After a day of diablo 3 i finally got round to having a go. I started different to my usual starts because I saw the jungle in my home system and they are my favourite plant type. So went ahead and colonised it and transferred pop over to it right on turn 1. After that it was my standard more or less, rushing the +40 sci building but with my second colony out slower as I used up my first ship. Oh and I cloned my admin twice (gotta love Horatio).



Pop 31, Food 332, ind 392, Sci 264, dust 72.
HORATIO - Turn 30 fluffya.zip

As far as I can tell, the hero xp gain on 'passive' heroes is largely due to # of builds.



Higher level = larger # of builds. I'd have to know the exact mechanics [isita%ofindustrycost?] but fairly sure it's :cheesable:, by multi-building ships etc. Something I'd have to pull open code to see how it works.





Build for a colony on your start planet is always: food exploit > colony. 3 pop is too low to really get a boost out of the sustainable farm (+1 / pop, 7+ build time), it becomes more useful as you have 2+ colonies with >4 pop each. So, for your first colony, skip the farms: build them afterwards.

Well, I certainly did not win by turn 60. But at least I did not die :-)



Pop=50, food=276, ind=415, sci=463. Both blue hissho west, and green UE east, DOW'd me on turn 33. Fortunately UE never attacked. I have captured some planets from Hissho (siege is still boring and slow). Since the new alpha is tomorrow I may not finish, but I will compare against the other turn 60 results. Having a +25 ind +25 happiness hero does not help as much as I thought, since I am not actually colonizing any new planets on this map.
davea-c3-t60.zip

How does one know if they are avoiding population dupe? To my knowledge I have not come across it in any of my games. Link or explain?

SomethingBlue wrote:
How does one know if they are avoiding population dupe? To my knowledge I have not come across it in any of my games. Link or explain?

There is an exploit where if you have a colony ship finishing on the same turn as some other improvement, you get extra pop on a planet. I will find the link but it will take a little while. So many threads ...

4x_Fan wrote:
Edit ~ attached the T60 save. All three neighbours went to war with me... sadly for them, rushing lasers + kinetic def. coupled with that hyperium meant I slaughtered them. Game is basically won.

This is a very informative save. Please take all these questions constructively, I am trying to learn.



When you say "basically won", what do you mean? It seems you have taken one or two planets, but all three enemies are still pretty active. Your score, including military power, is 2x the second highest player but still behind the total of the other players. I would call this a "long slog ahead" and not guaranteed. What are the things you look at to judge being way ahead?



I am curious about your cruiser build. 10x lasers is obviously good. But, my cruiser build is almost unarmed except for 10x S2G batteries. Do you find that sieges take forever? I am hoping 10x S2G will make it fast, but so far even this has been slow. I guess I am still hunting for the right mix of ship weapons, defenses, and S2G. What is your experience?



There are several recent threads about the superiority of numerous corvettes rather than cruisers. But all your builds are cruisers, with no support modules. I am trying corvettes for my main fleet, with cruisers only as S2G mounts. Possibly these threads started after you uploaded the save.



You have expanded further onto the right side tech tree. Getting Interplanetary Transport for +10% industry is something I had not noticed. I had been working my way up to Radiation proofing for the +25% ship HP instead.



Do you find that Colonial Rights, on the left side tech tree, is important? I have found that is the quickest way to get the happiness of captured planets up higher.



I am sure there are many loose ends in my game as well. I notice you have multiple food exploits still on Rhea, which is at max pop cap. Is there a reason to keep these?



Do you remember which planets you conquered, as opposed to colonizing? Serte was probably UE, and Edasir was probably Sophon. Were you planning to actively fight all three, or concentrate on UE?

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
I just finished the turn 60. I have the expansion (I think it's one when you need 75% of all the colonized systems) victory around 80%. I think it's won also.

As above, please help me to understand. Overall your position seems much stronger than 4x_fan; your score is 1200 compared to his 800.



Your cruiser build also has no S2G. Am I heading in the wrong direction by building these at all?



You have gone for Planetary Institute. Since the map is fairly crowded, there seems less opportunity to use this. I thought the main benefit was to speed up new planets. How does this fit into your plan? Do you just build them everywhere?



I had gone for atmospheric engineering to colonize asteriods, given the Garden of Eden asteroid in the home system. But since there is a large arctic there, perhaps I should not have bothered. On the other hand, although I had baryonic shielding to get cruisers, I had not colonized the lavas at Hadar and Serte, which I probably should have.



