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Post by roman566 on Jan 21, 2015 10:35:21 GMT -5
Nice to know that the game is impossible due to randomness.
Still, mine spamming seems to work for me. Spy battle, trade war and I have barely felt it.
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Post by fallen on Jan 21, 2015 10:38:56 GMT -5
roman566 - mines are very important on all difficulty levels.
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Post by roman566 on Jan 21, 2015 10:41:40 GMT -5
Yup, but I am basing my entire economy on them. I have NO exchanges. Heck, the only reason I got the tech was to get Duel of Assassins. If it wasn't for that I would have skipped it altogether.
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Post by Cory Trese on Jan 21, 2015 10:43:15 GMT -5
Nice to know that the game is impossible due to randomness. Still, mine spamming seems to work for me. Spy battle, trade war and I have barely felt it. No, that's still not true  Impossible removes safeguards, minimums and increases the simulation sensitivity. The argument could be made, yes, that the entire game is based on your actions + static content + rolling dice. However, the dice make up a much less significant part of the turn processor than you want to believe. I am to blame for this, as I said above, for failing to provide better visibility to the underling factors (your actions) in the game's simulator that are generating the event tree. Star Traders 4X has a long way to go before it can be said to be complete and this thread helps illuminate our path. Thanks for posting! |
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Post by Cory Trese on Jan 21, 2015 10:44:15 GMT -5
Yup, but I am basing my entire economy on them. I have NO exchanges. Heck, the only reason I got the tech was to get Duel of Assassins. If it wasn't for that I would have skipped it altogether. Skipping Exchanges is a mistake, especially on Impossible, your Factions need to maintain trade routes and trade points to facilitate good will between adjacent planets. |
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Post by roman566 on Jan 21, 2015 10:46:26 GMT -5
Yup, but I am basing my entire economy on them. I have NO exchanges. Heck, the only reason I got the tech was to get Duel of Assassins. If it wasn't for that I would have skipped it altogether. Skipping Exchanges is a mistake, especially on Impossible, your Factions need to maintain trade routes and trade points to facilitate good will between adjacent planets. Been there, done that. Didn't work. Mines work. I got a second spy battle going on, shrugged it off as it was nothing. This one was good, one spy battle has ended. Next turn the Diplomatic Summit ends another one, guess playing as Syndicates pays off. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2015 11:07:30 GMT -5
Yup, but I am basing my entire economy on them. I have NO exchanges. Heck, the only reason I got the tech was to get Duel of Assassins. If it wasn't for that I would have skipped it altogether. Skipping Exchanges is a mistake, especially on Impossible, your Factions need to maintain trade routes and trade points to facilitate good will between adjacent planets. Exchanges are good once you've exploited all of a planet's minerals and have the economy and treaties to make a triple trade allience. Early on, mines are best for profit, exchange is good for other things (research, espionage, entertainment). roman566 - yes, you should invest in mines, especially when you haven't yet unlocked treaties and do not have sufficient EP to execute them fast enough. Early on, negative conflicts do not affect you as much as later, and mines will keep a profit even with negative conflicts. Also, I agree with Cory Trese that impossible difficulty is for more experienced players. I've recommended making the impossible difficulty as well as certain difficult maps unlockable before to prevent such problems with new players. |
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Post by khamya9 on Jan 21, 2015 12:37:56 GMT -5
And that's why even though hard is far too easy, I've given up on crazy and impossible. Never come close to being defeated by the ai, but never made it to year 2 without an irrecoverable economy. Even going all mines, and having good luck with treaties early on, I get slammed with a fatal population surge. Most planets over hab capacity , lacking spice and morale 1-4 is game over.
The worst game was having two planets get their first population the same turn I colonized them. One of them was already at population 4 by the time it finished the first subsidized hab 1 and I hadn't yet invented hab 2 (though it wasn't far off). Worst single planet was a turn 90-ish colonized quality 6 with population 9. So much for using that one as a javat mining base... It was wall-to-wall hab units and still unhappy from only 5 spice. Got to 12 before it finally stopped growing.
Tried not expanding early, ended up with three worlds vs two ais each with 15+. And that one had the early politics death spiral.
