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Very fun game you have here
Anything you care to share about this Custom Character and as well as putting them in a campaign. Do's Dont's and how I should place my starting planet replacement or is it relevant? How many can I create and add and I been trying all day to add more than 1 but it just was going to add a separate faction for every created custom leader. What did I do wrong for not to have my created custom character to 1 faction. This mechanic is powerful and I been searching reddit's, youtube and google and haven't been able to pin any information about this other than your announcement on it while back. Thanks Mr. Han Zhiyu any expert opinions and advice is invaluable.
Best Regard's Stan
Any advice, tips and hints you want to share about starting with a good balance, starting locations, tech and builds is welcome and heard well.
Best Regards Stan.
https://discord.gg/KDMtCtj
Hopefully YOU will give us a small fraction of your vast array of knowledge.
Best Regards Stan.
+ Noryang
I think this is much more difficult than the other starts listed below. You're going to get Imperial factions teaming up against you if you are unlucky.
But if you start at Noryang you can get Chongjin, Emishi, and Kuril before others can get them if you start moving on turn 1 (need at least 3 custom commanders).
You'll have 4 planets, 5 if you are able to send someone all the way to Solomon since it tends to get ignored for a while (past the Emishi Pirates and Eastgalaxy).
Northsky wants to declare war on someone and it's either going to be you or the Pirates. Since you are closer it will be you unless you use diplomacy to get them at war with someone else.
The real problem comes in that Northsky likes to ally with the Regent, or become their vassals. It's hard to take them on without drawing in the Regent after they push through the Royalists. So you'll probably need to take out the Emishi, which will leave you surrounded in most games by an alliance of the Regent with Northsky and Eastgalaxy as their allies/vassals, and nobody else to deflect them, especially if the Southern Principality is destroyed or vassals of the Regent.
+ Granada:
A good place to start is Granada in the far south of the galaxy. It has an empty planet next to it, gives a discount buying units, and has 4 "independent" planets nearby that take over (though 2 of them get rushed by other factions pretty quick).
It's really good for mecha factions since you can get 2 good mecha unit blueprints from Rawa and Malacca. Malacca is a gold mine taking care of your money issues.
Take Malacca and Quangnam first, they get rushed by other factions. Malacca should be the priority for the money, Quangnam may get taken by the Southern Principality before you can even get there and sometimes there's nothing you can do about it. But if their first attempt fails, get that after Malacca.
Also, send a unit to take Solomon as well, it's another "free" planet to boost your economy. Then pivot to taking Rawa and Moai.
If you have the extra units available, I like to send one starting on turn 1 to take Badr (which sometimes get ignored for a bit, and then use that unit to unlock alien tech going after sandworms.
Now you have 6 planets (8 if you are lucky) and can decide what to do from there.
+ Sheba:
It can be good to start at the planet Sheba between Thinis and Badr. Send two units to take Thinis and Badr immediately, Thinis especially for the 2000 research you can get, hopefully shortly after taking the planet. You could then get Blackstone before others take it as well.
You'll need to give supplies or something to the Lycurgus Corps because they will declare war on you very quickly. Get your relations over 70 and that should keep them from declaring war. I pay them to take Pella and then immediately giving them supplies to get relations up to 70 the next couple of turns. This presumes you start with maximum resources, however.
You'll have 4 planets, 5 if you can take Blackstone. You can decide where to go from here, but a few options are to take on a faction in tough situation: either help others take down Omnics or get Lycurgus to betray the Regent (so they won't have allies) and use the Omnic's attacks to distract and help take down Lycurgus.
+ Tyre
If you have 6 or more custom commanders you can start at Tyre. Send the closest unit you have to Balkh and it can beat anyone there, should be the unit that starts 2 spaces off the Tyre to the "northeast", which means you need at least 5 units or you will come up 1 turn short and Balkh will get taken by the Regent. Send another unit (or 2) to take Ipsus and Dardanelles. Send one to take Pella, which you can get because you paid the mercenaries to take Thinis for you (don't forget to then get your relations up with them to stop them from declaring war). Send 2 remaining custom commanders to take Sheba and Badr.
