Overwhelmed new player » Forum Post by paralaje

Don't worry; this game is, uh, it's got a lot going on. That's why it's awesome. Here're your answers:

1) Mining base sits on an asteroid. It gives you additional manufacturing points (mp). You'll notice that on your planet's factory, if you click on it, it shows you the MP it generates (in purple) and the BC it costs to maintain that building (in red). You use MP's to build things. What an mining base does it give additional MP's to the planet it is beaming to (look for the gray line that connects a mining base to a planet).

You can reassign a mining base to a different planet by clicking on the mining base and clicking the Assign button that shows up in the control bar. Then select the target planet.

The nice thing about mining bases: unlike MP's from the planet's improvemens (aka buildings), the MP's a mining base generates don't cost you anything. Normally, a traditional factory costs 3bc to maintain. On top of that, it can generate a maximum of 4mp's per turn, if you run at 100% production (ask about sliders, if you don't know what I mean by %production). But it costs 1BC to generate each mp. So to generate 4mp from the traditional factory, it'll cost you 7BC total (3 maintenance, 4 production). A mining base costs you 0.

2) Look for the brightly colored icons floating in space around the map. If you land a constructor on top of the colored icons, it becomes a mining starbase. It gives you a civilization-wide bonus to your corresponding thingy. Blue resource = influence bonus, Green resource = economy bonus, Yellow resource = happiness / approval bonus, etc...

If you send another Constructor on top of the existing mining starbase, you can improve your bonus even more. See here:

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Starbase_module

(scroll down midway to Mining Modules. The tech listed is the prerequisite before you can build that additional mining module on the mining starbase)

3) Most people agree that selling influence is a good (albeit cheap) way to generate some cash flow. If you don't own over half the IP's during a United Planets meeting, then sell em off. It's a pain in the ass, but it lands you some money to do business.

4) Economic bases do overlap, and the bonus is additive.

I'm not an expert, but I believe an All Economy empire is quite difficult to run. Most people say do a traditional mix until you get the hang of it. Regardless, you want lots of Economy improvements, so you're not wrong in that respect, but you have to balance it against tech research (or the other empires will just show up with big ships and take your stuff) and actually manufacturing some defenses (telling the other empires "I know how to make Big Guns" won't stop them from taking your stuff unless you actually have a Big Gun).

Also, note that the main source of your Economy is not Trade, it's Taxation. Trade brings in some bonus cash, but if you want a strong Economy (and you do), concentrate on Taxes first. Taxes are based on your population(s), so you need lots of planets mostly full of people. Population grows according to your Approval per planet... Approval is based on your Tax rate (plus improvements that improve morale / happiness). So that's your first metagame, balancing Taxes and Population. Look here for a little more info:

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Population

Basically, if the planet has 100% approval, your population growth rate doubles. If you have above 75% approval, you get a bonus (not doubling, but any bonus is nice). If you have above 41%, your population grows at its base rate. If you have below 21%, your population falls.

Hope that makes some sense!

Successfully updated karma reason!

As a quick note - that first colony ship Frogboy kindly gifts you?

Beat him with a wiffle bat - IT'S A TRAP!!!!!

For, ah, a couple reasons.

First of all, like your flagship, it's actually not a ship you can reproduce until later in the game, so it's wasted on the second world in your star-system. That world will, ah, suck until you have some of the techs from the terraforming tree, and if you take that ship out from home world and colonize a reasonable good planet towards the edge of it's range, you'll have a much larger area to explore at the start.

But that's just a mistake, the actual trap that Frogboy has kindly set you up for is the fact that it has space for 250 million colonist . . . but only actually has 100 million loaded up. Since your initial colonies cost 10bc/week to maintain and don't make a profit till your tax base is high enough to pay for those 10bc, the curve between 100million colonists and 250 million colonists is a couple extra months of keeping your belt tight because you're still paying for the initial colony maintenance on that first colony.

One of the few real irritants I have with the game in fact - I've restarted games because I suddenly realized I f*cked up and didn't top off that colony ship - it's the *only* time in the game a colony ship doesn't automatically start topped off.