So not fun, not trying again. I'll take the easy wins over frustration and unalterable bad circumstances.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2015 13:56:23 GMT -5
Well I on the other hand have already mastered Impossible and would welcome a difficulty that's even harder! I just beat the Garden on impossible, invading every xeno world by 19.33AE, and considering there's no level that's harder than the Garden, now I just continue to develop my colonies and grow my economy in peace, without xeno interference. khamya9 - the best way to defend against early overpopulation is with more advanced colony modules. They start with more advanced star ports that provide starting housing and CP, so even if population increases rapidly you'll be more prepared. |
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Post by khamya9 on Jan 21, 2015 22:05:54 GMT -5
Well I on the other hand have already mastered Impossible and would welcome a difficulty that's even harder! I just beat the Garden on impossible, invading every xeno world by 19.33AE, and considering there's no level that's harder than the Garden, now I just continue to develop my colonies and grow my economy in peace, without xeno interference. khamya9 - the best way to defend against early overpopulation is with more advanced colony modules. They start with more advanced star ports that provide starting housing and CP, so even if population increases rapidly you'll be more prepared. That's not an option in the first year, and that's usually when I get hit with the leading edge of doom. Either political or population. It takes a while to really get ful blown game over, but its so early I truly can't see how to prevent it. Edit 1: Just checked, colony 2 is another 400 rp past hab 2. Given I usually get crippled faster than I can research hab 2, this is definitely not an option. Edit 2: steelsong are another possibility as they begin all colonies with a hab 1 in the form of their fort. But I find them so dreadfully underpowered that using them I end up doing worse the more worlds I give them. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2015 0:13:42 GMT -5
Well I on the other hand have already mastered Impossible and would welcome a difficulty that's even harder! I just beat the Garden on impossible, invading every xeno world by 19.33AE, and considering there's no level that's harder than the Garden, now I just continue to develop my colonies and grow my economy in peace, without xeno interference. khamya9 - the best way to defend against early overpopulation is with more advanced colony modules. They start with more advanced star ports that provide starting housing and CP, so even if population increases rapidly you'll be more prepared. That's not an option in the first year, and that's usually when I get hit with the leading edge of doom. Either political or population. It takes a while to really get ful blown game over, but its so early I truly can't see how to prevent it. Edit 1: Just checked, colony 2 is another 400 rp past hab 2. Given I usually get crippled faster than I can research hab 2, this is definitely not an option. Edit 2: steelsong are another possibility as they begin all colonies with a hab 1 in the form of their fort. But I find them so dreadfully underpowered that using them I end up doing worse the more worlds I give them. Again, I've beaten 3 different levels on impossible. Prehaps you'd be better off staying with hard or crazy. Different difficulties work for different people. Impossible isn't literally impossible, but it can be a challenge early on if you aren't experienced and don't use the right strategies. |
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Post by roman566 on Jan 22, 2015 6:59:27 GMT -5
Better research strategy I guess. I did have problems with population, but it never grew faster than I could add housings. Sure, I guess my quality 6 planet will not last very long but as they have nice faction research bonuses I try to keep it afloat.
BTW, how long does it take for Morale 1 planet to turn independent and do they loose their faction bonus when they do? If I built the faction specific building, will it be destroyed when planet turns independent?
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Post by fallen on Jan 22, 2015 10:32:15 GMT -5
@starfixer - may you could post a "start-up guide to Impossible?"
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Post by huckleberry on Jan 22, 2015 11:53:41 GMT -5
Also, some tips to prevent negative conflicts from occurring in the first place: - Having the same number of colonies for each faction reduces conflict - Having the same number of ships for each faction reduces conflict - Making your factions all clans or syndicates (as opposed to mixed) reduces conflict - Keeping diplomatic efforts active reduces conflict and increases durability of positive alliences Starfixer I think these are great tips, and really emphasizes how good faction relations is more than just using diplomatic projects to band aid a specific issue. Personally I have started playing my games similer to the community games where I ask "what would each faction leader want to do?" instead of "as supreme overlord how do I maximize faction bonuses?" Not surprisingly it has led me to enjoy the game in a completly different manner where sometimes the decision I make are similar (javat still usually gets the red planets) but other times it has forced plan adjustments (e.g. Thulun or cadar shouldn't always get stuck with just colonies on the front lines that are always under attack ). In no way do I want to make it sound like this will get rid of all faction issues or the best way to win on the harder difficulties, but usually I am less surprised when things go bad. This has led me to recomend a couple of other tips to add to your list for good faction relations, with the caveat that unless Cory/fallen has confirmed them these are just hunches: - group your faction planets together so they can have their own "faction territory". - the more trade points the better, especially if all factions are producing them. - Higher moral leads to better relations. Sounds like the orginal Post's issue has been addressed and I know other posts discuss this, but I think the more people are aware of the faction dynamics the less likely they will believe everything is caused just by RNG. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2015 12:23:57 GMT -5
fallen - sure, I'll make one over the weekend. huckleberry - those tips are very good guesses, especially about morale and equal trade. It would not surprise me if equal trade between each faction and high morale both contributed to better faction relations. roman566 - it could take a while for a faction planet to become independent, even after morale is reduced to 1. Independent planets are not as good as faction planets. Sure they don't lose morale or gain population or are affected by conflicts, but the lack of population growth will prevent income generation later, and political neutrality will prevent it from benefiting from trade routes and alliences that will become more prominent later in the game. I am unsure if you could keep already-installed faction upgrades, but my guess is yes.
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