Advice for new players (Full Version)

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Aroddo -> Advice for new players (11/25/2009 11:27:25 PM)

Pick the humans and just play the Twelve Races scenario.

Play a while and play a while longer.

You will suck.


The chances are excellent that you'll tank your economy to the point of no return. Your people will hate you. Your neighbours will hate you. You won't be able to build structures due to constant riots or simply because you're out of money.

That's normal. And you'll learn best how to control your economy by ruining it thouroughly the first (few) time(s). The humans are awesome at ****ing up their economy.

And don't come here complaining about it, because it's clearly your fault. :D



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 12:26:36 AM)

The humans are frankly one of the weaker races in this game.



Janster -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 1:00:01 AM)

Their negative happyness penalty is too big, it becomes impossible to play them, I picked the more warlike dudes, and they are doing hunkey-dorey.



LarryP -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 1:59:24 AM)

OK, so now we know how to learn about regulating the economy. What would we choose to do the best, or the opposite of the sucky humans?



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 2:46:03 AM)

Lots of good alternatives. The QaQa, the Linken, that race that likes the icy moons (these guys can become trading monsters and make tons of cash) the Tree people (no bureaucracy allows them to make huge empires.) I've had great success with those. Note the variety of playstyles here, these range from economic, empire building, and warmongering.  

Humans are trash. There's another race out there with the discord penalty and they are awful as well. (The 3 eyed bug race, whatever they are called.)

That penalty is a game killer. It needs to be rethought, or the positives need to made much much stronger. And the human +10% research benefit is badly diluted by the hits on psychic and especially hyperdrive research, so they go into the game in a huge hole. They really don't bring anything special to the table at all.

Homo Sapiens is Aramada 2526 on hard mode.



06 Maestro -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 4:40:07 AM)

Is there a planet of sexy, green dancing women? I feel an urge to get this game to explore that possibility.



Warspite3 -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 5:42:01 AM)

I would like to know this too but I guess you can have the green ones, I was hoping to find some tan colored ones in short skirts [:D]

quote:

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Is there a planet of sexy, green dancing women? I feel an urge to get this game to explore that possibility.




sabre1 -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 6:06:24 AM)

[sm=Cool-049.gif]



bssybeep -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 6:31:39 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Is there a planet of sexy, green dancing women? I feel an urge to get this game to explore that possibility.

lol, I was also looking for the race of "space babes" to play. Ended up with the warlike urg? (the big purple, multi eyed beasts). Much easier than the humans.



06 Maestro -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 6:52:53 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: bssybeep


quote:

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Is there a planet of sexy, green dancing women? I feel an urge to get this game to explore that possibility.

lol, I was also looking for the race of "space babes" to play. Ended up with the warlike urg? (the big purple, multi eyed beasts). Much easier than the humans.


Oh well; the search continues. Never give up. [:)]



Terl -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 11:17:48 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: 06 Maestro

Is there a planet of sexy, green dancing women? I feel an urge to get this game to explore that possibility.


I believe Captain Kirk has that one [:'(][:D]

Downloading my copy now, by the way [8D]



Aroddo -> RE: Advice for new players (11/26/2009 11:43:37 AM)

the key to keep unruly races pacified is to make living conditions good by choosing good planets in the first place and building stuff to improve habitability.
also don't let those planets overcrowd.

eventually you'll have to set taxes to low on some planets, so make sure that other planets generate positive revenue to make up for it.
That means that many planets won't be developed fully despite having lots of building slots free.

also, check your fleet composition. humans in particular have access to inexpensive ships with very low upkeep: the corvette iv. very effective in large numbers and it doesn't require expensive oribtal shipyards to build. fleet maintenance will be one of the largest drain to your economy.



Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 2:20:13 AM)

I agree with Aroddo that financial management is critical. I'm on Turn 31 of my second try at the tutorial, and came very close to running out of money. My practice in MOO3 was to always have financial reserves equal to one turn's income, and that seems necessary for this game as well.

Bob, I recommend the following in this regard:

1) More detailed control over tax rates, both for the empire as a whole as well as each individual colony, with the empire-wide taxes having an optional override of those of each individual colony. I.e., colonies respond to the most recent tax rate set. If the most recent tax rate was set at the imperial level, the tax rates of all colonies use the imperial level. If the most recent tax rate set is at the colony level, that colony uses the local rate, and will keep it until the player changes either the rate for that colony, or the imperial rate.

