There are many CivBe strategies. This is just one of them.
This strategy is based around the idea that you make good use of the 2 affinity upgrades from might and 1 lower affinity requirement from the Memetwork so that you can obtain a Supremacy victory more easily. Also, this strategy assumes heavy early scouting in order to perform as many expeditions as possible and collect as many pods as possible, using them while having an expensive tech selected in hopes of greater science boost.
Another interesting strategical aspect is that all affinity techs will be researched only after we have +20% boost from Might, for maximum effect. This will occur early enough anyway, even when we combine might with taking 2 virtues in Knowledge (for the science boost from exploration which is very cool). More on virtues later.
We want to win by Emancipation but Contact is possible too if we find a piece of the signal in a progenitor ruin. Otherwise, don't bother.
Any faction can use this strategy but some of them might have a few synergies - for example Brasil for the combat bonuses and ARC for extra intrigue. Franco-Iberia is the worst for this since we don't really need that many virtues anyway and their bonus is weak too.
I will break this down into steps and discuss the priorities for everything - techs, virtues, wonders, etc. Everything below is written for single player with 8 players for all Pangaea/Continental maps (on archipelago you would have to build fewer explorers.)
Note: Staggered Starts is much easier than Non-Staggered Starts. I recommend for everybody to start at once.
Table of contents:
1. Seeding Options
2. Diplomacy and Alien approach.
3. Build order and early game priorities
4. Tech path
5. Virtues priorities
6. Spy activities
7. Trade routes
8. Army composition.
9. Improvements.
10. Satellites
11. Wonders
12. Important tricks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Seeding Options.
with the unlockables enabled, we will pick:
Colonists: Pioneers (fast exploration is great)
Spacecraft: Electromagnetic Sensor (too good to skip)
Cargo: Cryotome or Laboratory are both great
without unlockables, pick:
Colonists: Artists is main choice, with Scientists also a good pick.
Spacecraft: Tectonic Scanner is the best
Cargo: Laboratory is the best
2. Diplomacy and Alien approach.
The goal is to try to stay peaceful and have pacts of cooperation so that you can sell your resources and to be able to buy/sell science according to your needs. You mostly want to buy it, not sell it. Late game, anything goes...
Aliens: leave them alone in the early game in order to not hurt your exploration and expeditions.
mid-late game start hunting them for science, gold, xp, etc.
Befriending them is borderline useless.
3. Build order and early game priorities.
- build a lot of explorers (around 8-10) and use them effectively to collect as many Progenitor ruins or Alien Skeletons. The other exploration sites have way less priority. I am usually able to get anything from 2-5 affinity levels from exploration alone, which is crazy good. Exploration pays off.
After explorers are built (usually at the supply limit allows with no penalty), we build the normal buildings like Old Earth Relic, Trade depot, etc.
Early-mid game, try to quickly buy or build the Feedsite Hub and the Command Center for their extra spy. The faster you get those spies, the faster they will steal science for you. Cel Cradles are also similar but they need lvl 4 supremacy.
The number of cities that you will use depends on many factors but in general I think 5-7 are enough when going Might otherwise health will sink too much.
As a rule of thumb, as weird as it sounds, playing with -20 health is OK. Below -20, we start having production penalties and these are the worst to have in the colony. Everything else is tolerable. Don't let intrigue creep up too much in the capital, though. A surveillance web takes care of it, should it happen, though.
4. Tech path.
We want to take Chemistry for the 2 great buildings it unlocks and to see the petroleum, and then go straight to Computing by taking either Engineering or Ecology. Needless to say, research Pioneering after Chemistry if you don't start with it.
After this we want to go for Orbital Networks ASAP in order to make sure we catch the Memetwork.
It requires firaxite but you can trade for it, and Robotics isn't very expensive, so we can get our own.
