Quick Start Tips

[MarcP]

I've put together what seems to be a reasonable quick start for (at least) SP Moo3, and thought it might be appropriate here. This is mostly focused on expansion and colony development.

There are a few useful things that I always do at startup:

1. Load da Blades dev plans, which seem to give decent DEA upgrades etc. if you manually zone your DEAs.

2. Start hiring the quickest (4-turn) agents and queue four of them up. If I have an agent power I eventually get science agents, but I like to keep a big stable to suppress enemy agents. I set the oppressometer at the bottom until either turn 5 or the first time I encounter an enemy, and then leave it at the top.

3. Go for trade/research agreements with all non-Ithkul; it seems to keep the natives happy and it usually works, even at poor diplomacy.

4. Design either a slightly better scout
(to win ties with other scouts) or a dirt cheap system speed one weaponless drone. Quick exploration is key, and how crowded the nieghborhood is determines which is the better choice.

I always try to run with maximum production, average trade, average environment, creative; I do the worst diplomacy and combat, spending the remaining picks on better research/mines/bio depending on the race.
There are a few general things that seem to help with colony development:

A. when the colony is born, uncheck the box that gives excess cash to the empire, empty the military queue, and lock it shut. This focuses all early spending on that first industry DEA.

B. I put about 1/2 of my empire cash into grants, 1/4 each to research/military. This usually gives nice big grants to new planets. The key is to prevent the AI from wasting this cash, and storing up a big bank for later use.

C. On the second turn, ensure that the production spending (all on development) is no more than 15x industry (e.g. for 5 industry, spend no more than 75). All other cash should be saved. Also, use natural dev plans and do not zone anything but the initial industry DEA until the first one is done.

D. Monitor the planet to reign in rampant spending for a couple of turns; the AI eventually stops sending extra grants once a lot of cash is piled up. Once the first industry DEA is built, manually zone the whole planet. In the early game I favor rich/very rich planets and just use a simple allocation scheme:

One government wherever the first industry is;

Split industry/recreation and industry/military if the planet is big enough (size 5-8 for one, size 9-12 for two), usually on the worst production terrain;

bio in alluvial plains;

mines in all mountains (later one this can be toned down, but it is useful to establish early mineral surpluses);

even industry/research everywhere else.

Once you hit 100+ production you can open up the military queue to build anti-piracy system ships, defences, etc.

Expand like crazy in the early going, concentrating on staking out one planet/system and posting a garrison ship to keep out colonies from other species. When you have established a border with someone get a non-aggression pact (letting you tunnel through to the other side, or freeing you up to focus on another front).

I also try to keep production/research at least 2x lightbulbs/industry; the big cash bank for new planets will let them overdrive steadily at 3:1 to 4:1 after the first industry is built if you don't squander your excess cash.

Also note that HFOG stays flat up to a certain empire size and then balloons. I found that for my absolutist-types it appears to stay one until 50 planets, rising to almost 2 at around 125 planets. You may be best off "filling in" your systems past 50 planets after you've developed the first 50 "on the cheap".

Once you've established borders on all sides, fill in the planets from green down to yellow. If you have magnates, do the same for them (you can re-name colony task forces to remind you of the race on the ship). I always do manual colonizing.

cheers,

Marc

[SnowFox5]

A. when the colony is born, uncheck the box that gives excess cash to the empire, empty the military queue, and lock it shut. This focuses all early spending on that first industry DEA.

How do you lock it? What race do you like to use?

[MarcP]

There is a little lockbox next to the military build queue; if you click the lock shut it will keep producing whatever is in the military build queue. If it is empty, the AI will not add items to the build queue.

The best producer races are the cybernetics (meklar/cynoid), but they have crummy relationships and small planets. The Imsaes can be nicely customized and have really big planets; you can also build a good producer race with the insects, but will sacrifice somewhat on the research side.

If you want fewer big planets (easier to manage, and very good for cranking out big ships) go for the etherians. You can use magnates to fill in the little planets.

If you want lots of smaller planets go for the bugs or the cybernetics.

cheers,

Marc

[RobNelson]

empty the military queue, and lock it shut. This focuses all early spending on that first industry DEA.


Setting military spending policy to Peace and Prosperity or Peace through Strength has the same effect. It'll also make sure that your new DEA enhancement will get built fast (like automated mines, soil enrichment, etc)

[Da_Blade]

Originally posted by MarcP
The best producer races are the cybernetics (meklar/cynoid), but they have crummy relationships and small planets. The Imsaes can be nicely customized and have really big planets; you can also build a good producer race with the insects, but will sacrifice somewhat on the research side.

