First game yesterday, first questions.

[NeuroNiky]

Hi guys,
just got the game, after a long wait, and while in the meantime I read a lot of posts in the forums, I came up with some questions during my first 60 turns of playing...
1) I'm playing with Cynoid, using a personally designed dev plan, which was pretty flawed (as I discovered after 40 turns or so of playing, but thats part of the learning curve I guess), as I ended up with much too industry DEA than I could really want. I had a constant mineral deficit and I was frightened about pop starving, but then, looking at various DEAs, I figured out the deficit was probably related to the fact I had a lot of empty industries. Am I right here, are mineral needed by industries counted in the minerals needed indicator, right? And if so, is there a way to control if the pop is starving because of mineral deficit with a mineral consuming race?
1b) Every single colony started building an industry DEA, and I had in my dev plans manifacture as primary in All planets (which, I guess, is what made me had a lot of empty Industry DEAs), plus Mine in primary for New planet. If I put Mine as secondary in New planet would this push the VR in building a mine as first DEA, or the VR always build the industry as first DEA to start the planet production (which is pretty reasonable, only I wanted to start building more mines at the beginning because of the mineral deficit I had)?
2) Is there a penalty for exporting resources? I mean, everywhere on the game and the manual is written that, when you have a yellow resource number on a planet this means your getting imports to balance the need, but do you pay for this import to arrive? Any penalties on imports? Any range constraint between the importing nd exporting colony, or the whole empire has an "excess resource pool" from which the importing planets gets the goods?
3) What the Econ AI check exactly does? In the manual is stated that it "turns off" the VR and that you have to manually build DEAs, productions and military queues and so on, in addition of setting the econ sliders. I thought it only let you set the sliders as you wanted to... I left it on, since I want the VR to micromanage for me, but I was found tinkering with the sliders a lot, expecially to force military construction (then, I found the military setting for VR, the one which limits the amount spent by the VR... still have to try it though).
4) As far as military is concerned, how do you build fast a new "military colony" i.e. a colony made to build ship fast on the second line of a war? Any advice on this (my shipbuilding primary industry was, as you could easily deduce, in the core planet, and it took my newly built ship 14 turns to get to the front, which was a pretty long time to respond to a new immediate threat...).
5) Emh... how can you *really* follow all the tech advances thing? After only 50 turns I was discovering new thing after new thing almost each and every turn... just reading all the tech reports took a great part of the turn! Is this correct?
6) This is really stoopid, and I think I could find the answer elsewhere on the forum, so sorry to ask, but since I've already written an epic poem there... do you need trade structures such as a space port to get the fruits of a Trade Agreement, or it is just like in MOO2 where the cash automatically flows in?
Well, thank you all for your answers... bye,
Niky
P.S. I can't see why the people wanted to drop this game. It is daunting, it deserves a true manual, but it just feels like the deepest game I've ever encountered... it's astounding.

[The Wagster]

I'm not particularly good at the game so I'll tackle a few of the easier questions and leave the rest for someone better!

4) I guess there's 2 questions there really; how to build ships faster and how to get ships to front line quicker? Well the second parts easy so I'll tackle that one:D.

You can deploy ships at any system you've built a Mobilisation Centre in. Build the mob centres everywhere then it shouldn't take too long to get a task force where it's needed. You get them at about tech level 5 or so.

5) A lot of people think the tech goes to quickly and use a fan made modification to slow it down. Check out the Fan Modifications section to find one, and a lot of other cool mods. The MegaMod is a very popular mod with a tech slow down and lots of other cool features including an improved encyclopedia to make up for the lack of a manual, you can find it stickied at the top of the forum.

6) I think the money from trade agreements comes without the need for space ports but they do increase the trade and get you more money.


If you haven't already done so you should download the patch from the official website or here
http://www.moo3mods.com. Check out the stickied threads at the top of the strategy forum for more gameplay hints.

[Da_Blade]

Hi there; here's my attemp to tackle a few questions:

1) The dev plan is not at fault. If you play the right way with cynoids you ALWAYS get a huge mineral defecit somewhere at the start. They are real good at manufacturing, and sadly that requires some extra minerals :) So do not worry about it, when technology advances you'll find you have plenty of minerals.
1b)An industry DEA is always best to start with, if you are in mineral defecit and want the mine first, i'd suggest switching to the "specialized" zoning policy (empire tab), this gives enough weight for a mine to be built first on average and rich mountains.
2) Nop, importing/exporting is free of charge.
3) That switch turns off the econ AI, as it says ;) Which basically means the VR stops filling the military queue and planetary queue, and doesn't touch the spending sliders. I never turn it off personally, though i do tinker a bit with the sliders in the beginning of the game. When you have a bigger empire the empire-wide setting is better if you're at war and need some extra production.
4) nothing you can do about that, expansion can go real fast, but the military infrastructure to protect it usually develops a lot slower. If you colonize that far from your homeplanet, send a sizeable fleet along in case you need it, because if you don't send it untill there is a threat it won't arrive even remotely on time to deal with the threat. It takes time for a colony to build up, just like it takes time for a city to become a city on our little earth ;)
5) It takes quite a while before you come familiar with all the techs, especially the economical technology's. As said, some play with tech slowdown, i do not, i like it much better without. I think it adds an extra challenge to keep the fleets up to date.
6) The trade agreements are completely independant of starports. Starports trade with "enemy" planets within reach independantly. Starport trad income is added to the planetary income, not the empire income. The income through trade agreements is added to the imperial funds.

