For Science! - 5+ city Academy spam guide

[Victus75]

Unsure if playing with the largest map possible would be viable, as there is usually plenty of space for sponsors to expand, and the chances are lessened for an early DOW. Another plus would be if you went Purity you should have plenty of space to settle the earth colonists as well.

The downside that I can think of is taking a longer time to reveal international or station trade routes, but if you primarily go internal (as the game I'm currently playing I'm doing) it won't matter as much.

 

[tedeviatings]

Below Apollo a handful of Soldiers is enough to fend of early AI aggression. If things get problematic upgrade to Marines.

I usually place my soldiers 1 tile in front of my cities, dig them in and use them as meatshields to delay the AI as long as possible while the city takes down enemy units. If possible use chokepoints to delay the AI and spread out to slow the flanking units via Zone of Control. As long as you can prevent the AI from performing an encirclement on your cities you should be fine.

I should have specified. Was referring to apollo and what I'm worried about is the following, perfectly common scenario (in my games anyways):

In the early game I try to secure space for my cities and in most games this means forward-settling at least one AI neighbor. This neighbor is usually pissed off. Since it's the AI he'll be ahead off me in both, army size and affinity - massively. So he'll attack me.
Usually the timing of this attack is roughly when he hits level 6 in his preferred affinity. Imho you have to have excellent defensive terrain to hold this without affinity level 2 because basic rangers just don't do anything to affinity 6 soldiers. So you'll need to have affinity level 2 at least to hold the push consistently. Which comes pretty late if you go bionics and cognition first.

 

[RedRover57]

I should have specified. Was referring to apollo and what I'm worried about is the following, perfectly common scenario (in my games anyways):

In the early game I try to secure space for my cities and in most games this means forward-settling at least one AI neighbor. This neighbor is usually pissed off. Since it's the AI he'll be ahead off me in both, army size and affinity - massively. So he'll attack me.
Usually the timing of this attack is roughly when he hits level 6 in his preferred affinity. Imho you have to have excellent defensive terrain to hold this without affinity level 2 because basic rangers just don't do anything to affinity 6 soldiers. So you'll need to have affinity level 2 at least to hold the push consistently. Which comes pretty late if you go bionics and cognition first.

This is why I've been trying to work Might (to the free affinity virtue) into Apollo games, but the way to do this seems to be to skip Prosperity entirely (i.e., no free colonist). Otherwise the Industry virtues are delayed for too long. The Industry virtue that gives increased energy for station trade routes is particularly good (as are the deep virtues that give health, of course).

If you go Might/Prosperity and try to conquer a neighbor this could possibly work since you capture hammers/science/energy rather than spend hammers yourself (and therefore don't need Industry as much), but you need to get to the bottom of the Prosperity tree pretty fast to counter the huge unhealthiness cost of conquest. The current problem with conquest is that pop on cities is not lost after capturing (unlike in Civ 5), but many important buildings usually are lost (like science and/or health buildings). Not to mention the health cost of immediate annexing (or even worse, the double dip of puppeting then annexing later). The game just won't be balanced until at least some early warmongering is viable.

 

[Ryika]

Haven't had that much time to test yet, but... wuah. I really hate Science Specialists. I thought they might work at first, but the overall yield you lose is just insane and the way they stagger the growth is abnormal. Won't even try to incorporate them and rather try to refine the original strategy.

About the aggressive-neighbor-thingy: I think it's quite obvious that if you have aggressive neighbors AND a difficult to defend terrain it's a really bad thing to even TRY to progress as fast as possible and the strategic decisions should rather evolve around side-tracking as little as possible while still staying save. I had an Apollo-Game yesterday where I basically had to expand towards ARC into open space and of course most of what I did in the first 100 turns turns was getting units out and Affinity 1 (and thus I was only at I think around 60 science), before I went back on track and although she attacked me and gave me a hard time for most of the game (literally until my melee units got to t4 and just cut through her army of t2/3 I still managed to win on turn I think it was turn 238. Now, my starting terrain was acceptable and my expansions had some nice resources, so if that had been worse, then of course I might have lost the game (or my victory would at least have taken even longer).