IMO, Cybernetics are by far the most superior fast growers, tachidi second and eoladi only third. Cybernetics are the only race that can be reasonably modified to have superior manufacturing, superior environmentalism, natural engineers and tolerant. Together with the 40% production bonus means you can get the first colony ship built in 4 turns, once every 2 turns after that first one. This enables them to grow fastest by all means. I ahve fought early wars with them and i could simply bring so much more warship to the scene, and still colonize like mad.

Read LazyViking's overexpansion strategy and try it out.

[AlanC9]

What are the advantages of building up a (edit)planetary surplus from the cash grants? If you use them, won't you get more from the empire? (That's how governments work IRL; glad to see that MOO3 supports this). Or is this only for the first couple of colonies, where the colony cash grants are significant relative to the imperial tax revenues?

Incidentally, what counts as a fast start? For that matter, what counts as a slow start?

Say you're playing a stock human -- I picked them because they have few advantages for expansion. How many planets should you expect to have at turn 30, turn 60, turn 90? (assuming expansion isn't blocked by other races).

[Adacore]

One cheap strategy I use occaisionally in crowded galaxies is to get a huge number of cheap lancer system speed 1 drones and put one in each system, to stop my enemies colonising my space - if a colony ship does show up you can either wait for something big enough to blow it away, or you can shove a single light mount laser on the drone to scare it off...

[Iskabis]

Originally posted by AlanC9
What are the advantages of building up a (edit)planetary surplus from the cash grants? If you use them, won't you get more from the empire? (That's how governments work IRL; glad to see that MOO3 supports this). Or is this only for the first couple of colonies, where the colony cash grants are significant relative to the imperial tax revenues?
<snip>
well, there's no real benefit to having a ton of money sitting on a planet, but in the early turns of a colony (before it gets its first 1-2 DEAs built), the viceroy will spend all the cash you get from grants with no regard to efficiency. that can be bad, if you're expanding reasonably quickly because pretty soon that planet won't be getting those grants anymore. then it better be able to support itself! if you limit the spending until the first couple of DEAs are built, odds are good that you'll have enough pop that with the DEAs, your tax income on the planet will be sufficient. if you let the viceroy spend it all in the first couple of turns, though, you can be in trouble when it takes 10 turns for those first couple of DEAs to come in - you've got nothing to use for money after the first couple!

once a planet is built up and supporting itself easily, though, there's no reason to keep lots of cash in the bank there. you want to keep some, because the predicted end-of-turn balance is never exactly what you really end up with, so you want to cover any overrun. but i'm running my homeworld at about 500AU or so (anywhere from 200 to 700 at the moment, but it's the only thing producing yet so that's on the low side of what i'd prefer). i figure it's probably ok to run around 200 for early game, but later on i'd rather have the buffer be up around 700.

all that said, it can be useful to keep a cash reserve, if you expect to want to build something specific really quickly within the next few turns. say you know you're about to get some improvement, or a ship tech that will cause you to do a massive redesign. if you wanted to save some AUs for when that imminent need arises, it can be pretty useful to be able to build whatever it is very quickly and then go back to business as usual...

-rhyssan

[triller]

Originally posted by AlanC9
Say you're playing a stock human -- I picked them because they have few advantages for expansion. How many planets should you expect to have at turn 30, turn 60, turn 90? (assuming expansion isn't blocked by other races).

My first 100 as Psilon (not AI colonize).
25 - 5(7)
50 - 9(6)
75 - 17(6)
100 - 29(6)

This thread could be helpful as well.

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=301244

[DavidByron]

With modified Klackon:
turn 25: 5
turn 50: 27
turn 75: 87

What the heck does that number after the planet number mean does anyone know???

The other stats (for turn 75) were comparable with my pre-patch games or close.

Minerals: 2.3/1.4k
Industry: 7.7/17.2k
Research: 5.2k
Population: 441
Techs: 19,15,16,13,11,11
rank #1

Puts me just ahead of the best AI on an AI only test bed (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=299918) of 'impossible' AI empires to turn 75. At least as far as industry goes, but on research I am behind a little. Even by turn 75 the amount of space you have is critical so I should say the game was large 2 arm spiral with 8 AIs. (The default setting).

[MarcP]

Originally posted by AlanC9
What are the advantages of building up a (edit)planetary surplus from the cash grants? If you use them, won't you get more from the empire? (That's how governments work IRL; glad to see that MOO3 supports this). Or is this only for the first couple of colonies, where the colony cash grants are significant relative to the imperial tax revenues?

