Transcendence / Wide Strategy Thought

[vorlon_mi]

I'm in the midst of pursuing a Transcendence victory on a Lush Terran planet, standard size and standard speed. I was fortunate to start on a fairly large land mass -- 1 close neighbor, whose 3 cities are now mine -- and so built some additional cities around turn 250-270 to fill up the land. Twelve cities total, with the last 3 around size 6 or 8.

As i prepare for the end-game war, I'm looking at the production rates in my 6 smallest cities. Not much, compared with my core. I'm considering setting most of the smaller to "Industrial Development", that is producing energy, as well as setting their production focus to energy. That way, all their yields are combined into a single yield, a very fungible resource. With a pile of energy, I can purchase troops where I need them, rather than try to produce them in the smaller cities. I can hard build troops in the larger cities while building the Mind Flower in my biggest production city.

Has anyone else tried this, when pursuing a Transcendence or Promised Land victory? If I were going for Emancipation, I would build as many units in as many cities as possible, since I will be pushing them through the gate.

 

[Tiberiu]

I think I almost never use Industrial Development unless it is to stop my energy reserve from being negative. But I see why you could want in the late game to do that, it is something with instant effect that can manifest at long distances from a city.
With a big colony this might be useful even for Emancipation since you can only send 1 unit per turn and the cities might make enough energy to be able to buy the strongest unit to send each turn.

I can also see it as an obscure way (especially efficient for Al Falah), to try to kickstart a self-sustaining economy via Smart Grid with an Ally? (+5% of energy reserves incoming each turn), maybe coupled with all Industry energy virtues and Traits that are related to energy. In a game I am playing now I have discovered Smart Grid agreement is really powerful, well worth its expensive cost (250 + 25/turn Diplo capital). edit: it is 3% for basic and 4% for cooperation so it is still strong even at that level compared to Industry virtue that gives 1%