Officer Genious's Hard Tutorial Playthroughs-- ADVICE WANTED

[Officer Genious]

I fail pretty hard at the economy/politics in this game (incase some of you guys missed the five thousand posts I've made on how I can paddle the Xeno to the brink of death and sink into debt-blivion), so I decided to start chronicling my misadventures here to get some feedback and ideas from you guys in a way that makes it easier for everyone to understand. And who knows, maybe this will help someone.


Game #1

Objectives: Knowing that my kryptonite is not being able to end Solar Wars and Trade Wars, I'm aiming to make a bee-line straight for Trade Wars to the mid-right of the construction tech tree (under spice den 2, I believe).

Summary of Empire as of Turn 77:

Colonies: 5, Avg Morale of 8
Factories: 20, 18/2 busy/idle ratio
Minerals: 19/62 mined/available ratio
Spice: 15/18, built/required ratio

RP: 10, Spy: 11, Trade: 0

Empire $:
Economy: $561
Income: $170
Colony Maintenance: $364/340, guessing that's outcome/income
Total Rate: 103%

Ships: 3
Maintenance: $27/36, not sure about this ratio


Current Politics
Trade Embargo between Steel Song and Thulun


---
Officer Genious Log
---

Straight off the bat, I sent Javat to settle the red giant just left of the starting position in the lower-right corner. Steel Song took a yellow with decent quality slightly north and right while Thulun took the south-right yellow with similar quality and more minerals. I had them focus on mines and factories for a while so they could support themselves before I sent out any colony ships.

I gambled that the 6 or 8 anamolies around me would give me a good chance at Research bonuses, so I took multiple Research plans at a time, such as basic Fighters (~7 turns) with more intensive projects like Space Colonization 2 (~20 turns).

Naturally, only one of those anamolies had research bonuses in it (the rest being credits and one Xeno infestation), and a full investigation backfired so badly nearby Steel Prima went from 10 morale to 4. I suppose everyone's grandmothers were onboard that explorer that awful day. XD

Anyway, life went on and as the colonies grew and stabilized, I sent two colony ships out-- one from Thulun to colonize a very nice yellow with great quality rolls some distance left (it's behind a red giant and consistently gives me a good start) and one from Steel Song to a solid yellow with slightly less stellar quality but with lots of expansion potential.

The Thulun colony, Kalflange (also a very common name for that particular planet for whatever reason), ended up with a lovely 20 Quality and 10 Minerals. Hell, its in better shape than the Thulun home planet (only 16 Quality).

Steel Song's Kinngott colony, on the other hand, somehow ended up 12 Quality and and 13 Minerals.


Awesomesauce. On top of that, I have a Trade Embargo going between Steel Song and Thulun, but at least I have a Trade Ban treaty going to try and take it down.


So, about that spice trade...

I actually have 10/10 morale on all planets but two--Steel Prima (5/10 morale, but I have spice festivals lined up to help that place out) and Thulun Prime (6/10 morale). Thulun Prime is not only the only planet I have with more than 5 population, but holds the dubious distinction of having the worst Quality following Kinngott with only 16 Quality. Because of my focus on getting politics straightened out early and concerns about my low-quality planets bringing me down (Thulun Prime is all ready dragging me down as 14/16 Quality is taken by 7 Mines for the 8 total Minerals, and it STILL has an income of +$84/-$121 expenses).

But I have a plan. I just finished researching Palace I. One of the nice things about the Palace lines of updates is that it comes with Spice for 5 population (II), research, espionage and population bonuses for one Quality slot (I), and it helps make colonies useful who otherwise would not be. Kinngott (the unfortunately Steel Song colony) has 4 Spies, for example, but I can't enrich that with only 12 Quality spaces that also needs to cover a bunch of other needs. I'm thinking that Palace II can help cover a good deal of those needs and give that colony a purpose in the empire if it can't contribute financially or via research (and again, with politics being a weak point for me having a spy hub may just be worth it).

