Balanced build order?

[snuggleform]

Is there any consensus on a good "baseline" build order in terms of sector specializations/colony buildings? Part of what I find overwhelming in this game is just not knowing which direction to take. Coming from a starcraft background I liked having a basic framework buildorder like the 1/1/1 terran building or protoss 4 gate; I know this game's different but I hope you can see my desire for some structure in what to build.

Yes yes it depends on your scenario/goals, but nonetheless can something be said?

E.g. let's say you intend to build an army fairly constantly and you're going for either domination or doomsday thereafter; forget about water sectors for simplicity; my current best guess is

Central buildings - at this point in time I'm pretty settled on just building energy reactors on everything. Economist doctrine + energy reactors means you enjoy huge energy reserves without necessarily having to invest in energy sectors, and energy is super important to recruit heroes, enact doctrines, launch operations of all varieties, and is effectively the cap on your army size.

I expect to have a significant energy upkeep due to militia buildings and also because I plan to spam tier II skirmishers (whether they be secret tech or racial). I've really been struggling on this - at one time I used to go 1 energy core in HQ just to keep things going, then being greedy and going science on others. I also considered going replicator in HQ and energy elsewhere, as the HQ really gets bottlenecked with infrastructure but also wants to churn out units to steadily support the frontline. Is one of the options I mentioned the best, or is there something else? As a beginner I used to go food but I'm pretty wary of that option as I find 1 food sector in a colony is enough.

Sector specs - always start 1 food sector (bioengineering), otherwise the city just grows too slowly. In the HQ, nowadays I really like going double production sectors (civil/basic military) + 1 energy sector (energy efficiency) in that order thereafter, because again I really expect the HQ to be the one churning out units and it just gets bottlenecked if you don't go hard on production.

In expansion colonies, I like to go double science after food. Largely the reactor cores + economist takes care of energy issues for the early game, food has been taken care of due to the first sector, and unit production is relegated to the HQ, and at this point you really need to look to the future and address the science bottleneck.

As far as research orders, it's a bit flexible but I actually have been paying a lot of attention to operational strength lately as it largely prevents the enemy from doing super annoying things like fabricating casus belli (they usually declare war shortly if they're successful on this!!) or draining your energy (energy is good!). I go frontier -> food improvement -> two levels of op strength -> covert ops up to secret society. With 3 doctrines, I go builder/economist/secret society. From there the research is fluid and depends on the map topology and enemy actions.

[Charlando[SunsOfStmChrts]]

IMO focusing on food and population growth doesnt matter as much as some people might think.

Pumping out tier1 units and new colonies is far more valuable in the early game. Energy income is the limiter here - that would be the only time I consider building anything other than new t1 units and colonies.

I will make exceptions for specific larndmark bonuses and synergies. Bedies that however, the math for population doesnt add up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AOWPlanetFall/comments/dmb5o7/live_from_pdxcon2019_triumph_promises_major/f50jtdj/

"The basic sector exploitation produces 5 of its resource and 2 jobs. Because pops require 2 happiness and 2 food, their net gain in the early game is only +1. This means that the basic exploitation produces a net gain of only +7.

The basic exploitation costs 150 production (about 2 turns) to complete, same as a colonizer. A new colony produces 20 food, 16 happiness and 50 production (I believe this is the case, but I can't find the actuall numbers anywhere, so dont take this as gospel) + a pop. What this means is that a colony, right from the start, pays for itself in about 2 turns. A sector upgrade takes well over 20 turns to pay for itself."

If I'm playing Amazon or Vanguard I rarely need any food sectors. The bonus food they get from doctrines is good enough

[sandman25dcsss]

I suggest disabling quests, then every game feels really special. +15 doctrine is OP.
Recently I noticed that most of my military research is wasted, cosmite battleneck is too cruel. I prefer going for energy sectors and getting most research from anomalies. I play with 12 teams though so I really need as many units as possible to survive/expand/attack.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by CharlandoSunsOfStmChrts:

IMO focusing on food and population growth doesnt matter as much as some people might think.

Pumping out tier1 units and new colonies is far more valuable in the early game. Energy income is the limiter here - that would be the only time I consider building anything other than new t1 units and colonies.

I will make exceptions for specific larndmark bonuses and synergies. Bedies that however, the math for population doesnt add up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AOWPlanetFall/comments/dmb5o7/live_from_pdxcon2019_triumph_promises_major/f50jtdj/

"The basic sector exploitation produces 5 of its resource and 2 jobs. Because pops require 2 happiness and 2 food, their net gain in the early game is only +1. This means that the basic exploitation produces a net gain of only +7.

