Playing as Morgan - Maximize your Money!

[Bezurn]

"

And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.​

CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Centauri Monopoly"​

"

A friend of mine said I should try to make the game more challenging, and so I came up with this crazy challenge.

Your cities can only build "Wonders" and "Other" categories on the city build list. No units can be built, nor any buildings. Everything with a price however, is fair game for purchase.

So pull yourself up to your closest river with floodplains, get those generators a humming and let the challenge begin.

I've included the save file from my recent game I tried this on. Here are the game settings.

Map Type: Terran
Map Size: Standard
Game Pace: Standard
Difficulty: Mercury

Sponsor: Samatar Jama Barre - African Union
Colonists: Aristocrats (+3 gold, +1 health per city)
Cargo: Machinery (Start with a worker)
Spacecraft: Retrograde Thrusters

To try it yourself just download the attached file and save it to saves folder for beyond earth, located at "..\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Beyond Earth\Saves\Single\" You could also roll your own map, I'd enjoy seeing variations played with different settings if you prefer. Please refrain from using exploits such as AI gold exploit and espionage capital stealing.

I look forward to see other people's approach to this challenge and how they do.

 

[Bezurn]

So here is a recap of my play through and victory. TL;DR version is, It was close and I had to thwart my good Chinese friend from her own Mind Flower, but I prevailed despite some pressure. I didn't grab any screen caps of the first 300 turns, but here is a quick run down of how I went about it.

Spoiler The First 300 Turns :

I started off along the coast adjacent to a floodplains river, so I thought this would be an ideal spot to settle. I set my worker off to build generators and my scout to crab resource pods. Most of the pods I grabbed incrased my gold, so this was vital in expanding my early infrastructure. In my capital I built... well Wealth, Research, or Culture, depending on which I wanted a boost in at the time.

I choose the harmony affinity, even though there was no Xenomass nearby. There was lots of floatstone, but I was going to aim for either a trancendance victory or a contact victory.

I settled to the west after a while of building up gold and started trading heavily with the stations that plopped down nearby. One gave culture so that was a great boon, as it helped me get to the bottom portion of the prosperity tree and I ran in positive health for the first 300 turns without even relying on the tier three prosperity virtues.

Instead I chose to open up science to maximize my earnings from my tall empire I was making. All of my trade routes either went to stations or external sources, as the influx of money and science was of far more use than the production and food which I couldn't really use.

After grabbing the basic techs I went for Computers to get my spy network up quickly to leverage the siphon money missions into my coffers. I then made a conscious effort to rush for Solar Collectors, as I had found 2 in resource pods and they really accelerated my infrastructure purchasing. I secured my third city shortly after finishing my stint into prosperity, as this city had three sources of oil and access to the other coast, which expanded my trading opportunities.

Vlad to my north and Elodie to my south postured their military units near my borders many times, but never committed. I had 1 ranger and 2 infantry, so I was cutting it very lean on military. I purchased a needle jet and rover, built some rocket batteries shortly after getting solar collectors just to ensure my survival.

I then headed further up the tech tree for the Xenomalleum wonder. As I had many generators on the lush riverbed that needed to be boosted. Once I had this wonder, along with completing some quests, I started to focus on grabbing the affinities and techs needed for victory.

At first I thought I would try a contact victory, and so processed Transcendent Math, however, I switched gears after building that wonder as it looked like China was making big strides and catching up to me in Affinity. I abandoned the second part, launching the satellite to find the 2nd half of the signal.

Instead I went for the three techs needed to construct the mind flower, and cherry picked some easy harmony techs here and there to increase my score. Both my neighbors (Vlad and Elodie) had started to put points in Supremecy. Though my army was smaller in size, their power made up for it and I was able to have friendly-to-tenous relations throughout the first 300 turns.

