Need some mid-late game tips

[Enrico Pallazzo]

I bought this game a couple of days ago and I think it's great but I'm terrible at it. I can't win a game against the AI on the Assistant difficulty level.

I seem to do well after building 6-8 structures but it all goes downhill from there. I'm learning how to play with New Meridians and this is my basic strategy:

Phase 1
I build 2 steel mills on iron & 2 electrolysis reactors on water

Phase 2
Although this part depends on which resources are nearby, I usually build 2 greenhouse farms on water & 2 chemical refineries on carbon

Phase 3
I build 2 wind turbines, a water pump & either 1 more chemical refineries or 1 glass kiln on silicon

This is where things start to go south. While my opponents begin to prosper, my economy stalls & my stock plummets.

Phase 4
I try to gain enough money to buy a patent lab, optimization center, hacker array & 1 more chemical refinery or glass kiln

Phase 5
I try to build 1 or 2 offworld launchpads & I either build more chemical refineries or greenhouse farms & electrolysis reactors.

I don't use the black market much and I try to patent teleportation first & financial instruments soon after that.

In general, can someone critique this strategy?

Do you guys usually buy structures in 2s so that you get the 50% production bonus?

[hexapus]

Yes, we build buildings in pairs and triangles to take advantage of the production bonus.

Make sure you found near both iron and water when you r playing scientist.

Google OTC spreadsheet for more basic strategy.

And check out our discord channel for more advice. You can even ask for a coaching session there.

Discord: https://discord.gg/aJBqXs

[Enrico Pallazzo]

Thanks. But why should I prioritize getting iron instead of carbon? I go for carbon because I can build chemical factories and/or electronic factories on it. I build only steel mills on iron. What else can I build on iron?

[Kay of Sauvage]

Are you playing a campaign or just single games?

I always try to build structures in 3s when feasible. Building 2 buildings gives you 3x output for 2x the cost (compared to a single building), while 3 buildings gives you 5.25 the output for 3x the cost. Although for scientfic HQs, the cost savings is less important if you are getting the resource for free from the tile.

I don't build in a set strategy. I look at the prices of things. I look at the other corps and see what they are making, what resources they are near, and what they are good at producing. Also look to see if any resources are rare.

If the other corporations are not near a resource, they would have to pay more in transport costs to get it, so they will be less likely to use it unless the profits are quite high. But if you are near it, you can get it and face less competition and sell for a higher price without a problem.

You don't necessarily need to sell everything you make. For example, if you are making food and nobody else is (or they just have 1 greenhouse, etc.) then you can stockpile food, allowing the price to rise, and then sell later when you need to money, and you'll get a higher price than you would have gotten.

Though if you allow the price to rise, it can attract competitors to start making that product too. So that is something to consider. If you do let the price get high and a competitor builds a bunch of factories to make it, which you think is enough to start driving the price down, then you can sell your stockpile, destroy your factories, and switch them to something else. That gives you a huge profit overall, and kind of screws the other guys who just started making that product only to see the price drop like a rock.

Generally speaking, if there's enough people producing something to satify the market and push prices down, you will want to sell what you make immediately. If instead prices are rising, you can hold off on selling, and only sell because you need the money (or have a better way to invest the money) or because you want to avoid attracting competition.

And you should probably be using the black market. Try to do the math on how much each black market ability is worth. Many of them earn you more money than they cost, and buying them makes them more expensive for other people to take advantage of.

[Enrico Pallazzo]

Thanks. I've played both campaign and skirmish but I'm playing mostly skirmish games against 3 AI opponents right now.

What I meant was, do you build 2 structures at the same time (turn 1 & 2) to take advantage of the bonus or do you build 1 and then build another one next to it later on.

Those are good tips. I don't pay much attention to what my opponents are building but I've started to destroy buildings if what they're producing is very cheap.

Which race is the best? I thought New Meridians would be better due to their science advantage but I'm wondering if there are better options.

[Kay of Sauvage]

Always try to build 2 or 3 structures together, right away. Exceptions for that might be for making power or for harvesting base resources.

The scientfic HQ does well making steel, glass, and the water based items because these each use a whole unit of the resource to make the final product (and they get it for free, basically). So that adds to the profit, though how much depends on the price of those resources. But because they often need to ship these expensive resources back to their HQ, they are a big target for black market pirates or magnetic storm.

Expansive HQ spends half as much steel on buildings, gets an extra claim at each HQ upgrade, and the transports fly twice as fast. The transport speed mean their transport costs are halved, so that helps for getting far away resources.

