Train supply technology

[Captain Australia]

Hey There - just wanted to ask why most experts seem to remark that the train supply technology is crucial. (Playing Apocalypse).

My logic is this:

48 day map, yields like 8x units of resource per day wood/stone/iron

So over the lifetime of the map, you'll recieved up to 384 units

(This assumes always having storage space, which you don't)
(This also assumes the shipments are valuable in latter days - which I doubt)

So if you skew the numbers to factor that, what's the deal ?

Achieving a good amount of wood production is trivial, early game you can easily be getting +50 or more wood (every 8 hours). That trivialises an extra 8 per day, right ?

Stone, similar story, even on a stone light map, production could be 15 or so. Iron likewise.

But for me, the main thing that I don't understand is - with massive cashflow and a market, you could directly purchase all required resources. If you had +1 or even +2 gold per kill, the act of defending yourself generates revenue which you can use for repairing and expanding defenses.

I look at the train tech and it seems ultra-sucky to me.

BUT..

Performance wise, folks have lauded it and they are dramatically better players than I am, so I was wondering if my above logic is unsound, or if theres more to it ?

[Asharai]

The train speeds up massively your early game, which is usually the tricky part at least for higher difficulties. You can buid the barracks after the third shipment and you can produce soldiers without any access to iron quarry, which is often diffcult to obtain so early in the game.

[snuggleform]

Logistics is +40 gold income. That is ten tents of income for doing nothing. That's pretty good.

Gold transportation is approximately the same as +67 gold income, that's even better than logistics, which was already pretty good.

Ingot is approx +100 gold income, that's even better than the previous two.

Wood isn't amazing but the early game has a lot to do with being wood starved (gotta build farms, cottages, walls, mills, wood tech stuff).

Stone/iron on apoc, it takes a while to expand to them naturally, so you are giving yourself sometimes many days of nonzero stone/iron income which means you can start pumping soldiers way earlier than you normally would. Like what 5 extra days before you normally could get those resources? That's...pretty good.

You can't use the market all that early in the game because it requires 200 pop and research to even get one up, whereas the train has been steadily delivering resources to you nonstop.

Yes gpkill is good, but certainly no replacement for train tech.

[Commisar Jon Fuklaw]

As wsc said, the biggest benefit is being able to consistently rush barracks on day 3 and soldier production on day 4 with no risk of over-pulling to acquire stone/iron deposits. The 15 wood/day also helps with early game wood economy (better on some maps than on others). Nevermind the benefits of free, zero effort gold.

Additionally, the final train tech makes expanding much safer and faster and is a source of 6 iron/240 gold for every wasp you delete. That ♥♥♥♥ adds up.

[Captain Australia]

OK got it, thanks guys --- early soldiers, more aggressively dominate the map.

I'm only up to Narrow Pass (apocalypse) and thus far my strategy hasn't been to expand the build-space aside from stone/iron outcroppings, until I have a squad of soldiers that I can clear out the map with (and otherwise build defenses and economy).

So I'm not actually out there clearing these massive swarms of zombies until something like day 10 at the absolute earliest.

Understood that the tech enables that alot earlier.

I like to turtle a bit but I can see how the game would want you to keep a strong foot moving forward. It makes sense now - thanks, appreciate the replies.

[One Man Army]

Like others said, the main reason you go for the stone/iron transportation is for being able to tech up to Farms and build a Soldier Center early on, regardless of the map layout and where those minerals are on the map.

In Nightmare and especially Apocalypse the zombies are so dense on the map, that it takes a really long time to clear and reach stone and iron minerals, especially iron ones.

Not only do you have to clear towards the minerals with a few troops (which you may have no idea where they are), you then have to wait for the quarries to finish building and then wait again for enough production ticks to reach 20stone for soldier center and even more for a shocking tower if you have that.

On top of that, the first wave comes really early at around Day 12 and there are mini waves close to Day 7-8, so you want to have a solid army by that time.
By accelerating your early game, you ensure that you will be ready to defend on time and in turn make the rest of the mission much easier to beat.

I'm playing difficulty 4 and 5 missions in my campaign now and I find them way easier than some difficulty 2 missions due to this early boost.

Tech +2gold per kill is also great in Apocalypse mode, but you should get that AFTER you have Iron Transportation.

[Quineloe]

Free Wasp is broken good, but ridiculously expensive.

[Evilsod]

The only weak upgrade on the entire list is Oil Transportation but if all else fails you can just sell it for a little extra gold.

Wood helps you a little early on when you might be struggling for Sawmills so you can get out a Workshop.
Stone lets you get a Soldier Centre up by Day 3 regardless.
Iron lets you start pumping out soldiers without having to find a deposit which on some maps is tricky.
200/500 gold really boosts your early game when you don't receive much and you need it most.
Wasp is free gold/iron or an extremely powerful defensive unit that helps you plug holes in your defences or gives you a huge chunk of damage for the first wave.

[One Man Army]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

The only weak upgrade on the entire list is Oil Transportation but if all else fails you can just sell it for a little extra gold.

Oil transportation is good if you want to build one of the more advanced wonders like the lightning spire (Energy wonder) that need 100oil each, without investing and wasting money into the Foundry and Oil platforms, but other than that it's the weaker part of the train tech line.

[Wormeur]

You get the stone and iron to start spamming soldier faster than if you had to expand. That's basically it. The oil one is close to useless imo tho

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by One Man Army:

Originally posted by Evilsod:

The only weak upgrade on the entire list is Oil Transportation but if all else fails you can just sell it for a little extra gold.

Oil transportation is good if you want to build one of the more advanced wonders like the lightning spire (Energy wonder) that need 100oil each, without investing and wasting money into the Foundry and Oil platforms, but other than that it's the weaker part of the train tech line.

Yeah I didn't say it was totally useless, just weak. It can be put towards Advanced Quarries or Titans or a wonder to give you a head start too.

Doesn't really help for bypassing the Foundry though. Spire requires a Foundry to build it afaik so I guess thats the same for all of the ones that need Oil.