2) A scrollable list of all colonies showing the current tax rates of each, with the ability to sort colonies by colony name, star name, population, current tax rate, and happiness.

3) The tutorial and manual should be revised to place much more emphasis on financial management.



Star Ranger -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:43:15 AM)

What we need is less unrest and more income. Even on Easy mode - Income is so hard to come by. This is obviously a "total war" carry over where money is always desperate. This needs to be changed to make this a playable game.



kafka -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:49:27 AM)

well, I'm playing ma first custom game now and I have to say that I really like the game, definetely the best on the strategic layer comparing it with the other 4x games I have played (GC2, SE5, MOO3, SOS). The strategic layer is kept simple but challenging (even on normal difficulty it is challengig to keep your economy running). The key to this is to not overexpand and choose wisely which systems to colonize and what struxctures to build on your colonies. What I really like about the game is the race specific approach as for the victory conditions. In any case, thats not a total war clone, as contrary to the ootb total war games the strategic gameplay does work and is challenging. On the tactical layer however, I think SOS is way better. Well, the game does need some improvement on the tactical layer and, maybe, as a future add-on the ship design feature. All in all I'm really enjoying the game. Thank you Nitronium.



kafka -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:54:50 AM)

quote:

What we need is less unrest and more income. Even on Easy mode - Income is so hard to come by. This is obviously a "total war" carry over where money is always desperate. This needs to be changed to make this a playable game.


well it is surely challenging to keep your economy running, I had problems too in the beginning, but in my current custom game, on normal difficulty level, I'm doing well now, and have no problems affording structures like asteroid minings. As I said in the post above, key to do economically well is not to overexpand and to wisely choose which planets in which order to colonize combining with what to research and what structures to build. It's definitely not a total war clone in the negative sense.



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 6:58:14 PM)

Trade like mad and look for systems with oort clouds and asteroids. I establish trade missions on high pop worlds with absolutely anybody who I don't plan on going to war with in the near future. 40-50 trade missions running each turn (completely possible in larger maps) will make ridiculous money. Pick one poor sap at a time to be the guy you go to war with; the empires you trade with on a large scale will never jump you in my experience, so you can concentrate your forces againt one empire at a time.

Even a poor world with comets and asteroids can make some serious cash. Don't be afraid to develop those poor worlds, the initial expense is staggering, yes (16k credits total or so to build both asteroids and comets on poor systems) but they can net 1k+ credits a turn once developed.

Not gonna lie, I'm mostly taking a pass on the tactical space combat portion of the game and autoresolve all my battles. I don't much care for the tactical combat in the game, and it slows down play time anyways on the larger maps I prefer to play with.

The good news is the autoresolve on this game works just fine and gives reasonable results. Better than in other games, in fact. (I've learned to be wary of the autoresolve on Sword of the Stars, for example.)



Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:00:25 PM)

I agree with Flavius. Combat autoresolve works fine. I'm putting time into learning the rest of the game.



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:06:37 PM)

I should add that the strength of this game lies on the strategic end. It really scales up well and can handle very big games. The weakness of the tactical space combat engine is somewhat irrelevant to me and, arguably, part of the reason the game succeeds in the larger maps. Other games with a greater emphasis on tactical combat tend to bog down in larger maps. The amount of time spent on micromanaging these space battles (and designing ships as you tech up, for that matter) seriously slows things down at the larger level.

Armada 2526, by eschewing that flavor, allows you to focus on galactic conquest on a, well, galactic scale. I'm completely happy to delegate the space combat to my minions.



LarryP -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:07:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Trade like mad and look for systems with oort clouds and asteroids. I establish trade missions on high pop worlds with absolutely anybody who I don't plan on going to war with in the near future. 40-50 trade missions running each turn (completely possible in larger maps) will make ridiculous money. Pick one poor sap at a time to be the guy you go to war with; the empires you trade with on a large scale will never jump you in my experience, so you can concentrate your forces againt one empire at a time.

Even a poor world with comets and asteroids can make some serious cash. Don't be afraid to develop those poor worlds, the initial expense is staggering, yes (16k credits total or so to build both asteroids and comets on poor systems) but they can net 1k+ credits a turn once developed.

Not gonna lie, I'm mostly taking a pass on the tactical space combat portion of the game and autoresolve all my battles. I don't much care for the tactical combat in the game, and it slows down play time anyways on the larger maps I prefer to play with.

