Ectogenesis Pod

[Kaigen]

Roxlimn:

What exactly do you mean by an Econ game? Supremacy doesn't get a direct line on anything that boosts food, hammers, or energy, it's true, but trade routes provide all of that in spades. Supremacy is arguably the biggest benefactor of how powerful trade routes are right now because they take care of everything Supremacy's not great at so that Supremacy can focus on what it is good at: Pushing science and culture really hard. CEL Cradles and Feedsite Hubs get you extra covert agents to steal more science so you can fill out key techs faster. They also provide you with extra culture so you can grab Prosperity 10 to ensure happiness before diving down Knowledge to grab the extra science from Academies (conveniently located on a tech with more science and culture boosting buildings).

I just put all that together with your internal trade route strategies and the stuff Bandobras Took's been saying in the "best sponsor" thread about the ARC. After putting down farms and generators in the early game, I spammed biowells in two cities and academies everywhere else, with trade routes going from my other cities to the breadbaskets to boost their production. Once I had Prosperity 10, Biowell spam kept me in the mid 20's health-wise. Once I had Alien Genetics (the one non-Supremacy affinity tech I picked up before hitting Supremacy 18) and Protogenetics, virtually every tile in my empire was generating culture. I ended up winning an Emancipation victory on turn 203, which is my fastest non-Domination time yet.

I attached a screen shot on turn 184, a few turns after starting the Emancipation Gate, and one on the victory turn. I also included the game settings (in addition to what's shown there, I had 7 AI instead of 8 so that the Cultural Burden quest wouldn't bug out, Abundant resources, and Low sea level):

 

[Carl_Bar]

What exactly do you mean by an Econ game? Supremacy doesn't get a direct line on anything that boosts food, hammers, or energy, it's true, but trade routes provide all of that in spades. Supremacy is arguably the biggest benefactor of how powerful trade routes are right now because they take care of everything Supremacy's not great at so that Supremacy can focus on what it is good at: Pushing science and culture really hard. CEL Cradles and Feedsite Hubs get you extra covert agents to steal more science so you can fill out key techs faster. They also provide you with extra culture so you can grab Prosperity 10 to ensure happiness before diving down Knowledge to grab the extra science from Academies (conveniently located on a tech with more science and culture boosting buildings).

The Cel cradle is a Tech 3 tech in the bottom part of the tech tree, the Feedsite hub is a Tech 3 tech in the lower right of the tech tree, the Neruolabe and holosuite are Tech 2 items in an upper right tree tech. But except for the cel cradle you need a tech 2 tech in the mid left part of the tree to use them.

Thing is the non-affinity specific boosts to Energy are in a part of the tree purity allready goes through or passes close to, and Harmony whilst benefiting from certain specific techs can ignore the rest of the left side of the tree besides autoplants and mag rails and their right side tech path is very linear.

Basically Supremecy's issue is that all it's good affinity econ options are spread all over the tree, in deep techs, a long way from the tech they need to be able to use them. Harmony's are on the same tech or a nearby tech, and purity goes heavily into the general econ part of the tree to start with. Harmony and Purity can pick up good general econ techs in addition to good affinity tech's. And no amount of trade routes will compete with trade routes + tech.

 

[Kaigen]

The Cel cradle is a Tech 3 tech in the bottom part of the tech tree, the Feedsite hub is a Tech 3 tech in the lower right of the tech tree, the Neruolabe and holosuite are Tech 2 items in an upper right tree tech. But except for the cel cradle you need a tech 2 tech in the mid left part of the tree to use them.

CEL Cradle's tech costs the same as Biology (the route to Vertical Farming) and is directly on the path to Hypercomputing, as opposed to on a detour like Biology is in relation to Nanotechnology. Likewise, Feedsite Hubs requires Communications, which is also directly on the victory path. Neurolab, Holosuite, and Academies are out of the way, to be sure, but Holosuite gives a free virtue, which puts it in the same ballpark as Bionics (to say nothing of what you can do with Academy spam).

I'll grant you that Purity gets to have its cake and eat it too, as it gets solid economic bonuses directly on its affinity techs, something neither of the other affinities really gets (Harmony's affinity techs are virtually devoid of economic bonuses aside from Photosystems, mainly providing healing and units). Supremacy, on the other hand, can field twice as many covert agents without deviating from the victory path, which is not something to take lightly. Supremacy might have to jump all over the tree (again, this is something Harmony has to do as well, Purity is uniquely blessed in this regard), but you'll fill that out faster than you think with a half-dozen spies stealing science. And it's not like Purity is going to reach the magic affinity 13 purely from the top half of the tree alone (unless you get really lucky with quests and expeditions).