Spoiler The War to Victory :

As I continued on my tech path to acquire the pieces for the mind flower, I launched a Planet Carver between my lands and Vlads, just for fun. Apparently he had been planning to go war with me, or this act of passive aggression pushed him over the edge and he and Hutma (who was on another continent) declared war on me. Unfortunately for Vlad, his affinity was not on par with mine and my Planet Carver was in range of one of his cities. I made quick work of his forces with about 8 units I proceeded to steam roll his empire.

Meanwhile to the south, China, whom I had been best friends with all game due to shared affinity and kind relations, was making huge strides in affinity levels and had built many wonders during the game. I was then notified that she had built he Mind Flower after I took Vlad's first border city. My own Mind Flower was about halfway through production, about 15 more turns left!

This lead to a race of sorts. To finish off Vlad and secure that border from further incursions, and to deny my dear harmony friend the joy of speaking with the planet first. Fortunately she had built it next to the coast, as she did not have much interior land to her empire. I began to purchase a navy and marshaled them in a bay in preparation for invasion.

Spoiler Chinese Mind-Flower :

The clock was ticking, and just as I had captured Vlad's capital, I quickly sent my two hover tanks to the south. Elodie posed a slight problem, as it would take too long for me to circumvent her lands. To pay for open borders she wanted all of my strategic resources, and 300 GPT... OUCH. I had no choice though.

Spoiler African Mind Flower :

A turn or two through her lands however, she decided enough was enough and declared war herself! My Infantry and one of my hover tanks were expelled back into my lands. Luckily, one of the tanks managed to get popped into China's land. Had it not, I would have lost this game, scary!

Spoiler Short open borders :

With regret, I informed Doming that I would be the first to speak with planet. Our people were more in tune with planet and had been fortold to be the rightful heralds to the planet's song. I assured her a high rank within the new social order that would unfold, but business first.

Spoiler Denial :

Elodie had gained equal footing in military might to me, at least on land. My troops sacking Vlad's last city hurriedly rushed to defend the mind flower, as she did get a shot or two off on it. I had placed it in a very defensible position though. After I had brought my fully war hardened force to her front, she quickly gave up thoughts of ending my commune. As compensation she granted me a city, which I could easily accomidate now, having finished the prosperity virtue tree.

Spoiler Iberia caves in :

After losing a few ships, I evacuated from Doaming's territory and offered an olive branch. She was willing to accept a right hand position in the new social order we would impart upon the world, holding no grudges.

Spoiler Repairing relationships :

Meanwhile around the world, various factions sought to bring a new type of order to the world. By now though it was too late. The mind flower hummed with lucidly and power as the thoughts of a distant voice became clearer and pristine in my mind.

Spoiler :

At long last, having not built a single unit or building during the play through, I had bought my way to the knowledge that we could be one with the planet, and reap the energy and eternal life that it would provide.

Spoiler :

 

[bhavv]

Meh, in Smac you could use credits to conquer the world through cornering the global market.

Energy is weak in BE.

 

[Fabio1701]

this is a cool challenge, I may try it next time, perhaps just flood the world with generators. I am upset that the game imposed OCC option was taken away. I think it would be cool if more of these type of challenges were legitimately built into the game like the OCC was in CiV. Could come to some cool achievements.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Done. Mercury is just super easy. It wasn't hard at all as much as it was tedious as hell, waiting for everything to come out.

 

[Fabio1701]

Well ofcourse it would be tedious on mercury! Try appollo.

 

[Bezurn]

Yea, this was a proof of concept game that I toyed with back shortly after launch. I'm sure the vets could attempt this at higher difficulties. I'm glad you played it, sorry it was tedious :\ Did you puppet the world or did you play somewhat peacefully?

 

[stormtrooper412]

It was tedious because I played it all wrong tbqh. I had massive ept income from trade routes but even then buying up units and buildings took forever for me to save up. In hindsight, this should be played really wide, with 2 pop cities acting giving you beakers from trades which you then use to tech up affinity.

I have to point out one thing though, I didn't see the attached save file so I loaded up a random map using the same settings, I was on a continent with Kavitha, and, well, she was quickly taken out, that was the only difference. Keep giving these weird challenges please, it's definitely fun