I simply have to figure out how to balance that cost with the other planets I have so far, but my view is a bit skewed with that stupid Trade Embargo going. >.> I'll have more to add soon enough, but for now that's all I have to report here.

[Officer Genious]

Updated-- finished the post from this morning, sorry for the long wait! Please everyone, feel free to talk/discuss/rant and rave as I'll happily admit that I chose the name "Genious" and not Genius for a reason.

[vylox]

With 0 TP a Trade Embargo is a non-issue. Seriously without TP generation, a trade embargo is doing absolutely nothing bad for your colonies at this time. Ignore it. While it is nice to have the ability to try and end it, with no exchanges built it has no affect and no additional trade support the treaty will never pass anyhow.

You should not have gone after the anomalies so quickly. It is more beneficial to hit one or 2 early for the first build on your first colony or 2, and then to hold off on them until you have 2-3 planets for each of your 3 houses.

20 quality 10 minerals is actually about of balance planet. It will likely be not a good place after 100 turns of investment. It sounds good, but it doesn't have enough minerals to support itself until much later when you can conceivably reach 25+ population there. Since it is the tutorial map, that isn't likely to come around.
That 12 quality 13 minerals planet, while it doesn't look great, will likely become a nice moneymaker for you.

At turn 77 and 5 planets. I might be slow personally, but at this stage you might be advancing your colonization before you are prepared to. On hard I tend to wait until I have access to Palace, Spice Dens, and exchanges before I even research starship construction. Meaning that I tend to startup new planets after turn 100. And I freely admit this might be slow compared to others, however when I do get colony ships, I will usually have the ability to build 3/6/9 places right in a row.

Let me see if I can put this in simple terms also. Trade represents half of the possible income your empire can potentially produce. Without a sufficient amount of Exchanges, you are depriving yourself of half of your possible income, portions of both your potential research capabilities and a chunk of your early game political power. Not to mention the population movement that is being restricted from and to your current or future colonies/planets.

So currently you are concerned with a negative political conflict that is literally having zero effect on your entire empire. You either have a genius build that is currently immune to half of the game itself, or you missed half of the name of the game. ! (No offense intended with this statement but it can be construed offensive easily)


I suggest to you. Build exchanges before you aim for additional colonies.
Shoot to get Orbital Mining and Orbital defenses quickly. Which will invariably give you upgrades for starport, mines, habitats and factories.

I understand that your on the time schedule of the tutorial map, but you shouldn't need to rush more ships or planets in your empire before it is ready to handle their inclusions. Ensure that you have a balanced setup. Balance includes Trade Points !!!

[vylox]

Oh yea... Forgot to put this in.

Quoting you.
Empire $:
Economy: $561
Income: $170
Colony Maintenance: $364/340, guessing that's outcome/income
Total Rate: 103%
/

You make $561 from TP, idle CP, and mineral mining.
You profit $170 expected on the turn change.
Your colonies are spending $364 on maintenance / of a total maintenance cost of $340 (your paying too much)
Total rate is the % over or under the standard maintenance rates. Your case 3% too much (or $24)

Your info
Ships: 3
Maintenance: $27/36, not sure about this ratio
/

You are paying $27 per turn for your 3 ships combined / base maintenance cost of your ships

[Officer Genious]

Duly noted. Thanks for the feedback! I was concerned about the Embargo simply because it skewed my maintenance numbers-- I couldn't tell if I was ahead or behind the curve because of that.

As a quick update, I'm on turn 102 now...

1: I realized I can't get at the Palace II upgrade as quickly as I'd like, so I'm putting in Spice Den Is to keep my morale from crashing.

2: A spy war popped up a few turns after my Trade Ban succeeded (it all ready started, so I let it finish), and was eventually replaced by a full-on Trade War.

3: Tying to point #1, I realized that I may as well get at least an Exchange I in the meantime and I have maybe 7 turns to get it researched.

4: While I'm waiting on all of the above, I've been updating my Hab I units to Hab IIs. The reason I was excited to get a 20 Quality planet was because *all* my colonies so far (including home colonies) have scored Qualities of 16-14. Kalflange had a range going up to 26, but I'll settle for a good 20 after that start. And because of all but Kinngott having 16 Quality, my growing population was starting to become a problem, so having Hab IIs definitely clears up some much-needed space for Exchanges and so on.