On our way to Orbital Networks we should take any cheap tech that we think we need - Engineering is good for titanium unless we have Tectonic Scanner. If we have Xenomass, especially in the capital, making a detour for Alien Sciences is always worth it because the 2 buildings it unlocks are great. They need Harmony 2, though, so you need to use your best judgement to see if you can easily meet the requirement without slowing down your progress towards main objectives. Sometimes, you can get harmony affinity from alien skeletons, and then you just need Alien Biology to get to lvl 2.
important: in order to get to affinity 12 (1 less because of Memetwork) you will need only a few techs that give affinity. You get some levels from expeditions, some levels from quests, and 2 levels from Might. So just complete the main Supremacy objectives, you don't need to worry about what techs to unlock. You'll be surprised to see you don't really need that many techs to win.
5. Virtues priorities.
There are 3 good ways to do this:
a. First take Industry 1 and then only Might policies. Industry 1 is taken in order to get Tier bonus free virtue. It's a useful bonus that will be active all game long. Delay Might affinity bonus until the very end.
b. Take Knowledge opener and science expedition bonus (2 virtues). You can go for this option when you see that you will be able to perform a lot of expeditions. It might not be much, but early game, a few 30 science boosts mean you will be able to build your Spy Agency 10-20 turns faster, and in turn you will be able to get to the point where you steal science with your spies, earlier.
After knowledge 2, take only Might Bonuses, making sure you delay the Affinity bonus until the very end. A quick note- if you are African Union, you can even go for Knowledge 5, you will have enough culture to complete Might tree in time, and having 10% bonus culture in cities will make sure you recover your investment. Going deeper than 5 virtues in Knowledge involves risking to not finish Might Tree in time.
c. Take only Might virtues. You can try to build the Bytegeist after the Memetwork, and it will essentially give you 1 free virtue from the Tier Synergy requirement reduction. Building the Bytegeist is not a priority, so do not do it if it delays your main objectives.
note: Prosperity is a begginer trap, never take it.
6. Spy activities.
- Until your spies level up, just perform "Establish Network" again and again, don't bother with other operations, except the ones that are quest-related and give you extra spies.
- After your spies are leveled up, the goal is to steal science, as often as you can, making sure you have the technology selected when the mission finishes. If you are desperate for Energy, you can steal Energy too, but as a rule of thumb, the best is to just steal Science. Stealing Techs is a bit too luck based for my liking and the spies die more often. It's a high risk-high reward operation. Use common sense and your best judgement. I advise "Steal Science" as best.
- in the late game, it is time to use the spies at the HQ, and use them to either boost wonder production or health. I think boosting health is generally the best since it boosts all yields.
7. Trade routes.
- as a rule of thumb, send food/production to the capital when you need to build something important (which happens very often, after all), and when you need to tech for something faster, switch to External/Station trade routes.
8. Army composition.
If you can, build a small army earlier, rather than later, but don't overdo it. You should build infrastructure and other important buildings most of the time. But building units while they are cheap can be very worth it, especially when you are close to important affinity upgrades. For example building 3 tacjets before you get to lvl 6 affinity is a good way to then have 3 Needlejets that you built for half the cost.
I think Combat Rovers, Gunboats and Tacjets are the most useful units by far, so I recommend them as main choices. However, it can be worth having a few melee that fortify key positions, or some rangers who stay in cities to protect them, or hunt siege worms.
9. Improvements.
- early game you don't have much choice then to build farms everywhere and mines on the hills. Don't waste time cutting forests, you will just put biowells over them.
- don't bother with magrail, use roads. Unless you really need Carriers, but this doesn't happen often.
- Mid/Late game, simply spam Biowells everywhere. On bad tiles like Snow, Tundra you can put Terrascapes. You can use Terrascapes to "delete" useless resources that preventing you from building Biowells. After that you can replace the Terrascapes with Biowells. After you have around 10 biowells it is time to make a detour for Alien Genetics that gives biowells +1 culture. Too good to skip, I think.
- late game you could try to build some manufactories in your capital in order to boost production there, but I think most of the time that's not really needed. If you have good health levels, go for it, otherwise don't bother.
note: academies are a bit overrated, you don't really need early Cognition, it is good later for Holosuite free virtue, to complete Might Tree faster. Also, arrays are about the same in strenght and we get them faster.
