Quick War/Bad Political Events Again?

[Officer Genious]

Jan 1, 2015 18:12:06 GMT -5 Paco said:

Don't want to necro an old thread, but justwanted to ask how much Treaties cost after the initial payment.
I "bought" several Treaties at once early on (year 3) and my economy tumbled from +300 to -800. (The three-way embargo isn't helping.)

Also, what' so bad about debt? I'm not too keen on paying up-front for my colony buildings AND waiting for them to get built, but other than that my army is still powerful and can shoot up Xeno ships forever (water only prevents Special abilities from being used) -- what's wrong with focusing on military, pinning Xeno's into the corner, and rapidly expanding everywhere else?

You'd likely run out of money for things like housing, and mining, for one. Housing booms are unpredictable and if you can't pay for them, the planet will get more expensive to maintain, creating more debt.

As for why that's bad, the aliens level up after one or two fights with you. Eventually, you'll find that they are capable of wounding/killing your ships and you're essentially unable to fight back as you can't upgrade your ships.

In other words, a slow slide into oblivion.

[Deleted]

Jan 1, 2015 18:12:06 GMT -5 Paco said:

Don't want to necro an old thread, but justwanted to ask how much Treaties cost after the initial payment.
I "bought" several Treaties at once early on (year 3) and my economy tumbled from +300 to -800. (The three-way embargo isn't helping.)

Also, what' so bad about debt? I'm not too keen on paying up-front for my colony buildings AND waiting for them to get built, but other than that my army is still powerful and can shoot up Xeno ships forever (water only prevents Special abilities from being used) -- what's wrong with focusing on military, pinning Xeno's into the corner, and rapidly expanding everywhere else?

Treaties cost no money after initial payment. Your income most likely went down because it takes 1 turn after a conflict (like a trade embargo) begins to affect the economy.

Debt is bad because you are unable to buy colonial upgrades, which is necessary for preventing overcrowding and increasing income via mining and TP, which will lead to further debt. From a military aspect, debt means you can't buy new ships to replace damaged or destroyed ones, and you can't purchase FDF defense for your new colonies to prevent invasion. Debt also means no colony ships. Eventually, you will not to invest in your economy in order to keep a strong military and expand.

[Paco]

So what does the "Alien level" mean? How well their ships perform, their colonies expand, etc? Seems a little unfair that they progress faster than I can (in a fight).

In the game I was describing, things did go downhill despite what I thought was a fool-proof tactic. (My invading dropships were destroyed in orbit, my fleet did stagnte... and despite having only three star systems to twenty, the Xeno's eventually destroyed enough of my army to send world-killers out.)

I've since started two new games: one normal, one hard. The normal game wound up being too easy (the AI ships bumbled around, some embargos happened, and only one spy war) and the game was concluded in under 500 turns. The hard game... two sets of 3-way embargos/spy wars eventually drained my coffers dry. Is the secret to beating Hard having overpopulated, 1-morale, mining slums? (Like how Civilization could be won on the hardest difficulty if you built a "road" of empty cities; no modules meant no upkeep costs)

[Officer Genious]

Jan 3, 2015 2:32:18 GMT -5 Paco said:

So what does the "Alien level" mean? How well their ships perform, their colonies expand, etc? Seems a little unfair that they progress faster than I can (in a fight).

In the game I was describing, things did go downhill despite what I thought was a fool-proof tactic. (My invading dropships were destroyed in orbit, my fleet did stagnte... and despite having only three star systems to twenty, the Xeno's eventually destroyed enough of my army to send world-killers out.)

I've since started two new games: one normal, one hard. The normal game wound up being too easy (the AI ships bumbled around, some embargos happened, and only one spy war) and the game was concluded in under 500 turns. The hard game... two sets of 3-way embargos/spy wars eventually drained my coffers dry. Is the secret to beating Hard having overpopulated, 1-morale, mining slums? (Like how Civilization could be won on the hardest difficulty if you built a "road" of empty cities; no modules meant no upkeep costs)

Alien levels are kinda like beating up the rats in every RPG known to mankind, and returning at level 20 to find that the rats have also leveled up to level 18-- basically, it prevents players from simply getting a few decent ship upgrades and sitting on their butts steamrolling enemies for the entire game. The more you fight the Xeno (which can't be avoided), the more often they will "level up" their ships to match your technology. Xeno ships may (or not) look the same, but selecting an enemy ship to see what little intel you can get will show a level to represent modifiers to their dodge, hit chance, and damage (all you'll be able to see straight off is that missile ships are now capable of doing 30 damage instead of 20, and you'll notice they take less damage/have more health than the lower-level versions).

