DG Strategy Discussions

Harry Seldon · October 11, 2003, 12:21

Let's hash out some starting values and decisions here. I'm looking for advice from Ministers bakalov and Pave but chime in with your thoughts as well.

Bakalov had some questions:

1. Do we sell the starbase or hold onto it? I think we should keep it for now because we don't know where any of our opponents are now and I'd rather not leave us open in case we don't want to build ships right away. Bakalov, you're on defense so you can have final say on that.

2. Research order. I don't know enough about the tree to say which will come up when so any suggestions are welcome.

3. When to colonize? I generally wait to build colony ships until my home planet starts to reach max pop, so looking at the map I'd want to build housing until we hit around 15 pop before building any ships.

I don't generally adjust tax levels unless I'm in dire need so I'd like to leave them at initial levels. I also generally leave the pop distribution so that we have just enough food and put excess in either research or production depending on what my short term goal is at the moment. Pave is Minister of Affairs so it's up to him as to how people are distributed.

Since we got such a crappy star spread around us, I'm also leaning towards building a scout before a colony ship because we're going to need to expand or we're going to find ourselves boxed in later.

What does everyone think?

vmxa1 · October 11, 2003, 13:16

It seems to me that you have to choose between regular style or a blitz style. Then you can talk about how to proceed.
If this was a Uni, instead of +R and AHW, then I would prefer to
do nothing except to make a CB for all planets in the system.
Since it is not a Uni, I am not sure if that is the best way to go.
The colonies will not grow worth a crap with this race unless you get a cloner on them. This suggest that a CB to start may not be so useful for this race.

The research is straight forward in the early going.

vmxa1 · October 11, 2003, 13:25

Star Base selling for this race is a bit less desirable, as it has low production values and will not replace it quickly for some time.
I do not know if we have that much time or not, probably we do.
We will not be very productive until we have AF and Robos in place and a full planet.
The idea of selling the SB is to get the cash to buy RL and AF on the colonies and save the cost of the maint. This is probably a good plan for most maps. If the planets are all going to be poor, we will need all the help we can get. Raising taxes is just free money, if you do it for short periods of time. This race will bebefit from jumping to 50% some where in the game. I would think when you have 14 or so pop, until you have bought a few of the structures for the colonies.

I would not worry too much about being attack real early, if this race is jumped before turn 100, it is likely to be toast anyway.

Whoha · October 11, 2003, 14:44

1. Do we sell the starbase or hold onto it? I think we should keep it for now because we don't know where any of our opponents are now and I'd rather not leave us open in case we don't want to build ships right away. Bakalov, you're on defense so you can have final say on that:

Keep the starbase, we don't know where everyone is, and the ai will attack us early if we get caught with our pants down without it.

2. Research order. I don't know enough about the tree to say which will come up when so any suggestions are welcome.

Electronic computers -> research labs ->reinforced hull ->autofactories -> nuclear engines/freighters

I think everyone can agree on this pathway.

3. When to colonize? I generally wait to build colony ships until my home planet starts to reach max pop, so looking at the map I'd want to build housing until we hit around 15 pop before building any ships.

once we have the auto factory and a freighter built we should build a colony base.

I think that we should decide on general orders and you should play for 20 turns or until you finish those orders.

Whoha · October 11, 2003, 14:46

Scout -> colony ship,

and don't raise taxes until far later when you have to. If you get a leader go ahead and post it and let everyone decide on whether or not to hire the person.

vmxa1 · October 11, 2003, 15:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Whoha
Keep the starbase, we don't know where everyone is, and the ai will attack us early if we get caught with our pants down without it.

Electronic computers -> research labs ->reinforced hull ->autofactories -> nuclear engines/freighters

I think everyone can agree on this pathway.

once we have the auto factory and a freighter built we should build a colony base.

I think that we should decide on general orders and you should play for 20 turns or until you finish those orders.

I am not opposed to keeping the SB, but really if we are going to be attack before we have MB we are probably toast. This is not a race that will match the monster production races in the earliest part of the game.

