FaceUnderMask
Warlord
Ok, I do realise that this is the second rule of acquisition thread in two days, but still.
Basically, I am not in a club of lucky guys who got that with imbalanced TR gold ICS pre-patch. So I had to design a game where I can grab this achievement. There is a well-known abuse - you can store a lot of cash, save, buy tiles, load, repeat. The main problem is to minimize the amount of loading.
Setup:
Difficulty: Not very high.
Map size and type: Massive and Protean. Basically, you don't want AI to squeeze you, because you need quite a lot of underdeveloped cities to buy tiles from by the time you store good amount of cash.
Sponsor and Colonists: Mostly irrelevant. Kavitha + Artists and Barre + Artists may spoil things a little, because cities will acquire new tiles pretty fast without means to control it. I went with ARC and Aristocrats.
Spaceship and Cargo: Tectonic Scanner and Machinery (worker).
General strategy:
Since TR gold was heavily nerfed, and generators were not nerfed at all, I went with the latter. The generator spam is not unsimilar to academy spam, in the regard that they both need a favourable dirt to be effective (grassland, desert with a river).
Main stuff:
Affinity: Personally, I went Supremacy, but after giving it some thought I realised that Harmony is potentially better. Organics got Biofactory, which is a harmony building. Solar Collectors are received with Photosystems - a harmony tech. The tech that gives Xenomalleum also gives Molecular Forge - an amazing harmony +5 food building that doesn't require strategics. Another building with +10% energy quest is Nanopasture which is also a more or less harmony tech. The only thing you will want from Supremacy is free roads and magrails. Also Harmony got Xenofuel Plants, which is a mid-game energy building with a xenomass-enhancing quest. Basically, contrary to somewhat popular belief, generators weren't meant for supremacy playthrough, like, at all.
Virtues: Prosperity, then Industry. In prosperity - avoid Pioneer Spirit. Surprisingly, while things like Gift Economy and Hands Never Idle are somewhat okay for normal gameplay, and Alternative Markets were even discussed about being way too good at least twice, during this generator-focused gameplay they look kinda weak. On the other hand, this 'receive 1% of your current gold' criticized for being impractical suddenly becomes more or less decent.
That's basically it. It felt quite refreshing to play like that. Hope it was at least interesting to read.
I've accumulated 88k energy by turn 300. That's something like 200 tiles bought per a load. Easily got achievement in, like, 15 mins or less.
One thing I know for sure now is that I definitely underestimated generators before, and I should somehow implement some parts of this experience on Soyuz+/Standart.
Basically, I am not in a club of lucky guys who got that with imbalanced TR gold ICS pre-patch. So I had to design a game where I can grab this achievement. There is a well-known abuse - you can store a lot of cash, save, buy tiles, load, repeat. The main problem is to minimize the amount of loading.
Setup:
Difficulty: Not very high.
Map size and type: Massive and Protean. Basically, you don't want AI to squeeze you, because you need quite a lot of underdeveloped cities to buy tiles from by the time you store good amount of cash.
Sponsor and Colonists: Mostly irrelevant. Kavitha + Artists and Barre + Artists may spoil things a little, because cities will acquire new tiles pretty fast without means to control it. I went with ARC and Aristocrats.
Spaceship and Cargo: Tectonic Scanner and Machinery (worker).
General strategy:
Since TR gold was heavily nerfed, and generators were not nerfed at all, I went with the latter. The generator spam is not unsimilar to academy spam, in the regard that they both need a favourable dirt to be effective (grassland, desert with a river).
Main stuff:
- Organics - +1 energy from generators;
- Solar Collectors are absurdly good satellites - +20% for a city in range and +1 per affected tile. Also it doesn't require any strategics and is really cheap to build.
- Xenomalleum - a moderately expensive wonder, +2 from every generator.
- Field Reactor - is a generic high-end energy building. It's not that good - only +15% (with an appropriate quest) more energy for 500 hammer cost, which makes Solar Collectors fairly superior to that. But if you really want you energy-per-turn to skyrocket you ought to get it.
- Since generators will be your main tile, getting Planetary Engineering for it's +1 production from generators is worthwhile.
Affinity: Personally, I went Supremacy, but after giving it some thought I realised that Harmony is potentially better. Organics got Biofactory, which is a harmony building. Solar Collectors are received with Photosystems - a harmony tech. The tech that gives Xenomalleum also gives Molecular Forge - an amazing harmony +5 food building that doesn't require strategics. Another building with +10% energy quest is Nanopasture which is also a more or less harmony tech. The only thing you will want from Supremacy is free roads and magrails. Also Harmony got Xenofuel Plants, which is a mid-game energy building with a xenomass-enhancing quest. Basically, contrary to somewhat popular belief, generators weren't meant for supremacy playthrough, like, at all.
Virtues: Prosperity, then Industry. In prosperity - avoid Pioneer Spirit. Surprisingly, while things like Gift Economy and Hands Never Idle are somewhat okay for normal gameplay, and Alternative Markets were even discussed about being way too good at least twice, during this generator-focused gameplay they look kinda weak. On the other hand, this 'receive 1% of your current gold' criticized for being impractical suddenly becomes more or less decent.
That's basically it. It felt quite refreshing to play like that. Hope it was at least interesting to read.
I've accumulated 88k energy by turn 300. That's something like 200 tiles bought per a load. Easily got achievement in, like, 15 mins or less.
One thing I know for sure now is that I definitely underestimated generators before, and I should somehow implement some parts of this experience on Soyuz+/Standart.