Are there other things you did in your run which you thought were noteworthy? I may have missed some.

I suppose S2G (not very familiar with shorter names) is the planet invasion module ?

At the beginning, because you can't have a big fleet dur to cap point (I have 7 now I think), I prefer to have only warships. I'm slowly upgrading my fleet hero to get the bonus melee instead. Then I'll clone him.



For planetary institute, as I rushed for Lavas, it was not so far to research and considering the bonus it gives and the speed to build it, it's of course the best for new systems but also a nice improvment for old ones. Any bonus is good to get and by adding all these little bonus, you can have only a big one

I rushed Lavas to get Serte myself and not see it steal. I colonized Hadar after Edasir as Edasir was a lot more attractive.



For Colonial Rights, like the supermarkets, I needed just after the Lava planets. Indeed, people was not so happy to live there and I had to research them, not for new systems but for old one I was expanding.





Noteworthy : As I already wrote, my first move was to colonize the jungle in my system and send everyone there. I cloned the hero after the level3. I prefered to rush Lavas, then Colonial rights, then planetary institute. And somewhere between, I tried to get the +40 science per system research (non baryonic particles ?) and beams.



I play a lot on the beginning with the ind=>dust conversion, this time to clone hero and sometimes just to be able to have everyone ecstatic everywhere, and with the ind=>science conversion as I prefer to improve food and industry rather than science but I don't want to be late in researches.



I think because of the mushrooms giving bonus on a beginning planet, this time I researched them quite fast also.

Ok, I'll provide a break-down for you.

davea wrote:
Do you remember which planets you conquered, as opposed to colonizing? Serte was probably UE, and Edasir was probably Sophon. Were you planning to actively fight all three, or concentrate on UE?

Firstly ~ I've done the opposite to Photon. All of my planets are settled by myself, all the military action has been defeating incoming fleets, no offence. I've turtled because I'm about to launch a 'tech explosion' [seelater].

davea wrote:
I notice you have multiple food exploits still on Rhea, which is at max pop cap. Is there a reason to keep these?

Take another look at my systems ~ you'll notice that all the planets are open on all of them, and they have (largely) all projects complete on them. In this regard, my save is much more developed than Photon's. Rhea has those farms because it's 1 turn remaining to build the interplanetary transport, and it's been growing while building ~ next turn I'll immediately switch away from the farms (top tip: switching exploit usually only takes 1 turn for multiple exploits in a system with a decent production).

davea wrote:
I am curious about your cruiser build. 10x lasers is obviously good. But, my cruiser build is almost unarmed except for 10x S2G batteries. Do you find that sieges take forever? I am hoping 10x S2G will make it fast, but so far even this has been slow. I guess I am still hunting for the right mix of ship weapons, defenses, and S2G. What is your experience?



There are several recent threads about the superiority of numerous corvettes rather than cruisers. But all your builds are cruisers, with no support modules. I am trying corvettes for my main fleet, with cruisers only as S2G mounts. Possibly these threads started after you uploaded the save.

The cruisers are designed specifically for combat ~ and they have plenty of support modules (Power, Armour, Repair). I'll build specific invasion transports in about 10 turns, and lots of them. Post tech push though. As for "why cruisers", I'm playing as I expect the game to balance out: at the moment, the "spam destroyers / corvette > higher tech hulls" is something I view as bad balancing / bad design. I've no doubt it'll get fixed by beta / gold release, and so it's better to play to the intentional design of the game, rather than the current (unbalanced) build. There's no doubt that in the long term, higher tech hull = better, so I practice maximising on those builds.



Same as the negative dust issue ~ fixed in alpha2 patch, but if we'd all spent our 30 turn games maximising using it... we'd have learnt incorrectly.



tldr;



Yeah, I could abuse corvettes, I don't need to though

davea wrote:
You have expanded further onto the right side tech tree. Getting Interplanetary Transport for +10% industry is something I had not noticed. I had been working my way up to Radiation proofing for the +25% ship HP instead.



Do you find that Colonial Rights, on the left side tech tree, is important? I have found that is the quickest way to get the happiness of captured planets up higher.

Colonial Rights is the next research, after atmospheric filtration. And yes ~ it's essential, but I prefer to do industrial first, then switch over to colonial when I'm dropping into content / happy. For crucial builds, I can tax/rush or run at a deficit for a few turns to get the bonus turns. So, Optimised Logistics, then Quantum Communications are the next two researches.