The basic exploitation costs 150 production (about 2 turns) to complete, same as a colonizer. A new colony produces 20 food, 16 happiness and 50 production (I believe this is the case, but I can't find the actuall numbers anywhere, so dont take this as gospel) + a pop. What this means is that a colony, right from the start, pays for itself in about 2 turns. A sector upgrade takes well over 20 turns to pay for itself."

If I'm playing Amazon or Vanguard I rarely need any food sectors. The bonus food they get from doctrines is good enough

Your claim is nebulous as I don't know what is meant by "matter as much as some people think." I would still say that 1 food sector per colony is recommended, although not strictly required if you end the game early enough or use a lot of food doctrines.

Your colonizer math (or whoever you quoted it from) suffers a severe flaw in ignoring the rising cosmite and energy costs that were introduced a while ago. I don't think colonizers pay for themselves in 2 turns at all, not once you've built 2 or 3 of them already.

[Evierial]

1) A colony should focuses on 2 or 3 resources so no build like 1/1/1/1. Optimum build should be 0/1/2/1 or 0/0/2/2.
2) Never plan too far just to get level 5 sector, 4 is good enough. You better get level 5 from silver/gold landmark not from normal sector. To find terrain collaborates with climate is 50/50, don't rely on that.
3) To get access to level 3-4 sector easily, you better be concern on terrain type because researches allow to access before entering mid-game which is not hard.
4) In some unfortunate cases that you can't find any spot to exploit missing resource relevant to terrain type, it is acceptable to maintain only level 2 early.
5) Don't forget that you can raze annex or remove upgrade to build a new one. New patch makes it so easy to manage.

From 4) and 5), use these to your advantage when production queue is free. Remember to plans ahead before execution. Scouts play an important part here.

[sandman25dcsss]

Another flaw in that reddit post is that resources are quite different in values, for instance immediate value of food is zero unless you sell it. Late game you need 200+ food just to get a single colonist.

[CrUsHeR]

First off i would suggest disabling Empire Tasks, because their rewards are cheesy (too good) and endorse a repetitive playstyle. Without them you'll actually research your faction doctrines which are more fun and distinct, like Vanguard with the +15 food promotes a heavy expansionism, or Syndicate should try to be at peace with all dwellings for tons of free energy and influence.


Next up, i think you should trash the idea of a fixed build order for every colony. Because if you want to build a food sector first, then production, then whatever the colony should finally produce, you're probably wasting like 10-20 turns in each colony.

Example an Energy colony gets two Energy Exploitations first, then add whatever is profitable. As it's been said, if you want colonies to grow very fast, you can also start with the food center building. Then later dismantle it (1 turn) and replace it.

What exactly the central colony building should be depends a bit; example if the base colony only provides 60 production, you should always have the replicator in place because this is a flat 25% increase which will last through the entire game.

And food sharing from pure farm colonies should be pretty obvious, set "share half" in the farm colony and "take" in the others you want to grow faster.

The exploitations only make sense if you manually send colonists to work in the slots, for this you need to click on the circle buttons so they show "arrow up" in the resource type they should produce. By default the game would equally distribute the colonists across all jobs, which is a very stupid idea because the developed exploitation slots simply produce more per slot (check the exploitation tooltip).

I usually start a colony with colonist focus on food and production, then queue the militia upgrade (unless an army is nearby), the core building, and afterwards you should already need the first happiness building. Afterwards you should have 1-2 sectors annexed already, get the focused exploitations running and once they are in place, put the colonists in their final job.

Important to note is that there only are 3 levels for direct exploitation upgrades, and the remaining 2 come from terrain- and clime upgrades. So the sectors should generally match what you're trying to produce there.

And suddenly you have colonies which all produce like 200-300 of their focus resource. Rather than producing 30 food / energy / research / production in every colony.



And for the overall strategy:

Your HQ can be any type of colony, except your main army production hub. This is because the various HQ-exclusive upgrades sum up to a very long time, basically each turn building these is one army less on the field.

And generally you should always prioritize Energy, this is the only thing you can't have too much of. A good research strategy is Energy -> Mountains, this will sum up to level 3 energy exploitations in any mountain sector, plus the wind farms which increase energy output by 1 in each mountain energy slot.

Next up are Cosmite deposits, and area coverage.

