War-mongering_Child
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2022
- Messages
- 25
DISCLAIMER: I have a new and updated guide that is a more generalist approach to the Meta. Please feel free to continue using this guide, but do note it is out dated and specifically tailored towards the flavor of playing as ARC. It may be missing things that I have since discovered. You can find the new guide here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...y-rt-potentially-multiplayer-friendly.685025/
Hey guys it's me again! After some messing around with ARC because a friend suggested I try it, I've come up with what I think is a solid way to beat Apollo difficulty with this faction. I recently posted a far more in depth guide on Apollo difficulty it self but the build and tech order was for Hutama. Still a lot of good stuff in that thread so feel free to check that out.
Okay so let's get into it. As always, I like to play on massive maps. This time around I've been playing on Quick pace, but I am certain that ARC would be a very strong contender on any pace. Note that this guide is only for Domination victories, with all other victory conditions turned off. I haven't looked into the other ones for this faction yet, and besides I find the Domination to be the most fun and a lot less luck dependant. I mention map size and pace in my guides because they do vastly change how one plays the game. The good news is this strategy should ideally work in any map of your choosing, with some minor tweaks to respond to the environment.
I'm gonna keep this guide short because I'm writing it late at night, so I'll get into it all now.
For starters, we pick up artists, tectonic scanner, and pioneering. Realistically you can change artists for anything you like, I just find culture is the slowest resource to gain and so getting it for free is quite nice.
Unlike the Hutama playstyle where we rush to Academies and spam them everywhere in our first 5 cities, the way I play ARC fundamentally revolves around the use of Spies, but also the Node tile improvement. The reason for this is Nodes are a leaf tech right underneath Computing, and so it's quite fitting to pick up. As it turns out, ARC has problems with energy as it doesn't get the massive boost from international trade routes. In my opinion, the biggest difference between winning this difficulty and losing is the correct use of tile improvements.
Okay so your build order in the initial game is very similar to Hutama. Your capital builds a trade depot, a worker, a convoy, and buys Old Earth Relic. Send trade convoy to any outposts to get them to grow. We only get one convoy per city, and I think it's good to get a city founded rather than buff 1 city in a minor way. After that the first city builds 1 colonist, 1 worker, and repeats this until you have a total of 5 cities. Going above 5 is going to make your health so unmanageable with this strategy because you don't get any health buildings till a fair bit later, unlike the Hutama method. Send your first Explorer and soldier off around your land to find coasts and Titanium, then manually move them towards all other factions. I highly reccomend manually moving them each turn as they will act dumb if blocked by an alien in the way, thus taking a lot longer because they end out back tracking. When you've met at least 4 other factions you can automate explore with these 2 units. It can be handy to the explore head back to a city to refuel on expedition modules, but only if convenient. Target Progenetor expeditions for a free affinity level if lucky. If you want, you can save artefacts but sometimes you never get enough to unlock a good building, so I don't bother, but if you know artefact combinations by memory then use it to your advantage.
Your second city should ideally be off the coast, and it will produce an additional 5 workers.
Third and fourth cities will ideally be on the coast and should build 2-3 Gunboats each before anything else.
Fifth city can be either coastal or inland, and this one builds 5 Soldiers, but maybe more if the need arises such as an early war.
For techs, we start with Chemistry to get that recycler, petroleum, and laboratory straight away. There is a case for picking this up later instead, but I think this one is a good choice for a first tech as you might be able to buy some Recyclers in your cities earlier than expected.
Always buy Old Earth Relic in every city that doesn't have one, as soon as they become available.
Immediately upgrade your default personality trait to level 3, then pick up the increased spy speed from Political. Then grab production from Domestic, then military production from War.
The only essential agreement's are outpost growth speed from Africa or the colonists found immediately which often comes from Duncan. Africa's agreement is really cheap so i get this any time im building new cities regarsless of whether I need to upgrade my own traits. After you've maxed your traits get whatever agreement looks good in the context.
Never automate your workers until you're confident that all your tile improvements are done. At first, focus on improving every basic resource and Mines on any hill areas. Only when that's done, you can automate them until it is time to build Nodes, BUT it is a far better use of time to start laying down roads between cities. As soon as you unlock Nodes, take every worker off automated, finish what they were improving, then spam Nodes on every tile that exists in your first 5 cities.
