Cultivating your strategy
 

Cultivating your strategy

Hello fellow Emporers,Praetors and Omnicrons!

I have only been playing SEIV (non-gold) for a few short weeks but have been enjoying every minute of it. I have close to three thousand questions I still need answered but by discovering the simulator I hope to answer them myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Strategy! By the seven moons of atralius it's a difficult thing to develop and cultivate!

Devising a strategy seems to be a product of your surroundings, and isn't so effective when driven strictly by technology.

I have tried just running with a singular strategy in mind and have biased my tactical decisions to suit my strategy. This hasn't worked well for me once yet!

A few things I feel are important in the beginning of the game;

1.) Recon! Having a broad perspective of your surrounding systems and where (and how far) enemy/friendly races are is vital!

2.) Expansionism and military support go hand in hand, I can't seem to operate one without the other. So much boils down to an effective balance between managing your economy and having a long enough arm (militarily) to protect your fledgling
colonies.

3.) Racial techs don't win the game, I was really under the impression that the racial techs were show-stoppers. But like all things they all seem to have very effective counters.

4.) Automating orders (repeat) and making use of the sentry function are vital to creating a "fire & forget" defense.

I would like to see some of _your_ opinions on my newbie rant! I have so much to learn still before I become a challenging player, I need a guiding light!

~ Echo

[ January 02, 2003, 18:56: Message edited by: Echo Mirage ]

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Your're right they aren't really showstoppers, more ideas for role playing really. The faciliies are very cool, however, you just don't notice right away. Two examples:

Crystaline Restructuring: You build it, you save money on maintenance -- you don't notice the benefit at first, you just keep building ships -- and don't run out of money. Then you count your ships - Woah!

Gestation Vats: Again, you don't notice at first, then -- hey, who filled up all those planets?

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

Replicant Centers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Actually, the Religious Talismans can easily be a show-stopper if combined with a powerful economy.

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So what are a few good tips for building a strong economy? Mineral/Organic/Radioactive miners vs. Research facilities?

Never build Resource miners if the value of the resources is below 100%?

It's this stuff I need tips on more than the "Talismans rock!" tip. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

Don't force an absolute minimum value for building miners. I've built mineral miners on planets with a minerals value of 40 before. It all depends on the game and what you need. If you have plenty of planets with high values, use low value planets for research and such. If not, you may need more resources.

Monoliths (Stellar Manipulation tech) combined with a Resource Converter (Resource Manipulation) are the best way to build a strong economy. Also, expand like mad. Build tons of colony ships. Then, when you think you have enough, build more. Colonize every planet you can find. The more, the merrier! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">So what are a few good tips for building a strong economy? Mineral/Organic/Radioactive miners vs. Research facilities?

Never build Resource miners if the value of the resources is below 100%?

It's this stuff I need tips on more than the "Talismans rock!" tip. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Against the AI, I usually work like this:
Expand quickly, and go for the green planets first; the larger the better, and especially high percentage resource planets. Build a cheap space station with a space yard around your larger planets, so the station can pump out weapon platforms for early defense while the planet itself develops it's infrastructure.
Once you've expanded to the practical limit, then start filling in the litte greens and red planets, and build up resource storage on the more useless planets (low % resource). On the green planets with low resources, go nuts building research centers.
As long as you don't get attacked early, this will build up your economy so by turn 80-100 or so, you should easily be in the lead. Then it's just a matter of imposing your enlightened rule on the rest of the noble savages in the galaxy (mwahaha)

Against humans, I do pretty much the same thing, but of course hummies are far less predictable than the AI, so there really isn't any uber strategy (that I know of, at least http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Good luck!

EDIT: Oh, and don't forget: lay mines everywhere! Cheap defense against AI races.

Another EDIT: About the resources vs research (guns vs butter?) my philosphy is let the planet do what it does best. If it has a high mineral percentage, then mine away, if the radioactives % is high, then I build a few mining facilities and the rest research, if the %'s are low all around, just research facilities. It will all balance itself out in the end, in fact I usually end up with far more resources than I need to crush, er, enlighten the AI races.

I also try to put at least one cargo facility on each planet, to hold more weapon platforms.

[ January 02, 2003, 19:37: Message edited by: DarkHorse ]

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Or IF you place it on a ship with LONG range weapons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif beat em up before they can you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Cultivating your strategy
 

I have been playing people that are better than me and from the school of crumbling empires I have found a few nuggets of wisdom for SEIV.

1 Have the ablity to make a colony ship every turn.
2 If it has an orbit colonize it.
3 Fighters/carriers in the early stages of the game are indespensible.
4 He who cloaks first can have a big advantage.
5 cheap mines early in the game drastically ensures survival.
6 never stop expanding.
7 Get your population levels up and sent out to your colonies as quickly as possible. (production bonuses for population level is a big factor)
8 2 dozen 'Just as good ships' are better than 6 High quality well designed well trained ships.
9 no Idea is too dumb to try. (usally)
10 tech that increases production is a good choice in every situation. (notice I did not say best choice)
11 Have fun