RBTS9 - Final Frontier

[Olodune]

Great first post

My first reaction is that a one-pop homeworld doesn't look too hot, but we have the perfect leader to get to the "gems planet" Pisces Zeta soon. Still it will be a slow start

The initial tech path is the big choice here ... I think I would go:

Radar Polymers -> Light Craft Manufacturing

This is because Light Craft Manufacturing unlocks "Monarchy" which is a Low Upkeep version of Civ4's bureaucracy (+50% hammer/commerce in our capital system).

If we want to go for a Value, I think we need to beeline Galactic Epistemology (Knowledge) through Planetary Construction. Survival is an option, but the UB isn't great. I don't think we can beat the AIs starting with Radar Polymers to Wealth.

 

[Mojoqmeyvam]

Build: PDS first makes sense. Send the first one out scouting, and start building a Colony Ship at either size 2 or size 3. At size 2, we'd get 4 food, 4 hammers, and 13 beakers. Size 3, 5 food, 6 hammers, 15 beakers. This assumes that we don't switch from 2/2/2 to 1/1/7.

Techs: Religion is farther up the tree, as the 5th value. We'd need 2 techs after Galactic Epistemology.

Possibilities that I see:
Possibility 1: Beeline Knowledge. Survivalism --> Galactic Epistemology. This will unlock tech trading. Then head for Light Craft Manufacturing (Monarchy: It's Bureaucracy), and then either research the military line, or Synthetic Composites, and back-fill what techs we want with the AIs. Only Halis starts with Space Exploration, so if they don't research Survivalism at the start, we'll get that, too. Survivalism and GE are a total 764 beakers, with the 1.2 pre-req bonus, so 637 base beakers.

Possibility 2: Beeline Light Craft Manufacturing for Monarchy, then head straight for Galactic Epistemology (assuming Knowledge hasn't fallen, or maybe if it has), taking either Survivalism if it hasn't been discovered yet (unlikely), or Planetary Construction. The biggest advantage of this plan is it maximizes our homeworld's production. However, I can't guarantee that we'd get Knowledge. We'd need 373 base beakers pre-Monarchy, 1t of Anarchy (14 beakers lost at 3pop in 26 turns), and then about 440 base beakers (due to rounding, and the 1beaker/turn not getting a 50% bonus), for a grand total of about 827 base beakers, give or take 10. Planetary Construction would cost 100 more base beakers than Survivalism. This gets us Monarchy some 30-40 turns earlier, and that's 3h/turn, at least. I'm leaning towards this route. There's a chance we'll lose Knowledge, but it's a huge jump in our growth curve to go this way. We'll almost definitely lose Survivalism, but Knowledge and either Religion or Power should be plenty. Power might fall really late. The 3 civs that start with the military line aren't the best researchers, especially the Forge.

Possibility 2b: Beeline Monarchy, then head for Power. Unless we meet an AI that got Galactic Epistemology quickly (for tech trading), then we won't have Construction Ships available for a while. No tech trading for a while could put us into a big hole, but we'd be much better prepared for busting out of it by pointy-stick research. The Power beeline would require about 725 base beakers after getting Monarchy. A straight beeline of Power would be minimally faster than picking up Monarchy first, so no reason to go military techs first.

Some other options exist, but two are definitely subpar: a Wealth beeline is not a good idea. 3 civs start with Radar Polymers, and Starbases are useless without Construction ships. Wealth is solid, but the opportunity costs are pretty high, and Knowledge is about as good as Wealth. I don't see a reason to get Planetary Construction first. An early trade route to our second world is a measly +1 commerce, and we don't need Mag-Levs.

All units have a base visibility of 2. And can't see through asteroids (treated like forests, except they can't be harvested). Scouts have a visibility of 3, but Destroyers with 2 speed, and being the toughest early ships out in the open, make far superior scouts since there aren't any huts to worry about safely popping. I don't know how bad barbarians will be, since there won't be any barbs popping from huts.