Academies need Protogenetics and Knowledge upgrade to be really good. A bit too much.
10. Satellites.
- you don't really need any, except for the few Solar Collectors you find, obviously, and maybe some Tacnet Hubs if you need some boost during wars. You also need the Lasercom Satellite to establish contact with the earth.
- Orbital Fabricators are great but they come too late to be really relevant. Use Weather Controllers instead if you really like to try to use any of them, as they come at a more reasonable time. However they are best used on water, otherwise they can spawn resources that prevent you from building biowells on the tiles.
11. Wonders.
- Memetwork is the most important, you should catch it if you beeline for it, you can win without it a bit later.
- Master Control is good to have but not vital, don't prioritise it.
- Daedalus Ladder is cool to have if capital has good production. Not a priority by any means, but I like it and it's worth a mention.
- Bytegeist - if you somehow get lucky with a tech steal, it can be worth building it, expensive as it is. Requires a bit of planning, though, and it's much better integrated in a Harmony victory.
12. Tricks
- try to kill as many siege worms on non-improved tiles as you can so that you have a chance to boost your affinity by completing expeditions on the alien skeleton. Hunt them down if you don't have anything better to do with your army.
- Make sure to have an expensive tech selected when collecting Pods or when covert operation Steal Science completes. Otherwise it's very suboptimal way to play the game.
- Institute building Quest Choice gives a free tech at some point. Use it for Geoscaping or Neural Uploading. Steal the branch tech or research it normally. This way you get maximum benefit.
Sometimes what I do instead is to use it for Augmentation, and build Daedalus Ladder in the capital, and have access to Augmenteries in all cities. This is worth it only if done early, otherwise the Wonder and the Augmenteries don't have time to pay for their cost.
- buy science from other colonies you have pacts of cooperation with. you can buy 1 science for 3 energy
That's it! Thanks for reading, hopefully you can try out this strategy with good results.
This strategy is based around the idea that you make good use of the 2 affinity upgrades from might and 1 lower affinity requirement from the Memetwork so that you can obtain a Supremacy victory more easily. Also, this strategy assumes heavy early scouting in order to perform as many expeditions as possible and collect as many pods as possible, using them while having an expensive tech selected in hopes of greater science boost.
Another interesting strategical aspect is that all affinity techs will be researched only after we have +20% boost from Might, for maximum effect. This will occur early enough anyway, even when we combine might with taking 2 virtues in Knowledge (for the science boost from exploration which is very cool). More on virtues later.
We want to win by Emancipation but Contact is possible too if we find a piece of the signal in a progenitor ruin. Otherwise, don't bother.
Any faction can use this strategy but some of them might have a few synergies - for example Brasil for the combat bonuses and ARC for extra intrigue. Franco-Iberia is the worst for this since we don't really need that many virtues anyway and their bonus is weak too.
I will break this down into steps and discuss the priorities for everything - techs, virtues, wonders, etc. Everything below is written for single player with 8 players for all Pangaea/Continental maps (on archipelago you would have to build fewer explorers.)
Note: Staggered Starts is much easier than Non-Staggered Starts. I recommend for everybody to start at once.
Table of contents:
1. Seeding Options
2. Diplomacy and Alien approach.
3. Build order and early game priorities
4. Tech path
5. Virtues priorities
6. Spy activities
7. Trade routes
8. Army composition.
9. Improvements.
10. Satellites
11. Wonders
12. Important tricks
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Seeding Options.
with the unlockables enabled, we will pick:
Colonists: Pioneers (fast exploration is great)
Spacecraft: Electromagnetic Sensor (too good to skip)
Cargo: Cryotome or Laboratory are both great
without unlockables, pick:
Colonists: Artists is main choice, with Scientists also a good pick.