Trade routes alone might not equal Trade routes + tech, but it provides enough for Supremacy to get by while outstripping the other affinities in science and culture. That additional science and culture just isn't as obvious as the extra food and energy on your tiles.

 

[Roxlimn]

Very interesting! I must try that out.

Harmony actually does have affinity techs that give out Econ bonuses. Xenonursery boosts Science, and Xenofuel Plant boosts Energy. The quest for Xenofuel Plant (I think) adds 3 hammers and 2 energy to each Xenomass, and the Xenomass itself is a high-food tile, of course. Bionics gives Biowells - the Bionics tech is a Harmony/Purity tech.

Not sure about using Prosperity. I strongly feel that that tree is broken, so I'm trying not to use it every single game. I've made Purity work without it. Harmony, too. Gene Gardens is an easy get. Optical Surgery could work, I guess, but it requires substantial Firaxite.

Harmony/Purity stuff is often bundled together, so it's no big deal for them to dip if they need it. Harmony's got no issue dipping 2 Purity for Gene Gardens, IIRC.

 

[Kaigen]

Sorry, when I was talking Harmony affinity techs, I was talking about the ones that give direct affinity points, not ones along the path. You're right that Harmony can stack some nice economic bonuses off of Xenowells, though I have to wonder how many Xenomass tiles you'll end up working. I consider Bionics to be an anyone tech, because Institutes and Biowells are that good. By the same token, you could call Robotics and Computing Supremacy techs, but nobody's really going to skip those either.

I know what you mean about Prosperity, but it's hard to maintain 20+ Health without it or Purity's Health boosting buildings, and getting the extra +10% Science and Culture from utopian Health is a big boost for this strategy. Though to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get similarly good results by letting health slide and powering through Knowledge faster (or else using Magnasati and Profiteering as your health boost. Hmm, I might have to try that next).

So far I've tried this with ARC and Franco-Iberia, who are both obviously suited to the strategy. I just finished my FI game with an Emancipation Victory on Turn 205, and that was with some hiccups (namely, getting stuck with Familiar Exotics and no oil in the capital, and having Holosuites take dozens of turns to trigger its building quest). Maybe I'll try PAU next and see how it works with that.

 

[Carl_Bar]

CEL Cradle's tech costs the same as Biology (the route to Vertical Farming) and is directly on the path to Hypercomputing, as opposed to on a detour like Biology is in relation to Nanotechnology.

Except the autoplant a standard buy for everyone, but doubly so supremecy and is on the direct path and bionics is part of the best unit path in the game, and it costs less research, your forgetting that computing is considerably more expensive than physics and you need a T1 tech which are all the same to get computing.

Likewise communications is a tech i always pick up immediately before going for the victory because it's a side path with only one lead out and nothing in it or any of the leaf techs is worth the research cost till my science income is high enough to make it a trivial buy.

Also whilst Bionics is worth it for the institute i agree, it's not a super strong tech econ wise, the strong techs are the straight vertical path into bioengeneeiring and the biology tech, (or rather it's leaf).

That said i agree with you, you'll rarely be working enough xenomass to make the Harmony specific stuff worth it alone. That's true of all the affinity resource stuff so it's generally applicable stuff that matter's. Which means non-maintenance costing improvement yields and their improves and nothing in the bottom half of the tech tree competes with vertical farming or organics + xenothilium gens.

Anyway gtg dentist.

 

[Cannonballninja]

I know what you mean about Prosperity, but it's hard to maintain 20+ Health without it or Purity's Health boosting buildings, and getting the extra +10% Science and Culture from utopian Health is a big boost for this strategy. Though to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get similarly good results by letting health slide and powering through Knowledge faster (or else using Magnasati and Profiteering as your health boost. Hmm, I might have to try that next).

Magnasanti and Profiteering are very strong health virtues, and are definitely competitive with Eudaimonia and Mind Over Matter. They're not quite as crazy, but they're more than sufficient. And if you're taking Knowledge as your second tree, then Community Medicine will blow well beyond the 20 health needed for a utopian society.

 

[AlaskA]

Not sure about using Prosperity.

Weakest tree expect free colonist. I can explain if u want.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Not sure about using Prosperity. I strongly feel that that tree is broken, so I'm trying not to use it every single game.

Weakest tree except free colonist. I can explain if u want.

Intuitively agree Prosperity Tree is the weakest, but I want to hear your explanation anyway.

 

[Carl_Bar]

I'd say might's weaker, Prosperity's issue is that whilst it has some really nice bonus's hidden in it, there's some bad stuff locked in there too.

Industry is the strongest IMO.