I would agree with that tech plan, IF we are not going to blitz. If we are, then you need to do no research until you get CB's up.
You then need to get freighters first, then the RL/AF.
This race does not need to be in a rush to learn to fly, unless you have hopes of some miracle systems close at hand.
So if we do not want to blitz, then I agree get the RL/AF then freighters and CB. Slap an OP on any good planets, until you can get CS.

To start the game, 20 turns is just too small of a block. You need to go to around turn 40. After that you can have smaller blocks. Lots of dead time in those first couple of dozen turns and all the choices will have been made.

To tell you the truh, I do not know if this is a good blitz race, without being Uni.

Pave · October 12, 2003, 06:48

Quote:

1. Do we sell the starbase or hold onto it? I think we should keep it for now because we don't know where any of our opponents are now and I'd rather not leave us open in case we don't want to build ships right away. Bakalov, you're on defense so you can have final say on that.

I say we should keep the starbase, unless were in really big problem. If (and when) we need money, tax the people. I´d like to put the tax rate to 10%, if you dont mind.

Quote:

2. Research order. I don't know enough about the tree to say which will come up when so any suggestions are welcome.

Electronic computers -> research labs ->reinforced hull ->autofactories -> nuclear engines/freighters

Goes for me.

Quote:

3. When to colonize? I generally wait to build colony ships until my home planet starts to reach max pop, so looking at the map I'd want to build housing until we hit around 15 pop before building any ships.

No comments yet.

Pave · October 12, 2003, 06:58

As for the population distributing, leave them as now, its good now.

vmxa1 · October 12, 2003, 12:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Pave
As for the population distributing, leave them as now, its good now.

You need to pop shufle in the first 100 turns to get the most from them. When and how to shuffle will depend on how you want to play the race.
Blitz style means going 3/5/0 start CB
Reg style means going 3/1/4

Then you may want to go with some form of research shuffle. This is where you move some pop off of research when you get to some percentage of completetion. I use greater than 60%. You ofen can get the break through with either 0 or 1 scientist and gain the accumulation of industry for whatever you are working on or even just trade. This method often lets me get my CB up in half the time, while still get maximum research.
Once I get past having a few colonies I stop doing it as I have enough to do and I don't really care about the small edge.

Harry Seldon · October 13, 2003, 08:53

I've never played impossible before but I usually play more along the lines of your regular style. Pave advises to leave them so leave them I will. I'll run through the first five tonight and post an AAR and save.

bakalov · October 13, 2003, 11:07

Star base selling is good if we want to colonize some planets early ... unfortunately there are no good planets to colonize. In huge galaxy aliens never attack before turn ~90. Usually if you sell the star base this is the proper time to rebuild it. It takes ~4 turns to do so at that time and you can save many turns needed for early colonization if you sell it.

Creatives have a much better (imo) and cheaper structure for defence - Missile base. We can build it in emergency very fast.

The Star base still needs to be rebuilt because of the command points.

vmxa1 · October 13, 2003, 13:07

That is about the size of it. Even if you had a SB and a MB, this race will not have any ships that could be effective by turn 100.
What that means is that if a race shows up to attack it wil be with several ships and they will just blockade you, if they can not defeat the defense. This race will then have to put many workers on food and all progress will go into the toilet.
So I say again, if they come for us before turn 100, we will have big problems. Sell the SB or not. We must have more time to be sucessful. In a huge map, we should be able to get more time.
Chances are good, no one will be able to reach us before T130.
We may have contact before that, but still be out of their range.
If it turns out that a wormhole is nearby, then it will be painful.

vmxa1 · October 13, 2003, 13:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Harry Seldon
I'll run through the first five tonight and post an AAR and save.

What do you mean the first five? Not turns? I mean you will need to play much farther than that. You should play to arount 3504.0.
which is turn 40.

