Is surplus and excess income a sign of sub optimal gaming?

[s0nny80y]

Is surplus and excess income a sign of sub optimal gaming?

I'm thinking along these lines since there are more expensive improvements available, which properly spammed, would deplete your income to the benefit of the many advantages those expensive improvements provide towards victory conditions.

...thinks I need to build more workers instead of warmongering against Franco-Iberia, Apollo...

 

[Noatz]

In starcraft it is. In this game, not so much.

You generate so much sometimes you probably physically can't spend it all, or the only way would be by spam buying military units and going domination. In any event it's not likely to make a difference to your victory.

 

[homegrown]

Well, you *should* build more workers, irregardless of whatever else you're doing.

 

[Mysticforce]

Step 1: Research Terraforming
Step 2: Build 40 workers
Step 3: Set them on auto improve
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Now you are broke

I think I had one game where I covered a continent with those damn things and I'm pretty sure I was playing 500-600 energy per turn just for tile upkeep.

I couldn't actually go to war with anyone (this is after I already won Emancipation on Apollo) because if I lose external trade routes I'd be -300EPT...

 

[aguliondew]

Their are 2 production virtues encourages saving up energy. In the short term it does not seem like much but it adds up overtime. Investment gain energy equal to 1% of your stockpile of energy.

 

[Burck]

I'm really interested in trying an Empire build centered around grabbing Cognition early... maybe with a free tech slingshot? Anyhow, the academies would certainly eat up quite a bit of money (between the maintenance cost and the opportunity cost).

Specifically regarding whether excess energy is a sign of sub-optimal gaming... maybe.

I often notice other Civs (on Apollo) getting way ahead of me in Affinity level, so maybe by shifting away from generator spam to Academy spam one could keep up in the tech/affinity race.

 

[Mysticforce]

I often notice other Civs (on Apollo) getting way ahead of me in Affinity level, so maybe by shifting away from generator spam to Academy spam one could keep up in the tech/affinity race.

Early affinity level are a result of two things - completing the quests, and going for very specific tech routes. Out of the two, quests matter a whole lot more =/

In one Apollo game I was able to get to Purity 13 before the next highest AI hit Affinity 6, because I just completed them extremely fast.

 

[Kzell11b]

Well, you *should* build more workers, irregardless of whatever else you're doing.

Regardless.

 

[Selereth]

Having a negative budget in this game really hurts you militarily wise. For me the only way I stayed out of the minus zone was to continuously siphon energy from my opponents so that I didn't lose a military unit every single turn. Hell, if the AI had decided to declare war on me I would've been toast since my economy had gone down the gutter, and I built what, 5 terrascapes at the most?

In this case I should have turned all my trade routes into external ones. But then I lost.

 

[metagross]

One game I went for extremely early Terraforming with Vadim (research Ecology, slingshot with ruins Solar Collector) and went on a spree.

I STILL had 50-100 excess EpT with all those trade routes going external.

 

[rawrkitty2]

i always get investment so any excess ept/stockpile below 10k is inefficent, and furthermore any excess below 15k energy means you cant immediately buy an army when wartime comes.
Saving energy never hurts since its ONLY three functions are:

Buying tiles
Buying units/buildings
Preventing bankrupt energy detriments

the only time when excess energy hurts you is when buying something would otherwise increase your income and thus at T*N where you bought X you would have higher energy than T*N where you didnt buy X