5: Did I mention I had an increased Xeno threat rumor going around just before that Trade War? I immediately made three or four basic fighters to reinforce my two templar ships, but the Xeno haven't showed up to their own funerals. I hope I didn't just waste my money on those fighters there...


Why would Kinngott be a nice little moneymaker? I could (eventually) get Orbital Mines over it, but I'd have to be able to spend that $1500 on a broke planet first, and I rarely ever seem to get to that point as I'm updating infrastructure and working around Quality issues by the time I get Orbital Mines...

[vylox]

Exchanges are important.

I'll see if I can help each point ;>
1) Spice Dens are important for your Prime planets because of the time relation for researching. Plus they give you research points, making the whole process quicker.

2) The spy war was beneficial to you. As you at the time still had no income from TP, the disadvantages of it are irrelevant since it is a reduction in TP value per turn. While you gained RP (research points) per each colony... Would have been more if you had TP though. As for the Trade war... You still have no exchanges...... So it only slightly reduces your income by increasing maintenance rates.

3) Have you realized why getting this is a priority over just about everything yet ?

4) I don't see the issue here. I know and understand that some things about planets are nice. But total quality is not as important as it appears. Kalflange has 20 quality, which means there can be a whole slew of buildings there but it only has 10 minerals, which reduces the planet's raw income potential. This will skew the planet into being high cost on maintenance until you can get massive population on it. Upwards of 25. Whereas your little Kinggott with its 12 quality and 13 minerals will produce plenty of money from 3 mines (to be upgraded to Mine 3) and an exchange while having more than sufficient quality space left for factories and habitats.
I have no qualms or problems with obtaining low rolls on quality, but then again I am a slow starter for colonizing places, and I sort of disregard the suggested buildings constantly...... My issue is with planets that run low on minerals. As it takes hundreds of turns to make them profitable while waiting on population drift.

5) Traders report increased Xeno blahblah name here activity is one of those things you have to examine that turn. If you are not near any Xeno, they are unlikely to hit your colonies. If you saw them by scouting and they know where you are, then you might need a ship or 2. Since I make a nice broad sweep around my empire I know when to build and when to ignore. You decide if they are needed at this time or not. If you have steel song, you could keep their ships for the +3 EP they give.

See also point 4. It is a matter of turns to be blunt. I have a game that I'm on turn 1300 and turning high quality with low minerals into profitable colonies is still difficult.... Even with being able to essentially demolish and rebuild any planet as needed. (Kind of a waste researching the ship stuff with no Xeno left to fight tho....so its mighty boring).
One just has to accept the fact that some colonies would be better off building things and sucking up the cash flow, while others make more than enough to compensate.

Just to note. I made a new game on hard. On turn 70 I have 3 colonies. And have yet to research starship construction... The Rim map. Small 35 planets. No Xeno nearby.

[xdesperado]

Someone is in total love with mines...
No I've not had a huge amount of playtime with X4 yet, that said, YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE HUGE NUMBERS OF MINES TO MAKE GOOD MONEY!!!
Sorry, one thing that really irks me is when someone says You Have to do X to be successful, Bolox, there are a number of different ways to play the game and be successful. If there wasn't a number of different ways, then the TB's would have created a truly lousy game with no real reason to keep playing it.
I saw the same thing from another user regarding HoS who complained the game was to easy, several abilities were pointless and useless and that they were getting bored with the slow pace of the game...
You have lots of options available in X4, find out which ones fit your style of play and work for you. Something doesn't work this time, tweak it a bit and try again till you find a solution that works for you and keeps the game enjoyable.
Yes certain things/strategies can be easier to implement and help you succeed, but they are not set in stone.

Sorry for the rant...I'll go back to my corner now.