 

[timmy827]

Well, since you previously remarked on my mod-analysis skills:

Planet #4, Pisces Zeta, is another winner. Light yellow planets are great, at 1-1-6 base production, with food to self-sustain (each pop consumes only 1 food) and a monster 6 commerce. That's basically riverside gems in regular Civ terms - and 3 of them since it's a big planet! We can't reach it until our system has 50 influence, but that's okay, as the food and hammers from Gamma Aten are more important in the short run.

Nu Leo is also a miss. 0-2-5 blue planets aren't very good, roughly akin to a plains cottage.

Don't agree here. This is equivalent to saying grassland gems on a river are great, but grass hill-gems not on a river are bad. Yes, 1-1-x is better that 0-2-x but I think the latter could still be useful (the small size is a downer though). Also, remember that whipping is a long way out in this mod (and specialists gone completely), so we may get more use out of low food but otherwise high yield tiles than in normal civ

Hestia Rho, the next planet, is a miss. 2-0-3 white planets are fairly uninteresting, roughly akin to coastal tiles in regular Civ.

Since its 1/food for pop, lighthouse lake is a better comparison, so also probably not as bad as your take.

---

The Bureau-equivalent at 2 techs in is my first "you've got to be kidding me" moment, so that's the obvious short term move to me too. I'm in favor of growing at least past size 2 before colony ship.

 

[Tatran]

Lurker's comment :
Something else, maybe you should check this in the code, but I do remember
the AIs got a huge advantage over the human player compared to the civ4 AI.
IIRC, the Final Frontier mod AI is civ4 + 2 levels, so you're actually playing against an civ4 Deity AI when your setting is Emperor.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Very untrue. I find Final Frontier's AI to be much worse than regular Civ4's AI. Most on CivFanatics agree with me.

 

[TheArchduke]

Lurking and reading. Haven´t ever played through this scenario, so I am quite curious about it.

 

[T-hawk]

Something else, maybe you should check this in the code, but I do remember
the AIs got a huge advantage over the human player compared to the civ4 AI.
IIRC, the Final Frontier mod AI is civ4 + 2 levels, so you're actually playing against an civ4 Deity AI when your setting is Emperor.

Good point. I checked and yes, the cost modifier for Emperor AIs in FF is 60% of standard, same as Deity in the regular game. But if standard Deity is sometimes winnable against 60% costs, a mod with inferior AI should be often winnable against same.

Given that, I think chasing any of the values is an unlikely proposition. I agree with Olodune and Timmy on the Monarchy beeline (Radar Polymers - Light Craft Manufacturing.) Nothing else will kickstart our growth curve and catch up to the AI discounts like +50% hammers and commerce at the capital. Let's do that first and then assess the values situation.

Don't agree here. This is equivalent to saying grassland gems on a river are great, but grass hill-gems not on a river are bad. Yes, 1-1-x is better that 0-2-x but I think the latter could still be useful (the small size is a downer though).

Sure, it's still useful. Every planet is useful to work eventually and no planet is actually bad. There are no tundra or desert planets where the net productivity is actually negative. Plus every planet can be brought at least to food self-sufficiency with a nutrient facility. Just pointing out that the 0-2-5 blue is behind higher priorities for now.

Since its 1/food for pop, lighthouse lake is a better comparison, so also probably not as bad as your take.

True; I was speaking in rough equivalencies. Also it's a question of relative utility. Lighthouse lake is pretty decent, compared to your average bulk tile like plains or regular coast. But in FF, where most cities/stars have access to the equivalent of several cows or gems, the 2-0-3 white planet does kind of bring up the rear.

Planet size matters a lot too: a size-3 white planet is worth building the booster facilities to a quite strong 3-1-4 total. And a size-1 light yellow is worth the one laborer for 1-1-6 but the boosters aren't cost effective.

BTW, here is a link to a description of all the planet types. The two we don't have are Gray 0-3-3 and Orange 1-2-3. The closest equivalent to gray in regular Civ would be a grassland marble/stone tile. Orange doesn't have a close equivalent, maybe a late game watermill. Both are useful but not at the top of the chain compared to the Earthlike and dark yellow.