 

[Anomandaris]

BE is my first civilization game and I am pretty new
Still, I would say the knowledge tree is the most powerful IF you are not going domination. Science is simply too important and more culture > more virtues > more science. That said, the optimal setup for me is a hybrid - prosperity up to colonist (obviously), Industry up to Social whatever (+2 production), then 10 knowledge including science from culture and +2 science from academies as well as -10% leaf science needed. Then back to Industry and magnasanti and then the might tree, however far you get before finishing. That enables me to save up the free virtue (but lose out on a covert agent) for when it really shines - once they start getting expensive. Similar to that, I like saving up my Virtue wonders for as long as possible as well by using an exploit:
1) Set autosave to every turn, 100 max saves.
2) Enable queue
3) Build up the wonders until they have only 1 turn left to complete, and never let them finish by putting other stuff to build in front.
4) When/If an AI builds the wonder, reload the save two turns before, let the wonder finish.

 

[Cannonballninja]

That enables me to save up the free virtue (but lose out on a covert agent) for when it really shines - once they start getting expensive

You don't have to do that with free virtues. They're genuinely free - you just get an extra virtue. It doesn't increase the cost of any of your regularly earned virtues. So grab them as soon as possible - you're only losing out if you don't!

---

I also agree that Prosperity, as a virtue tree, is one of the weaker trees overall. Its Tier 1 virtues are all about short-term gain - and they're gains that are exhausted very quickly. The Tier 2 virtues are all inferior to the other Tier 2 virtues and - Eudaimonia (possibly also Ecoscaping) aside - its Tier 3 virtues are in the same boat. Prosperity has nothing even approaching virtues like Independence Network or Liquidity.

That's not to say Prosperity is a terrible tree, though. It's a very...explosive tree. It gives you a lot of bang at the very beginning of the game. But I think it's very easy to squander that early edge it gives you. You really have to ride that early city and early worker as hard as you possibly can.

But of the four virtue trees, I do think Prosperity is the worst. Or, at the very least, the hardest to leverage. I also believe that Might is really quite strong - though if it suffers, it suffers because it's one dimensional. You really need to go kill folk to get any mileage out of it. But killing folk gives you lots of free cities and lots of money so...you really can't argue with if if that's the sort of game you're planning on. I DO think you're well served taking Lifeform Sensors if you're planning a Might game though - just so you can see if Survivalism/Scavenging are worth it.

 

[Carl_Bar]

The issue with might is that aside from the alien stuff, (which is a T2 virtue and so delays T1 synergy), there's nothing useful for a long time because no military is really upto taking early cities reliably. If the affinity boost came earlier it would be a different matter. Might's really only useful if you get a really hard alien locked start, (I've had it happen). Now the later part of might is quite strong, but it's a poor opener and later on virtues get so expensive that working through the early ones is quite painful.

Knowledge is nice, but it just can't compete in health terms with industry, ad it really helps get cities up faster which increases your boom rate. Being able to make stuff cheaper to buy is nice too. Ironically IMO the weakest virtues in the tree are the bonus's Manufactoury's, (none of the special improvements, except the terrascape under specific circumstances is worth building, like, ever, IMO), and the trade route bonus's. Orbital production is probably the weakest. Now free Petroleum would be another matter...

 

[Kaigen]

I tried a Supremacy game opening Industry instead of Prosperity, and as much as I want it to work, it doesn't quite make it. Industry provides some great bonuses to energy and production (two things that Supremacy is hungry for), and I could live without Prosperity's faster start and faster workers. Magnasati, Profiteering and Biowell spam, however, aren't enough to get you to Utopian healthiness, at least not on a Standard size map without the benefit of Purity's health buildings. Running in the red instead of at Utopian effectively cuts into your Science by 30% and your Culture by 20%, which means you're kneecapping Supremacy's best features.

Re: Communications, when I play Purity I would usually put that off until the end as well, but I'm starting to wonder if that's a mistake. A successful Steal Science action is worth 25% of the most expensive tech you can research, and a non-ARC sponsor can easily attempt 3 or 4 of those actions over the course of the game if you get them early enough. Which means that, as a conservative estimate, passing up the Command Center covert agent is missing out on 2,250 beakers towards Tactical LEV, or Industrial Ecology, or your favorite 4th ring tech that you always end up putting off. It's like saying "No thanks, I don't really want a free Great Scientist."

 

[Carl_Bar]

Question, do you regularly leave any buildings un-built in your cities? I know that i personally run an energy heavy, food low, econ and eventually i'll buy up every building long term. s a result i'm probably sitting on enough positive health from industry virtues alone to offset each cities health penalties, including pop.