Lastly Research and Food are about equal. Research sounds extremely important, but isn't all that useful if you can't afford the cosmite costs of colonizers, mods and T2-4 units.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

First off i would suggest disabling Empire Tasks, because their rewards are cheesy (too good) and endorse a repetitive playstyle. Without them you'll actually research your faction doctrines which are more fun and distinct, like Vanguard with the +15 food promotes a heavy expansionism, or Syndicate should try to be at peace with all dwellings for tons of free energy and influence.


Next up, i think you should trash the idea of a fixed build order for every colony. Because if you want to build a food sector first, then production, then whatever the colony should finally produce, you're probably wasting like 10-20 turns in each colony.

Example an Energy colony gets two Energy Exploitations first, then add whatever is profitable. As it's been said, if you want colonies to grow very fast, you can also start with the food center building. Then later dismantle it (1 turn) and replace it.

What exactly the central colony building should be depends a bit; example if the base colony only provides 60 production, you should always have the replicator in place because this is a flat 25% increase which will last through the entire game.

And food sharing from pure farm colonies should be pretty obvious, set "share half" in the farm colony and "take" in the others you want to grow faster.

The exploitations only make sense if you manually send colonists to work in the slots, for this you need to click on the circle buttons so they show "arrow up" in the resource type they should produce. By default the game would equally distribute the colonists across all jobs, which is a very stupid idea because the developed exploitation slots simply produce more per slot (check the exploitation tooltip).

I usually start a colony with colonist focus on food and production, then queue the militia upgrade (unless an army is nearby), the core building, and afterwards you should already need the first happiness building. Afterwards you should have 1-2 sectors annexed already, get the focused exploitations running and once they are in place, put the colonists in their final job.

Important to note is that there only are 3 levels for direct exploitation upgrades, and the remaining 2 come from terrain- and clime upgrades. So the sectors should generally match what you're trying to produce there.

And suddenly you have colonies which all produce like 200-300 of their focus resource. Rather than producing 30 food / energy / research / production in every colony.



And for the overall strategy:

Your HQ can be any type of colony, except your main army production hub. This is because the various HQ-exclusive upgrades sum up to a very long time, basically each turn building these is one army less on the field.

And generally you should always prioritize Energy, this is the only thing you can't have too much of. A good research strategy is Energy -> Mountains, this will sum up to level 3 energy exploitations in any mountain sector, plus the wind farms which increase energy output by 1 in each mountain energy slot.

Next up are Cosmite deposits, and area coverage.

Lastly Research and Food are about equal. Research sounds extremely important, but isn't all that useful if you can't afford the cosmite costs of colonizers, mods and T2-4 units.

I like your point about disabling empire tasks .I've definitely got into a rut of builder/economist because as you correctly noted, they crowd out all reason to take some of the racial doctrines..

What you said about going replicator since 15/60 = 25% is ignoring that you could go reactor core. A non-HQ colony provides 0 energy baseline, so +10 is an infinite increase. Your example here makes little to no sense if you want to use a % based analysis. Maybe you are talking about using a replicator in a non-HQ colony that intends to be the production hub?

Some of your last points are incoherent with the rest of the reasoning; you say for instance to prioritize energy but then earlier you said food core first is fine, and even food sector first is fine too, and you never mention reactor cores which effectively raise the electricity cap on each colony.

My "fixed order" certainly does not involve a production sector second (except for the HQ). Food first I think is actually very smart and necessary unless you are certain the game is ending soon. Then I take 2 research or 2 energy immediately after the food.

Research is actually more important than you seem to think, as it means you can squeeze out more resources from your colonies. Don't forget most of the society techs are quite useful; I think your "cosmite is limited" argument is only looking at the military side of research. While it may be true you don't necessarily want to rush military research due to cosmite limitations, I personally cannot get society techs fast enough. I want more, and I want them yesterday, but I have to pay some attention to food and energy and have 1 production hub.

Your point about the HQ not being production hub....well yes and no. Remmeber the HQ has naturally more production than other colonies, so even though it has some special buildings, the extra production should overcome this and in the long run it makes sense to make your HQ your hub. Additionally, the civil engineering specialization actually rewards the HQ for having more buildings, raising its production rate even higher compared to other colonies. However, the very final cosmite upgrade gives a bonus when your HQ is doing research/energy, which means in a super late game you don't want the HQ to be making units for this reason.

[VDmitry]

HQ is good for producing units early, but later you can get much better cities if they get lot of bonuses to prduced units. You can have a city which provides +4 resistance, up to +20hp, up to +4 armor etc.

[snuggleform]

Originally posted by VDmitry:

HQ is good for producing units early, but later you can get much better cities if they get lot of bonuses to prduced units. You can have a city which provides +4 resistance, up to +20hp, up to +4 armor etc.

but you can move your HQ to a colony that has those gold/silver/bronze buildings, thus that city with the bonuses will have the HQ production bonus as well once the transfer is complete

(click the last tab in colony management and it has an option to move HQ to a colony of your choice).