Incidentally, what counts as a fast start? For that matter, what counts as a slow start?

Say you're playing a
stock human -- I picked them because they have few advantages for expansion. How many planets should you expect to have at turn 30, turn 60, turn 90? (assuming expansion isn't blocked by other races).

The main advantage of saving the cash is that you can spend it far more effectively once you have more industry to work with. The overdriving penalty gets fierce when you try to squeeze more production out of a few industry. It can get as high as 96 AU/production. If you wait until you have more industry later, you can spend less. Neglecting pollution (which makes things much more expensive at high overdriving), you'd spend the following for a colony with 5 industry:

5 PP : 5 AU
10 PP : 5+10=15 AU
15 PP: 5+10+20 = 35 AU
20 PP: 5 + 10 + 20 + 40 = 75 AU

Beyond this pollution kicks in and the cost of additional production skyrockets.

Once you get an industry, you'll probably have 50 PP (give or take).

If you have saved the initial cash, you can use this to generate 150 production/turn very cheaply (350 AU/turn). Basically, you can spend 1050 AU on the first turn for about 10 extra production, or you can save it a
nd use the same 1000 AU to generate 450 production for three consecutive turns. That is a really big difference.

What this strategy prevents is the situation where you have planets with tiny banks that are unable to use the industry that they already have because they're dirt poor.

What is a fast start? In a recent game I was running with 8 opponents in a small spiral galaxy, impossible, with custom Imsaes. My benchmarks during the expansion phase were

12 planets - turn 40
25 planets - turn 55
50 planets - turn 75
100 planets - turn 100

and I could have maxxed out more; my hfog was climbing like crazy so I paused the kudzu thing. I started that game in the senate and surrounded on three sides by other races, so it took me the first 40 turns to tunnel out to a relatively empty chunk of the galaxy to expand in. I also had only one magnate, and I didn't get it until turn 25 or so.

cheers,

Marc

[Da_Blade]

Spend all the money incoming when it comes to grants, save only a little. Getting that first industry on-line and getting the rest of the economy on track as soon as possible. overdriving has been invented to do just that: it's ineffective, but in the long run it's more effective to burn that cash early. Just watch the research, VR has a tendency to burn part of money on research fairly quickly, just set the slider to zero, then the VR will only slowly bring it back after a few turns.

Saving generally has no use in moo3, imo at least. There's only two choices for saving: Burn it ineffectively now, or burn it ineffectively later. Up to a certain point savings can be cheaper, but saving too much is a simple waste of money. And on new colonies, getting that industry on-line is more important then saving that money IMO. I'd rather have my colony "finished" a good 20 turns earlier then save a few hundred or even thousand AU.

[MarcP]

I think you're arguing against a position
I'm not taking. I overdrive at 4:1 for a cost of 75 or so for 5 initial industry;
this gets the first industry in 6-7 turns depending on set migraton, etc.

If you let roy spend like a drunken sailor, you'll get that first industry in 5 turns.
The wasted thousands of AU simply cannot justify a 1-2 turn head start.

Period. There simply isn't any way around the cost/benefit, especially since you can't count on Roy to continue to dump cash into the new colony on turns 8, 9, 10 etc.

I think you're talking about folks who
really torque the spending down to 5 or
15 AU and take many turns for the first build, which is silly.

I'm an astrophysicist and model building is what I do (stellar evolution, to be precise). You can solve these equations, and there is an optimum solution. There are plenty of other things about this game that are art - e.g. I really like the dev plans that you put together. (It is a lousy UI and system for controlling things IMO, but you've navigated through a much too complex swamp quite nicely).

cheers,

Marc

[Da_Blade]

Oh and fast expansion:

Turn 10: 4
Turn 25: 8
Turn 50: 24 (no magnates or splinter colonies anywhere :()

haven't played this game any further yet.

[AlanC9]

Originally posted by MarcP
I think you're arguing against a position
I'm not taking. I overdrive at 4:1 for a cost of 75 or so for 5 initial industry;
this gets the first industry in 6-7 turns depending on set migraton, etc.

If you let roy spend like a drunken sailor, you'll get that first industry in 5 turns.
The wasted thousands of AU simply cannot justify a 1-2 turn head start.

Period. There simply isn't any way around the cost/benefit, especially since you can't count on Roy to continue to dump cash into the new colony on turns 8, 9, 10 etc.