The good news is the autoresolve on this game works just fine and gives reasonable results. Better than in other games, in fact. (I've learned to be wary of the autoresolve on Sword of the Stars, for example.)


Excellent advice! That's exactly how I play battles in all games that have autoresolve. Too time consuming for me too. I will concentrate on the trade routes more. Thanks a lot for this help. [&o]



Aroddo -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:16:42 PM)

the only thing where auto resolve really sucks are the ground units.

when attacking a planet without static or mobile defenses but a large amount of militia, the auto resolve option will waste your marines against them.

if you take control of the battle personally, you just bomb them from orbit and keep your marine safe.



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:30:11 PM)

Nah. My standard late game conquest fleet includes 10 marines and 5 hovertanks and stomps the opposition on autoresolve, usually without losses. I'm the kind of guy who doesn't get very aggressive until late in the game, however, and when I can roll with huge (100+ ship) fleets. I mainly focus on development and expansion for a good 200 or so turns, with the occasional border skirmish.

In a small map game this could be more of a concern, granted, you won't have that kind of time to build up.






Aroddo -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 7:45:44 PM)

just out of interest: how bad were the games with bad autoresolve?



Flaviusx -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 8:09:57 PM)

Sword if the Stars is bad on autoresolve for largely unavoidable reasons. (Numbers don't matter much in that game system since the amount of ships you can bring into combat is limited by command and control tech.)

The devs made deliberate design desicions in that game to place the focus of it on starships, not imperial management. So tech, ship design, and combat tactics matter no matter what, and there's a lot of rock, paper, scissors tactical minutiae to consider. Autoresolve cannot handle these nuances.

The economic and diplomatic aspects of the game are also...rather basic. Crude, even.

It's a great game up to a certain point. And then it just flounders due to time constraints. For those folks more interested in starship fleet combat, that game remains the gold standard. (Or at least midsize fleet combat, since fleet size is inherently limited, and the rest of the fleet is just there for reinforcements in excess of command limits.)

If you want to do the actual space empire thing from the imperial rather than starship captain's standpoint, this is the better game. 

I'm not sure at this point if it is even possible to design a single game that does both the micro and macro well.

Moo3 also had a rather flaky autoresolve. But that game failed on so many levels that it hardly mattered; it would have been a more serious failing if the game actually succeeded at the strategic scale it was supposed to be good at.

GalCiv2 I suppose "autoresolves" everything, it doesn't have an actual tactical engine.




Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Advice for new players (11/27/2009 8:35:39 PM)

MOO3's autoresolve was dead on arrival because the designers, incuding Alan Emrich, had never heard of Lancaster's Rule that combat power is the square of the numbers involved, all other things being equal. This results in the largest possible fleets, with the latest tech, consistently taking 5-10% losses in attacking planets defended only by planetary bases and a small system defense task force, whereas the same fleet would consistently take no losses under player control, or even under AI control using the tactical display and the Watch command (player watches the AI run his ships).

Given that almost all space battles are one-sided planet-bashing, consisting of a huge fleet against planets without defending starships, this consistent 5-10% loss is crippling in a strategic offensive. I always resolve all my MOO3 planetary attacks on player control. Its auto-resolve is satisfactory only when a large fleet is defending against a small fleet.



Rosseau -> RE: Advice for new players (11/28/2009 1:46:21 AM)

My advice when playing the humans is to edit the factions XML file and give yourself 4x the money to start. I know, it's shameful...



LarryP -> RE: Advice for new players (11/28/2009 2:42:58 AM)

And I without shame, did just that. It's wonderful having files to mod. [8D]



Zakhal -> RE: Advice for new players (11/28/2009 3:42:11 AM)

Im doing just fine with humies. I have like 95000 kredits and not a single rebellious planet. Diffuculty normal. I almost thought the game was too easy until my war on "kilrathi" changed totally with their spoiling attack on my border planet that totally wiped it out giving them full access to my inner planets. 



LarryP -> RE: Advice for new players (11/28/2009 4:06:30 AM)

Are you doing a lot of trading?



Zakhal -> RE: Advice for new players (11/28/2009 5:26:57 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: LarryP
Are you doing a lot of trading?

I have perhaps 10 missions. Mostly with allies. But I do have lots of good planets with asteroids etc too. I had a good starting place. Even the homeplanet was rich.



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