Spacecraft: Tectonic Scanner is the best
Cargo: Laboratory is the best
2. Diplomacy and Alien approach.
The goal is to try to stay peaceful and have pacts of cooperation so that you can sell your resources and to be able to buy/sell science according to your needs. You mostly want to buy it, not sell it. Late game, anything goes...
Aliens: leave them alone in the early game in order to not hurt your exploration and expeditions.
mid-late game start hunting them for science, gold, xp, etc.
Befriending them is borderline useless.
3. Build order and early game priorities.
- build a lot of explorers (around 8-10) and use them effectively to collect as many Progenitor ruins or Alien Skeletons. The other exploration sites have way less priority. I am usually able to get anything from 2-5 affinity levels from exploration alone, which is crazy good. Exploration pays off.
After explorers are built (usually at the supply limit allows with no penalty), we build the normal buildings like Old Earth Relic, Trade depot, etc.
Early-mid game, try to quickly buy or build the Feedsite Hub and the Command Center for their extra spy. The faster you get those spies, the faster they will steal science for you. Cel Cradles are also similar but they need lvl 4 supremacy.
The number of cities that you will use depends on many factors but in general I think 5-7 are enough when going Might otherwise health will sink too much.
As a rule of thumb, as weird as it sounds, playing with -20 health is OK. Below -20, we start having production penalties and these are the worst to have in the colony. Everything else is tolerable. Don't let intrigue creep up too much in the capital, though. A surveillance web takes care of it, should it happen, though.
4. Tech path.
We want to take Chemistry for the 2 great buildings it unlocks and to see the petroleum, and then go straight to Computing by taking either Engineering or Ecology. Needless to say, research Pioneering after Chemistry if you don't start with it.
After this we want to go for Orbital Networks ASAP in order to make sure we catch the Memetwork.
It requires firaxite but you can trade for it, and Robotics isn't very expensive, so we can get our own.
On our way to Orbital Networks we should take any cheap tech that we think we need - Engineering is good for titanium unless we have Tectonic Scanner. If we have Xenomass, especially in the capital, making a detour for Alien Sciences is always worth it because the 2 buildings it unlocks are great. They need Harmony 2, though, so you need to use your best judgement to see if you can easily meet the requirement without slowing down your progress towards main objectives. Sometimes, you can get harmony affinity from alien skeletons, and then you just need Alien Biology to get to lvl 2.
important: in order to get to affinity 12 (1 less because of Memetwork) you will need only a few techs that give affinity. You get some levels from expeditions, some levels from quests, and 2 levels from Might. So just complete the main Supremacy objectives, you don't need to worry about what techs to unlock. You'll be surprised to see you don't really need that many techs to win.
5. Virtues priorities.
There are 3 good ways to do this:
a. First take Industry 1 and then only Might policies. Industry 1 is taken in order to get Tier bonus free virtue. It's a useful bonus that will be active all game long. Delay Might affinity bonus until the very end.
b. Take Knowledge opener and science expedition bonus (2 virtues). You can go for this option when you see that you will be able to perform a lot of expeditions. It might not be much, but early game, a few 30 science boosts mean you will be able to build your Spy Agency 10-20 turns faster, and in turn you will be able to get to the point where you steal science with your spies, earlier.
After knowledge 2, take only Might Bonuses, making sure you delay the Affinity bonus until the very end. A quick note- if you are African Union, you can even go for Knowledge 5, you will have enough culture to complete Might tree in time, and having 10% bonus culture in cities will make sure you recover your investment. Going deeper than 5 virtues in Knowledge involves risking to not finish Might Tree in time.
c. Take only Might virtues. You can try to build the Bytegeist after the Memetwork, and it will essentially give you 1 free virtue from the Tier Synergy requirement reduction. Building the Bytegeist is not a priority, so do not do it if it delays your main objectives.
note: Prosperity is a begginer trap, never take it.
6. Spy activities.
- Until your spies level up, just perform "Establish Network" again and again, don't bother with other operations, except the ones that are quest-related and give you extra spies.