In the end, I find it sensible-- to use Civilizations, for an example, rarely will the AI win (or challenge anyone) if its still rolling Knights when actual players are vomiting bombers all over the world.

I moved from Normal for the same reasons and entered Hard to find politics as my weak point. The previous thread (Quick Wars stacking) has a link to me trying to play through Hard tutorial and getting some advice from vylox (thanks again!). I haven't posted recently but my empire was going rather well last time I checked. The important thing to remember is that A: abuse Trade Treaties at all times and B: Don't constantly upgrade your ships, think carefully and build your ships to last for a good while to save money in the long run. Oh, and C: If its relatively later in the game (200 turns) and your home colonies don't do much of anything, it may be worth chucking some palaces/exchanges at them so that they contribute instead of just existing in space. And one more thing: D: Think carefully about what planet you choose to colonize (as in, don't jump on it because it has a cool quality range-- if it fails and throws a 4 Quality at you, you want to at least be able to say, "Well, its a good fort/base/shipyard/mining facility at least!" and build to that).

[khamya9]

The trick to hard (crazy and impossible are different) is to focus on money. In the beginning, mines are critical as treaties don't modify them much at all. You can ignore embargo's if your money is coming from mines. The three most critical technologies are hab 2, mine 3 and exchange 2. Get those and build them everywhere. Factory 2 is also nice, but not like those guys.

Do not let your worlds get to 1 morale. You pay massively higher upkeep , you earn less money, and your faction might sell it to become independent so you lose their racial bonus. This is bad.

Just get enough of a fleet to hold a solid defense vs the ai. I find your starting three ships plus two cheap fighters are fine for one enemy. Towards turn 180 you'll need more like say one or two cruisers or fighters with two attacks. Your goal is not to crush the ai, but bleed them. Stay in your green squares, and try to bottleneck the ai into attacking one one spot over and over. Kill mass driver ships in preference to missile they are far more deadly. You can get the ai to go into passive mode by killing all its visible ships and outnumbering its fleet and being far away from any of is worlds.

Try to keep your three factions balanced. Also there is always an annoyingly timed population surge in hard. Your worlds will start bursting and if you're not careful they'll end up with a death spiral too many hab units and no factories or spice. I like to time colony ships so I get one from each faction at about the same time. Helps me keep them balanced.

I also find, on many maps if you don't explore, but instead hold back ypout Templar cruisers until they heal, then find the nearest ai, you can pick apart their whole fleet and kill 2-3 colony ships before being forces to retreat. The ai usually cannot overcome that loss of tempo and it gives you a big advantage. This is a high risk strategy though, if a second aingets involved it can go really bad for you.

Which map do you like and what three factions?

[Paco]

Huh.

I might just be having horrible luck in politics. I just tried a game using the coward's way - save-scumming - and found it was... possible. It still took over 200 turns on tutorial, but without Spy Wars and Solar Wars (I could live with Embargos), the game doesn't screw me over hard enough to have Morale:1 colonies (for long).

So the aliens don't level up their ships with XP, but with combat technology? I tend to not pick Combat Research until after Hab2/Mine2 is researched, making do with the basic Templars and maybe an extra Fighter or two. At best, I create a handful of custom Gunboats (fighters extra-high gun/pilot and durability/evade values), Missile Boats (cruisers with extra-high torpedo and durability/evade), and Dropships (transports with extra-high invasion and durability/radiation) with marines.

But back to politics, Wars are especially draining on my fleets, refueling, and colony upkeep. And there's no counter but to "wait it out". The counter-treaties are all the way at the end of the research tree, but I can be hit with a Spy War as early as turn 48! Once that hits, timed with population surges, it pretty much ends my games. (So far, I'm just trying the free version with Tutorial and Rim -- I take it generated-maps/map-editors are not possible any time soon. Is customized difficulty -- e.g. increasing AI aggression without increased political strife -- in the Elite version?)

Running straight into an alien race and taking out their colony ships is a very viable strategy, especially with the Rim (2 enemies). It keeps one faction pinned to two or three planets, allowing me to focus new units on exploring the other.

[Paco]

Maybe I'm over-thinking things. On Normal mode, the game is very brisk paced. I think I only saw two Spy Wars (and they weren't concurrent), making save-scumming inconsequential.

[khamya9]

The alien "level" is a measure of its current power, that is a value that constantly increases over time. The more worlds it has the faster its level increases. It will start making better ships as it gets higher level. 

In politics, there are multiple ways to resolve any situation. Spy wars are hard, though one faction does have the ability to end them (I always forget which). Solar wars you can downgrade to a spy war with very early tech, or end completely with migame tech. The later techs just give increased % chance to succeed.

