I need some insight

Lenght and speed of a game, resources, fleet

from Sins Forums

I've just had my first 'real' game against the AI, beforehand I just explored maps and got to know the tech trees.

Let me sum up the game quickly:

I used TEC and played for 31 minutes against normal/random AI before I quit.

My credits were quite okay, mostly between 1500 and 2000.

My metal supplies were alright, also around 1100 to 1500.

I was always nearly completely out of crystals, though, mostly not even having 100.

I had built two military labs and three civil labs to get to the LRM and colonisation of ice planets, I had further researched faster crystal extraction 2/2 and more population for terran planets 2/2.

My fleet consisted of a Marza CAP, a colony ship, two scouts and four to five LRMs, as soon as I had them researched.

 

So, please enlighten me. Did I take too long? I head of people having built a complete fleet after about 20 minutes, I barely had enough left to counquer another planet.

My credits and metal supplies were ok, I guess, I always built the civil infrastructure as soon as I colonised a planet to not lose credits and built extractors for both crystal and metal. I've had games in which I could've swom in crystal but was drained off metal, though I've always had roughly the same amount of asteroids.

What about my fleet? It seemed really small to me, but I couldn't afford any more research or labs. I barely had the crystal to build ships to reach the fleet cap.

I had no defense at all, my fleet could barely fight off a pirate raid. Where and how to get more resources for some defense? When to build up defense? How important is it anyway? I couldn't afford a second fleet to fend off pirates, obviously.

I occupied my home planet, two asteroids and another terran planet. Before I needed my fleet to fight the raid, I was on the way to an ice planet to conquer it.

 

I was really satisfied with my Marza, it conquered the terran planet all on its own, destroying a LRM, two Krosovs and three or four Cobalts in the process.

 

Any insight is appreciated. Thank you. :)

strategy
3,758 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

How many upgrades to fleet supply did you make? By that point, you should have at least the first upgrade to fleet supply (250 max supply, 9% lost income).

Two military labs should be enough to research the Repair Bay and its associated upgrades. These, grouped with Hangar Bays and/or Gauss Cannons work well against repelling Pirate raids, or at least considerably slowing them down.

As for your crystal problem, you should have at least 4 crystal extractors with the colonized planets you have, giving you around 2 crystal per second. Additional research would bump this value up 13%, or to 2.3ish crystal per second (unless you mean you researched four levels of crystal extraction, since each research subject has 2 levels - then its a 27% increase to about 2.5 crystal per second). If it seems you're constantly out of crystal, either buy crystal from the Black Market or reconsider where you're putting your crystal (research is notorious for eating up crystal).

Normally, you would want to have at least the number 1 fleet in military ranking. Even if you don't have the best economy, you at least have the military might to acquire resources to boost your economy.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Well, I hadn't improved the fleet capacity yet - I didn't even have enough crystal spare to reach 0 capacity without the upgrade. :\

I had about 4 crystal extractors and I really didn't research anything 'fancy' or unneccessary, just the things I listed: LRM, the first tech in the crystel extraction tree 2/2, trade posts (though I didn't have enough resources to boost logistical capacity to build these...), population for terran planets.

 

Conquering new ground wasn't the problem, my Marza could easily destroy the fleets guarding neutral planets. Rather, the problem were the resources needed to establish the infrastructure.

I'm playing another game right now, I'ma try to build a better fleet. Thank you.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

You were wasting your resources on the crystal research. It would have been more effective to research metal extraction, then to sell the metal and buy crystal - I take you had 2x amount of metal extractors to crystal and metal extraction is cheaper to research. Little things like this you can figure out with some thought. Take some time to analyse the graphs at the end - they will show where you were lagging behind the puter.

You were wasting money on research labs and research. Research should only come slowly over time. Build some cobalts instead right away and sent them to colonize the galaxy with your marza. It really sounds like slow colonization and economic expansion are your doom at the time being. Take first a roid, then the ice planet, the neutrals are easier to beat in these and ice planets really help with their crystal and population.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Remember to get trade up before you take your 4th planet. It gives a credit boost you just cant ignore. Its what makes the Tec..... well Tec.

:grin:

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Trade is not really worth it in the beginning. I'd say get 3 planets first, then build the lab to research trade, and build a tradeport on all the planets at once.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Crowsbane, reply 4
before you take your 4th planet.
End of Crowsbane's quote

 

I agree completely :thumbsup:

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Well, sometimes it's not smart because of the scenario. If your 4 planets are terran hw, ice, desert, terran, then you can depend on just the planets for income, and trade is not worth it - rather keep upgrading the planets. If they are metal heavy asteroids and volcanic planets, then you need the credits so you can buy crystal, and suddenly trade ports will be more valuable.