Actually, *my* theory is that I don't ever build the default 250 million colonist ships in the game - the first thing I do is rip out the life support systems and engines and drop *three* colony pods in those bad boys - Other disagree (They move slower and have a shorter range), but I think you save enough time getting colonies up to being profitable to make it worth it. But I only play at tough, so there is legitimate reason to question my competence on the issue - {G}.

Hope that helps - Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!

Jonnann, you forgot to mention how to top up that colony ship

Just move it into orbit around your homeworld (move it "into" the homeworld), then take it out of orbit again. When it leaves orbit you get a choice of how many colonists you want to take with you.

And yes, it is mindboggling why they made that design decision.

Successfully updated karma reason!

On top of that, it can generate a maximum of 4mp's per turn

5 if it's right next to the planet in question, and you forgot to mention upgrading them, which IMHO is the only thing that makes them anywhere close to worthwhile.

5 mp/5 weeks, 10 mp/10 more weeks, 20 mp/20 more weeks, and finally 30 mp/20 more weeks. So the second and third stages are the most useful-particularly as while your 5 may round down to 4 due to distance, your 10 will probably round down to 9.

But otherwise spot on.

@Jonnan

Why are you still not playing Breeder? I drop a 250M colony ship on a planet and 3 turns later I can fill up another colony ship at that planet with 250M pop while still having 250M pop on the (newly colonized) planet!

I do recall us having this discussion previously and I did concede that 500M colony ships are far superior to 250M colony ships when Breeder isn't your SA, but I still believe that 750M colony ships are quite probably not worth it, albeit useful in some situations. The extra cost is one thing, the lower speed is another, but I don't see how when running a non-Breeder empire you can afford to fill 750M colony ships. That's five turns without any bonuses, at 100% approval no less, and even at Tough that should be Suicidal.

Successfully updated karma reason!

What good is 750M colonizers (for the duration of the Colony-Rush, btw) if they can't get there or anywhere first? Empire wide Morale is also a big concern, since (for much of the early growth) they will certainly drain economy rather than supplementing to it all.

The key figure to me is 6bil on a planet before starting to spit out true local production and only IF the income is above spending including maintenance... otherwise, your taxes go to waste (Republic helps, but that's a different issue).

Proof being that the stock default colony ships for X-Worlds aren't available at all and not until IonDrive, with more range and a tricky sensor (to defeat the hidden planet while entering a new system)... i resisted the need for 250+ cargo holds but there is a very good reason as explained above. Besides, the only way to make a planet grow faster is to bring some fresh population in by a second wave of colony ships (possibly upgraded as much as possible with faster engines, and now with any of those decisive and essential 750M+ modules too) or wait for the regular patterns to slowly but surely add numbers to the initial tax payers on the surface.

Fertility clinic and other "enhancing projects" excluded of course.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Wow...

It took you until the 3rd paragraph to mention X-Worlds. You're getting better at that.

+2

Successfully updated karma reason!

LAMO+++

you get karma for that one Piz

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hey paralaje, I'm still pretty much a beginner so here's some concise advice and explanations from one beginner to another:

First off, your specific questions have more or less been addressed.

Second, like it's been said, you're wrong to go for the first planet you see. The planet in your system is a pity planet at only 4, it's not high on your priority list. Select a colony ship, and look at the minimap. make sure you can see stars. You'll be able to see the range you can go and when you turn on the 'ownership' highlights, you can see where other races are (and where they'd likely expand) Generally, you'll want to find and capture the nicest juiciest planets as quickly as you can. Not only do you get bonuses for planet quality, you can build many more buildings.

As for economy buildings, the basic ecomnomy works like this:

You get money mainly from taxes. The more people on a planet, the more taxes you get. The more economic buildings on a planet (such as trade centers etc) the more money you get from tax collection. So you can see how having a slow reproduction rate/low number of initial colonists don't generat e alot of moolah, there simply aren't a lot of people to tax.

Factories build things, like ships and buildings. The more factories you have, the quicker it can do so. BUT, theose factories can only operate at the level you set the slider to in the economic screen. So you can have tons of factories but they won't do a thing if they don't receive money.

Research buildings increase research, but again it depends how much money you give them. Just remember that research and factories are essentially money gobblers, you get money from taxes and the more people on a planet the more taxes you get.

here's what I do specifically at the start of the game:

General rule: get as many planets and minable resources (those little colourful dots) as fast as you can.