After Chemistry, we immediately go for Computing via the Ecology side. We need to be able to remove miasma anyway, and Vivariums are very good, especially on Icy maps.
Once Computing is done, go one down and grab Nodes, and build the Master Control wonder when it becomes available for the free worker maintenance and movement. If Daoming is in the game she may well beat you to it but its worth trying to get this in the early game.
After you get Computing, this time around we head straight up towards the tech that unlocks the Gene Smelter building, and picks up Pharmalab along the way health has been bad for a while and we need to fix it asap or our growth and production will suffer really badly. Then we can head over to Robotics, snagging ourselves the Autoplant and Thorium reactor buildings. Finally, the last tech for the early game will be for the Alien Preserve building.
After you've built your first army, you can focus on building a trade depot, Recycler, Clinic, Vivarium, Pharmalab, Gene Smelter, Autoplant, Thorium Reactor, and Alien Preserve, ideally in that order but is more dependent on what your deficits are at that time in the game. Trade Depot and Recycler should always come first if you want to change the order. Quest rewards are situational, pick what's needed at the time.
At some point one of your inland cities will have nothing to do, so snag the Ultrasonic Fence and reverse the polarit with the quest, allowing you to start sending trade convoys between your cities. My convoys always go for the highest production, but I'll go for a little less production if it gives me even 1 food.
Virtues for this one are pretty straight forward. We want to immediately get the free colonist from prosperity, then head over to the industry tree for +1 energy from basic resource, 25% production for buildings already in the capital, then bee line through the middle to Mangasanti. Then I grab the % energy based on income, and any other virtue of your choice in industry to complete the synergy for another 10% production. After this, personally I go to the Millitary tree and go straight through the middle till the very last virtue, then pick up 50% strategic resources. After that just get whatever you feel like, but we don't get much culture with this style so you'll likely beat the game before you get another virtue.
Okay so you've built enough army to fight off any other factions that declare war, and hopefully you've kept them close enough to defend rather than attack an ai. Unfortunately this is Apollo and without an army you will always lose, but you also lose a lot of turns to building an army when you could be making buildings, although we don't have a choice. By now you should start to have 1-2 Nodes in each city, and are now able automate 1-5 workers to naturally improve your cities. Also, you will have spies sent out to at least 3 other factions, where they will prioritise stealing tech, science, and energy, in that order. Do not underestimate stealing energy, because you will have energy problems until your Nodes appear, so steal energy whenever you have to, but then go back to stealing tech/science. During this phase, you will be given a quest to perform a tier 4 espionage, and the only one available is Coup de etat which is a garunteed war, so do this when prepared as it will make all your spies powerful. Also follow any espionage quests that you are given. You don't need to actually go after the other factions yet and I'd encourage you not to just yet, but be ready to defend. Because you aren't juicing science up with this faction, your deterministic tech progression will feel really slow, but that's okay because by stealing tech we get an incredible amount of affinity levels. I would always steal tech whenever I can instead of science because it's almost always garunteed affinity xp and the sooner we get to 7/7 in any 2 we can compete against a pressuring ai with just soldiers and gunboats.
When you've finished the above, it is now time to transition to the mid game. We want to unlock additional spies through the use of quests, and conveniently the techs to do this help us with our other goals. To get more spies, we want CEL Cradle, Command Centre, and Feedsite Hubs. Conveniently this gets us Tacnet Hubs, and so if you're at war I'd go for Communications first before the CEL Cradle tech. After Cel Cradle, we then want the tech that gives +1 science from all node improvements. This will ensure we can target specific techs if we need to.
Now is the time to send out 1 colonist and 1 worker at a time, for a total of 5 times to found 5 new cities. These new cities will want 2 manufactury tile improvements, and any basic resources improved, then the workers can be automated or you could build more Nodes or even Academies. Any city that doesn't have anything to do should build gun boats or soldiers/armours. Soldiers if you only want to defend, or armours if you want to go on the offensive a little bit, but remember our army is still weak at this point so don't over extend. Steal energy whenever you need to purchase units to defend your cities.
Once the above is done, you're now ready to head into the end game. The end game techs that we target are based on good units and orbital coverage, because you guessed it, this is another Phasal Teleporter strategy. To increase orbital coverage we want Neoplanitarium, Observatory, Repair Bay, Field Reactor, and Launch Complexes. Build all of these at least once to trigger the quest so we can get the most use out of them later. Before getting orbital coverage however, it's a very good idea to research the Aquilion unit when you can upgrade it to carry 2 aircraft each. Also grab the tech for Magrails, to speed up your army quite a bit.
