Are sea colonies necessary?

Esmer

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 27, 2014
Messages
56
Location
Athens, Greece
I've recently bought the game and I'm currently at my 3rd playthrough (First two victories were Domination with the Hive and planetary council with the UN Peacekeepers).

Until now, I haven't seen much merit in building sea cities. Their non-connection to land is annoying for troop movement and the seas seem to be rather resource poor in general.

Are there certain strategies and advantages which favor building sea colonies?

I'm playing on Talent difficulty.
 
But there is more than enough land for a 20-30 bases empire on a medium sized map. Is expanding into the seas really giving you some important advantage?
 
They can be quite powerful, done right. The AI seems to use them quite a bit, but doesn't seem to know what it's really doing very well.
Once you start getting the resource satellites (Sky Hydroponics, Orbital Power Trans. and Nessus Mining) the fact that the ocean is resource-poor and expensive to improve becomes moot. You still can, of course, but the fact that it costs energy just to raise the seabed to the point you can improve the tile means it's not really worth it, even for a small fee.
Do note however that random events can destroy all satellite improvements except for Sky Hydroponics though - which can be painful if you use them a lot for seabases.
 
You need them for transcontinental warfare. Mind you, Needlejets only have an avarage range of about 20-24 spots before the nanofuel upgrade so you'll want a way to refuel and carriers don't come in until mid-late game. Same is even more essential of copters. Of course, this is not as essential where you have a pact with another faction. It's a good idea where there is a lot of energy bonuses or kelp concentrated in certain areas. In my game, I have one which specifically functions as a top tier naval production facility.
 
But there is more than enough land for a 20-30 bases empire on a medium sized map. Is expanding into the seas really giving you some important advantage?

There is only upside to building more bases. And once you hit satelites more bases means more energy which translates into everything.
 
I don't like sea colonies either; I'll usually hand them off to a weak pact ally for the trade bonus. The tricky thing though is keeping the A.I. sea bases from stealing production squares from your better cities. In my middle game I'll often raise land bridges from my main continent for more building sites (land bases hold territory lines better than sea bases too, I believe) and aim directly for repealing the U.N. Charter (for conquering and obliterating the most annoying A.I. incursions).
 
They're not necessary, but they do produce lots of energy and will massively accelerate your mid-late game teching.

On land you're mostly going to have 1/2/1 forests or 1/2/2 river forests as your bread and butter squares, at sea once nut and energy restrictions are lifted (which is about the time you want to start making sea bases) you've got 3/0/3 kelp+tidal which becomes 4/0/4 with Aquafarm and Thermohaline Transducer. That lets the bases grow really fast, and produce a lot of energy per square.

If you're making troops in sea bases, you're probably doing something wrong. Water squares have very low mineral output and what little they get should be directed towards drone control, hab complexes, and energy/research facilities (all of which should be rushed when you can afford it).

At talent, or even on Transcend, you don't need sea bases, but a well established sea base can be a research powerhouse so if you've got some good locations they make excellent investments. Just remember to build a lot of Sea Formers and put Kelp+Tidal in every square, Mining Platforms are time consuming to build and inefficient (rush with energy to get important facilities up rather than using minerals).
 
One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that they can be very lucrative for human players vying for Planetary Council and Supreme Leader - especially against Lal, or someone with a Project that also doubles votes.
Station a bit of defense in them and beeline Hab Complex and Dome, while land bases pump out Sky Hydroponics. Their population will swell, more votes for you. This can be abused quite spectacularly - as the Pirates, I had a Supreme Leader victory even though no one else voted for me.
 
Top Bottom