Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeeves

I just finished LCC9 at 50 days of play, my ninth game, and have some insights to present for new players. Nedrear, I'm a micro-managing nitpicking powergamer for sure, because I am unemployed semi-retired and have 12-16 hours per day on my hands to waste. People who only have 10-20 hours per week to play can't play the way I do, looking into every single game event and spending an hour or two planning strategy every 19 day trading cycle...
1) Galaxy creation : I use irregular galaxies but have played a couple of times with spirals, but in all cases I set myself at the core of the map. The furthest I ever played off center map was about 1.5 sectors away, and it was not an outstanding game. Basically you want to be able to send ships from your homeworld to the furthest edge of the galaxy in minimum time and fuel. I play 10x10 1400 system galaxies, tried 15x15 once and did not like it.
2) I set space creatures to none because they just are nuisances which contribute little to the game. The silvermist was the deciding factor for me when they were added, threatening to derail games focused upon expansion and conquest into shooting matches. They also handicap the AI, distracting their warships.
3) I set pirates to normal, used to set them higher but found that just increased the number of ships they get rather than how many pirate bases there are. Pirates are the source of reputation points, giving two per base destroyed, so you need to destroy two bases per conquered independent. That takes a lot of pirates!
4) Expansion starting, difficulty normal, aggression normal, research very cheap 30k, unless I am playing Quameno then cheap 60k. My goal is to learn all technologies by the time I finish the game, in 12 to 15 game years.
5) Colony prevalence abundant, independent alien life teeming, colony influence range 100%. No range restrictions on colonization, because that just hurts the AI expansion.
6) I've tried different races, but the easiest is Ikkuro due to construction speed +25% and s2f7 repair bots. They get a 10% economy boost and a 10% ship maintenance discount too. Those repair bots reduce inflicted damage and repair components quickly. Your ship never again needs to limp into port for repairs!
7) Home system excellent, size starting, tech level starting and give that to every added AI empire. Government Republic, because I'm a republican not a democrat LOL. I add one of every AI race at average distance, which usually places them in a circle around me, more or less due to clumping. Their governments are default unless the default is random in which case they are republics too. Independents are not allowed to form new empires.
8) An easy win is with economy 30%, population 40%, and territory 50% at 75% victory threshold. For that you only need about one war, and maybe not even that. For more challenge set it at 60% economy, 75% population, and 80% territory with threshold of 80%. I disable standard racial victory conditions, because they just handicap the AI.
9) Victory conditions apply after 10 years, enable original game and Shakturi story lines, disable disasters, enable racial events.
10) I generate a couple hundred galaxies for every game I play. It takes a day or two compared to seven weeks to play a game. Basically I want a game where I can develop the galaxy into a star empire to be proud of. I do not save a potential start unless it meets my criteria, which are :
11) If your homeworld is a moon orbiting a gas giant, start another galaxy, because you don't want your freighters chasing the docks all game. Click on the home system. If there are not at least a full line plus a second line of six or more resources, generate another galaxy. If there are fewer than ten total planets plus moons, same. That takes about five seconds to judge. If there is more than one gas cloud with a storm within a sector, start another.
12) Count the number of systems within a sector of your home system, ignoring gas clouds. If there are fewer than 25, start anther game. That takes about 30 seconds.
13) Selecting sector view and plus zooming out three times, look at your position within the galaxy. Does it look like a prosperous neighborhood, with more star systems than gas clouds and few storms? Okay then count the home system strategic resources, and if fewer than 15 of them, start another galaxy, takes another 30 seconds.
14) Open up the expansion planner and check your empire resource locations. If there is no caslon fuel, or less than two steel then discard. Look at the galaxy priority list. If there are less than six total of steel, including all of your steel mines, discard. If there is no fibre, discard. If there is an independent in the potential colonies list, that is a plus!
15) Okay then save and make a note of the file's name and your observations about that potential start. When you have a dozen or two, then go back and look at each judging the total list of potential starts. The process takes 20-30 hours for me, unless I get really lucky and find an outstanding start early.
16) Open up the expansion planner and notice what resources are already mined. How many missing ones can be developed with three constructor projects to start off the game? You need lots of steel and other resources to develop mines. If you design your own as I do, then they may require different resources depending upon your technology. Use the designs screen selecting the mines to notice what they require. Highest priority for mines are those resources required to build mines! Chances are that you will disagree with the three projects already scheduled by your constructors, so change orders appropriately.
17) Your explorers do not need to completely explore systems at game start. Your objective is to find high quality planets and independents within two sectors of your home system, then to contact AI empires so you can start tech trading. Change explorer's orders to move to rather than explore unknown stars and manage them to check out potential colony planets in the systems, then move onwards to the next system.
18) Technology research depends upon your play style, but here is a list of techs researched from LCC9 : Enhanced Construction, Star Fighters, Enhanced Resource Exploration, Missile Weapons, Accelerated Construction (buy Bakuras Shipyards at 50k cash), Proximity Sensors, Ion Weapons, Long Range Scanners (design explorers to look for supply zones and buy three), Component Prefabrication, Countermeasures, Point Defense Weapons, Enhanced Engines, Target Tracking, Rail Gun Weapons, ending first year of research. Now to do that I had to redesign my homeworld spaceport to add lots of labs so that I researched at my full potential and buy an upgrade as my first project...
19) second year : area weapons, enhanced hyperdrives, enhanced transport, light interceptors, high speed hyperdrives, missile bombers, nuclear supercharging, enhanced research (when Bakuras done buy Rusan Technology facility), light torpedo bombers, fast jump hyperdrives from scrapping, quantum exploitation from scrapping (needed for civilian ships), and on 55/08/28 started trading technologies with AI empires so that makes all further research dependent upon game trading.
20) I design my own civilians unarmed and fast so that they can escape from pirates without weapons. The Guardians are offended by armed civilians...
21) Rather than build warships to fight pirates, I pay off the pirates in the first two years of game play. Instead of buying warships, I buy explorers as fast as my money and resources permit. Usually the first bought warships are from supply zones in the second year. At supply zones I buy two sets of six explorers then six destroyers armed to fight pirate bases. For that you need three each of missiles and ion weapons, plus a couple of fighter bays and your best torpedo or beam weapon depending upon technology learned. At supply zones I scrap all of the warships found there as soon as the one day build of the first set of explorers. Hint : the supply zone will immediately build the first set of ships if you refuse to open it at first sighting. Set speed to 1/4 and wait until the date has just changed then open the base and hit pause. Buy the six explorers before going off pause.

Well that is no means everything I could tell but this post is getting long, so maybe I'll add more advice in response to questions later.


Lonnie Courtney Clay

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

And I have never fought the Shakturi