You now have 8 planets within the first few turns if it goes right, with Lycurgus's units battling the Ominics. You'll want to take Thessaly and Salamis fast as well, because the Aerie Assassins, and soon Lycurgus, will take them early in the game and you want those planets and the unit blueprints. You can beat them with just starter units by just overwhelming them with numbers and your commander units.
Now you have 10 planets in the first 15 or so turns (maybe even faster). After you paid for the starter units to take Thessaly and Salamis, you should be 100% spending on your economy, starting with Civil Ports to get money, Leisure Complexes to get unrest down, and then the farms for supplies/labor.
This is the best possible custom faction start I could figure out in over 1000 hours of playing, but you'll need some luck (or save/reload) to keep Lycurgus from declaring war and wiping out your baby empire before can afford units.
edit: spelling
I'm totally surrounded by Lycurgus now like a pack of wolves planning to attack me.
I think the only reason they haven't by now is every recruit is stacked with 50,000 plus power. I should have moved quicker to gather planets.
Thanks tvance52
I will add a few minor details.
First of all, regardless of where you start, on turn 1 you should always hire the merc faction to take Thinis for you, you don't need to hold on to it (particularly if it is too far away from your starting location) you just want it because after a turn or two it will usually proc an event which awards you a large amount of Learning points, more than enough to justify whatever the mercs charge you.
Granada gives you cheap unit recruitment which helps with the early rush, and Malacca and Batavia nearby are both great for gold income (most of this was already mentioned) naturally you would want to take out the independent's before turning to Batavia.
When capturing Rawa you definitely want the mech blueprint, however when taking Malacca i would actually recommend the support ship (fast merchantman?) as it is arguably the best support ship in the game, however if you really want the additional mech blueprints then the support ship you can unlock by taking Quangnam is a solid alternative.
Another thing is, If you send your first fully formed fleet straight towards Qingwei, you have a decent chance of taking it as Wufeng is usually able to survive the first few attacks from npcs, if you do manage to take it you can procure blueprints for a fairly strong battleship, no need to hold the planet, just get your blueprint then send the fleet home for resupply and recruitment. Just in case you are unaware, all planets held by an independent faction will award you one blueprint from a pool of 2 or 3 blueprints, so just before capturing the planet, save and then if you don't get the blueprint you wanted reload and try again.
Overall, Granda is a great starting location, and fairly beginner friendly.
Tyre as mentioned above is probably the next best option, while it doesn't offer as many nearby blueprints or gold rich planets, Thessaly has silver shield mechs and Salamis has an artillery unit, they are some of the best units in the game.
If you let us know what faction type and tech tree you are using and maybe share a little about what kind of setup your custom characters are using we can probably give more specialised advice.
Yeah, I agree.
Yes, I didn't get to into details since I worried I wrote too much. My general approach for blueprints at Malacca, Quangnam, and Rawa are:
My thinking is Imperial faction type with a Mecha focused policy tree can field a lot of units with Imperial rank increases, so getting both blueprints means I can go all mecha.
For non-Imperial + Mecha games, I don't think the Mamelukes at Malacca are as good as the other blueprints, so I prefer the Fast Merchantman at Malacca. I may go for the Support at Quangnam as well, their support gives a more offensive option if needed. But without the Imperial ranks giving fleet size increases, I can't field enough units to justify getting the Mameluke mecha blueprint at Malacca.
Any non-mecha game: I would prefer getting both Support ships since they give different options for fleets, so I generally try to get them both from Malacca and Quangnam unless one of the other options really fits my policies better. I generally get the artillery from Rawa because I generally don't use mecha mid- to late-game unless I have policies to improve them. The Ancient Artillery is more useful than a mecha I won't use, especially for an ammunition policy tree, though I generally won't use it much once I research my end-game units or capture other blueprints.
I didn't know 90 % of your commentary. Thanks fellas
i
+ You're neutral with everyone, that is a massive advantage.
