Linear routes to easy win?

[DVid6x3]

Does anyone have suggestions/tips on what tech web research to unlock in what order to guarantee an easier late game ? Or basically any generic strategy that is going to likely become the norm on mp

[Wildmanyeah]

multiplayer or single player?

[DVid6x3]

Either and/or. Right now I've been doing single just to learn the techs

[Wildmanyeah]

If you just going for tech that will advance your allignments ( ie supremecy) by the time you are 6 the computers will be like 1 or 2 and your troops can just walk all over them. Its completely unbalenced imo

[DVid6x3]

Yeah the balance and ai is horrendous . I can ♥♥♥♥ around the first 300 turns and then figure out what I wanna do and still win

[Cythal]

Hmm, in terms of tech I do not think there is a straighforward way.

I have not tried a few city win yet to see how it plays out. My current playthrough involved expanding wide, grab a large portion of the continent I am located in on a terran map setting. You can either use the cargo that helps identify coasts or you can use techtonic scanner to reveal oil, geothermal and Tin early so you can settle your new cities wisely.

Or of course you can start with Pioneering tech but know that untill you get a worker to build mines arround your captial or cut forests, building a settler will take very long. The Prosperity virtue tree does give you a free settler though.

At the begining, I research the pioneering technology if i did not take it while i build a relic and explorers to explore the map especially the areas surrounding the AI on the same continent I am in so that I can guage how they are expanding and quickly expand towards them if neccesary to grab those sweet spots. River cities are good.

The goal is to expand and grab land to build massive poplulated cities in the 20s. With the Knowledge Virtues you can turn the population into large culture and and tech points per turn. I try to do this till around 200 turns on standard speed after which I then begin to research techs for the particular victory I am going for. By turn 300 or more, I should have almost won, just waiting for the victory wonder to finish its duties.

I watch the number of turns that it takes to research a tech. Look at the inner circle and research tech that you need to expand and build things that you want for your cities to grow and your workers to build the resources you have. Grab some military techs for basic defence, you really do not need defencive building techs yet until late game when the affinities have upgraded the AI units.

There will be many techs you do not need at all especially techs with special units of a particular affinity. If you are going for say harmony win and a tech gives Purity points or supremacy points but adds say +1 production to your farms, then if you have built alot of farms it may be wise to go for it. However i tend to leave that till late game when my workers have built most of the land.

The same goes for monument techs. one tech I always try to get is the Bietgiest that give 15% reduction in aquiring virtues which helps alot for my large number of cities. I do not try to build other monuments especially those in the inner and or the middle circles. On Hardest difficulty, inner tech web monuments can get built while you are focused on building up your cities. Emphasis is on building health buildings in cities and trade ports for internal trade to aid production and food and then culture buildings to get those virtues in time.

Looking at the tech web I normally go this route on early game

*Pioneering (Colonist and Trade ports)
*Ecology (supersonic web and immune trade convoys from aliens)
*Planetry survey (unit embankment)
*Genetics (more health building with some added research)
*Chemistry (if you have lots of oil to sell to AI and of course the recycler to improve your internal trade, recycler really bost production if you have a lot of internal trade)
*Computing(spy defence, also opens path to Bietgiest wonder, and the missle unit and gunboat)
*Physics+Engineering(mainly for the ranger and armor rover but there are othrer benefits, like revealing Tin)

At this point I probably have 4 to 5 or even 6 cities if i was able to keep health above zero. I do not let it dip too low at more than -10 as you incure more penalties than just the -10% culture and science.

There is really no straight forward path from here on. You can decide to imediately start researching techs that leads you to victory but remember that those techs are located in the outer regions of the tech web and will take a large number of turns to get. So I focus on techs that give me culture, health and production buildings, improve the land, allow my workers to build some improvements. For large popluation and more cities, I cannot stress the importance of the biowell in Bionics to allow you to keep you health in check until you can grab virtues or build more heath buildings. So that could be a tech to grab next so that your cities keep growing in positive health although negative 10 health( i think 9) and below do not stunt city growth.

I normally do this when I am ignoring the prosperity tree to get to the Knowlege virtues that reduce the culture and tech penalty i get for number of cities. After I grab those i can then grab the health virtues in properity tree. this shoots my health to positive high numbers allowing me to now focus on energy prodcution and tech points buildings. And some more military units for defence.

I never bother about Frabrication for example as it takes ages to build those mag rails and there is no option to still build roads when you research that tech. but if I aquired alot of land then i could build it in late game when my workers have improved much of the land around my cities. For Purity however, you may need it because of the purity point leaf-tech under it.

So in mid game a good way to go for Harmony win

*Robotics (Air units for defence)
*Artificial Intelligence(mostly for the next tech below)
*Swarm Intelligence (harmony point, Bietgiest wonder, pardon the spelling if it is wrong, I think the tech is part of the harmony transendecne win)
*Genetic Design (mostly to unlock Transgenetics for harmony victory which i will research later on or even grab as a free tech if i can)

In fact i could go on but it will be focused on a harmony win. At this point it is good time to start grabing your affinity points to level up you army and start unlocking the Wonder for your victory type

Basically, on the tech web, you see ellipses branching outwards from the center. inside each elipse, focus in getting specific techs that you need from each. this will depend on the type of victory you are going with. For the first elipse or rather the second after the small one circling habitation, you will probably need all the main tech but not all the leaf ones.

When you get the necessary ones, move outwards to the next ellipse in which at this point the number of techs you really need will reduce as you need to start focusing on the affinity you are going for and the type of victory.

Repeat for outer circles.

I belive this to be the way they have built the tech web. Hope it helps.

[DankDankerson]

the industry cultural stuff is pretty op, you can get a 200 bonus energon just for havin money in the bank, and one of the bonuses in that tree is to make trade routes to stations give you 20+ energy every turn at that point you can buy a soldier or ranger type unit, or every 2-3 turns buy a more powerfull one on top of what you can produce in your cities.
trade routes are ungodly powerfull. you can set up a new colony and have it procuding buildings in one turn right away

[Ed]

It also doesn't help that there are no out-right world wars late-game like there are in BNW.

[Halborn]

Pick PAC or Iberia / Artists / Tec Scanner / Worker Unit or Lab, make your way to the Purity Lvl 4 and stomp everything with your battlesuit. You just need 4-5 cities to exploit trade routes between them fully.