot allow them to develop any further than this, as they will outpace you (i they are an expert player). Your economy should be much more advanced at this point than a creative race, allowing you a strong chance to rush them successfully.

Note: Against a non-creative race, going for Autolabs now and building a ton of them and waiting longer to attack is a good option. Against a creative race this will delay your attack too much such that they become powerful.


Conclusion:

The Unification Android strategy is competitive with other top strategies and is, imo, the best Unification strategy in VDC. Building android scientists and shipping them to a ton of colonies allows your production race to keep up with a research race in RP.

It’s a good strategy for those who prefer to attack relatively early (turn 110 or so).

In comparison to most tech races, this strategy makes an economy that is better than your opponent in the turn 110 timeframe and is ahead somewhat on tech at that time. However, an expert opponent will exceed your economy and technology later in the game with their teching race, and thus you must successfully rush them at this point in order to win. You have an economic advantage with which to perform the rush, but if they defend successfully they should win later on.


It is important to note that the game may allow you to fit more androids onto your worlds than it actually lists as the max population of a planet, however you should NEVER do this. This is a bug and is considered cheating. The bug allows the stuffing of many more androids than this onto some worlds, if you fill them up with normal population first and then move a bunch of androids there. While this bug allows you to achieve even stronger results, you should never do this in a multiplayer game. Its very easy to detect via your opponent loading a save in hotseat and looking at your position.
Last edited by Alexfrog on Thu Dec 23, 2010 9:51 pm, edited 6 times in total.


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rewster1
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Postby rewster1 » Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:25 am

Hi Alexfrog... looks like you really fleshed out that strategy. I had an idea to do something similar about a year ago:
viewtopic.php?p=4117#4117
But I lacked the online experience to make a coherent strategy out of it (and still do). Have you considered including fantastic traders in your race picks? I realize it doesn't fit, but I suppose it could if you used Subterranean intead of Aquatic or took out +50% growth for rich homeworld. You could double your cash intake from surplus food from android farmers this way. I don't know if that would be useful enough to you to forgo either aquatic or +50 growth, but you did mention money problems.

Alexfrog
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Joined:Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:05 pm

Postby Alexfrog » Tue Jul 13, 2010 12:50 pm

Hi Alexfrog... looks like you really fleshed out that strategy. I had an idea to do something similar about a year ago:
viewtopic.php?p=4117#4117
But I lacked the online experience to make a coherent strategy out of it (and still do). Have you considered including fantastic traders in your race picks? I realize it doesn't fit, but I suppose it could if you used Subterranean intead of Aquatic or took out +50% growth for rich homeworld. You could double your cash intake from surplus food from android farmers this way. I don't know if that would be useful enough to you to forgo either aquatic or +50 growth, but you did mention money problems.
If I had 1 extra pick I would do this, and I took it in some tests where I had a pick left. It earns you about 30BC a turn or so once you have androids, when you have like 60 surplus food. However, that isnt actually all that relevant. It doesnt do anything to help get you going faster, and all it does later on is make it so you use one less planet on trade goods or buy a bit more stuff.

I dont cash crop with Android Farmers, I simply get 2 per world, and later on 1 in most worlds as my 'real' population spreads out. I just use them to fulfill my food needs. My android spam is mostly android scientists, for RP.

I have found Pop+50% to be much better than RHW, for this strategy.
Last edited by Alexfrog on Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

Alexfrog
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Postby Alexfrog » Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:43 am

I updated the guide for my new finding that Subterranean is slightly superior to Aquatic in the end, though it gets going a bit slower, IF you are playing with fixedhw/planets=5 such that you have a gaia world in the home system. You must move all population to the Gaia and settle it first. This gives you the food production of aquatic but the slightly higher max pop of subterranean. Its a bit slower at start and weakens your food production on planets other than the gaia, but in the end i find that its worth it. Both are very close however.

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Postby rewster1 » Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:29 am

I updated the guide for my new finding that Subterranean is slightly superior to Aquatic in the end, though it gets going a bit slower, IF you are playing with fixedhw/planets=5 such that you have a gaia world in the home system. You must move all population to the Gaia and settle it first. This gives you the food production of aquatic but the slightly higher max pop of subterranean. Its a bit slower at start and weakens your food production on planets other than the gaia, but in the end i find that its worth it. Both are very close however.
Wasn't suggesting you try what I did completely... obviously mine was a flawed approach. But now that you are playing with Subterranean, you don't have to give up the +50% growth to get fan traders.

If I ever get a free moment perhaps I'll try a fusion of your strategy with a little of my old one. In any case, thanks for going into detail, it'll help me a lot if I do give it a shot.

