Game 1 Over: Some observations
Posted: Mon Apr 20, 2020 7:56 pm
I just finished my first sandbox game, Version 1.00.06, and achieved a Conquest Victory on Turn 362. Played Terran, average size galaxy, with opponents Kala, Guardians of the Seed, and Okli-To Consortium. Basically I took the default parameters on everything. I chose the attributes Ancient, Peculiar, Creative, Collectivist (-2) which allowed me to select another +2 characteristic, Predator. I was very surprised I won, since I looked upon this first game as experimental, just to get a feel for how things work. For example, my “strategy” for technology research was to simply pick the brightest and shiniest object available. Around Turn 250 I realized I had made some really bad choices. Anyway, what follows are my observations and reactions.
Things They Don’t Tell You:
1. Ships and ship designs have no shields—to get shields you have to research them. I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t notice until around Turn 250.
2. It is possible to move population from world to world. You can use the “Board” button to load them onto freighters just like you would Infantry. If no fleet is present a little icon pops up to the right of the star and you can select the destination just like a regular fleet. If there is already a fleet present the population becomes part of the fleet, and this can get very confusing sometimes.
3. Scrapping planetary installations gets you $20 each.
Strategy and Tactics—very subjective. Everyone will have their own opinion.
1. I didn’t meet any other factions until about Turn 70, give or take.
2. Okli-To Consortium declared war on me around Turn 160. My only provocation was to refuse to trade star maps.
3. Fleets containing large numbers of different types of ships are not economical. At one point I had a fleet of 6 (obsolete) Titans, 7 Battleships, 10 Cruisers, 11 Destroyers, and 12 Frigates. Total might = 10800. Upkeep = $777. I was going broke. If I had a fleet of 6 upgraded Titans, might 8000, the upkeep would have been $354. I kept noticing that I had a fleet of 30 or 40 ships, and all the other factions only had 5 or 6 ships, but they were stronger than me. All they ever built was very large Titans.
4. I found it impossible to have a large fleet engagement, the reason being it takes too long to get anywhere. They see you coming with one or two turns warning, and if they don’t want to fight, they leave. The most ships I ever faced was a couple of frigates or orbital forts. I chased the Okli-To fleet all over creation and never caught him. Ditto with the seed people. On the other hand, that left all their worlds unguarded so I took them. For me, conquest turned out to be blasting the orbital forts and taking over unguarded worlds, not wiping out fleets. (Well, except for the Okli-To. I nuked 3 or 4 of his worlds, but only because I had forgotten to load infantry onto my fleet. But, whatever).
5. Speaking of which, the diplomatic consequences of bombarding a world were not that bad. The other factions all had a fit, but they got over it.
6. I didn’t think researching galactic events, plague and whatnot, was worth it. They seem to last 8 or 10 turns and the one time I did the research it took 5 turns of spending all my resources on research and then it went away anyway 3 turns later. Just grit your teeth and ride it out.
7. As one of the other commenters on this board mentioned, there are never enough resources. Both minerals and money are almost always in the hole. I ended up “binging:” I would set the entire population to mining for 3-4 turns, then building for 3-4 turns and then you were out of money so everyone had to be shifted to trading and paying taxes. Throughout this whole cycle I kept getting messages that I didn’t have enough freighters or the people on Draco IV were starving. I was never able to get the economy “humming” and it was very frustrating. I would like to see this tweaked in an update. (On the other hand, maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to efficiently allocate my resources).
8. Colonizing small worlds is not economical. I colonized several small worlds because of their minerals, but when 3 or 4 is the max population you’ll never get enough minerals out to make it worthwhile.
9. Heroes: Mixed bag. Spies weren’t worth it in my opinion. They always failed their missions. Plus, an unassigned spy will give you a readout on enemy ships and colonies, which I found more valuable than sending them on a mission. On the other hand I had a great governor that really helped with production, and an admiral that could cut the travel time between stars by one or two turns. Both worth the cost.
10. Ground combat: Never got the hang of it. I tried, but finally gave up and just used autoresolve for that.
11. Tech: Lots of fun playing around with this. Based on my mistakes I think anything that gets you more people and more food will help. As far as ships and weapons—shields plus large generators to power a Titan. Basic armor and hulls seemed sufficient. A few basic weapons, nothing fancy. Production technology seemed helpful, mining technology did not. Technology to lower corruption didn’t seem to do much. Getting the stock exchange tech finally helped the money crisis. I put a lot of research into increasing mineral production but it didn’t seem to help (worlds were too small I think).