Could you "show us your work" on this one? Given that the first DEA will start producing its own tax revenues 1-2 turns earlier, and every other DEA also starts producing earlier, 2-3K AU for a 1 or 2 turn lead sounds like it might well be a plausible investment. Is there a better use for the cash?

If you've got some math on this, I'd like to see it. And if the overdriving really is excessive, perhaps the AI should be changed to give the computer players an assist.

[Da_Blade]

Exactly, it's not one or two turns that you colony will be faster online, it'll have a sort of snowball effect. I've had this discussion with Sirian before, do a search on "viceroy burning da_blade micro macro" or something and it'll turn up. The money you burn is pretty much "doomed" anyways, since from the moment it will come online you will burn the money at a high rate anyways, and the only way to empty your cash reserve gradually is too empty it gradually, now i'd rather have my colonies online faster then having some extra to spend when i have plenty to spend anyways. But it's a strategy i guess... luckily there;s a switch for it: "savings" spending policy will cause the VR not too overburn too much.

[MarcP]

By midgame I am usually dealing with 3000 AU grants to new planets.

If you really want an alternative, spend the 3000 AU that it wastes on a handful of production points on a second colony ship and get an even bigger boost.

If you want the viceroy to spend 3000/turn for five turns, you could just as well build FIVE extra colony ships with the cash and get a really big starting colony.

I'm really, really surprised that this is even an issue. Why on earth would spending at a 96:1 ratio EVER be wise?

The key flaw in the spend-at-all-cost argument is related to the lack of control that the players have over the grants. You cannot count on having the viceroy continue to provide cash to new planets after the first few turns. You can either store the cash - in which case the viceroy steadily overdrives the colony at 4:1 for many turns - or you can burn it all in the first five turns and then have the colony limp along with a tiny bank and low overdriving.

By using this tactic my planets are always running at high overdrive levels for many, many turns without needing excess grants - which go to other new colonies instead. This means that each new colony gets higher seed grants (distributed among less planets, therefore bigger).

Da Blade seems to be assuming that cash is infinite and that the viceroy will always provide every planet with huge grants every turn to give maximum overdriving. The Moo3 engine just doesn't work that way. In fact, it doesn't work that way even if cash is effectively infinite.

I'm saying that storing the initial seed cash allows you to overdrive FOR MANY TURNS without depending on the flaky grant system to keep the planets going.

And - yes - I think that a master switch that limited overdriving would be a fantanstic improvement that would allow controlled experiments on precisely the things that we're talking about.

cheers,

Marc

[DavidByron]

you could just as well build FIVE extra colony ships with the cash

No you couldn't because the cash is on a new colony. It's eaither spend it there and then or spend it on that colony latter on. You could use it to build a colony extra maybe quite a few turns latter. At that point you'd be using it to overdrive your industry partially more so you'd have to build say 6 instead of 5 colony ships in the same time span say.

Now compare that to 2 turns extra production - couldn't you get an extra ship out anyway? It's a marginal difference and it's not clear to me where the line is.

[MarcP]

I've run a sample case that hopefully illustrates the overdriving vs spending
situation. The bottom line:

Overdriving at 3:1 or below is a bad idea. You lose too much early production.

Overdriving at 6:1 or higher is tremendously expense (e.g. opportunity cost) and gives less total production over the first 20 turns or so. It isn't as extremely awful as it might appear ***as long as all of the early production goes only to the first industry***. If you are doing any military spending/planetary build queue/other DEAs, it gets a lot worse.

Overdriving between 4:1 and 5:1 (e.g. right when pollution starts to kick in) can be continued until well after the industry at higher rates is forced to "live" off of its own income.
I used a 5 industry planet as a testbed, and assumed the following:

Industry DEAs cost 150 and make 32 industry once they are built

The population is at 1 and doesn't grow; it makes 5 industry.

You only make one DEA, and evaluate the total production over the first 20 turns.

You have a 15,000 seed grant that you spend at a fixed overdriving rate; once it is gone, you produce at the level supported by the planet itself. At 25% taxes, 1 industry, 1 pop this is close to
80 production/turn supported only by the income of the planet itself.

I assumed that pollution kicked in after overdriving at the 4:1 level; e.g. for production per turn in increments of 5 you have the following production

5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40

with the following costs

5/15/35/75/235/555/1195/2475
Once the DEA is built, it runs on the seed grant until the cash is used up and then it overdrives at its native level.