- Set my flagship to autosurvey (the money it can find is neccessary as there's always an economic dropoff)

- set production to 100%, and for the sliders I usually bring research down a bit so planetary improvements and ships can be built quicker (that and reseach is hell on money)

- Rush buy a factory and a scout ship on my main planet. The factory helps build a few more factories, then a mix of economy buildings and research centres. It also helps with the speed that new colony ships and constructors are spat out. The scout is relatively cheap and can help me be more efficient in actually finding nice planets.

- top off the colony ship and send it to explore towards the edge of my range, heading to other empires, checking on stars along its path for nice worlds. the reson I head to other empires is that they're probably going to expand along my way, taking up some nice systems.

- I work from outwards in, taking planets at the fringe of my range and then eventually working on getting the interior and less valuable planets. Since it will take a longer time for the enemy to reach into my space, so I try to head them off at the pass.

- When building on a planet, the first few nice ones I find are economic based. I build economic buildins, as well as approval buildings (if the aproval is higher the reproduction rate will increase) I've also taken to creating influence buildings on my eco planets, as I thought I read more planetary influence increases tourism. Tourism itself is important economically.

- I try to find 3 good quality worlds for each of my capitals: production capitals either have tons of spaces or have tiles with manufacturing bonuses and are closer to the galactic center. Research and economic capitals can be anywhere, as long as the economic one has more tiles. I also might have a few more manufacturing planets (I play more of a conquer them after I researched incredible tech, so I don't need a lot of manufacturing areas) Manufacturing takes up money whether your building something or not, so if you have a lot of factories or research centers on a planet it probably won't do well economically. The general rule is make more economy based planets then the others.

- I wait to trade. It's more important to get as many colony ships and contructors out there to get plents and take and upgrade mining bases. Only after I have everything I can get without force I start building freighters.

- From there it's waiting until the economy gets better, then... whatever you wish. I usually try to get a head start in research, taking a few weeks off to spurt out a few high-tech war machines to deter invasion.

-----------------

Anyways I hope all that helped (I hope it's at least somewhat accurate too)

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm going to apologize in advance for possibly derailing the thread and more importantly probably contributing to more overwhelmingness.

What good is 750M colonizers (for the duration of the Colony-Rush, btw) if they can't get there or anywhere first? Empire wide Morale is also a big concern, since (for much of the early growth) they will certainly drain economy rather than supplementing to it all.

Hi Zyx! Apologies for not responding to you directly, but I was more so having this discussion with Jonnan, and it appears you agree with me on that, so there's not much to say.

Well, the 750M pop planets are earning you more money than the 250M pop planets ever were (call it 73% more), and they're growing faster, too. (Side note: This means two 250M planets earn you more money than a single 750M planet-but they also cost you more.)

But if your homeworld can't grow fast enough to put out 750M pop colony ships, and they're base speed plus bonuses and you're only kicking them out once every 4-5 turns, you're a lot better off with 500M pop colony ships.

Jonnan, you're talking about building a 205BC, 2 speed (3 speed with Impulse Drive researched) colony ship. The 500M pop colony ship can fit an impulse drive in instead of a third colony module for 4/5 speed respectively, at the same cost. This is somewhat less relevant if you're taking points in speed, but if you're not taking Breeder, you'd better be taking pop growth, and between pop growth and speed, you won't have much left over for...research, military production, social production, economics, all that good stuff.

The other thing to keep in mind is that while your ships are in transit, that population isn't growing. With no bonuses, a 500M planet will become a 750M planet in 6-7 turns (assuming a 4% growth rate due to being custom race-with no spored growth [almost unheard of], the 6th turn has you sitting at 732M). Taking the 40% customization point growth bonus makes this a 4 turn ordeal (756M with no spored growth).

So if the colony in question is anywhere from 15 parsecs/one sector out from the launch point, which is your homeworld, (at 40% pop growth bonus and 2/4 speed) to 49 parsecs/just over 3 sectors out (at 0% pop growth bonus, 7 turns, 3/5 speed) or if you'd prefer 40 parsecs out/just under 3 sectors (at 0% pop growth bonus, 6 turns, 3/5 speed), it will grow faster with a 500M pop ship colonizing it due to it getting there sooner.