[CrUsHeR]

What you said about going replicator since 15/60 = 25% is ignoring that you could go reactor core. A non-HQ colony provides 0 energy baseline, so +10 is an infinite increase. Your example here makes little to no sense if you want to use a % based analysis. Maybe you are talking about using a replicator in a non-HQ colony that intends to be the production hub?

The example with 60+15 means that this colony will be 25% faster in getting all its upgrades in place. In particular if you found or re-spec a colony later in the game when there are many and expensive upgrades available.

The flat +10 from the reactor is absolutely negligible at any point. It doesn't grow the colony faster (to annex faster and fill slots faster), it doesn't get the buildings and upgrades faster in place. If you do the math, let's say you wanted to use the "buy now" button for 400 energy, the reactor core would pay that off after 40 turns.

There also is no electricity cap, and no flat happiness bonus like in AOW3. In that game it always made sense to build like 1 shrine if you wanted more mana, or put a spell with +15 gold because the benefit was exactly the same in every city. The difference here is that you can only have one core building, and the effect of the replicator or (alternatively and temporarily) the food core are the most useful.

Not sure but i think you can't get the happiness event for a resource you are not producing? Even more reason to not have that in a non-energy colony.

Some of your last points are incoherent with the rest of the reasoning; you say for instance to prioritize energy but then earlier you said food core first is fine, and even food sector first is fine too, and you never mention reactor cores which effectively raise the electricity cap on each colony.

I said it depends. The food core is the best option if you for example build a colony right under your neighbor's nose, and it should annex as many sectors as possible to get your claims down. Aggressive expansion.
Or perhaps there is something like a cosmite deposit to the left and two landmarks to the right, and you want both ASAP in the same colony domain.
The game is full of important decisions, and the food core *can* be the right choice in some situations.

Research is actually more important than you seem to think, as it means you can squeeze out more resources from your colonies. Don't forget most of the society techs are quite useful; I think your "cosmite is limited" argument is only looking at the military side of research. While it may be true you don't necessarily want to rush military research due to cosmite limitations, I personally cannot get society techs fast enough. I want more, and I want them yesterday, but I have to pay some attention to food and energy and have 1 production hub.

I also mentioned colonizers. More energy cities means more units, with them you should win an early war and then you got enough colonies you can turn into research and food farms. It's really easy to catch up that way.

Also research can be found in large quantities in the new anomalies, if you can find time to do those.

Your point about the HQ not being production hub....well yes and no. Remmeber the HQ has naturally more production than other colonies, so even though it has some special buildings, the extra production should overcome this and in the long run it makes sense to make your HQ your hub. Additionally, the civil engineering specialization actually rewards the HQ for having more buildings, raising its production rate even higher compared to other colonies. However, the very final cosmite upgrade gives a bonus when your HQ is doing research/energy, which means in a super late game you don't want the HQ to be making units for this reason.

Quite simply, no :)

Civil Engineering should under no circumstances be in a production hub. There also is a third type for Elite you unlock with the second production sector upgrade. The military engineering upgrades also give armor bonus later on, so you can't skip that in an actual production hub. This is much more important than a bronze landmark with +1 armor / shields.

[snuggleform]

The flat +10 from the reactor is absolutely negligible at any point. It doesn't grow the colony faster (to annex faster and fill slots faster), it doesn't get the buildings and upgrades faster in place. If you do the math, let's say you wanted to use the "buy now" button for 400 energy, the reactor core would pay that off after 40 turns.

Totally disagree. As you said energy is the most important resource. Having more production but not enough energy is a common problem.

If you do the math, trying to convert 15 production gives you 3.75 energy. So you're getting nearly 3 times as much by going pure energy than going production.

Civil Engineering should under no circumstances be in a production hub. There also is a third type for Elite you unlock with the second production sector upgrade. The military engineering upgrades also give armor bonus later on, so you can't skip that in an actual production hub. This is much more important than a bronze landmark with +1 armor / shields.

I would assert the diametric opposite - that civil engineering should always under every circumstance be in a production hub. It gives an insane amount of production bonus when you build all the structures.

You don't typically need both military AND advanced military productions, as you usually focus on one type of unit at any point in the game. For example, if you're low on cosmite you'd probably be spamming a tier II skirmisher that only costs energy. In this case, advanced military guild does nothing, while civil engineering immensely helps you churn out those units. If you've somehow made it to a stage where you have elite military, and you plan to use them, you'll come to realize they are rather slow to produce and here having the basic military guild does nothing for that, while again civil engineering does help because of the +4 production per structure bonus.