Now is the time to build cities anywhere and everywhere you can see, and spend any spare energy on Recycler, Old earth Relic, Trade Convoy, and Autoplant, in that order. Autoplants are expensive so buy all of the others first in each new city. Like before, put 1-2 manufacturies in each new city for a comfy end game production line. Buy a couple of Pharmalabs to keep health above zero when needed.
It is now time for war. The techs you choose are now personal choices or just shift click them all at random, it doesn't matter anymore. Your army will consist of 7 spies, which you will he using liberally to target either 1 faction really hard, or any and every faction for whatever reason you like. Drain their energy, and drain their army. You'll likely not be able to coup de etat anymore but if you can, do this at the right time. There is only 4 useful military units in the entire game in my opinion and that is the holy Aquilion, the Armour, the Tacjet, and the Destroyer. Make 7 Aquilion with 2 Tacjets each, and 14 armours, alongside 3 Phasal Teleporters. If you chose the correct upgrade, your cars will hover over water and ignore zones of control. Your destroyers ideally will have additional range, your Aquilion with additional aircraft capacity, and your Tacjets have either strength against cities or against wounded/land/sea units. You might not always get 12/16 Supremecy or Purity for the planes first so if you get Harmony, just grab whatever upgrade looks nice to you. For any other upgrade its personal choice, I personally like the healing so I can maintain an assault a little more comfortably, but higher damage is usually best. If you have spare destroyers, and you should have spare destroyers, send them up by sea along with your new army. Always keep enough army at home to defend, and start building tacjets in every city when you get their second upgrade, only after buildings of course.Try and get orbital coverage next to capital cities and teleport up your army. If you put your planes on the aquilions at least 1 turn before teleporting, they will immediately be able to attack, so do this to kill any units around, prioritising melee units that can reclaim cities. After you've cleaned up their land of any would be attackers, start air bombing their cities and taking them with your Armours. Repeat to win. It's a good idea to leave some army behind just to defend newly captured lands. It can be helpful to try and make peace once you've secured their capital so as to not waste time.
And there you have it, how to beat the game as ARC. Good luck out there and may your spies bring you good fortune.
Turns out this might be over powered in multiplayer...
Hey guys it's me again! After some messing around with ARC because a friend suggested I try it, I've come up with what I think is a solid way to beat Apollo difficulty with this faction. I recently posted a far more in depth guide on Apollo difficulty it self but the build and tech order was for Hutama. Still a lot of good stuff in that thread so feel free to check that out.
Okay so let's get into it. As always, I like to play on massive maps. This time around I've been playing on Quick pace, but I am certain that ARC would be a very strong contender on any pace. Note that this guide is only for Domination victories, with all other victory conditions turned off. I haven't looked into the other ones for this faction yet, and besides I find the Domination to be the most fun and a lot less luck dependant. I mention map size and pace in my guides because they do vastly change how one plays the game. The good news is this strategy should ideally work in any map of your choosing, with some minor tweaks to respond to the environment.
I'm gonna keep this guide short because I'm writing it late at night, so I'll get into it all now.
For starters, we pick up artists, tectonic scanner, and pioneering. Realistically you can change artists for anything you like, I just find culture is the slowest resource to gain and so getting it for free is quite nice.
Unlike the Hutama playstyle where we rush to Academies and spam them everywhere in our first 5 cities, the way I play ARC fundamentally revolves around the use of Spies, but also the Node tile improvement. The reason for this is Nodes are a leaf tech right underneath Computing, and so it's quite fitting to pick up. As it turns out, ARC has problems with energy as it doesn't get the massive boost from international trade routes. In my opinion, the biggest difference between winning this difficulty and losing is the correct use of tile improvements.