Hope that helped, you're welcome to ask more when you have more :)

[Ron_Lugge]

First, a suggestion - double space your paragraphs, it makes your post MUCH easier to read.

Originally posted by NeuroNiky
1) I'm playing with Cynoid, using a personally designed dev plan, which was pretty flawed (as I discovered after 40 turns or so of playing, but thats part of the learning curve I guess), as I ended up with much too industry DEA than I could really want. I had a constant mineral deficit and I was frightened about pop starving, but then, looking at various DEAs, I figured out the deficit was probably related to the fact I had a lot of empty industries. Am I right here, are mineral needed by industries counted in the minerals needed indicator, right? And if so, is there a way to control if the pop is starving because of mineral deficit with a mineral consuming race?

Pops fed first, then industry. Also, you will get a mineral deficit early game wtih just about any race.

1b) Every single colony started building an industry DEA, and I had in my dev plans manifacture as primary in All planets (which, I guess, is what made me had a lot of empty Industry DEAs), plus Mine in primary for New planet. If I put Mine as secondary in New planet would this push the VR in building a mine as first DEA, or the VR always build the industry as first DEA to start the planet production (which is pretty reasonable, only I wanted to start building more mines at the beginning because of the mineral deficit I had)?

Please note that since industry builds things, you *NEED* at least one industry DEA per planet. Since they are also decent money makers, this is a good thing.

2) Is there a penalty for exporting resources? I mean, everywhere on the game and the manual is written that, when you have a yellow resource number on a planet this means your getting imports to balance the need, but do you pay for this import to arrive? Any penalties on imports? Any range constraint between the importing nd exporting colony, or the whole empire has an "excess resource pool" from which the importing planets gets the goods?

Exporting actually earns you money - the exporting planet gets money, but IIRC the importing planet doesn't actually lose any!

3) What the Econ AI check exactly does? In the manual is stated that it "turns off" the VR and that you have to manually build DEAs, productions and military queues and so on, in addition of setting the econ sliders. I thought it only let you set the sliders as you wanted to... I left it on, since I want the VR to micromanage for me, but I was found tinkering with the sliders a lot, expecially to force military construction (then, I found the military setting for VR, the one which limits the amount spent by the VR... still have to try it though).

It makes the AI stop trying to fiddle with the sliders. It will still fill in an empty build que, and there is no way to make it stop trying to manage the regions of a planet.

4) As far as military is concerned, how do you build fast a new "military colony" i.e. a colony made to build ship fast on the second line of a war? Any advice on this (my shipbuilding primary industry was, as you could easily deduce, in the core planet, and it took my newly built ship 14 turns to get to the front, which was a pretty long time to respond to a new immediate threat...).

There isn't really any way to get an industrial giant quickly. Despite what you want, it doesn't work that way. However, it is possible to get a mobilization center up on the front lines, which is almost as good. Any mobilization center can summon up ships out of the reserves.

5) Emh... how can you *really* follow all the tech advances thing? After only 50 turns I was discovering new thing after new thing almost each and every turn... just reading all the tech reports took a great part of the turn! Is this correct?

Sounds like you haven't d/l the patch yet. However, we deal with it fairly easily... It doesn't take long to realize that auto=mines are a mining tech, and auto-factories an industry tech :D

6) This is really stoopid, and I think I could find the answer elsewhere on the forum, so sorry to ask, but since I've already written an epic poem there... do you need trade structures such as a space port to get the fruits of a Trade Agreement, or it is just like in MOO2 where the cash automatically flows in?

Flows in...

Spaceports can trade with one-another, however, and can be a MASSIVE source of income, especially on larger planets or in larger systems.

[triller]

Also note:
Per Lore Weaver's Strategy Guides, Cybernetics EAT 1/2 food and 1/2 minerals. Until you get a few rich planets or some mining tech improvements, you'll have mineral shortages.
Edit>
In rereading the thread, it looks like you know that and it was hinted at in the replys. There's a good bit of strategy in Lore Weaver's posts.

[NeuroNiky]

Thank you all for the replies. I've just arrived from a nice trip away and I will try all your advices later... Thanks again, and cya soon for more question to come! Bye,
Niky

[pedxing]

another thing you can do, to slow down your tech churn is to crank your Creativity all the way down to Imitative. this reduces the chances that any particular tech will appear in your tree, limiting the number of new techs that you have to learn about in any one game.

i usually spend the points to crank my Research all the way up, so even though i'm getting fewer techs, i'm progressing through the levels faster. diplomacy and spying can help make up the difference too.

the effect is usally that you miss a couple of shield and drive techs along the way... for example, right now i've been playing for ages with Class I shields... and just now Class IV shields have become visible in my tree.

all my neighbors probably have Class II or III by now, so i'm not attacking (well, other than the last-place player, the Silicoids), and luckily they're leaving me alone. but when those Class IVs come on line, look out!

sure, having these kind of holes in your tree can be annoying, but they do make for extremely interesting game play, i think.