 

[Mojoqmeyvam]

T-Hawk: Hestia Rho, the next planet, is a miss. 2-0-3 white planets are fairly uninteresting, roughly akin to coastal tiles in regular Civ.

Since its 1/food for pop, lighthouse lake is a better comparison, so also probably not as bad as your take.

Of all the planet types, though, it's the weakest. Population only cost 1 food, but the health cap is pretty low, and it's not a big deal to blow past the health cap. Like regular coastal tiles, we basically want to work them last in nearly all cases. It'll be quite some time before we've got enough of a happy cap to work it.

And Tatran's right that the AI gets bigger bonuses than regular Civ (it might be 60 or 70% of normal costs? I think Deity's all the way down to 50.), but Emperor here's easier than Emperor Civ, after controlling for experience.

Edit: T-Hawk said it all first. And let's go for Light Craft, pick up Monarchy. Hopefully, only Wealth and Survivalism will have fallen by then.

 

[Olodune]

Planet size matters a lot too: a size-3 white planet is worth building the booster facilities to a quite strong 3-1-4 total. And a size-1 light yellow is worth the one laborer for 1-1-6 but the boosters aren't cost effective.

So far the most interesting part about this mod seems to be figuring out what is worth building on which planets -- random choices are much worse than in a standard Civ game Not only are the +1 per pop buildings better on larger worlds , but there is path dependence as well -- since the costs escalate per planet it is sometimes worth delaying building, say, mining facilities on planet X because planet Y will be under our influence in 10 turns and will be a better location. Getting free Mag-Levs is a lot of saved hammers

I'm still undecided on when we should build our first Colony Ship -- we have a slow growing capital and no trees to chop. Growing to our nerfed happy cap could be an option, since the Large map size will hopefully mean that expansion is dictated more by economics than land availability. Obviously, scouting the neighborhood may change things.

 

[Mojoqmeyvam]

random choices are much worse than in a standard Civ game

No wonder the AI's weak. .

Colony ship: Size 2, 3, or 4? 4's our happy cap. Colony Ships cost 120.
Without Monarchy, we build 8 (15t), 11 (10.9t), and 14 (8.6t) +/turn.
With Monarchy, it's 10 (12t), 14 (8.6t), and 17 (7.1t). We should get Monarchy in about 33-34 turns (36 at current rates, but growth will help.)
Pop growth costs 30+7xpop. No granaries.
The first growth is 13 turns at +3, then 11 at +4, and 11 turns at +5. So we could grow to size 4, switching over to Monarchy a turn or two prior, and churn out colony ships every 7 turns.

I'm leaning towards building our first colony ship at size 3, then growing with some infrastructure and/or units (like a mining facility on Gamma Aten once we get Light Craft in) to size 4, and spamming colony ships until we get to about 8-10 worlds. A test map with our settings had about 60-65 systems in it.

 

[Olodune]

I'm leaning towards building our first colony ship at size 3, then growing with some infrastructure and/or units (like a mining facility on Gamma Aten once we get Light Craft in) to size 4, and spamming colony ships until we get to about 8-10 worlds. A test map with our settings had about 60-65 systems in it.

8-10 worlds will hit our treasury pretty hard. We'll see what the map looks like, but it might be better to only expand to 4-5 star systems before saving for our first starbase, which will hopefully claim either crystals or gold (both +3 happy). Our capital will be much stronger if we can get from size 4 -> 7 early since those last 3 pop points are most likely "gem world" citizens. Gems boosted by bureaucracy sound nice to me

Side note: IIRC, there are only two happy resources and two health resources all with +3 yields. The other resources are "strategic" giving a production boost to a specific unit type or enabling nukes.

 

[T-hawk]

random choices are much worse than in a standard Civ game

No wonder the AI's weak. .

Indeed. I poked around a bit in worldbuilder after finishing my solo game. Looks like one of the big AI problems is the health cap. We humans know to ignore a small health loss and keep on building anyway. But I saw one system with 7! Recycling Centers. 280 hammers for +1 health is rather not optimal.

Pop growth costs 30+7xpop. No granaries.