Since a custom faction isn't immediately at war with anyone, you have no need for a military at first. You may want a few basic units to take nearby independent planets, but I generally only buy units for 1 or 2 commanders who are going to take those independent planets.
1) Military
You want a main military base to buy units and every other planet in you taken in the early game should be for your economy.
Depending on your policy tree, my "military base" planet will have 2 Shipyards and 1 Arms Factor (for Ship focused policy trees) or 1 Shipyard and 2 Arms Factories (for mecha or fighter policy trees). I don't build any other Shipyards or Arms Factories until I have expanded enough that I can't travel back and forth and need new military sites near the frontlines.
If you are not close to independent planets, skip this step at first and come back to it later. For example, if I start near Emishi then I will save the 3 spots in Emishi's orbit to build military after the following steps.
2) Economy
After the first step with military, or if I can skip it, I spend all my money on Civil Ports. You need more gold build your economy, the earlier you get that gold the earlier you can build everything else. I build in this order:
- Civil Ports: I fill every spot in orbit with Civil Ports (aside from the 3 spots reserved for military production)
- Leisure Complex: Have to keep Unrest down
- Farms: Once Unrest if under control, farms for the Labor and Supplies
I usually do 1 Leisure Complex, 3 Farms, and then any special buildings if the planet can hold more. If there are 5 slots on planet, after the Leisure Complex and Farms I may build a research building (I want to 5 of both research centers and alien laboratories spread across my empire). If 6 slots or more, it really depends on the faction type, but I never build the mercenary build (Training Grounds?).
Late game, once a planet is fully built up, I switch all Farms to Mines for more supplies. The exception is planets with a bonus to gold, where everything is switched to gold production. To save time, I usually wait until I have several planets to switch over with the right amount of labor (~ 1800 for 3 farms to mines) and use the auto-build for one turn and the switch it back off. Since auto-build doesn't prioritize growing your labor, I never leave auto-build turned on. Faster labor growth, faster the planet improves.
A planet like Thinis, I build 1 Leisure Center, 3 farms, and then research centers for the research bonus. But by the time the planet is built up research isn't an issue anyway, so I switch those farms to mines just like any other planet.
3) Diplomacy
You need gold to grow you economy, so do not use it for diplomacy. Late game, gold may be better as you have less to spend it on.
Since you aren't building up a military yet, use your supplies for diplomacy in the early game.
Get on good diplomatic terms with nearby factions that tend to declare war. I find that around 70+ relations usually stops factions from targeting you for war. The two factions I find most aggressive are:
Lycurgus: They are hyper aggressive and will declare war very fast on you. If you start near them, with maximum money/supplies starts I pay them to take a planet on Turn 1 (either Thinis or Pella, depending on where I am), and then on Turn 2 I start sending them supplies until I'm at least 70 relations.
Northsky: Since they are not at war with anyone nearby, if you start next them they are about as aggressive as Lycurgus. I start getting relations up on Turn 1.
Sometime you want to get on good terms so you can provoke a war between factions. I especially do this with Northsky if I start near them. I don't want them to target me, I don't want them to serve the Regent (as an ally or vassal) and I don't want the Regent to get too big. So I try and get Northsky to declare war on the Regent. All you need is higher relations with Northsky than they have with the Regent to do this, I think they have a default of 60(?) relations with the Regent so just get above that.
These are just some ideas on how you may want to start with a custom faction. There's a lot of ways you can play the game, you can be aggressive starting on Turn 1 if you want. I am just a "turtle" player by nature, so I always avoid conflict in strategy games until I have overwhelming economic advantages.
How you mentioned Thinis set-up, is almost the same as I got.
Like you say, I haven't got attacked yet they just circling and I don't have room but to attack and that's suicide. If they attack I will get wore down on supplies and money slow defeat. I was testing out Custom Characters and it was so fun hours flew by and now I gotta abandon the campaign and start again with the tips I have gotten and get serious.
Best Regard's Stan