GAGA Extrem
Emperor
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- Dec 24, 2008
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Outdated Content!
The Fall Patch has made this strategy obsolete.
Feel free to read it to get some general advice, though.
Greetings fellow star travellers!
After playing a few games of BE I feel ready to give you a quick guide about a decent strategy I found.
The Idea:
This strategy focuses on rapid expansion during the early game, utilizing the immense yield of trade routes and later shifts into a tall-like setup with a limit number of cities that are well developed. By utilizing the power of the Purity affinity we will turn our part of the planet into a lush garden of Eden - ready to welcome the tired, poor and huddled masses of Earth.
The Setup:
Sponsor: PAC -> While PAC does not have a very destinct bonus, the worker speed is helpful throughout the game (and much needed later on since we will rely heavily on Terrascapes and the like). Extra production for wonders can be a saving grace when competing against the AI.
Colonists: Artists -> Culture and Health are a fantastic combination for this strategy, since it requires rapid early virtue development.
Spacecraft: Tectonic Scanner -> Being able to see these ressources early on, we can adjust our city locations and avoid settling on these ressources. If we are lucky and stumble upon a nearby Titanium, we get a massive early game production boost.
Cargo: Machinery -> This will allow us to develop our land from the get go, utilizing our Sponsor ability from turn 1.
Planet: Protean World -> This strategy works best if you have a lot of land tiles available. But feel free to select any world you like the most - everything can be turned into Eden.
Planetfall:
The very first thing we will do is trying to find the best landing spot. Ideally we pick a location on the coast (so we can utilize the more powerful Trade Vessels) that has some improveable ressources nearby. Also keep in mind that we want to expand early on, so try to place your capital in a way that allows as many cities as possible nearby.
We start by researching Pioneering and building an Old Earth Relic. Send out the initial Explorer to scout the area around the capital to find the ideal spots for our first cities. Stay away from wild lands (areas covered in forest, miasma and alien nests) until you have Purity level 1. Our Worker will focus on improving ressources and building farms (and if possible one mine on a hill tile).
After finishing the Old Earth Relic we build a soldier to cover our settlers from potential alien threads. Meanwhile the OER quest should pop up - naturally we pick +1
. The soldier should finish shortly before Pioneering is finished, use a Clinic or Explorer to fill the few turns and switch to Trade Depot once it is available. Select Chemistry as your next tech.
Somewhat surprisingly, our first 6 virtues will be invested into Knowledge to reduce the penalties from our number of cities and to lay down a strong base for the mid game. If everything goes smoothly, you should unlock Memeweb by the time your first outpost is almost finished.
After the Trade Depot is up we immediately build a Colonist, followed by a Trade Unit. Use it to speed up the outpost's growth and to kickstart production via an internal trade route. Queue Ecology and Genetics as your next techs, build another Colonist and send your Worker over to the new city.
The placement of the first city is quite important. Select a spot as close to your capital as possible, no more than 5 hexes away. Don't worry about overlap - BE cities will rarely grow big enough to run out of tiles to work. Personally I even prefer to settle at minimum distance, but you should always keep the situation on the map in mind - if that means giving up an otherwise unreachable ressource tile moving the city spot might be worth it.
After 50 turns your colony should look something like this:
CLICK ME!
Early Game:
The priority from now on is to settle 5 more cities (7 total, including the capital) as soon as possible. Why 7? Because later on each city will have 3 trade routes, which means 7 cities alow for 21 trade routes, making the whole trade route renewal part much less tedious. If you want you can certainly build more, but I found 7 to be a decent balance.
The first building in each new city is a Trade depot - build and transfer a Trade Unit from the capital as soon as it is finished. Keep sending internal trade routes to push production and growth. Don't forget to build more workers as well as connecting your grown inland cities via roads to receive more energy.
If you can, try to settle at least one outpost within 3 tile range of an alien nest - if you can manage to include the nest within your borders, the aliens will turn friendly (blue color) within a few dozen turns.
Do not worry about negative health at this point - we will suffer some penalties, but during the early stage it has almost no impact. Once you have researched Genetics move on to Genetic Designs - we really want the Ectogenesis Pod to boost our capital and all farms. Build it in the capital once the tech is finished.