Aha, that's the formula? I noticed it was a lot more than regular Civ. That rapid escalation means an adjustment to the notion of self-supporting food. A laborer producing 1 food feeds himself - but he also adds 7 to the cost of growing the next laborer, so it's something slightly less than zero net. This is true in standard Civ too, but a differential of 2 food is mostly ignorable.

Getting free Mag-Levs is a lot of saved hammers

Early, definitely so, especially before we even have the tech. Later, not so much. Copies 4+ typically don't get built anyway, so it's not like we really saved huge hammers. It's like statistics on music piracy - the RIAA likes to claim something like a $15M loss on $15 albums times 1 million downloads, but hardly any of those downloads really represents a lost sale.

Anyway, one more strategic point before I play in a few hours. What direction should we send our scout? This is really important

 

[Olodune]

Anyway, one more strategic point before I play in a few hours. What direction should we send our scout? This is really important

Try to get a gravity assist from one of the outer planets

I think you expose one more tile by moving diagonally, right? So that eliminates the compass points ...

 

[Mojoqmeyvam]

In regular civ, never going above health or happy caps is a decent rule. Good human players know when to go over it, but AIs need easy rules that work well enough most of the time. Here, not so much. Heck, I don't always build a second recycling center on a world, much less a 7th.

Also, we should probably name our first defense ship. As Paradise, we could have our first guard be Gabriel (FYI: that's from Milton, not Genesis), or go with a different theme.

Since we don't see any asteroids to investigate, there's no way to tell what's where. Maybe 1st four turns be NW, NW, NE, NE, unless there's something worth investigating? 2 visibility in a map with no hills is wonderful. I think we do want to investigate asteroid fields when we can, since we do want to know where our resources are.

 

[Olodune]

(FYI: that's from Milton, not Genesis)

In which case we clearly need to tag on "Lost" to our home star system

 

[T-hawk]

Mojo said to move the scout NW, and I heard no other opinions, so northwest it is! And I waited until Gamma Aten orbited around that way, but no gravity assist.

Northwest was a very good choice - we spy a planet orbit after only 2 moves! Three more moves finds the star (amusingly, you can't tell what's on a planet until you see the star. although you can look at planets visually for color and size.)

Hmm. This set of planets shows one of the more awkward situations that occurs in star system development. When we settle, Horus Taurus (home run for the random name routine!) is the highest food planet, so it will get the free nutrient and mining facilities. But we'd prefer them on the size-3 Libra Amun instead of the size-1 Horus Taurus. (I'm just going to keep saying Horus Taurus a few more times. Horus Taurus. Horus Taurus. )

Influence level 1 is almost entirely uninteresting. But influence level 2 has a wonderful size-2 Earthlike planet. Our faux-Creative ability will help here in spades, though still take a good long while.

Anyway, the scout now turns southwesterly. There are never any features within about 3-4 tiles of a star, so there's nothing more to find immediately beyond it. On turn 8, our Planetary Defense Ship at home is completed. I send it scouting southeasterly, in the opposite direction, and start a second PDS.

Meanwhile, the first ship finds yet a third star, but the system is pretty miserable. There's asteroids there, so we go that direction next, and find a Silver resource there! A +3 happy resource close to home is quite welcome. On turn 11, our research into Radar Polymers has completed, and we begin Light Craft Manufacturing, due in 25 turns.

Southeast, we find another bunch of rocks. This system is pretty good short-term - a 2-2-1 starter planet of size 2, and our influence will reach Libra Ra quickly. On turn 13, Paradise has grown to size 2, with the second population working the 2-2-2 planet. On turn 14, Paradise has completed a second PDS. I'm actually going to pass off one turn early, since we have a decision to make.

Do we want to start a colony ship right now? By doing that, our next population point can produce 3-3-2 on either Horus Taurus (Horus Taurus Horus Taurus) or Pi Anubis, rather than 2-2-2 in the home system. But it will take longer, 15 turns to build the ship plus 3 turns of travel time.

Also, there's another star to be discovered on the top left. I'll let sooooo have the fun there.