- After your spies are leveled up, the goal is to steal science, as often as you can, making sure you have the technology selected when the mission finishes. If you are desperate for Energy, you can steal Energy too, but as a rule of thumb, the best is to just steal Science. Stealing Techs is a bit too luck based for my liking and the spies die more often. It's a high risk-high reward operation. Use common sense and your best judgement. I advise "Steal Science" as best.
- in the late game, it is time to use the spies at the HQ, and use them to either boost wonder production or health. I think boosting health is generally the best since it boosts all yields.
7. Trade routes.
- as a rule of thumb, send food/production to the capital when you need to build something important (which happens very often, after all), and when you need to tech for something faster, switch to External/Station trade routes.
8. Army composition.
If you can, build a small army earlier, rather than later, but don't overdo it. You should build infrastructure and other important buildings most of the time. But building units while they are cheap can be very worth it, especially when you are close to important affinity upgrades. For example building 3 tacjets before you get to lvl 6 affinity is a good way to then have 3 Needlejets that you built for half the cost.
I think Combat Rovers, Gunboats and Tacjets are the most useful units by far, so I recommend them as main choices. However, it can be worth having a few melee that fortify key positions, or some rangers who stay in cities to protect them, or hunt siege worms.
9. Improvements.
- early game you don't have much choice then to build farms everywhere and mines on the hills. Don't waste time cutting forests, you will just put biowells over them.
- don't bother with magrail, use roads. Unless you really need Carriers, but this doesn't happen often.
- Mid/Late game, simply spam Biowells everywhere. On bad tiles like Snow, Tundra you can put Terrascapes. You can use Terrascapes to "delete" useless resources that preventing you from building Biowells. After that you can replace the Terrascapes with Biowells. After you have around 10 biowells it is time to make a detour for Alien Genetics that gives biowells +1 culture. Too good to skip, I think.
- late game you could try to build some manufactories in your capital in order to boost production there, but I think most of the time that's not really needed. If you have good health levels, go for it, otherwise don't bother.
note: academies are a bit overrated, you don't really need early Cognition, it is good later for Holosuite free virtue, to complete Might Tree faster. Also, arrays are about the same in strenght and we get them faster.
Academies need Protogenetics and Knowledge upgrade to be really good. A bit too much.
10. Satellites.
- you don't really need any, except for the few Solar Collectors you find, obviously, and maybe some Tacnet Hubs if you need some boost during wars. You also need the Lasercom Satellite to establish contact with the earth.
- Orbital Fabricators are great but they come too late to be really relevant. Use Weather Controllers instead if you really like to try to use any of them, as they come at a more reasonable time. However they are best used on water, otherwise they can spawn resources that prevent you from building biowells on the tiles.
11. Wonders.
- Memetwork is the most important, you should catch it if you beeline for it, you can win without it a bit later.
- Master Control is good to have but not vital, don't prioritise it.
- Daedalus Ladder is cool to have if capital has good production. Not a priority by any means, but I like it and it's worth a mention.
- Bytegeist - if you somehow get lucky with a tech steal, it can be worth building it, expensive as it is. Requires a bit of planning, though, and it's much better integrated in a Harmony victory.
12. Tricks
- try to kill as many siege worms on non-improved tiles as you can so that you have a chance to boost your affinity by completing expeditions on the alien skeleton. Hunt them down if you don't have anything better to do with your army.
- Make sure to have an expensive tech selected when collecting Pods or when covert operation Steal Science completes. Otherwise it's very suboptimal way to play the game.
- Institute building Quest Choice gives a free tech at some point. Use it for Geoscaping or Neural Uploading. Steal the branch tech or research it normally. This way you get maximum benefit.
Sometimes what I do instead is to use it for Augmentation, and build Daedalus Ladder in the capital, and have access to Augmenteries in all cities. This is worth it only if done early, otherwise the Wonder and the Augmenteries don't have time to pay for their cost.
- buy science from other colonies you have pacts of cooperation with. you can buy 1 science for 3 energy
That's it! Thanks for reading, hopefully you can try out this strategy with good results.
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