Slitherine

How can I do it as fast as the AI on hard difficulty?

I'm in a rut atm, Medium AI difficulty is too easy and weak.
But if I move up to Hard, Terra Salvum is building Nuclear launch centers while I'm researcing Goliath Mechs....

And I tried to beeline Quantizunation tech. But they moved so fast in tech tree despite only having five cities. Then I just spent whole game settling new cities and researching tech until I had every single tech researched before dowing. <_<

I need help please.

Easy/cheesy way to do this:
Conquer one of the neighbors to double your population.
After that, things on science front will be different.

player1 is right, that is an effective strategy but I try to avoid it because conquering so early makes the game easy.

But if we take a step into theory land, there are a few different ways to do this. As you know, the difficulty setting essentially controls the morale bonuses of the AI factions. So you could just zero-out your credit income by lowering taxes in order to boost your morale faction-wide but then you'll never be able to refit your units or purchase things. I don't like this, I want money.

You could compensate by focusing on research, but this results in less labor towards other areas and therefore limits your production and consequently your military strength. This is what I'm doing in my current game (Hard Difficulty, like you). I'm just reaching Mechanization Era. My military only has a "two-dot" rating, but my research is unsurpassed at 5 dots (this was with a research-focused city next to an observatory). I don't know how long I can sustain though. I'm pretty sure I'll be playing a defensive game until I can get some units and operations that provide me with some solid strategy. My biggest fear is that one of the AI will conquer another soon and I'll be left in the dust. So I'm trying to keep an eye on the conflict... I might have to intervene with my only 2 air units and try to sink some transports in an effort prevent a total domination. A few of the factions are fighting, but I don't think anyone has lost cities yet.

XD I've done that player1, although it isn't always viable on huge map especially with five factions the less there is the more likely you'll only have xenomorphs for your company.

Cool ok jdmillard i tried out what you suggested.. Although what kind of boost each morale point gives?
But I managed to get a science city up which have access to two observaties! It now have about 10 scientists in there and that managed to allow me reach and finish researching the nuclear weapon tech at same time as Terra salvum finished building their first Nuclear launch center facility! Looks like my main problem was me never making a science city in Pandora. My military is currently the biggest at five stars and everyone else is at 1-2 stars although I haven't met Terra Salvum yet.

Its turn 232 I believe and I'm running around with lots of colonial troopers using Gauss rifles/armor and Strike fighters/Scout Atvs with gauss guns/armor. got about 10 fighters running around and eradicating hives in a circle assassinating every queen in near reach with troopers and atvs slowly closing into the hives and squishing them.

I'm feeling kinda invincible atm, my neighbors is solar dynasty and torga university and everyone is generous to me.

Although its my first time playing Pangaea in Pandora, and my starting spot was coastal and mostly desert.
I'm rather surprised by sacrificing one city for science alone is helping alot.

If you have Research Pacts you can see how much the others are currently putting into research, combine that with the dot ratings and you can see where you stand, and whether you need more scientists to catch up. I like to keep research at 4 dots if possible, slightly ahead (until the endgame where the exponential curve kicks in and you can run far ahead).

Pandora is a little different from other 4X games in that growth is basically pre-determined. So putting more into research only cuts the amount of units and buildings, it doesn't take away from growth. So really the only consideration with tech is that it's balanced with your productive capability - there's no point researching advanced tech if you don't have the workers/minerals to build the units & buildings. And if you're spamming lots of weak units because there's nothing else to build, you need more advanced tech.

What happens when you're out of minerals? I've ran out of them before and stayed at 0 but from what I see.. it does nothing.
It tends to happen when you're transiting to new era and building new stuff you're not used to yet or many many many cities is building something at once before they're grown to a good size without miners to work the minerals.

Rossthegreat wrote:Cool ok jdmillard i tried out what you suggested.. Although what kind of boost each morale point gives?
But I managed to get a science city up which have access to two observaties! It now have about 10 scientists in there and that managed to allow me reach and finish researching the nuclear weapon tech at same time as Terra salvum finished building their first Nuclear launch center facility! Looks like my main problem was me never making a science city in Pandora.

Sweet, I'm glad that worked out. That's pretty cool that you found a spot with 2 observatories in range.

I continued the game I was talking about. Divine Ascension and Imperium started killing each other (I'll vent about their ridiculous behavior in another thread). I was worried that Lilith would take all of James' cities, so I declared war on her which worked out nicely because she was on the island next door. I sent an aircraft over to James' island just so that I could keep an eye on things and if necessary, defend him. It's a good thing I did because she stormed his coast with a mech and a tank which I took care of. James hated my guts despite my valiant efforts,... sigh. I protected his cities which helped my take out Lilith. Before long though, James had made enemies with almost everyone else on the map. I think technically they made enemies with him because he was weak and that's the unfortunate current state of the AI strategy (it's been discussed recently in other threads). I couldn't fight off waves of enemies from all directions with 1 unit and I didn't want to declare war on every faction in order to protect James, who hated me, so I watched him fall. It was okay though because Solar Dynasty and Noxium split his land equally as they invaded so neither will become as OP. Also, by the time they finished him off, I was able to finish off Lilith. I'm doing good with population now because I played my cards well (manipulating James' defeat and all), but the other factions caught up to me in tech during my intense war. The best part is that this game is just starting to heat up because both Terra Salvum and Solar Dynasty have huge armies. This is going to be a good match.

Rossthegreat wrote:What happens when you're out of minerals? I've ran out of them before and stayed at 0 but from what I see.. it does nothing.
It tends to happen when you're transiting to new era and building new stuff you're not used to yet or many many many cities is building something at once before they're grown to a good size without miners to work the minerals.

That's a good question. I would guess that it puts a cap on production, which means there's some workers out there that are assigned as workers but aren't doing anything. I'm not sure though. I'm also curious what happens if you run out of money because it's never happened to me. Do your units disband because you can't pay the upkeep? Maybe the units that don't have upkeep paid should lose 10% life per turn or something like that.

jdmillard wrote:

Rossthegreat wrote:What happens when you're out of minerals? I've ran out of them before and stayed at 0 but from what I see.. it does nothing.
It tends to happen when you're transiting to new era and building new stuff you're not used to yet or many many many cities is building something at once before they're grown to a good size without miners to work the minerals.

That's a good question. I would guess that it puts a cap on production, which means there's some workers out there that are assigned as workers but aren't doing anything. I'm not sure though.

That's exactly what happens.