So of course, anything said here is pretty much the "sandbox"-strategy for peaceful games, if the situation is different adaption is needed. I think having a bad neighbor is actually one of the things that even makes biowells more interesting -> You automatically get the range units and have Ballistics as a direct option if it's really needed. Anyway, what I suggest is to not change anything about the Virtues, even when attacked. And industry will be WAY faster at giving you more defensive capacities anyway.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Haven't had that much time to test yet, but... wuah. I really hate Science Specialists. I thought they might work at first, but the overall yield you lose is just insane and the way they stagger the growth is abnormal. Won't even try to incorporate them and rather try to refine the original strategy.

Well, maybe that is slowing me down a bit - I usually employ some in every city. :x

 

[Ryika]

Maybe, though I actually agree with your previous post, it might just be the level of micromanaging - I usually do a lot and when I showed the strategy to a friend and did it "rather quickly" my overall performance was kind of lacking. ^^ But it might still be useful, especially when combined with the fact that if you don't use them early you can get the more expensive tech as your free one. Without specialists you do of course need some additional academies, but once solar collectors are available spamming a few of them is usually quite easy and efficient at dealing with the additional costs of academies and the additional workers.

Not sure how a non-harmony strategy would deal with the maintenance costs though.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, I was just testing some hybrid strategy stuff, with a good run towards a turn 220 finish or something. But: Surprise! Turn 201 AI Contact victory - on Soyuz.
*flails*

But I must admit - I am getting tired of testing that stuff. There are so many RNG elements that shift the victory turns around that it is almost impossible for me to objectively compare the different approaches, even when I am playing on the same map. I guess I'll just leave it at that - after all a T240+/-10 victory is decent enough. No need to waste many more hours on the whole issue.

 

[Gorbles]

Just popping in to say thanks for this; I always kinda skipped Academies in the past; incorporated them into my tile improvements as well as beelining Cognition after a couple of core techs (usually Genetics or thereabouts) and found things massively easier (only on Gemini so far, still refining my approach). Soyuz next!

 

[tedeviatings]

Not sure how a non-harmony strategy would deal with the maintenance costs though.

I've researched solar collectors for this purpose before when going for other affinity VCs. Slows down your victory of course but you need some kind of money source that's not tile improvements

 

[GAGA Extrem]

In that case it's probably better to use external trade routes. Sacrificing 12-15 turns for that tech doesn't seem viable.

 

[tedeviatings]

This strategy dips into the negative pretty early though. That would probably mean I'd have to run external TRs for 75 to 100 turns? That's a lot of growth / infrastructure I'd be missing out on. And it's not safe for war on some maps.
I might give it a shot in my next game, though. Theorycrafting is, after all, still essentially the same then making educated guesses.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Sure, you lose quite a lot of hammers and food. But at this point your cities are already somewhat developed, so internal TR are not as vital anymore. You will need longer to finish the game in that case, but the time increase (I'd assume something around 3-6 turns) is still lower than researching the two techs to get the satellites.

The best bet would probably be to establish a few extra TR to stations and use the Alternative Market virtue to max effect. Then start selling all your ressources to the AI if you are still in deep red.

You also have Affinity related stuff that eases the pain: Purity can get the +3 energy from Gene Gardens and Supremacy gets free road maintenance (which should roughly be worth the same).

Still, the best way to avoid this problem is adapting your play. If you notice that you will lack energy you should keep quite a bit in your reserve to sustain yourself during the problematic period and focus on energy enhancing quest options. Once you have Bionics you can also use the Institute to substitute 3 Academies (equal to a 5 energy saved per city, for a bit less food and hammers).