Robotic HQ get the adjacent bonuses from any building that outputs something that the other building needs as an input. So for example, putting a solar panel next to anything will give a bonus to it. So for example, if there's a single level 3 resource somewhere, you can build the mine on it, put a solar panel next to it, and the resource will produce 50% more. This also makes it easier to diversify, since stringing together buildings can allow you to get 50% or 75% bonuses without needing 2 or 3 of the structures. For example, you can build 2 electrolysis and 2 greenhouses around a water pump to get 75% bonuses on them. They also use power for transport instead of fuel, so that can be better or worse depending on prices. They also use half as much aluminum to upgrade the HQ. Last, they don't need life support, so they aren't constantly spending money on food, water, and oxygen the whole game.

Scavenger HQ uses carbon instead of steel, but 3x the amount. But you'll still produce 3x carbon much faster with a triangle of 3 carbon mines than you would produce steel with 1 level 3 iron and 2 steel mills producing at 50%, even if the carbon is all level 1. (Though scientific could be the best here with 3 steel mills in a triangle.) The carbon is also more versatile later on, since it will be needed for chemicals and electronics, while iron has no other use than for steel. Scavenger also gets faster cooldowns on accessing the black market, which can really be valuable especially for getting a good early start (MULE, bribe a claim). The also get news about shortages and surpluses earlier, which makes it easier for them to make money on speculation (buy up the resource before the shortage hits, then sell when the price has finished rising).

So every HQ has its advantages and I could write out a whole book of factors you would need to consider about each game to determine which faction is the best for a particular game. The complexity of these factors is one of the best details about this game.

[Enrico Pallazzo]

Thanks for all the info, it's very helpful. I'm going to practice a bit with each race and try to find one that I can play decently. :)

[hexapus]

Make sure you are not too attached to one faction b/c no one faction will always have the best founding location. But if you really really want to play using only one, expansive should be good. There are a few high level players who are expansive heavy and they do just fine too. Hack, I go expansive when I am stuck too.

[Enrico Pallazzo]

I intend to learn how to play with all of them but I'd like to get comfortable with New Meridians before I move on to another faction.

btw, I played against you last night or the night before. You bought me out pretty fast. :)

[hexapus]

Was it the slow paced game where power was really high b/c of my hacking?

Those guys banned me b/c they thought I trolled them :)

Scientific is the most picky of all the HQs. For a scientit to work, you must have a patch of iron AND water/ice. Quite often, there just isn't a good spot for a scientist.

[Enrico Pallazzo]

The speed was slow and your faction was new meridians. I left the game after you bought me out.

[Gnaal]

I havn't read most of this through, but I'll just recoupe some of the things I've learned in the week (playing CAMPAIGN, with different rules, but I think it still applies) I've had the game in relation to your issues. First and foremost, getting several buildings of the same type is awesome if the demand can support it. Usually it can not early game though, and what tends to happen is that it drops the prices leaving you in agony, unless you're using for something else. Machines are awesome here, since you can get adjacancy from other building types (ALL buildings can get it from power plants(!!!)).
I don't use the same start up for all maps, but my end game is usually the same (playing machines so far in my second campaign, with no kiln): get all of the four top tier resource I can (food, electro, chem and electronics) and make sure to have the sources for all of them (water, carbon, silicon).
Do note, this includes neither iron nor aluminium. Iron I'm managing without most of the time, depending on start prices I use either 2 smelters at lvl 1, one in each lvl 1 and 2, or none at all if I think opponents can get enough that the prices wont rise high (<100 is good, 150+ starts to hurt when upgrading).
For alu I usually go early for a single "high" one, but I've made without if it is abundant and the opponents might do it for me.
Power is balanced +-1 max if price is low, and a little extra power if prices are decent/high, pretty obvious ;)

Out of the "game ender buildings", I pretty much only use optimizations. It continues what you start with adjacancy when you start to run out of claims.

Patents mostly seems to worth the building investment to me, but that may a combination of playing machine (already having the best patent imho for 2x power) just be since I can usually find a good spot with close access to several water, and one of either carbon/alu/or silicon with the other two not being to far away (no need for teleport).
Hacker is really hard to use without losing the gains to others, you need monopoly more or less for raising prices and it still seems to be temporary gains. When lowering prices, you need a resources which you use but don't produce, however you usually want to produce all resources you use to not transfer your profits to someone else when the prices increase because you don't cover your needs (could be handy for that early iron, but that's to early to invest in black market anyway).
Offworld markets are nice but optional, in campaign atleast. They can be countered partly by making sure the prices of everything doesn't drop low. I figure they are probably way more important in skirmishes though, due to the different objectives.
Domes... idk, good with low prices I guess, but I try to stop that from happening.