[vylox]

Oct 7, 2014 0:43:49 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

Someone is in total love with mines...
No I've not had a huge amount of playtime with X4 yet, that said, YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE HUGE NUMBERS OF MINES TO MAKE GOOD MONEY!!!
Sorry, one thing that really irks me is when someone says You Have to do X to be successful, Bolox, there are a number of different ways to play the game and be successful. If there wasn't a number of different ways, then the TB's would have created a truly lousy game with no real reason to keep playing it.
I saw the same thing from another user regarding HoS who complained the game was to easy, several abilities were pointless and useless and that they were getting bored with the slow pace of the game...
You have lots of options available in X4, find out which ones fit your style of play and work for you. Something doesn't work this time, tweak it a bit and try again till you find a solution that works for you and keeps the game enjoyable.
Yes certain things/strategies can be easier to implement and help you succeed, but they are not set in stone.

Sorry for the rant...I'll go back to my corner now.

i know this. trust me i do. however, if you would kindly notice my statements about exchanges in such a light ?
during the early game, mines are important. middle to late in turns not so much.
and how many early settlements (first 3 planets you colonize) have no mines ?

quick reply only b/c i was reading something else...... ;>

[xdesperado]

Yes your first 3 planets will almost assuredly have mines that is almost a given, for that matter nearly all colonies will likely end up with a mine or two eventually, but if your focusing on getting things like exchanges very early in the game then they can quickly become much less important.

I personally much prefer High Quality, low mineral worlds over Low Quality, High Mineral ones...why because to often I've found myself out of room for habs and other essential structures long before I could tap that vast abundance of minerals.

High quality lets me build lots of Habs, Factories and other structures, if I don't need the production potential for anything else I can leave it idle and the CP helps power the economy. If I need to quickly build structures or ships I can do so. Meanwhile the mine colony may be a nice boost economically but will most likely not be able to contribute much to the actual strength of my forces. Even fairly far into the game those mine worlds may still be requiring subsidization for any new construction if it is to occur in a reasonable time frame. And heaven help you if they experience a population boom, especially early on.

[vylox]

I prefer balanced out worlds myself. Anything where the minerals and quality are similar. 9-17 quality, with similar minerals. + or -

While high quality worlds are nice, lacking in mineral to remain a self sufficient and profitable colony throughout its progress becomes more difficult. Admittedly not everyone cares to ensure that every one of their colonies maintains a positive income whether they are idle or not.
Though it is not impossible to have 15 or so population on a 9 quality 20 mineral world while still being able to mine all 20 mineral (unnecessary as that is). However the example is moot. Because on several plays of the game, on multiple maps, I have yet to even reach 20 population on any planet. Even at 1300 turns in and no Xeno. At 700 turns on hard with 32 colonies my highest population center is only 15... Granted most of those are between 10 and 15... Guess I'll have to start taking the Xeno planets to expand...... (112 planets, 3 Xeno. I started this game on my phone and played during 4 hours of lecture)

To each their own. I am just trying to help Officer here bring some balance to her force.

[Officer Genious]

Got some passionate responses in here, and that's great-- that's part of the reason I wanted to open a thread like this, so we could all take a look and debate/second-guess everyone's decisions, including our own. And it seems vylox found xdesperado's pet peeve... (waits until no one is looking, magically hacks desperado's advisor and reprograms it to suggest "BILD MOAR MINEZ" at every possible screen and every turn event page. Patiently waits for desperado to either break down sobbing or to rampage through the streets Godzilla-style).

I'm seeing some awesome points being made here, and thought I could chip in before I get back to blissfully wading through my empire...

vylox: To Xeno or Not to Xeno?

I do everything I possibly can to avoid setting off the Xeno, and as many times as I've played through this tutorial map I could draw the border where Xeno would find me before I'm ready blindfolded. However, and I suspect I have no one but Cory Trese to blame for this (as either the Xeno have developed their own form of genius or Cory's forcing gamers to be aware at all times), I've had early games turn into panic wars when Xenos would happily stay in their own territory during "increased activity" events only to suddenly fly into my small section of space with 5 or 6 missile ships, a world killer to the rear of them and a few attack ships to the side coming up out of cold black space: "Nice colonies you got there. Would be a shame if something happened to them... >:}"

I stopped gambling with my colonies' Qualities after a couple of those.


xdesperado, vylox: Mines vs. Exchanges

I'll admit to struggling really hard on this debate. I remember fallen coming into a thread before to talk about how Exchanges (and Trade Points) were easily affected by Trade Wars/Embargoes and are more like icing on the economic cake than a primary source of income. On the other hand, mines have their own set of limitations...

