Help a beginner - What to prioritize?

[Sipher]

Hey guys I am new to the game and since it is as complex as it is i still have many questions. I have read already most of the manual (but of course from only reading it once i by far cant remember all useful information that there is to remember like what stats are the most importand for what work and why etc. but in general i think i know the basics.

But since it is a game with so many possiblilities i dont understand at all what to prioritize at the start and why. I saw many youtube-turorial videos from WadeStar, DasTactic etc. but when they explain certain beginning decisions for me like "you have to go interior council as one of your first councils, you have to nationalize the scavinging building etc." i dont really understand why they do it. I dont understand what is the most optimal gameplan and which strategy you have to follow.

I understand that the game is as complex because it wants that you adapt your decisions based on the situation you are, and that not the one Build-Order is the perfect Way to go in any (starting)situation you are in...but since i lack the understanding of efficiency alltogether right now, i could never even make own decisions on my own that is not "ohh well lets try it out and see how it goes"

Of course one possible solution would be to just play over and over again trying all possible builds that you could make and review which works better then the other, but this method of learning is very stressful for me as a beginner, since i also lack the knowelege to understand if some move was bad because it was bad, or if it was maybe even a good starting-method, but only not in the specific starting situation that i faced this game etc.

So i would be very happy if one of you could provide me with a general starting-tipp list of what i at least should priorotize at the start, so that i can develop a good fundament from which i then can differentiate my own playstyle once the game keeps rolling.

Thank you for your help and i hope that i can soon finally overcome the starting
-hurdle of this game and enjoy it as much as you do :)

[CHOO CHOO]

Here's how to early game, in the simplest terms.

Economy:
1. Get metal. (That's why you consider nationalizing those scavengers)
2. Get industry (costs 1500 metal).
Once those two are settled, you gain a lot of freedom in picking further development.

Military:
1. Expand carefully, don't leave large gaps in your borders.
2. Don't outrun your supply lines.
3. Fight defensively.
Recruiting troops costs metal, industrial points and manpower, and you can't afford to waste any of it early on. So don't overexpand, and if you encounter hostiles, dig in and take the defensive advantage.

Internal politics:
1. Take whatever decisions make your people happy. Happy leaders are good leaders.
2. Let your interior council produce personnel strategems and so recruit leaders.
3. Open up new councils that suit the capabilities of those leaders.
You can also try to just found whatever councils you want and then staff them with whoever's available, and if you urgently need a particular technology or strategem you might even have to - but if not, then I recommend picking councils that best fit the available personnel, so they actually work efficiently.

Foreign affairs:
1. Make peace with all neighbors that don't want to eat your face.
2. Set up defenses against everyone else.
3. Attack only when you know how to get logistics to the territory you might conquer.
A successful offensive that ends with starving troops is no good.

[maerchen]

Very good advice! I would add:

Depending on difficulty, you need money sooner or later.
Interior council gives you tax stratagems, nationalizing the recycler gives you rare metals, those can be traded for Credits as you need them very much later in the game for better armor and weaponry.

Trading rare metals every 5-8 turns helps you getting better market prices, having a good SHQ commander with trading skill is helpful.

[VladK02]

rule of thumb:

Start game with 1 army.
Dont nationalize anything at start, you need money. That 500 doesnt grow on tress. later on, once you start wars, you will want to nationalize transport hub, and thats it.

At start, get military research council, start work on automatic weapons / infantry armor.
Dont expand beyond 6-7 hexes from your capital. Keep it tight. Units can only pull supply from 4 hexes away in the wilderness.

But do try to explore. every mini-settlement hex you step on, you get to 'explore' and loot credits, or machinery, or maybe a tank regiment. Dont worry about keeping those settlements, step on them and move on.

Dont piss off minors and majors (AI factions). Relations 35 and above, they will NOT steal your territory from you. Stealing their territory does drop relations. Expand in direction of non-aligned.

0. Buy 2-4 machinery (trade). Or dont, and gamble that you will find some when exploring.
1. Build scavenging asset (2 machinery needed).
2. Build industry (2 machinery needed). You need those IP's to build everything else.
3. Get model design council. To apply automatic weapons to your infantry.
4. Get a second infantry group with OHQ.
5. Start either a war, or build more assets - beurocratic offices for faster research, more mines, roads, food/water...
6. For money early on, keep selling rare earths you dig up with scavenging posts. More you explore, more facrtions you encounter, more merchants and better prices you will be offered.

Your military sucks. Only once you have automatic weapons, and upgraded your starter army, can you really begin steamrolling. Without automatic weapons, you will trade slightly better then even with raiders, which is a loss condition. To start taking minor cities, you need either 3-4 infantry formations with OHQs, or armored vehicles, it really makes a difference. APC with a machine gun and max armor/engine is always researched early, so are light tanks. an independent mechanized APC brigade or regiment is a real fist, it absolutely wrecks raiders, slavers, mutants, hunters, and all the other trash. They cant deal with 100mm armor.