Looking at photon's econ build, I might play with his maximised tax strategy.

davea wrote:
This is a very informative save. Please take all these questions constructively, I am trying to learn.



When you say "basically won", what do you mean? It seems you have taken one or two planets, but all three enemies are still pretty active.

When comparing my save to Photon's, remember I rarely play on anything less than impossible / serious ~ I'm used to the AI having massive fleets & being able to swarm / purchase large amounts of fleets. He's used a cruiser rush to take systems, and has only one combat hero (with three clones ~ again, this is something I slipped up on & should have used). I'd suggest that on higher difficulties, this simply isn't feasible, and is actually counter-productive. Looking at all my entries to these 30 turn challenges, you'll see the same thing ~ I rarely rush combat without at least two tech tiers ahead of the AI: this is about right to offset the numerical advantages higher dif. AI get.



So, basically, for these challenges, I play too defensively for the AI's military strength & could easily stomp them a lot quicker. I'm not sure this is a bad thing though, since I'm playing as if it were a serious/impossible game.



Back to the question...



I've created a base of operations, and am about to unleash a "tech rush". All my systems are now at the stage where they'll reach max populations very quickly as soon as colonial rights / +4 farms come into play. I'll then jump to hypermagnetic shielding. Photon has researched colonial rights / some laser tech previously, so he's done the 'tech jump' earlier ~ with less system back-up. I know the game is won, because the two combat heroes are at 5/6 level ~ which means I've fought off most of the hostiles, and now I can gear into production. I play like the Culture in Consider Phlebas~ slow to switch over to military, but when I do, it'll be total & crushing





tldr;



Tech jump into higher level lasers with a rock solid industrial / population base + experience means the game is won, even on serious/impossible. The 400 points is just ships built / systems taken, by the way ~ score is only a rough measure of how things will play out.

I may have a better save on this game, I see 4x_fan is a much better player than me. As long as I know, I can have quite good starts, I'm always kind of messy in mid-game. Like I said, I'm still learning and I know everything comes little by little.

Anyway, I'm still glad to answer questions, and be able to compare with other player. It's also a very nice way to improve our playstyle.

hc3-t90 Photon version.zip



Here is my save for the turn 90.

Just push end turn and I win with both Supremacy and Expansion victory

I had so many new systems (I colonized or invaded) my three heroes were not enough... Cloning machine, where are you ? ^^

First challenge I do quite well. I suppose I become better at it.

I have played again from the start to T30, and I got a lot better. Sustainable farms definitely helped. I see most of you rushed endothermic, so I did too. I got it around turn 29 but my home system hadn't quite reached the pop cap yet. I improved from 18 pop to 24, but not as good as 28,29 which are the best.



On the home planet, which was the early build order among colonize jungle, food exploit, or sustainable farms? And why?



I did clone, but I must have gotten my hero a little later than photon since he is only level 3.



Now off to see if I can win in another 30.

FluffyBunny wrote:
After a day of diablo 3 i finally got round to having a go. I started different to my usual starts because I saw the jungle in my home system and they are my favourite plant type. So went ahead and colonised it and transferred pop over to it right on turn 1. After that it was my standard more or less, rushing the +40 sci building but with my second colony out slower as I used up my first ship. Oh and I cloned my admin twice (gotta love Horatio).



Pop 31, Food 332, ind 392, Sci 264, dust 72.

Looks like Photon's tactics are actually the best ~ I used his econ build, duped my leader & used industry > dust conversion heavily.





Pop: 34

Food: 336

Industry: 369

Science: 168

Dust:142





Note: I got 34 pop "legitimately", although I basically cheated ~ I made x5 blank transports [with1gun] and then used the dust from conversion to retrofit them into colony ships, thus making sure that a) no production turns were wasted in the build screen on colonies and b) I essentially got +5 free pop. You'll also notice that I didn't research the +40 science, instead made a bee-line for +pop structures.





Thus, fluffy, looking at your save ~ hmm. Doubtful. I'd have to run this one again, switching the finance exploits for farms + no :cheesing: retrofitting, but I doubt that yours is legal.
H Challenge 34 Pop No dupe.zip

4x_Fan wrote:




Thus, fluffy, looking at your save ~ hmm. Doubtful. I'd have to run this one again, switching the finance exploits for farms + no :cheesing: retrofitting, but I doubt that yours is legal.