Okay so your build order in the initial game is very similar to Hutama. Your capital builds a trade depot, a worker, a convoy, and buys Old Earth Relic. Send trade convoy to any outposts to get them to grow. We only get one convoy per city, and I think it's good to get a city founded rather than buff 1 city in a minor way. After that the first city builds 1 colonist, 1 worker, and repeats this until you have a total of 5 cities. Going above 5 is going to make your health so unmanageable with this strategy because you don't get any health buildings till a fair bit later, unlike the Hutama method. Send your first Explorer and soldier off around your land to find coasts and Titanium, then manually move them towards all other factions. I highly reccomend manually moving them each turn as they will act dumb if blocked by an alien in the way, thus taking a lot longer because they end out back tracking. When you've met at least 4 other factions you can automate explore with these 2 units. It can be handy to the explore head back to a city to refuel on expedition modules, but only if convenient. Target Progenetor expeditions for a free affinity level if lucky. If you want, you can save artefacts but sometimes you never get enough to unlock a good building, so I don't bother, but if you know artefact combinations by memory then use it to your advantage.
Your second city should ideally be off the coast, and it will produce an additional 5 workers.
Third and fourth cities will ideally be on the coast and should build 2-3 Gunboats each before anything else.
Fifth city can be either coastal or inland, and this one builds 5 Soldiers, but maybe more if the need arises such as an early war.
For techs, we start with Chemistry to get that recycler, petroleum, and laboratory straight away. There is a case for picking this up later instead, but I think this one is a good choice for a first tech as you might be able to buy some Recyclers in your cities earlier than expected.
Always buy Old Earth Relic in every city that doesn't have one, as soon as they become available.
Immediately upgrade your default personality trait to level 3, then pick up the increased spy speed from Political. Then grab production from Domestic, then military production from War.
The only essential agreement's are outpost growth speed from Africa or the colonists found immediately which often comes from Duncan. Africa's agreement is really cheap so i get this any time im building new cities regarsless of whether I need to upgrade my own traits. After you've maxed your traits get whatever agreement looks good in the context.
Never automate your workers until you're confident that all your tile improvements are done. At first, focus on improving every basic resource and Mines on any hill areas. Only when that's done, you can automate them until it is time to build Nodes, BUT it is a far better use of time to start laying down roads between cities. As soon as you unlock Nodes, take every worker off automated, finish what they were improving, then spam Nodes on every tile that exists in your first 5 cities.
After Chemistry, we immediately go for Computing via the Ecology side. We need to be able to remove miasma anyway, and Vivariums are very good, especially on Icy maps.
Once Computing is done, go one down and grab Nodes, and build the Master Control wonder when it becomes available for the free worker maintenance and movement. If Daoming is in the game she may well beat you to it but its worth trying to get this in the early game.
After you get Computing, this time around we head straight up towards the tech that unlocks the Gene Smelter building, and picks up Pharmalab along the way health has been bad for a while and we need to fix it asap or our growth and production will suffer really badly. Then we can head over to Robotics, snagging ourselves the Autoplant and Thorium reactor buildings. Finally, the last tech for the early game will be for the Alien Preserve building.
After you've built your first army, you can focus on building a trade depot, Recycler, Clinic, Vivarium, Pharmalab, Gene Smelter, Autoplant, Thorium Reactor, and Alien Preserve, ideally in that order but is more dependent on what your deficits are at that time in the game. Trade Depot and Recycler should always come first if you want to change the order. Quest rewards are situational, pick what's needed at the time.
At some point one of your inland cities will have nothing to do, so snag the Ultrasonic Fence and reverse the polarit with the quest, allowing you to start sending trade convoys between your cities. My convoys always go for the highest production, but I'll go for a little less production if it gives me even 1 food.
Virtues for this one are pretty straight forward. We want to immediately get the free colonist from prosperity, then head over to the industry tree for +1 energy from basic resource, 25% production for buildings already in the capital, then bee line through the middle to Mangasanti. Then I grab the % energy based on income, and any other virtue of your choice in industry to complete the synergy for another 10% production. After this, personally I go to the Millitary tree and go straight through the middle till the very last virtue, then pick up 50% strategic resources. After that just get whatever you feel like, but we don't get much culture with this style so you'll likely beat the game before you get another virtue.