-

For what it's worth, I always colonize my secondary. Back when I played as Thalans, I didn't have a secondary, but I'd colonize the first planet I ran across ~90% of the time, regardless of class. Now, granted, I'm going to hit the population cap on that class 4 real fast, but my strategy involves researching for the first 5 or 6 turns before I start spitting out a colony ship per turn per planet, so the extra 14 research does wonders. (38 to 24 is 58% more research.) Even though my start is slowed somewhat, it works fine as low as small maps (tiny is another story entirely), with a decent amount of planets at least. Medium or larger is preferred, though.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Neilo

Join Date 04/2006

+128

Imdeed!!!

+2 Karma.

Successfully updated karma reason!

You might also try reading through this online strategy guide:

http://www.jeffpinard.com/Dark%20Avatar.htm

It is dated, but it has some helpful info. It is a good introduction to many features of the game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Sole Soul,

reply 4

On top of that, it can generate a maximum of 4mp's per turn
5 if it's right next to the planet in question, and you forgot to mention upgrading them, which IMHO is the only thing that makes them anywhere close to worthwhile.

5 mp/5 weeks, 10 mp/10 more weeks, 20 mp/20 more weeks, and finally 30 mp/20 more weeks. So the second and third stages are the most useful-particularly as while your 5 may round down to 4 due to distance, your 10 will probably round down to 9.

But otherwise spot on.

@Jonnan

Why are you still not playing Breeder? I drop a 250M colony ship on a planet and 3 turns later I can fill up another colony ship at that planet with 250M pop while still having 250M pop on the (newly colonized) planet!

I do recall us having this discussion previously and I did concede that 500M colony ships are far superior to 250M colony ships when Breeder isn't your SA, but I still believe that 750M colony ships are quite probably not worth it, albeit useful in some situations. The extra cost is one thing, the lower speed is another, but I don't see how when running a non-Breeder empire you can afford to fill 750M colony ships. That's five turns without any bonuses, at 100% approval no less, and even at Tough that should be Suicidal.

Because I'm having too much fun with Xenophobe right now? Screw the terrans and their happy stellar folder whatsis, I have influence over better than half the galaxy and those ships are going nowhere.

I just don't get all that much out of breeder that I can't get just as well by using large 750 pop colony ships - and then have the bennies of something else as well. Maybe this will bite me in the arse when I go up levels, but it hardly seems to be a 'suicidal' strategem at Tough. At any rate *I* win consistently at Tough, doing this.

I only get 4X population growth at 100% morale. Slowing the Terran navy to a slow crawl? That's forever! - {G}

Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!

Just FYI, no, it works for me with no population bonus.

Speed +20

Research +20

Morale +10

Luck +25

Creativity +25

Altarian Tech Tree

Super-Isolationist

Technologist party.

Immense Map

I could understand if you were of the opinion that this was sub-optimum, but you keep insisting that it's suicidal and it quite obviously is not. I'm going to start naming my CS-750 colony ships the "Bumblebee" class in honor of your continued insistance that they can't possibly fly - {G}

Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Piznit,

reply 6

Wow...

It took you until the 3rd paragraph to mention X-Worlds. You're getting better at that.

..!

Successfully updated karma reason!

I could understand if you were of the opinion that this was sub-optimum, but you keep insisting that it's suicidal and it quite obviously is not. I'm going to start naming my CS-750 colony ships the "Bumblebee" class in honor of your continued insistance that they can't possibly fly - {G}

That was a joke. I capitalized Suicidal; I thought it was obvious.

I also ran the math, and showed it, and the +speed is actually perhaps even more important than the +population growth, at least as far as a break-even point goes. (With your stats and setup, once again assuming impulse drive is researched, you're going to have the 750M and the 500M equal each other's pop growth at around 111 parsecs-or 7.4 sectors. This is definitely not an efficient way to go about it, particularly as you could easily design a strategy around the 500M ships and lose less people from your homeworld, but for your strategy, it's not that bad.)

If you're only colonizing from your homeworld on an immense map with a 205BC colony ship, that is sub-optimal.

I only get 4X population growth at 100% morale.

No, you only get 2x at 100%. Breeder gets 4x that for 8x.

-

As a side note, in DA and TA, pop growth bonuses factor in twice. They factor in after base growth has been determined (up to 75M before bonuses), but they also help to determine base growth. I can't remember if this applies for DL as well or not, but I think it doesn't.