Harry Seldon · October 13, 2003, 14:24

I thought our constitution stated five turns then discussion. I'd rather do more myself but I also don't want to ruin this by heading down a path no one agrees with.

vmxa1 · October 13, 2003, 14:47

You may be right about that, but I predict that 5 turns will kill the game. All that will happen in the first 20 to 40 turns will be standard moves.
At a 5 turns per block pace this game will last forever. I don;t remember voting on any turns, but that could be my problem.
I surely would have opposed it loudly.

Sharpe · October 13, 2003, 14:56

How about the ministers decide on what to build and a recommendation on how to destribute workers (farmer,worker,scientist) and then as many as they want join the President in a turn chat on IRC while he plays to give advice re where to explore, whether to hire any leaders that pop up, etc.

And then stop playing for an AAR when the first few builds are done.

Harry Seldon · October 13, 2003, 16:17

The only problem with chat is that the ministers and I are from different sides of the world and it may be hard to coordinate a time we can all be online. Someone had mentioned doing five turns a week later in the game but I don't see why we have to in the beginning. Why don't I just do ten turns a day and post the game until we get to some good stuff?

vmxa1 · October 13, 2003, 17:33

Harry, play out 10 urns and see where that puts you. If you feel it is too few paly 10 more and see. We can always back up if it is a problem. It is not like we are going to get any advantage if these first 30-40 turns.

Iasius · October 13, 2003, 21:46

This reminds me of why my last LAN game of moo2 failed. We had someone new to multiplayer moo2 there and he was busy designing and naming ships on turn 1.
With a race like this we probably don't really need to discuss anything more than a basic outline for the first 50 or so turns.
We won't meet any races (hopefully, if I meet anyone this early, I'm usually dead with a creative race). Research could be areed upon earlier and shifting pop around is not a biggie either.
So I think we agreed somewhere on a basic research plan, why don't we carry that out until it's done or something important happens.
With such a strong research race, we probably won't do much else than research and build improvements for nearly 100 turns.

Harry Seldon · October 13, 2003, 22:16

Just posted a save roughly twenty-five turns in. Left pop where they were, raised taxes to 10% per Pave, and researched Electronic Computers, Research Labs, and currently working on Biospheres. I'll pull reinforced hulls next, then autofactories. Production of houses but switched to Research Lab. We have a minister in the queue that gives a ten percent bonus to finances. I say we take him because he's only 30bc +1 and we can drop him later. Download this from the savegame thread.

vmxa1 · October 13, 2003, 23:28

Harry, just an FYI, but this is what I would have suggested:

T0 3/1/5 R-EC (if you elect to not make a CB
T4 R-RL
T13 buy RL and start R-hulls
T14 RP is 40
T16 R-AF
T20 hire Crassis
T21 buy AF and research Freighters (going to make that CB now

So at turn 21 I already have my AF up and running. Bio/Hydro can be done now if you wish to wait on the CB. The thing is you need to get the two colonies in motion, even if they are weak.
Actually one is huge and will eventually be very productive.
I did this with no pop shuffle.

If I go with CB, I would have founded III on turn 18. This is arguably better as you can buy an RL there and get that 5 rp every turn while it houses and sends pop to the HW to fill it up.
You could soon do the same to the other planet.

T22 save to check out:

bakalov · October 14, 2003, 07:05

Vmxa, settling these planets is not a good idea because of the Heavy Gravity on the huge one, and the Poor on the other. With -20% morale you will not be getting more than one production point. Stick up with the homeworld, imo.

Taxing: taxing is not good idea, because it taxes the production, not the population. And the production is what is our weakness and we must not weaken ourselves further.

Harry Seldon · October 14, 2003, 08:45

Pave is MoA so you'll have to convince him on taxes. I'd like to get some colonies going as well but I'm content to wait for now. Soon I'd like another if for nothing else pop points for invasions later on. The poor planet can crank out food and would let us push production up on our main planet.

V, too many acronyms

but I think I get the gist of it. I'll download your game and take a look at it either late tonight or tomorrow (Matrix Reloaded's out today. Sorry). What would you suggest we do with the game I posted? It sounds like you're wanting colony bases, reinforced hulls, and autofactories. How does everyone feel about this path?