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Postby Alexfrog » Thu Jul 15, 2010 12:36 pm

Wasn't suggesting you try what I did completely... obviously mine was a flawed approach. But now that you are playing with Subterranean, you don't have to give up the +50% growth to get fan traders.
Subterranean and Aquatic cost the same amount.

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Overlord2
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Postby Overlord2 » Tue Dec 28, 2010 4:11 pm

This is exactly the situation I was describing in the neighbouring thread.
I looked at the saves and what can I say, though you have colonised many worlds, each of the planet has not developed infrastructure ready to enter war. Additionally you have no specialized prod worlds, and generally total production output of entire empire is very low. The title of "production race" here is nominal. I don't see how you will be able to defend from attack of 7-10 BBs at turn 120 or further do well in full-scale war...
Btw, real prod race will tech not worse than this, have much more prod and eventually out-pop and out-tech this strategy.

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Postby Alexfrog » Tue Dec 28, 2010 4:42 pm

Its definitely a rush strategy. You need to succeed in your attack in this timeframe because other races will outclass you later.

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Postby Overlord2 » Tue Dec 28, 2010 6:48 pm

Its definitely a rush strategy. You need to succeed in your attack in this timeframe because other races will outclass you later.
Heh, big times no! If it is rush then you need to be able to build 4-6 Bbs by t110, but you have neither capabilities to build those BBs, nor required tech for them.

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Postby Overlord2 » Wed Dec 29, 2010 3:28 pm

Not to be unsubstantiated I decided to bring some examples. Here are the saves from one game vs Cabman. Cabman played the same uni race you're using for your android strategy and achieved unmatched results for this race so far. Though admittedly he had terrific start due to finding Chug leader early (with 15 researcher [er.+10] and terraforming tech, which allowed to tech android farmers later), but never the less the results are striking: galactic unification and moleculatronic computer (almost researched) by t116. At turn 100 he had his native pop 284+ (whereas your native pop at t 100 is only 137) and at 112 he had infrastructure ready to enter war.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/y6jvqy33r2v8wae/SAVE7.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/fmd7m3wm6163cez/SAVE8.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jn097cyeuw054ix/SAVE9.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/06iu3dpulzz750q/SAVE1.GAM

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Postby Alexfrog » Thu Dec 30, 2010 10:09 pm

Any links where he doesnt get a researcher leader that gives terraforming early on? :P

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Postby Gorean » Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:28 pm

Sounds to me like you two need to duke it out. :P
Vita multis dat nimis, satis nulli.

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Postby Overlord2 » Fri Dec 31, 2010 5:20 pm

Sounds to me like you two need to duke it out. :P
Not at all. I'm just pointing to the flaws of overspamming sci-androids and lacking production capacities.

Here are some more saves from a game with tf8. In this game he used early research strategy combined with android strategy instead of heavy expansion.
Getting robo miners early increased pop growth from housing and researching sci-androids allowed to get high research rate by the time of war. In result, he had teched both Zort armor and Antimatter drive by turn 109. What is particularly noteworthy, he had very solid production base, ready for producing war ships. Whereas owing to my poor performance in that game, I had nothing to do, but surrender.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b7qa5pdn77eq0vq/SAVE2.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/i38xxi584833k4c/SAVE3.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/qgja4934kf21rbt/SAVE4.GAM
http://www.mediafire.com/file/gvcpcdfzc9ccg1f/SAVE5.GAM

Warning: this is early version save, tech tree is displaying incorrectly in the last builds.

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Postby Alexfrog » Wed Jan 05, 2011 7:56 pm

The tf8 saves are great, as this is a very similar android strategy, with some differences:

First of all, our positions on t70-75 are very similar, except that he has Robo Miners and I have Android Farmers. We both have about the same population, and 4 systems.

* He techs Robo Miners before going for Androids instead of after, and thus pumps out a bunch of colony ships about 10 turns earlier than I do. The end result is that his later systems are more developed by the endgame than mine, which I think is probably better.

* The big one: He takes Terraforming over Android Farmers.

And I think Terraforming is better. I dont really build all that many android farmers, and it is probably better to increase pop caps.

He gets android scientists later, but when he gets it his worlds are more developed, so they are quicker to start being able to pump out android scientists, so he catches up.

Also, he has Subterranean instead of Aquatic, and I now think Subterranean is better (if you are playing with fixedhw planets=5 and thus have a gaia in the home system).


Its unclear from these later saves what his early tech order is. Based on the similarity of our positions on t70, I have to think that Cloning first or Supercomps first are very close to each other in value.

Finally, he fills his Rich worlds with non-androids to have production centers (which i didnt do in the save I posted, but I did do in my MP games), in order to build his BBs. This is definitely better than having no strong production worlds.


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