Try to get a gravity assist from one of the outer planets

Ha, in my first game I actually tried to get a gravity assist from a black hole. So this thing says it pulls ships in? Neat, that's a free move, then I can move out the other side next turn. Oh, it pulls me back in again next turn... :suicide:

T-hawk <--- just played
sooooo <--- UP NOW!
Mojoqmeyvam / Cyneheard <--- On Deck
Timmy827
Olodune

 

[Olodune]

Looks good. A couple things:

Your "silver" is really oxygen, providing +3 health

I would actually choose to build research next. By building beakers we can cut down the time to Light Craft Manufacturing (LCM) from 19->14 turns. When the population grows in 10 turns we can switch citizens 2 and 3 onto the gems world which will knock another 1-2 turns off. Sacrificing some early exploration for 5-7 more turns with +50% hammers/commerce is worth it. I think.

Building Colony Ships under bureaucracy is much better since each ship eats less food (that can go towards population growth), so I would wait until LCM finishes before starting our first colony build. I'm nearly certain that this comes out ahead.

Oh, and I think we should settle Horus Taurus first, despite the name

Edit: If the team agrees with me, the two scouts should probably circle back towards Paradise to explore the nearest tiles next.

 

[timmy827]

My vote is growing for now. Remember that 2-2-2 in the home system will soon become 2-3-3 with Monarchy.

The space map is definitely weird, not having coasts to direct us in terms of what direction is best to expand in. Also strange missing the north-south orientation from the types of trees...I think Horus Taurus looks better now, but we'll have a while to decide.

Commenting on the handicaps - the AI "per era" modifier is -5 like Deity, do eras actually come up in the mod like normal CIV? Also, their UnitUpgrade% is 5 (!) instead of 50 like BTS, so we may have to be wary of the vertical power graph, although from lurker comments it doesn't sound like the AI usually builds a lot of units anyways.

Thinking about barbs - it seems like pillaging is not a big deal right? So running with just one PDS per world is plenty? (probably not immediately needed, but looking ahead).

EDIT: cross posted with Olodune. I had considered swapping a citizen to the 1/1/7 planet for the same reason but it didn't seem worth it, but I'm partial to his build research plan.

 

[Mojoqmeyvam]

2 PDS per world is the minimum. The barbs use Invasion Ships, Destroyers, and PDS. PDS are only a threat to our scouting PDS, Destroyers are only killable if we're defending on an asteroid until we get Destroyers ourselves, and that's a ways off, but they're no threat to PDS in-system. Invasion Ships do NOT get defense bonuses. This means the +15% defense promotion is useless on them smoke: on that one the one time I did that).

Build research, and grow to 3, with the gems switch: Hm. This is a really tempting idea. I like it. I think we'll want to knock out a PDS or 2 to escort the Colony ship. Ideally, we should start the PDS the moment it won't delay Light Craft Research a turn.

Aten Chi is junk.
Pi Anubis isn't much better. 3 worlds, 6 pop max? They're solid worlds, but this is a backfill location.
Horus Taurus is definitely our first settle, unless we find something better. A slow-ish start, but we really do want to get it going sooner rather than later, HT's system (can we name the unclaimed systems with signs?)

FYI: I don't believe I'm going to be able to play before Sunday evening (I'm on deck).

 

[T-hawk]

Hey, building Research to get Monarchy (Bureaucracy) sooner is a great idea.

I found minimum defense - 1 PDS per system - fine once we have a bomber squadron or two. Like standard air units, they can rebase anywhere within a single turn, and one airstrike renders a pirate invasion ship unable to beat a PDS.

Re eras - the XML defines every tech as ERA_MODERN. I'm unsure what that means for per-era AI cost discounts. I suspect they all get 5 eras worth of discounts right from the start.

Yes, we can name unclaimed systems with signs. I labeled the systems with the name of what will be the "home planet" (highest food within influence 0), although that planet name gets overriden with a Paradise city name when we settle (sadly we'll lose Horus Taurus )

I disagree on Pi Anubis being bad. It has a low ceiling, but that population will be quite productive. The 1-2-3 size-3 planet is easily worth the booster facilities (including habitation for +1 size) so the system will ramp up quickly. It'll make a great worker/settler pump in the medium term.