[BERT] I'm on turn 200; what should I do next? (saved game download included)

[s0nny80y]

Here is a preview of the saved game I've attached;

My initial six cities including the capital of Central.

Al Falah cities won through invasion with a land force primarily made up of defectors gained through covert ops;

Going back and fourth with INTGR over a small ocean East of Central.

Currently protecting four stations with cities in close proxy to ARC territory;

Current politics;

Virtues;

 

[vorlon_mi]

My inclination would be to sprint for the Supremacy victory condition, while keeping an eye on Lena to see if she starts building the Mind Flower. Start setting up your domestic trade routes as Ryika describes in this article https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-for-build-the-victory-wonder-quicker.550882/, since you will need for the existing ones to finish.

In my experience, INTEGR tries to build a solid domestic empire and will construct the victory wonder in due course. Your spies can tell you which city has started it, so you can plan your strike force to destroy it. In my experience, the AI rarely build the supporting buildings to speed up the Transcendence victory, so you will have time to attack and destroy it before it "blooms."

Hutama could try to build the Purity victory wonder, but he may not have sufficient space in his homeland to actually house the Earthling settlers when they land. How far away is Polystralia?

 

[s0nny80y]

Start setting up your domestic trade routes as Ryika describes in this article https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-for-build-the-victory-wonder-quicker.550882/, since you will need for the existing ones to finish.

Wow, thanks for the heads up! I intend to go for a Contact victory because it's the easiest victory to obtain, depending on how long it takes to make actual contact after activating the Beacon.

 

[vorlon_mi]

In that case, consider building the Beacon in Vanguard (since it has productive land around it) or even annexing Ard and using it to build the Beacon. Your overall negative health is likely to crimp your productivity; on the other hand, your screen shot shows +318 energy per turn, which is pretty good.

I try not to let my negative health go below -20. Getting some health buildings built (cytonursery, pharmalab) usually help with that. The puppet cities will often build health buildings on their own, if the overall health levels are low.

BERT doesn't give any score bonus for winning early. If you have the parts of the Signal, go ahead and build the Decode Signal project to get ready. See who objects, and plan to make war on them. If you want to wait another 20 turns to get your health score up, that is not a bad option.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Yeah, that health is a major drain on your economy.

 

[Tiberiu]

Hello and thanks for the post. It's encouraging to see the game still being played. I haven't looked at the save but looking at the pictures your colony seems to be winning even militarily since you seem to already have a lot of army and have a good income to buy more. So congratulations on that as any victory is a victory and means something on Apollo.

My 0.02$ and please note I don't want to criticize you very much, take what you like from my criticism but in my opinion this strategy that you employed does not suit the ARC. I don't agree with going wide with ARC but I do understand why you did so in order to try to profit from Aristocrats. The AIs are way too close to your levels in affinity for my liking, with ARC you should be much more ahead. You would/should have been more advanced if you simply focused more explorers and do more expeditions (with Knowledge 2 maybe), and rush Computing faster. Your seeding options are not great either but maybe you are just testing out Aristocrats... and neither are the policies. Prosperity is the worst for ARC in my opinion and shouldn't be opened at all with this faction, ever (edit- or if it's taken, it's only for extra expedition modules, not for colonist). Instead, go all in into Knowledge (expedition science, extra spy) or Might (science from aliens + affinity from techs) while at the same time rushing computing and Spy agency. Industry is also ok I guess and especially so if you like to play with Aristocrats. Early game simply maintain an army good enough not to die, and simply get a huge advancement into affinity compared to everybody, which enables you to win in any way that you like, more comfortably than you are doing in your picture.

I also disagree with taking Developer trait for health since health is mostly useless and especially so if you stay non-wide as you should with ARC. 8 Health might seem like a good idea early game but if you think about it it's a really low amount for how much Diplomatical Capital you invest into it. This trait seems good only if one wants to really focus Health hard in order to get the maximum benefits asap, or when employing Knowledge, trying to keep the bonus science active all times, otherwise doesn't seem to be worth it. Playing with -20 health seems to be ok considering that only beyond this level production becomes affected.