Our next virtues will be invested into Prosperity to get to tier 3 and counter our health issues. We will skip the free Worker and Settler to dive down asap. Here is an image of my usual virtue path:
CLICK ME!
Mid Game:
Continue to found new outposts and establish as many internal trade routes as possible. You will now reach a point where your tech and building choises will heavily differ from game to game. Here is a short breakdown about some of the tech options:
Physics -> Gives extra science and unlocks the Ranger, an important unit for early game warfare. Use rangers to destroy stations and aliens that block your expansion. They are also decent to defend your cities in case of AI aggression.
Engineering -> Superb boost to energy income and unlocks the Combat Rover, a fast early game unit. Usually not a priority, but if you end up with an energy deficit you should prioritize this.
Planetary Survey -> Useful if you have lots of water ressources or if you need to cross bodies of water for your expansion.
Biochemistry -> Great to boost coastal cities that have many ressources or if you have multiple Petrolium tiles. Useless otherwise.
Alien Lifeforms -> Good for culture. Pick it up if you have a few Paddocks.
Genetic Mapping -> Unlocks Purity 1 (which makes your Scout alien proof), upgrades your Soldiers and gives access to a decent early game wonder.
Computing -> Good if you want to play (or counter) the spy game. I usually don't pick it up early, but if you like it - go for it.
Ballistics and Defence Grid -> Powerful tools to safeguard your cities against early game attacks. You should at least get one of the two if an AI is nearby.
Geophysics -> While Geothermal is only of limited use during this stage of the game, the energy yield from the tiles is fantastic.
The goal during the mid game is to establish our internal trade network, to stabilize our health and to start spamming buildings in our cities. Once you have the basic stuff you should focus on three key techs for this strategy:
Terraforming -> Unlocks the Terrascape, a costly but powerful improvement. Our ultimate goal is to build lots and lots of these, but for now you should focus on only constructing as many as your budged can handle.
Transgenetics -> This tech will solve your health problems and gives access to the Promethian, a powerful mid game wonder. If you want to make sure to get it prioritize this tech over Terraforming.
Robotics -> This is actually a rather cheap tech that unlocks air units (good in case of war) and the Autoplant, a building that will boost production and energy. I also has an additional immense advantage: +1 trade routes for your cities, which makes it a must-have.
Cognition -> This tech is important for the mid to late game. It unlocks the Academy, which is a powerful science oriented tile improvement. The thing here is that you can increase the yield to 5 science with a Knowledge virtue, which makes it really good compared to scientist specialists. Add a few of these to your cities to make sure you will keep up tech wise.
Servomachinery -> This unlocks the Battlesuit, a very powerful Purity combat unit that has a low end ressource requirement (Titanium). Use this tech to protect yourself against AI aggression.
In addition to that you should now get Creative Class (30% culture from positive health) and Applied Aesthetics (30% energy from culture), which improves your energy situation and makes it possible to build even more Terrascapes (that are also buffed to 3 yield, thanks to Ecoscaping from Prosperity).
Terrascapes are an unique improvement because they follow a special rule: Instead of adding to a tile's yield they replace it. This makes them very useful for Arctic, Tundra, Desert and Hill tiles (Tundra and Desert will also receive extra yield via Mass Digestor and Vivarium!). As a rule of thumb try to convert your low yield tiles first and use Academies on high yield location like desert floodplains.
Late Game:
Now it is time to set the stage to receive our fellow Earthlings. You should employ 15-20 workers that are constantly busy building ressource improvements, Terrascapes, Academies and Magrails. Reserach Orbital Networks to launch a Lasercom Satellite, grab more Purity affinity points and start building the Exodus Gate.
While the gate is under construction you should also start to develope the infrastructure for the arriving settlers. Your goal is to settle 20 Earthlings on the planet and you can stack up to 6 in a single city, so you will need to secure 4 city spots for them (they follow the 3-range rule!). Use your workers to contruct Magails to all settle locations and place defensive units to guard them from alien and AI aggression.
Once the Exodus Gate is built all you need to do is to summon an Earthling Settler manually each turn and guide it to one of the settle locations. Ideally you should finish the game within 20 turns.
Godspeed! Make your fellow Earthlings proud!
