Any tips on machine gestalt empires?

[Fayte]

I could use some tips. I played a few hours last night, I get the basics of the game. I could use some pro tips though....

~ playing as the default XT machine gestalt purifier race

1. How the heck do I keep my energy from going negative? Even making a 2nd world with nothing but energy districs, I couldn't fill or move the pop fast enough to recoup my energy losses. It crushed my minerals as I had to keep selling them to not crash.
2. How do I grow pops fast enough to be effective? (maybey I'm rushing too much?)
3. For traditions, I went expansion, then discover, then started warfare. Is this pretty optimial?
4. How much should I worry about sprawl? It feels like the game really doesn't want me to expand.
5. How early should I colonize? I tooke 3 worlds early, hoping to grow my pops in parrallel, but it's brutal getting enough pops on new worlds to build the dang robot bay. Is it more effective to overpop my homeworld and pay to relocate?
6. Any other general tips for this empire?

Thanks for any help/tips guys!

[Vyndicu]

Forget about growing population on par with biological empire.

Build your first machine empire robot template with the 5% production trait to everything + 20% energy productive trait.

Also add the -energy upkeep trait as each gestalt robot population cost 1 energy upkeep. This will save you lot of energy upkeep in long running. Especially at 200 total population it will save you 20 energy.

You will have so much mineral so luxurious (making robot more expensive to manufacture) for the two trait will make it possible to have all traits I just mention earlier. I even manage to run a gestalt machine empire without a mining district well into mid-game. You need those energy district far more than you need mineral unless you somehow was very unlucky with space-based mineral deposits.

There are a few civic that are useful for generic gestalt govt. I believe there is one civic that reduce energy upkeep for district if you are still struggling with energy.

If you see 10% energy from job physic research, get it as your machine energy district barely provide you with enough energy at 5 energy per districts (8 baseline from job minus 3 baseline for population/building upkeep).

With all trait I mention earlier it would be more like 2.7 upkeep and 10 energy before stability/leader modifiers for each districts.


You should wait a little before doing colonization as you will need 9 extra population somewhere and bit of extra energy stocked.

The trick to machine colonization is that while they do not ever immigrate on their own. But you can order robot off-world for a hefty 100 energy cost. It will allow you to immediately upgrade the colony hq + build a robot assembley building to speed up your general population growth.

Otherwise, your robot will take forever to get build. Alternative you could cease building district/building on your homeworld and move excess population off-world.


I would not worry too much about sprawl right now as you got bigger issue to deal with.

[Fayte]

Thanks!

[Evilgenius]

First, I would advice you to start again, Machine Empire Exterminators are one of the hardest starting empire in 2.2

1. Expand fast, but in the early game be prepared to be in the minus energy most of the time. Trade minerals and alloys when needed. You could use food production for another trade resource, that is generaly more valuable then minerals. And you can use the bio-reactor building to convert food into energy (I never use them, but i hear it can be good early game).
You could also murder another AI empire, exterminating bio-pops gives you energy.

2. Expand fast, you are a robot, so early game advantage is the 200% habitability, colonize every semi-decent planet. Every planet with 5 mineral districts is good enough, size hardly matters, but I try to not go below size 12. And ofcourse colonize big and better planets first. when you colonize a planet move pops to it to get it to 5 pops instantly, build the Robot bay. When you have colonized every planet that you want, resettle pops to colonies untill every colony has 10 pops, then upgrade the main building. This should give you a decent starting pop growth.

3. Expansion is a good pick. Before your first colony you want Colonization Fever (1 extra pop on colonies) this is very important. Second tradition should be Supremacy, your fleet needs to be better, so you can get bio-pops for extermination and precious energy. After these 2, it really doesnt matter. Prosperity if you are really short on energy, Synchronicity for all kinds of good bonuses, Discovery if you lack research.

4. Ignore it completely, that is a general tip. Don't look at it, don't think about it and just don't acknowledge that it exists. No really don't think about it to much, just remember when your science starts to slow down or your next tradition takes a long time, this just means you need more tech labs and unity production, it does not mean that you are too much over the empire sprawl.

5. Already answered at point 2. But in general expand fast, as soon as you have the Colonization Fever tradition. Colonize every usefull planet, get it to 5 pops and colonize the next, repeat untill your are left with that one size 10 planet that is tidal locked and has no mineral districts. That planet you do not colonize, reluctantly. If you can keep your capital populated with 30 pop you will be all right. 40 is better because you can upgrade main building again, for better pop growth, but it is expensive. I would aim for 30 in the very early game, when you are colonizing.

6. Try to maximize pop growth with edicts, Robot modification and Civics. Use automatic trade to get energy into the possitive and minimize micro. Invest in Alloy production, it should be the first and second extra building on your capital.

[Fayte]

Awesome, I was thinking along those lines. THanks a lot guys!

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Or you can act like actual exterminator and don't worry about colonizing too much. All you need is to grab mineral-rich systems in your general area (maybe, settle nearby planets, if any), build a couple of forges, and with supremacy as first tradition you should have your 40 corvette stack ready 15-20 years in. Let AI waste alloys on outposts and colonies while you take their mineral-rich systems and juice their pops for enegry.

Just remember that you'll need to constantly build more forges to snowball your fleet, and with 2.2.4 mineral buff will only need energy districts with housing mixed in.

[Fayte]

How do I turn bio's into energy?

[Fayte]

I've bene using apocolpyse bombing :)

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Fayte:

How do I turn bio's into energy?

It's a default form of purge for DE. Just got to have a degree of control over the planet.

[Fayte]

So I shouldn't bomb enemy worlds into obvlion? Better to build armies and capture populations?

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Fayte:

So I shouldn't bomb enemy worlds into obvlion? Better to build armies and capture populations?

That's, usually, the way to go because it's faster and you want that planet anyway. Bombing is more about denying assets when you know you won't be able to secure that area. Of course, with recent habitability changes it doesn't matter as much, but no one told AI that (among many other things).

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

Mostly it's about looking at your advantages / disadvantages compared to other empires.

You have no consumer goods usage, which means having pops in general is easier, as well as taking on specialist jobs (especially research) compared to non gestalt empires.

The downside is that you consumer energy instead of food.. which is a lot more costly now. (as food is 6 per job compared to the 4 energy). This means you want to invest heavilly in energy production. You also have no trade which means somewhat less energy too.

Also since your ruler pops have no extra consumer goods usage (and gestalt's have better colonizing starts), you want to spread wide and take basically every planet.