Good TG contest map available

geoschmo · #1 February 15th, 2001, 06:05 PM

Drake,

Took a look at your save game. The setting were about what I expected, with a few suprises though. A couple of questions from a strategy perspective...

All three racial techs are neat, but do you think you got enough benefit out of it to make it worth it? I guess I just haven't played the racial techs enough. I suppose that the facilities from the temporal and religous techs must give you some pretty impressive bonuses?

-50% on Happiness? Doesn't that make it hard to keep production levels up? I could see later in the game some of your facilities counter balancing that, but doesn't it cause problems early on?

Drake · #2 February 15th, 2001, 06:41 PM

Well, I'll address the happiness issue first. At 50%, an idle planet will go from jubilant to happy in 5 turns. (it'd be 8 turns if it was set to 80-100, range for that might be greater, didn't test it much).

As long as you build facilities and/or ships (actually completing them), it'll help to stave off happiness loss at that planet. I found that a planet building something every turn balanced out the increased happiness loss per turn. Since it's more effective to build the most expensive facility you can get done in the least amount of time, this helped boost happiness until I got the temporal vacation service facilities built.

For an idle planet, if you pick 50% happiness, you need a +4 or better to maintain your happiness level. All +happiness facilities are +1 to +3, except for the temporal vacation service, which is +2,+4,+6 for the three levels. Since I needed to research temporal early to get to the temporal space yards, getting the TVS facilities early was no big deal, and happened well before any of my planets were finished building and sitting idle for a few turns.

About the advanced racial tech: of the three I picked, temporal was the most important, followed by organic. As it turns out, because the value improvement facilities stack, religious wasn't necessary. I went with it at first because I thought it would double the max rate I could improve planets. If I had to do it over, I'd probably go with propulsion experts and take out the AI a few turns earlier. If I hadn't taken temporal, I would've set happiness to 80% instead, but since 50% is no big deal when coupled with TVS, I took advantage of the extra 300 pts. If I was in a war and losing battles I'd have problems with happiness loss, but that obviously wasn't a concern here.

-Drake

(spelling edit)

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 16 February 2001).]

geoschmo · #3 February 15th, 2001, 06:58 PM

I see, interesting. Very close to what I was doing although I had not tried the temporal tech at all yet. I can see now how that could make a diff.

I probably would have eventually. I have been doing a lot of expirimenting lately. Your 278 Mil has blown be out of the water and caused me to reevaluate what I thought was even possible.

Very well done.

Drake · #4 February 15th, 2001, 07:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
Your 278 Mil has blown be out of the water and caused me to reevaluate what I thought was even possible.

Very well done.

Thanks. I wouldn't be surprised if someone else surpasses me at this point, and breaks 300M. I think making even better use of the ringworlds is where I could lose some ground.

The planets I wasn't able to improve to max value were most likely system enhancement planets, or initially no atmosphere. If I'd gone with none to start, I think I would've gotten a better result with those planets.

In my particular game it would've been harder, because I only had one other CO2 breather. If you kept at it though, you could get another game with better balance in atmosphere types.

-Drake

Triumvir Emphy · #5 February 15th, 2001, 07:52 PM

Have they made illegal the following setup yet in the tournament??

merchant(the culture selection) +5% maintenance
20% maintenance bonus
equals a 25% bonus
which means you pay no maintenance on your ships and bases.

just curious, as i am sure that would kill a lot of competition, and i see it as a goof in the program.

geoschmo · #6 February 15th, 2001, 08:09 PM

Nyx kicked that one around, but the consensus was that maint was not going to be an issue for the top scorers, so it didn't need to be outlawed.

If you check the TG SEIV contest page it has the latest info on what is and isn't allowed.

No changes have been made recently.

Drake · #7 February 15th, 2001, 08:14 PM

Triumvir, that's what I thought at first, but it's no big deal. Consider that my resource output at the end of my game was over 70 million in each resource per turn. You don't need bases for score until the end of the game, and at that point the maintenance cost was insignificant.

Prior to that, you just need to make sure maintenance costs don't hamper your expansion. Once you get past the critical expansion/ship construction/ringworld construction phases, points put into lowering your maintenance costs are worthless, as they don't help your score and could've been used elsewhere.

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 15 February 2001).]