The total produced over 20 turns:

1:1 - 100; first DEA in 30 turns
2:1 - 470; first DEA in 15 turns
3:1 - 1110; first DEA in 10 turns
4:1 - 1686; first DEA in 8 turns
5:1 - 2070; first DEA in 6 turns
6:1 - 1777; first DEA in 5 turns
7:1 - 1629; first DEA in 5 turns
8:1 - 1571; first DEA in 4 turns

The 4:1 case only used 3600 of the initial grant, which would allow the planet to steadily run at more than
80 PP/industry almost indefinitely with the initial seed grant. In other words, it both costs less and would "win" by 30 turns out. If you have less total cash for grants the numbers for the higher overdriving rates get worse;
e.g. for an initial grant of 5000, the numbers at 5:1 through 7:1 drop to around 1400-1500 and the first DEA doesn't even get built at the 8:1 rate.
The 4:1 case stays pretty similar (and is better than the lower overdriving rates) down to initial cash grants around 1000 AU.

So you are best off with smaller grants overdriving new colonies at 4:1, and the peak moves up to around 5:1 as you get extremely rich. You gain essentially nothing from the extra cash spent to overdrive at levels higher than 5:1, while you still have a lot of cash left over to run your industry at a higher level at 4:1 or less.

cheers,

Marc

[AlanC9]

Originally posted by MarcP
You only make one DEA, and evaluate the total production over the first 20 turns.


But doesn't assuming only one DEA skew the results? The point of rushing the first industry DEA is that you build the other DEAs faster. How well-developed is the 4x world at turn 20 compared to the 8x world? The 8x world earns more local tax revenue starting with turn 5 because it has an operating DEA, and it will get its second DEA earlier as well. The question is whether the 4x world will catch up to the 8x world with the extra overdriving from the retained grants.

Of course, to model this we have to ask what happens after the first DEA is built, and that's not an easy question. There might be enough population available after 5 turns to go for another industry, but there might not be. If not, then what is the value of the new DEA - presumably a bio or mine, but on what terrain? Care to suggest assumptions for these?

Incidentally, would the overdriving techs change the breakpoints? Holistic Planning shows up around TL 10, IIRC.

Showing the grant as an initial lump sum allows us to neatly duck a serious question; what cuts off the grants? Anyone know for sure? If it's development, then the planet might get more money on the 4x plan. How relevant this is depends on your number of colonies.

[MarcP]

This thread is a good example of why this game would benefit from some better macro tools. It would be fun - and handy - to have some global controls that would allow you to play around with different strategies more easily. Do you want to throw cash at your new colonies or go slower and steady? Right now this can be done, but it is very tedious. A global overdriving button would allow you to test this sort of thing far more easily.

cheers,

Marc

[MrBoom]

Originally posted by MarcP
Also note that HFOG stays flat up to a certain empire size and then balloons. I found that for my absolutist-types it appears to stay one until 50 planets, rising to almost 2 at around 125 planets. You may be best off "filling in" your systems past 50 planets after you've developed the first 50 "on the cheap".


Has anyone tested to see if HFOG is affected by the number of planets, regardless of size? I would imagine a better way of calculating it would be based on total DEAs in an empire. If it DOES affect all empires equally, regardless of whether it has 50 size 12 planets or 50 size 6, then it would give Etherians another big boost.

[triller]

Originally posted by DavidByron

What the heck does that number after the planet number mean does anyone know???


My guess is it is the number of planets where you have a presence, but less than the requisite 1000 for full colonization.
Outposts, controlled Magnate migrations, etc.
Has anyone tested this?

[Da_Blade]

Well, at first i thought i was just outposts too. But i now have another theory; colonies to be.

This included outposts, but also colony task forces currently deployed. Still haven't given them the good testing though...

[DavidByron]

It's not counting outposts. That would be a far larger number than I'm seeing. eg I see 6 or 7 while I have over 30 outposts.

[Beamup]

Check the tooltips. It's the average number of regions on your planets.

[Da_Blade]

Haha, this game makes you forget about the obvious places for info sometimes, you know, thinks like tooltips, encyclopedia, manuals.... :D

Ah, so that implies that planet size is taken into account for the powergraph after all, that's good news indeed.

[triller]

Originally posted by Beamup
Check the tooltips. It's the average number of regions on your planets.
Per Sting
"Too much information running through my brain".

[Beamup]

Originally posted by Da_Blade
Haha, this game makes you forget about the obvious places for info sometimes, you know, thinks like tooltips, encyclopedia, manuals....

Well, we all should forget about the manual. It's quite different here, usually a lot of questions on forums like this get answered with RTFM. Here, it's more like, "Oh, you read the manual... so THAT'S why you don't understand, you actually believed what it told you."