-A civ with no bonuses reaches capped base growth (75M) at 1875M (custom race, 4% growth).
-A civ with a 40% bonus reaches capped base growth (75*1.4=105M) at ~1339M.
-A civ with a 90% bonus (customization points, aphrodisiac) reaches capped base growth (75*1.9=142) at ~987M.

So really, if you want to have any hope of competing with Breeder (simply as far as population growth goes-the rest of their game isn't quite so good), you almost need population growth bonuses.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mmm - Given the context of our previous discussions on this, and the specificity of the qualifier "even on Tough", I think I can cop to having missed any sarcastic intent without admitting to any extraordinary faults.

That said. What can I say. Either I'm missing something running the numbers, or you are, and at this point, having run it at 250, 500, and 750, and having results that basically agree with the way I ran the numbers, in my opinion you are in fact missing something. I will concede I can make it more efficient still by doing 'mixed' systems, such as 250m colonizers backed by 750m 'ferry' transports and so on, but that's getting into more micromanagement than i care to do on a regular basis, so I quit messing with it.

But all in all - 250< 500<750 No matter how you cut it, you can build two 750m transport in less time than you can build three 500m transports or six x 250, because it means you're building *just* two frames and six colony pods, rather than 6 frames, 6 colony pods, 6 engine sets, and 6 life support systems. Each coloniy seems to start becoming 'profitable' at around 1-1.5 billion colonists, and those two colonies are profitable, and themselves able to send out colony pods, months sooner than the 6 colonies they're competing with.

They're both exponential growth patterns and therefore by definition follow the same basic curve, but you're trading off a lower power for a higher base - in the short run, you come out ahead, but over the longer haul, the lower base/higher power will eventually cross your curve.

Even a 400% multiplier doesn't change that- it just changes how far down the curves cross, and not by as much as I think you're giving it credit for.

Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!

Mmm - Given the context of our previous discussions on this, and the specificity of the qualifier "even on Tough", I think I can cop to having missed any sarcastic intent without admitting to any extraordinary faults.

I could have made it more obvious. My apologies.

In any case I assumed due to lack of information that your intent was to break even as far as population depletion rate from the homeworld goes, which as stated above would in fact result in a five turn build time for a 750M colony ship, and the build time itself is suicidal, although not necessarily the ship itself.

For the sake of our argument it would be helpful to have some idea of just exactly how fast you're building these Bumblebees, as I've attempted to use math again to sway you to the dark side, and have had to make assumptions due to lack of information yet again.

I've assumed a three turn build for it below, which requires 69 military on the homeworld per turn, as well as reducing your population by 100M each turn due to the growth rate being slower than the launch rate. A two turn build would result in a whopping 225M/turn loss, and given your lack of military production bonuses, there's no way you could reach the requisite 205 industry necessary to put out one per turn, at least during the colony rush itself, although that would result in an even more impressive 500M/turn population loss from the homeworld. (You'd need industrial sectors and the manufacturing capital at 100% military funding, for God's sake, with 15 mp from mines no less. If you completely terraformed the planet first, it'd be doable with advanced factories and the manu cap, again with the mines. Don't tell me you're researching space mining and upgrading your mines during the rush?)

No matter how you cut it, you can build two 750m transport in less time than you can build three 500m transports or six x 250

But you can't fill them as fast. Which is all I'm arguing, really. (Well, except for the part where I argued that 500M colonies could outgrow 750M colonies due to how long they took to get there, but with your chosen stats you'll run into that scenario rarely enough that it's not a major concern.)

Considering you're not running any engines anyway, you might consider doing 250M colony ships instead-3x75BC is only 225BC, a mere 20BC more than your current industry output necessary for 750M. Assuming a three turn build for your 750M ship, and since they're the same speed, the first 250M ship saves you two turns, the second one saves you four, and the third one then saves you six. You start having colonies equaling the 750M ship's growth, due to how much later the 750M ship would arrive, around your eighth ship (16 turns saved), since 250M takes around 15 turns to grow to 750M with no bonuses.