Mines aren't affected by politics, and I first thought "Hey, I fail at politics, you're pretty much immune to politics, let's meet up Friday night and see if this relationship will work out!". But kinda like an ex-boyfriend you'd prefer to forget, somewhere along the line you realized you weren't dating him but his mother (Quality), sister (Minerals available on the planet), best friend (Population) and his grandmother (Factories). Everyone had a say in your relationship-- Have a great Quality planet with plenty of Minerals but a growing Population of freeloaders who seem way too comfortable eating your food and contributing nothing? Well, too bad-- you have to make space for them and less for your beloved Mines. Have a low Population planet? Beware the Trifecta of Familial Evil (TM)-- Quality is too low and great Earth Mother Gaia doesn't think you're successful enough, the crazy Mineral sisters are never appeased with what help you can afford to give them and the sweet, harmless Industrial Queen Grandma Num-Nums demands your presense in the kitchen so you can learn how to cook properly for her great-grandbabies.

So I bailed outta that relationship right quick and set myself up with Exchanges-- no insane juggling, no attempting to please half a dozen people I didn't know nor care about and a single-minded focus on us, right?

Well, sure, until that Trade War or Trade Embargo hits. Suddenly you're left high and dry when a single rough patch happens and the Exchange walks off into the sunset with some floozy. A year passes and everything gets straightened out, and its all "No, but I love you, I always did, and I'll bring value back to your wonderful empire if you just keep me around and not that Mine guy!". And you cave, and you promise yourself you'll let Exchanges go just this once and nothing will get between you and your love of money ever again and BAM, another Trade Embargo or Trade War happens, and another floozy, and so on until your emotionally drained and your empire is in pieces dealing with this fickle man-child for the rest of your days.


So I just decided to get the hell outta dodge and buy myself a pet. What do you mean what is a pet? A pet is a pet! What YOU talking about? What analogies, I thought this was a relationship column! (ntsheep, I believe I just derailed my own thread. Please advise?)



vylox: Where's the Spice in Your Empire?

I thought we went over this, my relationship has no spice because-- oh, you mean the actual empire. Ahem. But in all seriousness, I'm sensing a bit of frustration from you about my treatment of Spice Dens and Exchanges, and looking back at my previous posts I can see why-- I never really explained where I was going to get my Research Points and Spice from (which are kinda like... oh, forget it).

I mentioned before that I was building Palaces and couldn't wait to get into Palace IIs. The reason is actually rather simple-- Palaces have a range of bonuses that help make a colony more balanced. All Palaces have a single Habitation Unit. Palace I also starts with 1 EP and 1 RP compared to Spice Den I, which gives no Hab Units for 5 Spice and 1 RP. Palace II increases the EP to 2 and even does a basic Spice job of 5. Aside from giving out more Spice, the Spice Dens don't do much of interest until Spice Hall I (finally reaching 2 RP and 1 EP with 20 Spice), but I still get more variety out of even Palace IIs without having to get so far down the research tree.

Now this doesn't mean I won't build any Spice Dens period-- I know 5 Spice isn't going to be nearly enough alone unless I build a bunch of Palaces, which actually might not be a bad idea. But in terms of my small colonies, especially ones that have lots of Quality to share with Habitation Units/Factories and Faction bonuses for non-mining industries (namely Thulun), a few Palaces seem like a far better option.

If I have a high Quality Planet (or at least a planet with few Minerals to mine) colonized by Thulun or Steel Song, I can use the space not taken up by Mines to build a horde of Exchanges and Palaces to best boost the EP or RP bonuses the factions can give me while Javat takes all the Mineral-heavy red giants it can possibly want.