The only reason the HQ would not be your production hub is exactly as I stated, because of the final cosmite research. Other stated reasons do not make sense.

[CrUsHeR]

Well you asked for advice, and obviously the game is very complex so you'll hear plenty of different opinions. And it is good that you question the advice, too.

Totally disagree. As you said energy is the most important resource. Having more production but not enough energy is a common problem.

If you do the math, trying to convert 15 production gives you 3.75 energy. So you're getting nearly 3 times as much by going pure energy than going production.

If you are converting production to energy, the colony is idle and you kinda lost the train of thoughts in the explanation. As long as the colony needs to expand and build upgrades or units, having the energy or research cores will delay the process. No matter how you turn it.

And even if a production colony already has +200 output, the +15 on top are valuable because of the overflow between turns. It would take a lot of colonists in upgraded slots to replace that. Not to mention the value of that in colonies which have no production upgrades at all. Keep in mind that Production is a local resource which can't be transferred from somewhere else.

As we said, you can also dismantle the core buildings at any time, so this should be adjusted to the given state of the colony. Like if you have most of the production focus buildings in place, or annexed all sectors you need, then simply switch the core building to what you think is necessary.

I would assert the diametric opposite - that civil engineering should always under every circumstance be in a production hub. It gives an insane amount of production bonus when you build all the structures.

You only get this bonus if all slots are filled. And with two upgraded exploitations in matching sectors, this can take a while. In particular if one is a Gold Landmark or Dwelling which are always level 5 (which i think most people will aim for).

[sandman25dcsss]

By the way very late game your HQ should not produce units as it gets +10 cosmite when producing energy/research.
I made a mistake of producing 4 elite buildings once, there is no enough cosmite to produce so many units of course, so I replaced advanced military building with military building. Civil building is a must in all production colonies of course.

[snuggleform]

You only get this bonus if all slots are filled. And with two upgraded exploitations in matching sectors, this can take a while. In particular if one is a Gold Landmark or Dwelling which are always level 5 (which i think most people will aim for).

You might want to check your facts; the civil engineering guild gives a flat -% building structures, but starting at level 3 and beyond you get a flat production bonus per structure in the colony, without the need to fill all slots. I have no idea what this "if all slots are filled' requirement is coming from. I believe you are confusing this with certain research or food or energy specializations, but civil engineering does not have such a requirement. Level 3+ Civil engineering gives a truly massive amount of flat production bonus that is usable for building units as well.

Also you said youreslf energy is important, so I don't get why you don't like reactor core but you like energy sectors. As a matter of play experience if you skimp energy in favor of production you have a hard time doing basic things like hiring heroes, enacting operations and it's actually quite a pain to do things like pay off casus belli, archaeological energy requirements, etc.. +10 helps you a lot in the early game when your actual energy income is pretty trashy like +40 or +50 due to the upkeep. I find that having reactor cores keeps the energy ticking up just enough to keep the flow of hiring/bribing/etc going.

The reactor core argument is simple. If you have a reactor core, you can afford 10 more energy of upkeep. Without it, you can produce faster, but have a lower amount of units. As you yourself have said energy is what allows you to build a powerrful army early, so why the reactor hate? I have lost the train of thought yes when you make comparisons like well 15/60 = 25%, sure that's mathematically true but you're forgetting energy allows you to have more total units.

[snuggleform]

My takeaway from this upon more reflection and playing is that it mostly (not all) comes down to whether you are rush centric or more on the city-builder side of things.

If you're rush-centric, then as many have pointed out there's little point to making any food sectors at all - maybe a central farm at best, but even then who knows maybe not, just focus on energy and research.

If you're nor rush-centric, then 1 food sector per colony I would say is arguably the best idea, even if you have food doctrines if you really want to grow past the 16 pop mark the bioengineering city helps much more than anything else due to the sheer amount of food saved to get new colonists.

As far as central buildings go, right now I'm still leaning towards replicator on the HQ because I expect it to be churning out units, colonizers, and special buildings as the game progresses, so every point of production here is likely to make a big difference, and elsewhere it's a mix between science/energy.

I don't know what the ideal ratio is but I can see something in expansoin colonies, start with a food sector regardless(nonrush), then either follow up immediately with 2 energy or 2 research sectors. You probably only "need" one colony to be energy focused for a long while, and unblocking research with the rest of the colonies asap makes sense.