Also, what about our finance leader? Shall we pick him up?

bakalov · October 14, 2003, 10:26

If you play it properly you should be able to research Supercomputers at ~T56 and build Robo Miners at ~T81
I suggest the following research path:
1)Research Labs
2)Automated factories
3)Biospheres & farms
4)Soil & Clonning (Clonning here because there are no pop farms in our system!)
5)Supercomputers
6)Robo miners

Then there are two options - to go for missile ships or to go for beam ships. Very good beam ship can be built ~T110. Such ship usually can conquer an entire enemy race alone.

bakalov · October 14, 2003, 10:30

Pave, I think you have to reconsider your offer for 10% tax ...

Pave · October 14, 2003, 11:15

Ok, taxes to zero. I would said that earlier but Harry already made the turn. I´ll also want to distribut population as Blitz style aka 3/4/1 (we do need someone to research) but after we made the Colony base we put population as regular aka 3/1/4 or 3/2/3.

Techpath I`d like to keep it as it is (we need some ships) but after that we could do as bakalov suggested.

If someone doesn´t like my plans, please say it.

Harry, can we play the turns after everyone has accepted it (aka president says do we play it and everybody says yes or no).

Harry Seldon · October 14, 2003, 12:02

That sounds fine. I'm a DG newbie so stop me if I get excited. I may want clarification on my responsibilities. Do I just play the turns listed or can I make judgement calls as I see fit? Within reason, of course.

vmxa1 · October 14, 2003, 12:04

Quote:

Originally posted by bakalov
Vmxa, settling these planets is not a good idea because of the Heavy Gravity on the huge one, and the Poor on the other. With -20% morale you will not be getting more than one production point. Stick up with the homeworld, imo.

Taxing: taxing is not good idea, because it taxes the production, not the population. And the production is what is our weakness and we must not weaken ourselves further.

Taxes I would leave alone, I rarely use this, only when I am spending myself into a hole and only for a few turns. It will also hurt your morale.

Yes what you say is true, you can but the RL/AF and Cloner and it will be running fair. Then get Robo/Comp and it will be making a decent conribution. You will want that extra RP as the HW will have to do most of the ship building for a long time.

Anyway, I have no problem with the research first route. The thing is you will need some planets and you are not likely to get any good ones for some time. If you get started fairly early you can make the huge a solid partner. You will have bio/farms and them terraform, followed by a grav gen and it will soon be able to take over the ship building.

vmxa1 · October 14, 2003, 12:15

Quote:

Originally posted by Harry Seldon

V, too many acronyms

but I think I get the gist of it. I'll download your game and take a look at it either late tonight or tomorrow (Matrix Reloaded's out today. Sorry). What would you suggest we do with the game I posted? It sounds like you're wanting colony bases, reinforced hulls, and autofactories. How does everyone feel about this path?

Also, what about our finance leader? Shall we pick him up?

Yes, pick him up.At 30BC he will soon pay a dividend.
Come on the are easy to figure out.

He is my std list:
Worker dispositions are shown as x/y/z, where:
x= number of workers on food production
y= number of workers on industry
z= number of workers on research

R-abc denotes I started a new research project this turn and abc is the name of it.

AF= automated factory
CB= colony base
CS= colony ship
HW= homeworld
OP= outpost
PP= Pollution Processor
RL= research labs
SA= Space Academy
SB= star base
srt stands for started

As to the game underway, it does not matter to me. I just wanted to toss out one perspective for you to see. I know that Balakov was aware of the concept.
I just wanted you to see how getting the RL and AF first was very powerful. They will be adding extra production and RP for the rest of the game.
The idea of what next is up for grabs, but the first 20 or so turns is not up for grabs and really needs to proceed in either the Blitz or the std method. This would be different for a race such as UniTol. They need to go blitz and get scouts out to see where to send OP/CS

Harry Seldon · October 14, 2003, 13:32

I've never played like this before so this is a bit of an eye opener. I've probably played this game a thousand times and I tend to research whatever I think I need at the moment. I never paid much attention to what tech I had except to see if it was top level stuff. Cool.