If you'd prefer the average rather than the minimum (that is, the point at which the combined growth of all the 250M pop colonies is more than the combined growth of all the 750M pop colonies at the same point in time), you'd only need 15 ships (30 turns saved). With the 750M ships, this would be an investment of 45 turns or 11.25B pop (and since you'll only grow 6.75B during this time, that means you lose 4.5B pop off your home planet).

You can of course run the numbers as a two turn 250M ship and a five or six turn 750M ship, but quite frankly that only makes the numbers worse for your point.

So I have a question for you, Jonnan-do you ever colonize less than 15 planets? How about less than 8?

it just changes how far down the curves cross, and not by as much as I think you're giving it credit for.

Right-because of the extra effect that pop growth bonuses have in DA and TA. All the more reason to take them.

Trivia for the day: Using DA Thalans with their inherent +25 economics and due to the fact that they start with xeno economics, when taking +30% economic from customization points and Federalist, while running a tax rate that still allows your population to grow, you can break even on 250M pop colonies. Actually, I think it was a minimal net profit-2 or 3BC per colony.

Successfully updated karma reason!

You *can* fill them as fast, because (until you drop below the max pop growth level) worrying about keeping your homeworld population up is wasted worry. Sure, you lose a little bit on the tax base - but you're not paving homeworld over with stockmarkets yet anyway, so the extra population is making you a *lot* less than you're saving by getting these extra colonies to become profitable asap.

Given that 1billion population = 10bc tax base, every unit of population *below* that is pure economic loss. If I could feasibly get to planetary invasion quickly and drop 1.25 billion colony pods to fre 'em up, I would (My current, end game colonies - 1 colony pod, 7 troop modules; 3.75 billion colonies at a drop, plus you can invade enemy homeworlds 'en passant' - {G})

And I suppose that's the end of the argument for me - before I did this, I had to manage my economy. Now my colonies are profitable so much faster it's silly to worry about it. Breeder *could* have the same effect for me, but it's only useful as an early game colony rush advantage, why would I trade off a better, long term advantage that for a twinky short term advantage that's only useful during the period between colony setup and morale dropping to 99% that I can duplicate by simply, y'know, making big ships. In conjunction with breeder, it might be an even faster colony rush, but I'm also trading off the time frame breeder is actually useful for and losing some other advantage.

I *can* tell you, I got a precursor mine (and four asteroid belts) on homeworld this game, was pumping out colony ships as fast as my little psilon workers could manage it, and never dropped below 6 billion population - which is still 61% of the tax base of a population of 16 billion.

And I have *lots* of colonies. Because I can afford to get those colonies up and running faster.

it just changes how far down the curves cross, and not by as much as I think you're giving it credit for.

Right-because of the extra effect that pop growth bonuses have in DA and TA. All the more reason to take them.

Umm - exponential curves don't work like that - x^3 will always be better than y^2 in the long run, no matter how much larger y is than x. In this context, that *4 multiplier is going to just barely nudge the 'long run' where my system outperforms your down the street slightly.

This is so intuitively obvious to me I just don't get your argument - you're missing something fundamental here, but I'm having a heck of a time pinning down what it is, unless it's simply that maybe you play small maps and my strategy assumes a longer game where the shorter period between colony start and colony profitability will come to the fore.

But one of us is having a really bad intuition about the mathematics of this, and although I can't say that it's you with certainty without actually playing a game with breeder and making notes on how many colonies are up on date 'x', nonetheless, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's you on this one.

There are circumstances where getting these colonies up faster is not advantageous - if the map is sufficiently small that grabbing colonies is more important than the long term economics of the system, or if starsystems are sufficiently rare that you need the range and speed of a faster colony ship to effectively colonize (I've had a couple of randomly generated immense maps like this - entirely different strategy obviously) rather than being able to get a colony up and then use it to extend your range.

But those are both extremes - under normal circumstances in which you have plenty of colonies to grab, you don't require special equipment to grab them, and you're not a speed gamer (A third extreme, which I'm anything but), this is going to be a better tactic.

Apologies - Jonnan;

Postscript; Yeah, I definitely need to try the Thalans - Obviously *not* a tech tree to try with a new race - {G}.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I *can* tell you, I got a precursor mine

Of course. I forgot to account for bonus tiles.

-

This is so intuitively obvious to me I just don't get your argument - you're missing something fundamental here, but I'm having a heck of a time pinning down what it is, unless it's simply that maybe you play small maps and my strategy assumes a longer game where the shorter period between colony start and colony profitability will come to the fore.

Nope; my games are all-abundant and medium or larger (typically huge or larger). They last for Goddamned ever, and as such so does the colony rush phase.

The magic number is where your base growth is 75M-for custom (as all customs have 4% base growth) this is 1875M.

Breeder growth:
Turn/Pop (millions)
0/250
1/330
2/434
3/570
4/746
5/978
6/1290
7/1698
8/2234

And this is assuming no spored growth (~1-~5M pop added to base growth when base growth is <75M), which is a relatively rare occurrence for this kind of timespan.

Standard growth:
Turn/Pop (millions)
0/750
1/810
2/874
3/942
4/1016
5/1096
6/1182
7/1276
8/1378
9/1488
10/1606
11/1734
12/1872

And at this point you're growing at 150M/turn whereas I'm growing at 600M/turn. I hit my 8B initial colony cap in another 10 turns for a total of 18-you take another 41 turns to cap for a total of 53.

Umm - exponential curves don't work like that - x^3 will always be better than y^2 in the long run, no matter how much larger y is than x. In this context, that *4 multiplier is going to just barely nudge the 'long run' where my system outperforms your down the street slightly.

Except those aren't anywhere close to the curves we're dealing with here.

Pop growth is Pop * [0.03, 0.07] (where the value there is 0.04 for custom) * pop growth bonus --> >75M = 75M --> * pop growth bonus * approval bonus (1 >41%, 1.25 >75%, 2 =100%, 8 =100% for Breeder).

The formula is exactly the same, but the coefficient is different (as well as the initial value-I'll get to that). In your case, you have a coefficient of 2. In my case, I have a coeffecient of 8. To even attempt to combat these differences, you'd want to have an initial value of 4x mine-but you can't fit 4 colony modules on your ships.

-

As an addendum, you should be aware that I was referring to the DA Thalans only. TA's economic model is slightly different, albeit with increased tourism revenue, and the Thalans are arguably the single worst race in TA in terms of equivalent customization points (yes, even worse than the Arceans)-aka, they got screwed.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Super-breeder has some advantages - it wouldn't be a super-ability if it didn't.

You keep insisting that it's so overwhelming an advantage as to have no other comparison. It is not. It is useful for the time period between colonization and morale<100% (or population maxing out). Since the superbreeder is limited to the exact same morale and population limits as the normal breeder, the 'normal' population growth empire has every opportunity to make up this period later. An 8 population superbreeder colony makes on 40% more taxes than a 4 population 'regular' colony, and the exact same tax base as an 8 population normal breeder colony.

So, at the margin, there is a significant but hardly overwhelming early benefit to the superbreeder, a good portion of which can be duplicated by the simple expedient of making large colony ships. This diminishes to, literally, no benefit in the late game.

Not insignificant - certainly makes the early game easier, but to get this early game advantage I have to give up something else I want - and the fact of the matter is there are other superabilities I consider far superior -- in the early game super isolationist is relatively weak, but by late game? Not even a close comparison. Super Hive is a small, but consistent advantage.

Super Breeder in combination with larger colony ships would still be fun - I ran a race called the gigum (From Star Thugs - {G}) that used superbreeder and fast ships. But your argument that it's all that powerful seems to me to be based on ignoring it's shortcomings and ignoring that the tactics you seem to intuitively believe can't work, ah . . . do.

You've made some fairly definitive statements about the shortcomings of using large colony ships. Those statements are contradicted by my real world experience of using them. So why are we having this argument?

Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!

You've made some fairly definitive statements about the shortcomings of using large colony ships. Those statements are contradicted by my real world experience of using them. So why are we having this argument?

Just do me a favor and try tiny/small hulled 250M colony ships in your next game, even without Breeder, will you? Make sure they're a one turn build, of course.

Unless of course you're running a 1-2 turn build on your 750M ships, but as you say your homeworld didn't go below 6B and you also say you don't take population growth bonuses, my estimate of a three turn build would seem to be your lower limit.

For the record, I love how we've derailed the thread.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I have - you can do small without miniaturization and tiny with what, 2-3 ranks in miniaturaization? - I like this better.

Jonnan

Successfully updated karma reason!