 

[tedeviatings]

The best bet would probably be to establish a few extra TR to stations and use the Alternative Market virtue to max effect. Then start selling all your ressources to the AI if you are still in deep red.

This would probably be pretty efficient.

Aside from that does anyone actually have experience with this strategy on apollo and going for purity or supremacy? Cause the games I played using this strategy ended up being harmony by chance and I don't know if I'll have enough time to try it out myself.

 

[Victus75]

What I've done to supplement my science output, going Purity I'm using Lasercom satellites over the cities. I know it's not 100% going by this strategy (I'm even playing as KP on Soyuz diff) but I'm also curious to see how this would play going Purity or Supremacy as well. I should start an Apollo game this weekend, though for my first time I am likely to stick with this particular strategy closer to the core.

 

[Alkaid]

What I've done to supplement my science output, going Purity I'm using Lasercom satellites over the cities. I know it's not 100% going by this strategy (I'm even playing as KP on Soyuz diff) but I'm also curious to see how this would play going Purity or Supremacy as well. I should start an Apollo game this weekend, though for my first time I am likely to stick with this particular strategy closer to the core.

That's an interesting idea. Right now I usually have 1-2 out of my cities surrounded with a bunch of academies, so I'm not sure if I'm really "spamming" them, but I'd like to try some other methods for science. I'll probably give the Lasercoms a try too, and I also might try to use the knowledge virtue tree for the first time in a while.

Before I put much thought into academies I used to go prosperity and knowledge trees and was still winning games on Apollo as I do now with the academies. (that was around the time of the patch though) It'd be cool if Lasercoms work decently, since you can have more room for purity super farms instead.

 

[TalladegaKnight]

What benchmarks are you looking for? What turn are shooting for cognition? At what turn, do you stop founding new outposts? What's your science rate at turn 100? 150? 200?

If you don't mind, would you play SoS2, so I could get a feel for how I am doing with the strategy. It's not a super culture start, but there is room for peaceful expansion to 5-6 cities with one close neighbor. I'm only 140 turns in. I managed a turn 87 cognition while fending off an early DOW from said neighbor. I believe I am at 160 science with 5 cities at turn 140. Just wondering how I compare.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Cognition around turn 80 or so sounds reasonable. I think my turn 100 science is usually around 60-80, depending on how well early expansion went. Havent' really kept an eye on science past that, mostly because the yields fluctuate a lot from using Scientist and science conversion in cities. Expansion for the 5 base cities should also be over before Cognition is finished.

Playing that save game you linked won't give much info because the setup is sub-par, but I guess I can give it a try.
Edit: Done. Turn 232 victory, but only thanks to a pure science station that popped up next to my capital around turn 30 and a free Harmony level from a ruin. Overall start was extremely slow, I think with the usual setup this could have been a turn 220-ish win. Also a prime example why you should pick Tectonic Scanner.

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, that SoS-Game actually perfectly outlines why the early culture is so useful. ^^ I'm playing it too right now (though not for efficiency, but trying to warmonger a bit) and the start feels soooo slow, although there's certainly some adaption that can be done to migrate a few of the problems.

Semi-Offtopic: Have been playing around with trade route optimization (or let's better call them trade route experiments) and got some really interesting results. If you biowell up 2 cities while basically focusing the other cities on production/Science(and of course as much food to keep the population) you can create some really huge cities rather fast by sending all trade routes to the 2 food-cities. Not sure yet if that's at all useful (a big city doesn't really do anything just on its own and getting science improvements would then kill the +15(!)-food trade routes)... but it seems like there may be some somewhat decent playstyles that I hadn't thought about yet.

 

[Hot_spur]

Somehow I triggered a contact victory, so I decided to go down that path instead. Won the game on turn 241.

Does anyone else find the end game graphics, storyline, etc. to be really, really cheesy? I mean, a game in 2014 can't even have some kind of video graphic ending with nice music?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

This thread is focused on Strategy. Please take your (rightful) complaints to to the General BE forums.
Thank you.