Again, key to surviving bad politics is minerals. Politics have a much greater effect on trade. 

Also you can predict a few things. As soon as you start winning vs the ai, be ready for a trade war or solar war to start. Typically, one or two turns after you see "reduced xeno activity" all factions will attempt to commit mass suicide by declaring war on eachother.

Similarly, if you see the message "increased xeno activity" expect most wars to end and get ready to launch some trade route projects. 

 In terms of handling population growth, the big thing is knowing when NOT to subsidize an upgrade even if you have the cash right now. Try to keep your worlds with a buffer of 1-3 available hab space. The more you need money for war the less buffer you can afford (because empty hab units cost maintenance), and try to keep factories balanced with hab space. I only subsidize structures that will take more than 7 turns to build. This way, when I see the population surge hitting, I usually can afford to subsidize two or three structures at once, which keeps me ahead instead of fighting to catch up.


And don't expand toomfast, be sure you can afford the first couple upgrades before you colonize a planet. I like to have 200 for subsidized hab 1, 400 for subsidized factory 1 and 300 for a mine 1 ready to go before I colonize a planet.

[Officer Genious]

Everything above (will exalt!), though I do one or two colonies at a time instead of three because I've suddenly run out of money before and had three colony ships eat my funds until I could resolve the politics.

It was excruciating.

[kaistern]

Jan 1, 2015 18:12:06 GMT -5 Paco said:

Don't want to necro an old thread, but justwanted to ask how much Treaties cost after the initial payment.
I "bought" several Treaties at once early on (year 3) and my economy tumbled from +300 to -800. (The three-way embargo isn't helping.)

Also, what' so bad about debt? I'm not too keen on paying up-front for my colony buildings AND waiting for them to get built, but other than that my army is still powerful and can shoot up Xeno ships forever (water only prevents Special abilities from being used) -- what's wrong with focusing on military, pinning Xeno's into the corner, and rapidly expanding everywhere else?

Treaties do not cost "money" after the initial payment but instead EP (spy points). They are not responsible for your defiecit, the embargo is.

Debt is bad because you can not buy ANYTHING (except treaties which you can still get for double the EP).

ADDED: oops I goofed, I thought that was recent not old... and I can't delete my own posts on this forum lol

[Paco]

Jan 5, 2015 18:57:43 GMT -5 khamya9 said:

Again, key to surviving bad politics is minerals. Politics have a much greater effect on trade. 
...
 In terms of handling population growth, the big thing is knowing when NOT to subsidize an upgrade even if you have the cash right now. Try to keep your worlds with a buffer of 1-3 available hab space. ... This way, when I see the population surge hitting, I usually can afford to subsidize two or three structures at once, which keeps me ahead instead of fighting to catch up.

And don't expand toomfast, be sure you can afford the first couple upgrades before you colonize a planet. I like to have 200 for subsidized hab 1, 400 for subsidized factory 1 and 300 for a mine 1 ready to go before I colonize a planet.

I would beg to differ; political strife just hurts. Unless I focus on creating morale:1 mining slums, I cannot imagine how many +21 credit-per-turn/300 at-cost mines it would take to offset the 300+ credit deficit a mere +10% in colony upkeep costs (an even bigger jump if I'm going from 90% to 130%), not to mention if a population boom should hit, each population is now contributing negative credits in addition to morale drops (which reduce mineral-production).

If fleet refueling/repair is hampered, that's also another hike to fleet upkeep costs. And like Officer Genious said, if said political upheaval happens when a colony ship is in production, I either have to give up production (because I likely will have to save any credits I have to pay/subsidize a treaty that may/may-not work) or let it finish and have the colony ship eat up my reserves because, well...

I almost never subsidize a structure unless I need it right away -- the colony is in spice/hab crisis and is losing morale each turn -- and sometimes not even then. I do agree with having some bank when colonizing a planet... but that means having positive income (little/no political strife), having the cash to create a colony ship, and then having the extra $1k to purchase a Hab1, Mine1, and possibly Factory1. This will keep them busy and hopefully they won't get a population boom the day they get colonized. (I've seen it happen! At that point, I would being subsidizing improvements.)

I did not know that a Spy War (and Solar War) could be "downgraded" with Duel of Assassins (an early tech that can replace a Conflict). Though it's low-% and relatively high EP costs make purchasing them risky. (I can have 5+ treaties in process, but how much EP is allocated into each of them? It seems the top-3 split the EP, but I could be wrong.)

And don't worry kaistern -- it's the thought that counts.