Of course, the more I'm testing this the more I'm adjusting whether to give high Quality/low Minerals to Steel Song or to Thulun.

Steel Song takes forever to build and takes advantage of EP, both of which suggests Quality over Mines. Thulun's bonuses are to RP OR CP, which makes utilizing their RP bonuses rather difficult-- building a horde of Exchanges is great until you try the build the first few and watch your RP sink. In the long run though, it may be worth it. But that CP bonus would make it much easier to Mine as well, and splitting time on a high Quality/high Mineral planet between Exchanges AND Mining sounds more like a recipe for disaster (I can see all that lovely Quality vaporizing under the strains of building a Mining colony (which is pretty Quality intensive) and a Trade Empire (which requires a few Exchanges) and the rapid-but-relatively-small Pop boom coming from Mining at the same time). I may have to test a few planets to get an answer on that one.



vylox: The Baby Boomers

I had a few colonies reach 18+ and once a 21 Population by turn 300 or so, and boy, did they strain the resources of those colonies! The funny thing is, those colonies weren't necessarily the home colonies-- some were 2nd or 3rd generation colonies that clearly had something in the water surface-side. I ended up using those colonies to build my big ships as they rarely could build anything more on their planet due to Quality issues, and with little else for them to contribute but yet more people to a crowded planet they sank my budget.

It wasn't much fun, especially when I had other colonies that had waited for a pop boom for over 30 turns and still sat at 3-5 population with so much extra Quality space and resources I needed people to dig up.

The RNG is a funny beast, eh?

[ntsheep]

According to the Geneva Convention Derailment Section, you have not derailed your own thread because,

1: As the OP, you have artistic license to make temporary off topic rants\changes.

2: As a female, for several days in a row once a month, your allowed to go totally berserk and do whatever you please.

3: I FRAKKING SAID SO!

[squee]

Oct 7, 2014 10:37:33 GMT -5 ntsheep said:

2: As a female, for several days in a row once a month, your allowed to go totally berserk and do whatever you please.

Oh no he di-in't!

[ntsheep]

squee, #2 wasn't meant in a bad way. I'm letting OG know it's ok to derail her own thread. She is also the Queen of Derailing so that gives her the right to do whatever she pleases.

[vylox]

@officer
It is all about making each of your 3 subgroups happy. If you have no exchanges at all, there is no trade, there is reduced population movement throughout your colonies. This means that the population growth will tend to pile up into one or 2 of your colonies instead of spreading across your empire.

Lacking in spice, either overall or on a couple of planets (especially those without exchanges) will ruin your economy by reducing morale and increasing main5enance costs. Lower morale also increases the likelyhood and frequency of negative treaties occurring.

Where do I or how do I maintain spice easily ? I build things. Lots of things. Exchange 3 provides TP, research and spice. Spice Den I provides spice and research. Palace II is also nice to bump spice and research. Starport 4 also supplies spice, along with 3 factories.

One other thing I'll mention. Sometimes I refuse to let the RNG tell me how I need to build my planets. So occasionally I have to ignore the population strain on a planet in order to get other things accomplished. I have one that is 17quality and 12mineral that is at 6/3 population and 1 morale. Instead of building habitats (like the game keeps telling me to) I am instead building the base for the colony to be self reliable. When the starport is completed upgrading I might increase the habitats finally since it will then have Starport 4, Palace 2, 3x Mine 2, 2x Factory 2, Exchange 3, an orbital mine and a habitat 2. After that I can readily increase the morale with some spice festivals.

Its all about balance. You have to find the balance between 3 groups.... Just think of the game as mediating for a Catholic a Muslim and a Canabal. Or maybe... Your the boss and your 3 employees like you, but hate each other enough that it strains the imagination on how they can sit together in a room to get any talking done. They would shoot each other rather than talk amiably. In another thread a guy compared it to being a president dealing with the Senate plus the House and the Judicial branch all at the same time while those 3 essentially refuse to agree.