Also, try to start in a place with a river, or near an ocean, or with a lake. Near ocean with good wind speed, so rains reach your mainland. Wind speed is planet spin. That gives you unlimited water. Another good start is in the middle of massive city ruins - multiple adjacent scavenging tiles give bonuses for rare artifact drops. How you do that is when generating planet, you want a planet that had billions of population before the war - that way planet will be covered in massive city ruins. And dont forget, you need decent atmosphere to use aircraft. Planet generation is very, VERY important :P

read the manual. Just do it.

[CHOO CHOO]

Originally posted by VladK02:

[...]
Planet generation is very, VERY important :P

Overall good advice, but I would recommend not thinking too hard about planet generation or starting conditions. I find that much of the fun in the game comes from trying to play the hand it deals you as well as you can, rather than to rig the game to give you an ideal situation.

[maerchen]

There are some guides out, in the guides section here, too. I recommend the "What to do" series.

The transport hub nationalization is good if you have a road connection already. If you start without built roads, nationalize the scavenger and sell the rare metals.

Depending on your analysis of turn 0 in the strat map, you should install the appropriate council. I made a guide for that, and expanded it in the science guide.

[Sipher]

Originally posted by maerchen:

There are some guides out, in the guides section here, too. I recommend the "What to do" series.

Depending on your analysis of turn 0 in the strat map, you should install the appropriate council. I made a guide for that, and expanded it in the science guide.

Ahh thanks i havent watched into the steam-guides yet! I think i will find specific tips and guides how to approach which situation there! Anyway thank you so far for your tips guys, they are really helpful! :)

[Shepherd]

I've found a couple of things not to do. Upgrading your buildings too fast without the mats can be pretty damaging. It freezes or even worse tanks your economy. Industry 1 is always the big challenge for me. Gotta save a lot of metal and be ready to be poor while the thing is built. Keeping troops in your capital seems to help with happiness. Regular troops are better for this than militia. It also helps if some random free raider comes calling and cuts off your supply line.

I will usually check the design stats of my troops and starting equipment to see if it is decent (above 85 on the base design I think) or if they need improvement. If they do hitting research and model design out of the gate helps. Otherwise I usually go Econ because there seem to be a lot of techs that are econ.

The reports tab is actually super useful. If things don't seem to be going your way (or even if they are) it's worth taking a few minutes and paging through some of the reports there. You can keep a handle on a lot of issues before they become problems just by glancing at the reports tab.

Light tanks are very effective in supporting your infantry early on. Even just 20 of them can really help. Some of the creatures you will encounter are treated as hard targets and they can obliterate whole brigades if you get ambushed. Took me a while to figure out you can artillery barrage from an adjacent hex with the ranged attack button.

Finally, the best advice I can offer is if you really want to know about something in the game down to it's granular DNA in an accessible way check out DasTactic's youtube channel. He has essentially done a seminar on this game which was super helpful.

[smidlee]

A lot of complexity is really just role playing especially at beginner and normal difficulty.
I think you are over thinking this. Under the hood , SE is a wargame where the most important factor is troops placement, logistics and strategy.
Wadestar will say this units sucks in his let's plays just because it's build design was under 100. It's true a 80 built design tank will be weaker than 100 but it's still a tank that can win battles.
I started out playing mostly ignoring somethings in the game like leaders. if they start robbing me I'll fire them. Of course as you learn the game and get better smaller details can make some differences at higher difficulty.
The one thing you need learn first is logistics.

[CHOO CHOO]

I usually take a bad structural design score on a unit model to mean: "This game, your army will be built around a different kind of unit."

[smidlee]

You are right. It's structural design not build design than never changes.

By that way in one of my games (test run with aircraft) I'm at turn 39 and haven't build a single industry yet. I'm receiving in total 418 points + 132 cash per turn from the private industry.

[CHOO CHOO]

If you get lucky with private industry, sure, you can prioritize other developments. But sooner or later you might need more industry (depends on how far you need to stretch your logistics, what kinds of units you want to build, how quickly you aim to develop public assets) and you may not be able to shake more light industry out of your sleeves.

[maerchen]

Going Commerce hard and getting the bonuses isn't lucky with private industry, you can plan that. I always go commerce, at 70(?) you get insane IP income from light industry and service tax. The more zones you control, the better, of course.

My gameplan:
Commerce. Push it hard.
Call governors. Set zone orders to 1-15 Cr. private investment. That is incentive to let the private industry build QoL assets and light industry.
Get additional zones asap, conquer, charm farmers' daughters, colonize.
Play eager industrialist on your zones.
Get the profile feats of commerce, that takes some time.
Play Private investment.

This can work really well (and crazy).
In my longest running game I have 38 zones, 4.5k IP income. I have 2 industry II assets built. It is turn 114.

[Shepherd]

That is some good advice. Bladerunner Corp Future here I come!