Tau City Help?

[Gnasty Gnome]

So the utopia mechanic is something interesting. It would appear at first glance that you are supposed to keep tau cities small with few duplicate buildings, instead building multiple small sized cities. However, the mechanic is less beneficial once you need to start pumping out production from your city since building duplicate buildings reduces loyalty.

What is the best way to play the tau economy and city?

[Mors Avis]

I don't know that the Utopia mechanic is supposed to be strategically "built into", per se ... since, long-term, you really can't do so (as you mentioned). I think it's mostly beneficial in the early stage of city development, before you start doubling up your buildings, and is just a "flavorful" way of bringing the Tau's all inclusive, greater good philosophy into the game in a passive way. It definitely delays the need for loyalty buildings, but you will need to get them eventually.

[Gnasty Gnome]

Originally posted by Archon:

I don't know that the Utopia mechanic is supposed to be strategically "built into", per se ... since, long-term, you really can't do so (as you mentioned). I think it's mostly beneficial in the early stage of city development, before you start doubling up your buildings, and is just a "flavorful" way of bringing the Tau's all inclusive, greater good philosophy into the game in a passive way. It definitely delays the need for loyalty buildings, but you will need to get them eventually.

The thing is, eventually you will suffer worse penalties by making large cities than a regular faction because -1 loyalty from population and an additional -1 from the building they staff. It feels a bit bizarre almost researching the city expansion tech

[Goblin]

Use fireblade heroes. They give each city you have 6 loyalty when they reach level 6. That means the more cities you have the more loyalty they give. It is a really strong ability. That combined with the utopia mechanic makes it mush easier for tau to spam cities over other races.

Early game you don't need to worry about building any loyalty buildings. In fact you can build a second city asap and you won't go into negative loyalty thanks to the utopia mechanic. Every other race would.

mid game you should start relying on fireblades generating most of your loyalty, should have at least one at level 6 by now. The longer the game goes the easier it will be to level up fireblades. At turn 120 they start at lvl 6. Also equip all your heroes with the influence item from the shop, it will make spamming heroes easy.

[zolobolo]

Yes, it is an initial help but should also provide some benefit afterwards if you are building tall as the additional loyalty soaks up duplicates giving an edge over competitors.

[Gnasty Gnome]

Originally posted by Golin:

Use fireblade heroes. They give each city you have 6 loyalty when they reach level 6. That means the more cities you have the more loyalty they give. It is a really strong ability. That combined with the utopia mechanic makes it mush easier for tau to spam cities over other races.

Early game you don't need to worry about building any loyalty buildings. In fact you can build a second city asap and you won't go into negative loyalty thanks to the utopia mechanic. Every other race would.

mid game you should start relying on fireblades generating most of your loyalty, should have at least one at level 6 by now. The longer the game goes the easier it will be to level up fireblades. At turn 120 they start at lvl 6. Also equip all your heroes with the influence item from the shop, it will make spamming heroes easy.

Still +6 loyalty is 3 buildings. So for every 3 duplicate building and 3 population operating it i should have 1 fireblade??

[Jey]

Originally posted by BubbleShuffle:

Still +6 loyalty is 3 buildings. So for every 3 duplicate building and 3 population operating it i should have 1 fireblade??

+6 loyalty is 5 buildings + 1 loyalty building.
Every faction loses loyalty with pop, so you can't count it in Tau's utopia.

[Gnasty Gnome]

Originally posted by Iffu:

Originally posted by BubbleShuffle:

Still +6 loyalty is 3 buildings. So for every 3 duplicate building and 3 population operating it i should have 1 fireblade??

+6 loyalty is 5 buildings + 1 loyalty building.
Every faction loses loyalty with pop, so you can't count it in Tau's utopia.

Does utopia not go negative? If so I've been worrying about nothing.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by BubbleShuffle:

Originally posted by Iffu:

+6 loyalty is 5 buildings + 1 loyalty building.
Every faction loses loyalty with pop, so you can't count it in Tau's utopia.

Does utopia not go negative? If so I've been worrying about nothing.

It can, but depending on how you play it shouldn't really be a problem imo.

I dont build duplicates till late game. Early/mid game i build one of each building to just deal with the population loyalty, plus production buildings still generate you resources so they are still useful even if you aren't recruiting units. Also building as much unique buildings as you can in the early/mid game will help you deal with the negative loyalty from duplicates in the late game. The HQ building generates 6 of every resource iirc so it counts for like 5 buildings. So my early game/mid game strat is to get as much cities as I can get without falling into negative loyalty.

As soon you get builder drones you can build a second city right away and not worry about loyalty. For your third city you either build one loyalty building in each of your cities or you already have a fireblade at level 6. Each fireblade you have at level 6 is another city you can build. Building more cities increases the amount of loyalty a fireblade generates, building duplicates does not.

I would say three cities with just the hq building is worth 15 resource buildings. Tau should have a more balanced but overall stronger economy over the other races imo.

When building duplicates you should choose only one building type to spam in a city so all of your other buildings are still generating loyalty. Late game I have one city dedicated to producing food, another for ore and another for energy and so on.

[Jey]

Originally posted by BubbleShuffle:

Does utopia not go negative? If so I've been worrying about nothing.

No, it does.
The thing is you say "6 loyalty is only 3 buildings because -3 from utopia and -3 from pop".
However, every faction needs to deal with population loyalty. It's unfair to claim the +6 loyalty from the cheap fireblade is only 3 buildings. It compensates Utopia for 5 buildings + the loyalty building you need for the pop.