Iridium Corp Strategy

[Fleshbits]

Anyone got a strategy for them? What techs did you research in what phases?

Played one as them vs all the AI on gifted, huge map, loose formations. Thought I was really lucky to colonize 14 worlds without any interference from AIs. Friended all my neighbors, prolly bought about 30 techs from them. But the syndicate crushed me with bigger and better ship spam. I only managed to get large hulls by the time he had 90 or so coming at me. He has x3 my faction power at turn 150.

I only warred with the yor briefly in the middle of the larger war. I guess he saw my vast unprotected space and wanted some too. I took 2 worlds briefly for the whole game, before the syndicate took em. No war with anyone else and all other factions had about 1/2 the power I did.

My plan was to research growth and planet improvement techs first. That got me going to 200 credits/turn or so. I built 3rd tier mining, and got 6 trade routes, and was able to spam prototypes like no tomorrow, but it didnt matter. His plain jane large hulled ships took out my medium prototypes 1 vs 5.

It seems to me out of all the economic factors, credits are the weakest. It takes 5-6k credits to buy a large ship when he can crank it out in 2 turns with his production. Manufacturing planets and bonuses seem to trump wealth by far. Sure I can buy some techs, rush buildings, about every 5-10 turns, but it simply doesn't keep up.

I wonder what you guys think went wrong in this strategy. Or maybe it was just unlucky dice, it seems some games are far easier than others with the same map settings, but I dunno how I coulda had a better start.


What do you think? Iridium is weaksauce or not played right? What's your strategy with them?

[Sycloness]

I like the Iridium and played them most in beta until I could play custom with Iconian tech tree. I use the Iridium to culture and econ the map. I do not work on wealth so much and sell tons of crap to the AI and buy the techs I need. I am able to tech up pretty fast while my culture does the rest. I always keep a fleet near any of the pita AIs for when they decide to try and invade.

But yes your right atm production is better than wealth.

[stp602]

I love the Iridium personally. I think they have the most aesthetically pleasing look of all all the in-game races, and for role-playability, their style of play makes the most sense.

I focus primarily on commerce and research techs when playing them, and I use wealth rather than raw manufacturing power to purchase a great many of my planetary upgrades, and I plug all my ideology bonuses into starbase construction bonuses with overlapping layers of economic bases to help boost my planets.

It's a long-term strategy which works very well.

[Dead2Rights]

Originally posted by Sycloness:

I like the Iridium and played them most in beta until I could play custom with Iconian tech tree. I use the Iridium to culture and econ the map. I do not work on wealth so much and sell tons of crap to the AI and buy the techs I need. I am able to tech up pretty fast while my culture does the rest. I always keep a fleet near any of the pita AIs for when they decide to try and invade.

But yes your right atm production is better than wealth.

My experience as well, I even started a thread about how bad money is as a resource. Manufacturing is king really. They need to either increase how they generate money so that wealth oriented factions are actually competitive, or they need to reduce rush costs.