Mine is legal, no negative dust, no pop dupes and no refitting. Pretty sure I would have done better with the +2 on tiny + small thing whatever its called, if I had got that before the +40 sci. think that would have got me to 32/33 pop but with less research finished. refitting to colonies is an interesting tactic, not tried that yet - although it does kinda feel like cheating.

FluffyBunny wrote:
Mine is legal, no negative dust, no pop dupes and no refitting. Pretty sure I would have done better with the +2 on tiny + small thing whatever its called, if I had got that before the +40 sci. think that would have got me to 32/33 pop but with less research finished. refitting to colonies is an interesting tactic, not tried that yet - although it does kinda feel like cheating.

Sorry about the wondering ~ it's very irksome to have to check each turn that I'm not duping, esp. whilst juggling +pop terran / jungles vrs the deserts. I'm also rather amazed / outraged at just how much easier the econ / 0% tax is! Not only do you get more research, but you can rush build / retrofit anything.



So, hmph, bah humbug, I've been doing it wrong all this time ~ glad I learnt something though





About the transports ~



The main thing seems to be to hold off using them until the correct moment ~ thus avoiding the -happiness penalties. Obviously, in a Universe which had better systems, going wild + spamming them would be the best tactic. I'm going to play around with a challenge of my own.

Finally got round to doing this one...eeuggh had so much work this week. Not as good as fluffy's or 4Xs. Closed down the game now but I got a population of something like 26. Even though that was a quick run-through, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to improve on what I did in that game. Any ideas?



Btw, are sustainable farms worth building for the extra pop?

@4x what do you mean by 'The main thing seems to be to hold off using them until the correct moment ~ thus avoiding the -happiness penalties.'
HORATIO - Turn 30 Sebbers hjfsfehkfeskhf.zip

4x_Fan wrote:
Sorry about the wondering ~ it's very irksome to have to check each turn that I'm not duping, esp. whilst juggling +pop terran / jungles vrs the deserts..

Yeah I keep a close eye on my pop on these challenges, had to reload an autosave when I accidently duped on one turn.

I may look stupid but I'm not from an english-speaking country and even I do well in these challenges, it doesn't mean I know all the terms. What does 'dupe' mean in the case of population in Endless Space ?

If you build a colony ship you need population for it.

but if you build a few empty scout ships oder empty transports and "refit" them to a colony you dont need population.

So you "dupe" and use an exploit from the alpha.

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
I may look stupid but I'm not from an english-speaking country and even I do well in these challenges, it doesn't mean I know all the terms. What does 'dupe' mean in the case of population in Endless Space ?

It's short for duplicate - used in gaming slang to mean a method of copying something through exploits/bugs. In ES there are several bugs which let you duplicate your population on planets which we are trying to avoid to keep these challenges accurate.

Oh and now the patch is out we need a new challenge

FluffyBunny wrote:
Oh and now the patch is out we need a new challenge

Thanks for the poke! It will be at least 8 hours before I have a chance. Based on the existing challenges, what would you like to see, either to learn or to teach? I do want to keep a 30 turn limit. Beyond that, then I cannot look at a save game alone and figure out what happened.

Randeng wrote:
Can't you create a "challenger groups" and posting your challenges there? Because you've created 3 or 4 challenges in a few days...

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/group.php?groupid=80



AFAIK, nobody sees group posts; so if I *only* announced them there, nobody would ever play them.

why keep dust positive?

Ugh new challenge or diablo 3, what to do what to do :P

About me:



I play on impossible difficulty and win around 80% of the time. I have some room for improvement but sometimes pirates and bad starts just get to you I think.



Here we go:



With production queues building improvements:



Total Population:19(+1 colony ship), Total Food Production: 209, Total Industry Production: 172, Total Science Production: 79, Total Dust Production: 8, Total FIDS: 468



Total Dust: 361, Dust Per Turn (DPT): +4



Knowledge: 32 (2nd)



MP: 3 (4th)
arrow-daveachall3.zip

Ah, I like Horatio ~ requires a particular strategy. In this game I knew I was ending @ 30, so used a tax maximum + rushed a colony [Aldebaran] and farms [Serte], which is why dust is where it is.



I made very sure there was no pop duping in this game, here's 100% legit build ~



Pop: 28

Food: 281

Industry: 176

Science: 178



The trick is: Horatio's ship costs are extreme at the start, so you make sure that you always build in a dif. gal (no matter what), and you refit your scout into a colony ship. You also (planets depending) want to rush improved thermodynamics.