Addendum:
Sample Endgame Situation
City Yield Details
Endgame Virtues
Exodus Infrastructure
The Fall Patch has made this strategy obsolete.
Feel free to read it to get some general advice, though.
Greetings fellow star travellers!
After playing a few games of BE I feel ready to give you a quick guide about a decent strategy I found.
The Idea:
This strategy focuses on rapid expansion during the early game, utilizing the immense yield of trade routes and later shifts into a tall-like setup with a limit number of cities that are well developed. By utilizing the power of the Purity affinity we will turn our part of the planet into a lush garden of Eden - ready to welcome the tired, poor and huddled masses of Earth.
The Setup:
Sponsor: PAC -> While PAC does not have a very destinct bonus, the worker speed is helpful throughout the game (and much needed later on since we will rely heavily on Terrascapes and the like). Extra production for wonders can be a saving grace when competing against the AI.
Colonists: Artists -> Culture and Health are a fantastic combination for this strategy, since it requires rapid early virtue development.
Spacecraft: Tectonic Scanner -> Being able to see these ressources early on, we can adjust our city locations and avoid settling on these ressources. If we are lucky and stumble upon a nearby Titanium, we get a massive early game production boost.
Cargo: Machinery -> This will allow us to develop our land from the get go, utilizing our Sponsor ability from turn 1.
Planet: Protean World -> This strategy works best if you have a lot of land tiles available. But feel free to select any world you like the most - everything can be turned into Eden.
Planetfall:
The very first thing we will do is trying to find the best landing spot. Ideally we pick a location on the coast (so we can utilize the more powerful Trade Vessels) that has some improveable ressources nearby. Also keep in mind that we want to expand early on, so try to place your capital in a way that allows as many cities as possible nearby.
We start by researching Pioneering and building an Old Earth Relic. Send out the initial Explorer to scout the area around the capital to find the ideal spots for our first cities. Stay away from wild lands (areas covered in forest, miasma and alien nests) until you have Purity level 1. Our Worker will focus on improving ressources and building farms (and if possible one mine on a hill tile).
After finishing the Old Earth Relic we build a soldier to cover our settlers from potential alien threads. Meanwhile the OER quest should pop up - naturally we pick +1
. The soldier should finish shortly before Pioneering is finished, use a Clinic or Explorer to fill the few turns and switch to Trade Depot once it is available. Select Chemistry as your next tech.Somewhat surprisingly, our first 6 virtues will be invested into Knowledge to reduce the penalties from our number of cities and to lay down a strong base for the mid game. If everything goes smoothly, you should unlock Memeweb by the time your first outpost is almost finished.
After the Trade Depot is up we immediately build a Colonist, followed by a Trade Unit. Use it to speed up the outpost's growth and to kickstart production via an internal trade route. Queue Ecology and Genetics as your next techs, build another Colonist and send your Worker over to the new city.
The placement of the first city is quite important. Select a spot as close to your capital as possible, no more than 5 hexes away. Don't worry about overlap - BE cities will rarely grow big enough to run out of tiles to work. Personally I even prefer to settle at minimum distance, but you should always keep the situation on the map in mind - if that means giving up an otherwise unreachable ressource tile moving the city spot might be worth it.
After 50 turns your colony should look something like this:
CLICK ME!
Early Game:
The priority from now on is to settle 5 more cities (7 total, including the capital) as soon as possible. Why 7? Because later on each city will have 3 trade routes, which means 7 cities alow for 21 trade routes, making the whole trade route renewal part much less tedious. If you want you can certainly build more, but I found 7 to be a decent balance.
The first building in each new city is a Trade depot - build and transfer a Trade Unit from the capital as soon as it is finished. Keep sending internal trade routes to push production and growth. Don't forget to build more workers as well as connecting your grown inland cities via roads to receive more energy.
If you can, try to settle at least one outpost within 3 tile range of an alien nest - if you can manage to include the nest within your borders, the aliens will turn friendly (blue color) within a few dozen turns.
Do not worry about negative health at this point - we will suffer some penalties, but during the early stage it has almost no impact. Once you have researched Genetics move on to Genetic Designs - we really want the Ectogenesis Pod to boost our capital and all farms. Build it in the capital once the tech is finished.