 

[Kaigen]

On the contrary, I have a tendency to build everything everywhere (in my last game I was constructing buildings I normally don't, like launch complexes, just to try to squeeze more health out of Magnasati), but I mostly hard build powered by internal trade routes, so maybe I'm driving my population up higher than you are. If you generally play Purity you also have more health buildings than the Supremacy strategies I've been trying, which might also play a role. Do you play Massive maps? Those get something like a 25% reduction in unhealthiness for cities and population built in.

 

[Carl_Bar]

On the contrary i go with dwarf maps and internal's a lot. I think it might help if i explain the key essentials here as your very focused on your science income maximization, which isn't where industry shines. That's Knowledge's gig.

Industry is all about the energy boom, hardcore energy boom. You use that to allow you to more rapidly acquire and build up your cities.

The start can include 3 prosperity just for that free colonist, in fact i recommend it. After that the key is to rush the xenothilium as fast as you can.

In the meantime build as many cities as possible, minimum spacing and try and get cities within minimum spacing of 2 or more nearby cities. You want to maxamise your city numbers and density. Starting with Refugee's can make this really good as it totally helps cities grow to a useful size a good bit faster and Slavs are the best civ for obvious reasons.

As soon as you get the final, get it produced. Grab autoplants and Magrail's next, but feel free to grab the other T1 techs before you do. By now your science should have them down to a handful of turns each.

As soon as the wonder is up just continue the colonist spam, oh and hardcore gen spam the whole time. As soon as you have the autoplant, the Magrail's, and any T1'as you want, grab photosystems and spam sola sats over every city.

As soon as you get the xenothilium, (before if you've been a diligent gen spammer), you get enough excess energy you can buy colonist's, military units, trade depot's, autoplant's, and trade convoy's. This means the instant your city is founded you have enough production to produce everything else reasonably quickly. Production first then i go with production time order.

When the AI clogs your expansion, conquer, raze and replace low density with high density city placements. You can just buy your military as you need it if you get the econ gong early enough.

After you get the bottom health virtue in industry, switch to knowledge to get your penalty down.

You basically get Science and Culture via mass city spam, not via raising individual cities high. Supremacy works quite well with this actually as you can get affinity units much easier and quicker.

I'm still perfecting the basics of this strat ATM and you can get screwed by a bad start, i do recommend science and culture station choices, and try and use quests to beeline an affinity. But whilst it's probably slower out the door initially than most strats, it's VERY powerful once it gets going because it starts to snowball so hard once it hits it's stride. Getting the balance of workers to other stuff ain't easy though, that's the primary issue. My last try took off really epicly in the end, but i was really behind on tile improvements the whole time.


Also some additional thoughts on your issues: Specialists generate a LOT more un-health, and unless you manage the AI, setting a specific focus will make the AI use them. A basic tile is 0.75 health, a specialist is 1.34 for reference. I thus don;t heavily use them unless i absolutely have to.

Also as i noted before, affinity specific buildings almost never give you anything close to what you can get from other source's, don't get hung up on them, they're bonus's to your real economy, not replacements.

 

[Kaigen]

So, once you've got the energy boom going, how many buildings do you rush buy in each city? By my count, you need 15 buildings per city plus 3 trade routes just to take care of the unhappiness from the city itself with Industry, much less the population. Rush buying health buildings will help, but only up until around pop 8. Though I suppose if you're spamming generators everywhere your cities might not be growing past that much. Sprinkle in a bit of baseline health and you'll probably stay in the green, but I don't see how you're reaching that 20+ breakpoint.

Basically, with my Supremacy strategy I open Prosperity to jump start my expansion and secure lots of health bonuses before moving into Knowledge and getting Learning Centers with Academy spam to drive up science. I don't think Industry substitutes for Prosperity well in that strategy.

As far as Workers go, if I'm using a strategy based around basic improvements (i.e. farms and generators), I find 2 workers per city to be sufficient, though a few extra when magrails become available doesn't hurt. If it's a strategy based around more advanced improvements (i.e. biowells, academies, and/or terrascapes), then three workers per city is much better as you push out those new improvements, after which you can cut back on workers as things fall into place (PAC can obviously do more with fewer, and Master Control can have a big impact on how far you can stretch your workers).

 

[player1 fanatic]

Also some additional thoughts on your issues: Specialists generate a LOT more un-health, and unless you manage the AI, setting a specific focus will make the AI use them. A basic tile is 0.75 health, a specialist is 1.34 for reference. I thus don;t heavily use them unless i absolutely have to.

This is untrue.
Changing population from worker to specialist will deduct 0.75 from population unhappiness and add 0.75 to specialist unhappiness.

 

[AlaskA]

Intuitively agree Prosperity Tree is the weakest, but I want to hear your explanation anyway.

Hm, i find it too hard to explain, sry. Im really try hard, but i can't. Sorry.