12. Genetic Traits: Another fun area. I really like Ancients—you get the whole map which really helps with knowing the primo worlds to colonize first instead of blundering around in the dark. Peculiarities were all quite valuable so it’s nice to have one on your homeworld. The traits that give you combat bonuses might be over-rated; it’s cool to be a “predator” but being a farmer might have a bigger payoff.
Bottom Line: I like this game and intend to begin a new one tomorrow, trying out things I learned from my mistakes.
Things They Don’t Tell You:
1. Ships and ship designs have no shields—to get shields you have to research them. I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t notice until around Turn 250.
2. It is possible to move population from world to world. You can use the “Board” button to load them onto freighters just like you would Infantry. If no fleet is present a little icon pops up to the right of the star and you can select the destination just like a regular fleet. If there is already a fleet present the population becomes part of the fleet, and this can get very confusing sometimes.
3. Scrapping planetary installations gets you $20 each.
Strategy and Tactics—very subjective. Everyone will have their own opinion.
1. I didn’t meet any other factions until about Turn 70, give or take.
2. Okli-To Consortium declared war on me around Turn 160. My only provocation was to refuse to trade star maps.
3. Fleets containing large numbers of different types of ships are not economical. At one point I had a fleet of 6 (obsolete) Titans, 7 Battleships, 10 Cruisers, 11 Destroyers, and 12 Frigates. Total might = 10800. Upkeep = $777. I was going broke. If I had a fleet of 6 upgraded Titans, might 8000, the upkeep would have been $354. I kept noticing that I had a fleet of 30 or 40 ships, and all the other factions only had 5 or 6 ships, but they were stronger than me. All they ever built was very large Titans.
4. I found it impossible to have a large fleet engagement, the reason being it takes too long to get anywhere. They see you coming with one or two turns warning, and if they don’t want to fight, they leave. The most ships I ever faced was a couple of frigates or orbital forts. I chased the Okli-To fleet all over creation and never caught him. Ditto with the seed people. On the other hand, that left all their worlds unguarded so I took them. For me, conquest turned out to be blasting the orbital forts and taking over unguarded worlds, not wiping out fleets. (Well, except for the Okli-To. I nuked 3 or 4 of his worlds, but only because I had forgotten to load infantry onto my fleet. But, whatever).
5. Speaking of which, the diplomatic consequences of bombarding a world were not that bad. The other factions all had a fit, but they got over it.
6. I didn’t think researching galactic events, plague and whatnot, was worth it. They seem to last 8 or 10 turns and the one time I did the research it took 5 turns of spending all my resources on research and then it went away anyway 3 turns later. Just grit your teeth and ride it out.
7. As one of the other commenters on this board mentioned, there are never enough resources. Both minerals and money are almost always in the hole. I ended up “binging:” I would set the entire population to mining for 3-4 turns, then building for 3-4 turns and then you were out of money so everyone had to be shifted to trading and paying taxes. Throughout this whole cycle I kept getting messages that I didn’t have enough freighters or the people on Draco IV were starving. I was never able to get the economy “humming” and it was very frustrating. I would like to see this tweaked in an update. (On the other hand, maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to efficiently allocate my resources).
8. Colonizing small worlds is not economical. I colonized several small worlds because of their minerals, but when 3 or 4 is the max population you’ll never get enough minerals out to make it worthwhile.
9. Heroes: Mixed bag. Spies weren’t worth it in my opinion. They always failed their missions. Plus, an unassigned spy will give you a readout on enemy ships and colonies, which I found more valuable than sending them on a mission. On the other hand I had a great governor that really helped with production, and an admiral that could cut the travel time between stars by one or two turns. Both worth the cost.
10. Ground combat: Never got the hang of it. I tried, but finally gave up and just used autoresolve for that.
11. Tech: Lots of fun playing around with this. Based on my mistakes I think anything that gets you more people and more food will help. As far as ships and weapons—shields plus large generators to power a Titan. Basic armor and hulls seemed sufficient. A few basic weapons, nothing fancy. Production technology seemed helpful, mining technology did not. Technology to lower corruption didn’t seem to do much. Getting the stock exchange tech finally helped the money crisis. I put a lot of research into increasing mineral production but it didn’t seem to help (worlds were too small I think).
12. Genetic Traits: Another fun area. I really like Ancients—you get the whole map which really helps with knowing the primo worlds to colonize first instead of blundering around in the dark. Peculiarities were all quite valuable so it’s nice to have one on your homeworld. The traits that give you combat bonuses might be over-rated; it’s cool to be a “predator” but being a farmer might have a bigger payoff.
Bottom Line: I like this game and intend to begin a new one tomorrow, trying out things I learned from my mistakes.