Our next virtues will be invested into Prosperity to get to tier 3 and counter our health issues. We will skip the free Worker and Settler to dive down asap. Here is an image of my usual virtue path:
CLICK ME!
Mid Game:
Continue to found new outposts and establish as many internal trade routes as possible. You will now reach a point where your tech and building choises will heavily differ from game to game. Here is a short breakdown about some of the tech options:
Physics -> Gives extra science and unlocks the Ranger, an important unit for early game warfare. Use rangers to destroy stations and aliens that block your expansion. They are also decent to defend your cities in case of AI aggression.
Engineering -> Superb boost to energy income and unlocks the Combat Rover, a fast early game unit. Usually not a priority, but if you end up with an energy deficit you should prioritize this.
Planetary Survey -> Useful if you have lots of water ressources or if you need to cross bodies of water for your expansion.
Biochemistry -> Great to boost coastal cities that have many ressources or if you have multiple Petrolium tiles. Useless otherwise.
Alien Lifeforms -> Good for culture. Pick it up if you have a few Paddocks.
Genetic Mapping -> Unlocks Purity 1 (which makes your Scout alien proof), upgrades your Soldiers and gives access to a decent early game wonder.
Computing -> Good if you want to play (or counter) the spy game. I usually don't pick it up early, but if you like it - go for it.
Ballistics and Defence Grid -> Powerful tools to safeguard your cities against early game attacks. You should at least get one of the two if an AI is nearby.
Geophysics -> While Geothermal is only of limited use during this stage of the game, the energy yield from the tiles is fantastic.
The goal during the mid game is to establish our internal trade network, to stabilize our health and to start spamming buildings in our cities. Once you have the basic stuff you should focus on three key techs for this strategy:
Terraforming -> Unlocks the Terrascape, a costly but powerful improvement. Our ultimate goal is to build lots and lots of these, but for now you should focus on only constructing as many as your budged can handle.
Transgenetics -> This tech will solve your health problems and gives access to the Promethian, a powerful mid game wonder. If you want to make sure to get it prioritize this tech over Terraforming.
Robotics -> This is actually a rather cheap tech that unlocks air units (good in case of war) and the Autoplant, a building that will boost production and energy. I also has an additional immense advantage: +1 trade routes for your cities, which makes it a must-have.
Cognition -> This tech is important for the mid to late game. It unlocks the Academy, which is a powerful science oriented tile improvement. The thing here is that you can increase the yield to 5 science with a Knowledge virtue, which makes it really good compared to scientist specialists. Add a few of these to your cities to make sure you will keep up tech wise.
Servomachinery -> This unlocks the Battlesuit, a very powerful Purity combat unit that has a low end ressource requirement (Titanium). Use this tech to protect yourself against AI aggression.
In addition to that you should now get Creative Class (30% culture from positive health) and Applied Aesthetics (30% energy from culture), which improves your energy situation and makes it possible to build even more Terrascapes (that are also buffed to 3 yield, thanks to Ecoscaping from Prosperity).
Terrascapes are an unique improvement because they follow a special rule: Instead of adding to a tile's yield they replace it. This makes them very useful for Arctic, Tundra, Desert and Hill tiles (Tundra and Desert will also receive extra yield via Mass Digestor and Vivarium!). As a rule of thumb try to convert your low yield tiles first and use Academies on high yield location like desert floodplains.
Late Game:
Now it is time to set the stage to receive our fellow Earthlings. You should employ 15-20 workers that are constantly busy building ressource improvements, Terrascapes, Academies and Magrails. Reserach Orbital Networks to launch a Lasercom Satellite, grab more Purity affinity points and start building the Exodus Gate.
While the gate is under construction you should also start to develope the infrastructure for the arriving settlers. Your goal is to settle 20 Earthlings on the planet and you can stack up to 6 in a single city, so you will need to secure 4 city spots for them (they follow the 3-range rule!). Use your workers to contruct Magails to all settle locations and place defensive units to guard them from alien and AI aggression.
Once the Exodus Gate is built all you need to do is to summon an Earthling Settler manually each turn and guide it to one of the settle locations. Ideally you should finish the game within 20 turns.
Godspeed! Make your fellow Earthlings proud!
Addendum:
Sample Endgame Situation
City Yield Details
Endgame Virtues
Exodus Infrastructure