Okay so you've built enough army to fight off any other factions that declare war, and hopefully you've kept them close enough to defend rather than attack an ai. Unfortunately this is Apollo and without an army you will always lose, but you also lose a lot of turns to building an army when you could be making buildings, although we don't have a choice. By now you should start to have 1-2 Nodes in each city, and are now able automate 1-5 workers to naturally improve your cities. Also, you will have spies sent out to at least 3 other factions, where they will prioritise stealing tech, science, and energy, in that order. Do not underestimate stealing energy, because you will have energy problems until your Nodes appear, so steal energy whenever you have to, but then go back to stealing tech/science. During this phase, you will be given a quest to perform a tier 4 espionage, and the only one available is Coup de etat which is a garunteed war, so do this when prepared as it will make all your spies powerful. Also follow any espionage quests that you are given. You don't need to actually go after the other factions yet and I'd encourage you not to just yet, but be ready to defend. Because you aren't juicing science up with this faction, your deterministic tech progression will feel really slow, but that's okay because by stealing tech we get an incredible amount of affinity levels. I would always steal tech whenever I can instead of science because it's almost always garunteed affinity xp and the sooner we get to 7/7 in any 2 we can compete against a pressuring ai with just soldiers and gunboats.
When you've finished the above, it is now time to transition to the mid game. We want to unlock additional spies through the use of quests, and conveniently the techs to do this help us with our other goals. To get more spies, we want CEL Cradle, Command Centre, and Feedsite Hubs. Conveniently this gets us Tacnet Hubs, and so if you're at war I'd go for Communications first before the CEL Cradle tech. After Cel Cradle, we then want the tech that gives +1 science from all node improvements. This will ensure we can target specific techs if we need to.
Now is the time to send out 1 colonist and 1 worker at a time, for a total of 5 times to found 5 new cities. These new cities will want 2 manufactury tile improvements, and any basic resources improved, then the workers can be automated or you could build more Nodes or even Academies. Any city that doesn't have anything to do should build gun boats or soldiers/armours. Soldiers if you only want to defend, or armours if you want to go on the offensive a little bit, but remember our army is still weak at this point so don't over extend. Steal energy whenever you need to purchase units to defend your cities.
Once the above is done, you're now ready to head into the end game. The end game techs that we target are based on good units and orbital coverage, because you guessed it, this is another Phasal Teleporter strategy. To increase orbital coverage we want Neoplanitarium, Observatory, Repair Bay, Field Reactor, and Launch Complexes. Build all of these at least once to trigger the quest so we can get the most use out of them later. Before getting orbital coverage however, it's a very good idea to research the Aquilion unit when you can upgrade it to carry 2 aircraft each. Also grab the tech for Magrails, to speed up your army quite a bit.
Now is the time to build cities anywhere and everywhere you can see, and spend any spare energy on Recycler, Old earth Relic, Trade Convoy, and Autoplant, in that order. Autoplants are expensive so buy all of the others first in each new city. Like before, put 1-2 manufacturies in each new city for a comfy end game production line. Buy a couple of Pharmalabs to keep health above zero when needed.
It is now time for war. The techs you choose are now personal choices or just shift click them all at random, it doesn't matter anymore. Your army will consist of 7 spies, which you will he using liberally to target either 1 faction really hard, or any and every faction for whatever reason you like. Drain their energy, and drain their army. You'll likely not be able to coup de etat anymore but if you can, do this at the right time. There is only 4 useful military units in the entire game in my opinion and that is the holy Aquilion, the Armour, the Tacjet, and the Destroyer. Make 7 Aquilion with 2 Tacjets each, and 14 armours, alongside 3 Phasal Teleporters. If you chose the correct upgrade, your cars will hover over water and ignore zones of control. Your destroyers ideally will have additional range, your Aquilion with additional aircraft capacity, and your Tacjets have either strength against cities or against wounded/land/sea units. You might not always get 12/16 Supremecy or Purity for the planes first so if you get Harmony, just grab whatever upgrade looks nice to you. For any other upgrade its personal choice, I personally like the healing so I can maintain an assault a little more comfortably, but higher damage is usually best. If you have spare destroyers, and you should have spare destroyers, send them up by sea along with your new army. Always keep enough army at home to defend, and start building tacjets in every city when you get their second upgrade, only after buildings of course.Try and get orbital coverage next to capital cities and teleport up your army. If you put your planes on the aquilions at least 1 turn before teleporting, they will immediately be able to attack, so do this to kill any units around, prioritising melee units that can reclaim cities. After you've cleaned up their land of any would be attackers, start air bombing their cities and taking them with your Armours. Repeat to win. It's a good idea to leave some army behind just to defend newly captured lands. It can be helpful to try and make peace once you've secured their capital so as to not waste time.
And there you have it, how to beat the game as ARC. Good luck out there and may your spies bring you good fortune.
Turns out this might be over powered in multiplayer...
Last edited:
