"Very Difficult Choice" Mod, irc channel: irc.quakenet.org/vdc

[Semmelbaecker]

1. Autofactory vs research lab. First of all one shouldn't miss hydrofarms issue. The races, which produce 3 or less food per farmer, should go straight for hydrofarms.
Low prod races should go autofactory first because they don't build well. Prod races can go research lab first, but autofactory first isn't bad either. It allows better housing and also start builiding colony ships faster. Also another point which angra mentioned is that building labs after autofactories had already been built makes it much easier./quote]

I made a test. factories first or research lab first, with the race: uni, richHW, pop+60, subterran, telepathic, -spying, repulsive -ground combad. I played normal start, 5 planets in home system. Large galaxy, 6 players. (usual setup of our multiplayer games). I played 50 turns. In both cases, populaion was 30, same amount of colonies (6). In case of researching the lab first, I had a slight advantage in research, maybe 4-5 turns. But that could be easily due to 1-2 lucky technology researches. Now, this is a production race and it seems, for a research race, autofactories first might have been better.

However, I am still puzzled why to take the farms. Sure, they are good, espeacially in the beginning. But I dont see how I could survive without f.garrision. If I dont have strong ground defenses early, things get VERY hairy very soon.

2. Supercomputers vs VRN. Dict +2 research races or demo +1 research races can and I'd say should get VRN. Sometimes dict +1 resarch race can opt for VRN.

Thats what I thought, using the VRN is not an option for a uni race, so yeah, supercomputer is the obvious choice. But for demo races, there VRN can be better. Thats what I ment with "getting away". That means, "you can do this and it doesnt kill you". Sorry for the fuzzy english, it might be confusing.

3. Robotic factory vs heavy armor. Low prod races need extra production facilities, while prod races can do without robotic factory, it helps the housing, which in many cases is important for them.
Heavy armor is good, but there are many other defensive specials, which can compensate... like jammers, lightning field...but if you run into an offense race, which utilizes mass drivers then you are in trouble

Ok, since I am playing a production race, both options are viable. I usually dont have the time to setup large powerhouses for breeding population because with 4 AIs and 2 humen players, you get attacked soon and the number of planets you can go is very limited. I guess in a large galaxy, 2 player scenario, this would be different.

4. Merculite missiles vs pollution processor. Mercs are good, but atmos comes comparatively late, thus you stay without pollution cleaning longer. And second point is the cost of the building. While atmos is better it costs 150 BC, while pollution processor only 80 BC. Cheaper building allows new planets to be more effective faster. And third point, mercs make sense when you don't plan armor higher than zort. For rush games mercs might be good decision.

I never thought of that this way. Mercs were always be the life insurance for the first zortrium battleships. But f I use cruisiers with double damage atom rockets... this might actually work in the beginning. I never thought of that. So I could start producing warshps way before the current pace... would be interesting if these ships can punch through planetary defenses.. I usually dont build missile ships for attack, they are for defense only and against space monsters. 1-2 battleships with mercs and zort kill all monsters but the crystal..

[Semmelbaecker]

This math is incorrect. Try to find the mistakes yourself, it might be very interesting pastime, to do that.

ok.. let me walk you through it. fGarrision costs 80 FP, auto factory 150. RL 150 as well. makes 380. But you dont get the tech at that costs, 100% research on one tech is basecost + 50%. So its 380 to 570. Dont you agree? Also 150 for just RL to 150% RL is 150 to 225. Now.. since you told me its wrong and I cant find the mistake.. something is fishy.

The question seems very odd. Why exactly “even as non-uni”? Uni race have the least reasons to miss supers, because uni can't use +20% morale. And you may get better computers at cybertronics, so, why cripple your race so much by missing supers? In some specific cases, when situation favors, a non-uni race may take +20% morale to boost both tech and production (both for 25-30%, if not lith), and/or with the idea to steal supers from somebody with spys. But that is very questionable choice anyway.

"Can get a way" means "you can do it without dying." So, you misunderstood my words.

3. Are robo factory worth it?

Yes.

well, thx for your answer. However, since you dont justify our claim, I am sorry that I dont get it.

That is incorrect. Factories can give a huge pop housing, can free many pop from production for non-prod races, can give prod boost without any pollution for tolerant races. But heavy armor also good, so choose what you like more, or what you can use better with your strategy.

Well, yes. It seems it very much depends on your sourroundings. If you have a hostile neighbourhood early on, you cant play risky. So it very much depends on the situation.. I just never thought about it this way.. I though heavy armor is way better for almost all situations.

Different races have different paths. Besides, galaxy size affects this path as well. Also, different goals makes even more different paths, because someone plays with 4 planets rule, someone with 100 or 115 turns rule, someone plays blitzing, someone plays for overexpand, someone plays for maximum speed of conquering all galaxy before first Antarans ship comes. And someone plays to overcome Antarans invaders.

Im happy that MoO2 has such a rich variety of ways you can play it. Yes, its a great game!

[Overlord2]

In a dense universe with many players early war techs will be forced decision. When speaking about hydrofarms I meant 2-4 players setup with no AI. Same applies for armor, any additional war techs can help in early engagement. Still some races are so low on prod they can't do without robotic factory.
As for mercs, unfortunately they are not good for missile base, because of low hp - can be easily shot by ordinary beams, but they are good in ship-to-ship fight, especially when you can get the emg mod.

Edit:

I made a test. factories first or research lab first, with the race: uni, richHW, pop+60, subterran, telepathic, -spying, repulsive -ground combad. I played normal start, 5 planets in home system. Large galaxy, 6 players. (usual setup of our multiplayer games). I played 50 turns. In both cases, populaion was 30, same amount of colonies (6). In case of researching the lab first, I had a slight advantage in research, maybe 4-5 turns. But that could be easily due to 1-2 lucky technology researches. Now, this is a production race and it seems, for a research race, autofactories first might have been better.

Could you send the starting save for this test, I will try to repeat it with different race both tech pathes. Why I ask your save is to get same planets as you did.

[mbodrov]

Ok, seems like antarans need more work.

Are their attacks programmed to begin on the same turn in pre-warp starts as in normal tech starts?

[Overlord2]

Ok, seems like antarans need more work.

Are their attacks programmed to begin on the same turn in pre-warp starts as in normal tech starts?

No, the difference is 15 turns. On prewarp attacks begin at turn 100.

[Catalyst_Kh]

I made a test. factories first or research lab first, with the race: uni, richHW, pop+60, subterran, telepathic, -spying, repulsive -ground combad. I played normal start, 5 planets in home system. Large galaxy, 6 players. (usual setup of our multiplayer games). I played 50 turns. In both cases, populaion was 30, same amount of colonies (6). In case of researching the lab first, I had a slight advantage in research, maybe 4-5 turns. But that could be easily due to 1-2 lucky technology researches.

However, I am still puzzled why to take the farms. Sure, they are good, espeacially in the beginning. But I dont see how I could survive without f.garrision. If I dont have strong ground defenses early, things get VERY hairy very soon.

There is very big question then, why are you taking costly telepathic pick? If you are telepathic, you should go straight for blitz attack (without need of transports), and in this case you just don't need any FGarrison. But, if you are playing your race with normal strategical development, trying to outrun your opponents in quantity and tech (and obvious need for FG then), why wasting picks for telepathic then? You may pick +1 prod instead of telepachic, and/or more pop growth, or more food. If you like spying, then just pick +1 or +2 spying, it still will be cheaper than telepathic.

Thats what I ment with "getting away". That means, "you can do this and it doesnt kill you".
…
"Can get a way" means "you can do it without dying." So, you misunderstood my words.

You are right, I only meant that this will weaken your development, but of course you can do that and get away easly. You may miss any key tech anywhere, it will never kills you of course. Your opponents, who will outrun you as a result, that is the only thing, which kills.

4. Merculite missiles vs pollution processor. Mercs are good, but atmos comes comparatively late, thus you stay without pollution cleaning longer. And second point is the cost of the building. While atmos is better it costs 150 BC, while pollution processor only 80 BC. Cheaper building allows new planets to be more effective faster.

There is also important point, that Atmos gives only +15% to prod boost, in compare to PControls, besides those Atmos cost 3 per turn, not only 150 to build. By any math it just way doesn't worth it, to waste so many time/prod/money for Atmos. The only reason to miss PControls is to take Merculites. So, if you can play without Mercs somehow, you will benefit a lot from taking PC and later taking Iridium instead Atmos, or maybe even Pulson (for long games).

ok.. let me walk you through it. fGarrision costs 80 FP, auto factory 150. RL 150 as well. makes 380. But you dont get the tech at that costs, 100% research on one tech is basecost + 50%. So its 380 to 570. Dont you agree? Also 150 for just RL to 150% RL is 150 to 225
Now.. since you told me its wrong and I cant find the mistake.. something is fishy.

But folks already explained to you upper above, why it is wrong. You didn't calculated the time to built and the bonuses from already working building, before the second is done, and the power of extra population, housed by AFs. Besides all that, there is a subtle trick of making free additional production “out of nowhere”, if you take AFs first. It should be fair, if this time you will find this subtlety yourself.

Im happy that MoO2 has such a rich variety of ways you can play it. Yes, its a great game!

Best wishes to you then.

[Semmelbaecker]

Could you send the starting save for this test, I will try to repeat it with different race both tech pathes. Why I ask your save is to get same planets as you did.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/29934923/VDC_test.zip

Here you go. Game 1 is the initial save. Game 2 and 3 are the results. I settled the first planet not as fast as possible because I didn't initially know how good all surrounding planets are. So I copied the first turns exactly in both games. I settled the colony at turn 6.

I might have played not 100%, but I guess pretty close.

Cheers,
Semmel

[Semmelbaecker]

There is very big question then, why are you taking costly telepathic pick? If you are telepathic, you should go straight for blitz attack (without need of transports), and in this case you just don't need any FGarrison. But, if you are playing your race with normal strategical development, trying to outrun your opponents in quantity and tech (and obvious need for FG then), why wasting picks for telepathic then? You may pick +1 prod instead of telepachic, and/or more pop growth, or more food. If you like spying, then just pick +1 or +2 spying, it still will be cheaper than telepathic.

Well, I like to play an economic race. But if I don't pick telepathic, i basically cant conquer useful colonies. I have to bomb them until 1 pop and then invade, which renders them quite useless. So in order to use the conquered colonies, I use telepathic. It has quite some advantages and in conjunction with uni, its quite strong. The colonies I get are usually better then my own because the other races have better race picks.

However, I dont know how to blitz to be honest. I don't know how to get through fighter garrision without proper war tech. Before Zortrium, it seems very hard to impossible because there are simply no good way to defend against the fighters. But with mirv overloaded atom bombs, that might be an option I never tried. But to get that far, I need to have the supercomputer first. I dont know, it seems very inefficient to tech wartechs before supercomputer.

But folks already explained to you upper above, why it is wrong. You didn't calculated the time to built and the bonuses from already working building, before the second is done, and the power of extra population, housed by AFs. Besides all that, there is a subtle trick of making free additional production “out of nowhere”, if you take AFs first. It should be fair, if this time you will find this subtlety yourself.

Not interested. I don't cheat. And the argument from above: it counts in both directions. The gain in population does not outweight the loss in science points imho. And it is easily possible to accumulate enough production to build the RL immidiatly after researching it. And by the time you gave researched AF, you have enough accumulated production as well. And there is also the option to buy the building if it isn't done. You are correct, the math is terribly incomplete. But I don't think your conclusions are viable.

[Catalyst_Kh]

I have to bomb them until 1 pop and then invade, which renders them quite useless. So in order to use the conquered colonies, I use telepathic.

You may build several transports and take whole planet without bombarding, but you will not get conquered pops of course. Anyway, blitzing should be better with telepathic, because if you will take +1 planet earlier, it will start working for you earlier. And as your opponent will lose 1 planet too, you have a +2 planets difference. In early game +2 difference is much more valuable, than in middle game, also it gives you the springboard to farther invasion, while your opponent isn't well developed yet.

Not interested. I don't cheat.

It is very good of you! But saying that, you are implying that I am cheating, right? You never saw the way of doing it, yet, how can you judge of it's fairness?

And the argument from above: it counts in both directions. The gain in population does not outweight the loss in science points imho.

Why do you think so? Extra pop will start working at science with +1 from lab and regain that speed.

And it is easily possible to accumulate enough production to build the RL immidiatly after researching it. And by the time you gave researched AF, you have enough accumulated production as well. And there is also the option to buy the building if it isn't done.

Very true, and that is very good to have it this way.

[Darza]

Well, either you play economic race, and then you dont bother about capturing planets for additional production, only as outposts during attack, and overwhelm the foes using your own race (the single reason to play economy), either you play telepatic race and use a fast captured planets for a grow and capturing of next ones. Either you mix that 2 and get a very suboptimal race and gameplay, what you was told about.

Also math of +50% res is comprelety wrong, you either count each research field as 2x, where x is given cost number (when you guaranteely get a tech), either you count them as pure x for easiness. Exept the only way when you actually play by researching till 50% and then surely remove all scientiests for some reason.

Also heavy armor is pretty useless tech on its own, especially in comparison with robotic factory. Some races can skip a factory, but there is a little sence to do it for HA anyway, especially against AI.

So, if you dont want to kill AI by easy way - just tech all good production stuff, and be healthy.

Btw, i really wonder what you had called a "cheat" in previous responce? But surely if your race is good at prod at start you can get a rlabs first and be good.

[Semmelbaecker]

I definately dont have the experiance of you guys. So what is better in which situation. I dont know how your multiplayer games will go and I am pretty sure I would loose out right. But thats ok, I am not a preofssional MoO2 player.

On the cheat matter. I dont know what Catalyst_Kh was talking about. But if someone sais there will be production "out of nowhere" .. it sounds like a cheat. So if it was legit, he would have said it differently. Also I am not accusing Catalyst_Kh of cheating. Knowing a trick does not mean you use it. Still, i'm not interested.

Cheers,
Semmel

[Catalyst_Kh]

Semmel, none offense taken - i was joking all the time, because it is too boring to speak about game basics once again. I hope you got enough insights here to boost your play, and i am apologizing in advance, if i told something abusive accidentally.

It is legit way of course, stipulated by game mechanics, this way can give you 1-2 free turns, sometimes even 3 (but that is questionable already). Been 2 turns ahead in development is a nice bonus, even if in some cases those turns only compensate for other 2 losing turns from taking AFs before RLs.

And there are no professional players in MOO2, not a single one. Because nobody pays for playing MOO2 and there are no tournaments with money prizes. Thus, it is not a profession(sport). Imagine a tetris player called a professional, to get a feel of it. Correct word is MOO2 veterans.

[Overlord2]

@catalyst
I also wonder what you mean under producing some production points "out of nowhere" I have played quite a lot of games and I don't see what you are refering to. Please enlight us.

Here are the tests files:
http://speedy.sh/hPRb6/unification-test.rar
http://speedy.sh/MAX2K/wardict-test.rar

In one of the saves unification got lucky tech-roll hitting research lab at 10%.
The outlet I can draw from these tests is that dictatorship is better when it goes for research lab first. Substantiation - because of the 100 pop growth pick its pop growth doesn't hurt much when it doesn't do the housing. While unification race can go either way, but factory first allows to produce CS faster. Due to peculiarity of this map it couldn't do it as it was confined by other race.

[Catalyst_Kh]

Irakly, i just wanted to put some fog for intrigue, to encourage Semmel to find at least something by his own. Didn't worked though. I simply meant the bonuses, which AF gives, when you are waiting for tech advance. For example, if you are going for RL first and then for AF, been at ~25%+ of breakthrough to AF tech you would (hypothetically) like to switch your pop to prod totally, to accomplish breakthrough by passive labs bonus. But often it gets too long, up to 100% sometimes. So, passive bonuses of RL doesn't do well here and mostly you would prefer to take more than 60% right away, but even then it may stall if you will not take all 100. But when you do the same thing at RL tech, when AFs was taking first, then you may even not bother to accumulate prod in advance and only start doing so, when dropping tech at ~20-25% and removing all pop from science. If it stalls too long, AFs will be housing many pop and main planet will be building CS, or freighters, or any other things, or you may put pop to science again (didn't luck this time). Thus, no time and no bonus will be wasted while waiting, which is a sure speed up in cases, when there was no early breakthrough. You know that better than me anyway. I didn't made a lot of tests, but most times i was 1-2 turns ahead by this only (when everything else was played the same way and there was no early breakthrough with AFs), and in case of maximum stalling of RL tech, when it is taken first, it can be even 3+ turns faster, but that is rare. Everybody do that, it is common, but I saw several players, who do that with RL, not having AFs first, which is suboptimal.

[Overlord2]

Now I understand your "nowhere". You want to get the tech at lower rolls same time moving scientists to production thus increasing production points. Its very risky because you may lose time on teching. If it doesn't hit at lower % you win nothing. Time is more important than gaining extra production points