Note: for this challenge I researched hyp / titanium ~ you could lose doing so to attempt to focus on the higher farm levels, but it turns out they've nice locations in your systems, and so the benefits are worth the research, imo.





I also realised that in every other challenge I'd been saving on turn 29, not 30 ~ the button in the corner's number is next turn, not the turn you're on! So, saves from the proper turn in future (which also means that my prior games were at a handicap, but there we go )

Baron_Fel wrote:
why keep dust positive?

Because it's a bug ~ negative dust is an exploit, soon to be fixed.









Edit ~ attached the T60 save. All three neighbours went to war with me... sadly for them, rushing lasers + kinetic def. coupled with that hyperium meant I slaughtered them. Game is basically won.
H Challenge T30.zip
H Challenge T60.zip

FluffyBunny wrote:
Ugh new challenge or diablo 3, what to do what to do :P

endless space >>>> diablo 3



there's ur answer!

VitunSuoPaska wrote:
endless space >>>> diablo 3



there's ur answer!

But they are both so good :P ES for when I want to think and D3 for when I want to see things explode in fountains of shiny loot.

FluffyBunny wrote:
But they are both so good :P ES for when I want to think and D3 for when I want to see things explode in fountains of shiny loot.

this is going so off-topic i feel bad



ES > D3, nuff said.

Pats your head, feel better I command it. :P

VitunSuoPaska wrote:
this is going so off-topic i feel bad



ES > D3, nuff said.

Can't you create a "challenger groups" and posting your challenges there? Because you've created 3 or 4 challenges in a few days...

4x_Fan wrote:
Edit ~ attached the T60 save. All three neighbours went to war with me... sadly for them, rushing lasers + kinetic def. coupled with that hyperium meant I slaughtered them. Game is basically won.

***cries***

I didn't intend to make this challenge so hard. But, if anybody can do well on this start, I will cry.



On forums for other games I have been involved in, sometimes players share a game in order to learn. I consider myself an "OK" player but I usually play on normal difficulty and win 50/50 of the time. So obviously I can learn more.



The attached zip file has a save game at turn 0 of a small disk map, 4 empires, Horatio, hard difficulty, no pirates. I have also attached my result after 30 turns. I would like to compare results. If you got better than me, I'd like to understand your strategy. If I got better than you, I'll explain what I was trying to do.



My results at the end of turn 30: total population=18, food=127, industry=172, science=74.



This is a learning experience, not a competition. Please keep your dust positive, avoid the pop duplication bug(s), and submit your first playthrough.



The attached zip has a save game "hc3-t0" which is at turn 0, and a save game "davea-chall3-t30" which is at turn 30.

So I tried also and after 30 turn here are my stats.



Score : 246

7 planets in 4 systems with 29 pop.

Food : 255

Industry : 292

Science : 131

Dust : 52+15



I have 4 warships waiting for an opponent to come.

The Dust right now is boosted with an ind=> dust conversion. It allows me to have everybody happy as my tax are at 0%. I also want to clone a second time my hero to improve faster many system at the same time.

I rushed the colonization of the tiny jungle in my home system instead of building improvements because I could grow faster on it.

I also searched for the lava colonization to not loose the last system I finally colonize and which I don't remember the name



Here is the savegame : hc3-t30 Photon version.zip



Davea, I looked a little your save and I have one main question : Why don't you build the first food improvment : Sustaible Farms ?

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:


I have 4 warships waiting for an opponent to come.

The Dust right now is boosted with an ind=> dust conversion. It allows me to have everybody happy as my tax are at 0%. I also want to clone a second time my hero to improve faster many system at the same time.

I rushed the colonization of the tiny jungle in my home system instead of building improvements because I could grow faster on it.

I also searched for the lava colonization to not loose the last system I finally colonize and which I don't remember the name

Looking at your save & comparing it to mine: You have 3 less farms [you'veusedfinance], and Aldebaran is -1 pop & a colony down, and you're getting ~25 less food / turn. The two main systems have +1 pop though. Ah, I see what you did ~ you cloned the hero early on. Your hero has 11 prod plus the flat rate +25 prod, mine has prod 15, and yet you're +1 pop in the main system: I presume this is due to rush building it @ the start.



Hmm. Def. a good idea to clone there, I forgot to. However, I see a lot of people choosing the flat rate +25 bonuses on heroes, which works in these challenges, but I refuse to take them ~ you gimp yourself for the long term, imo.



I'd be interested to see your T60 save, interested to know if the dust/econ route works when you're attacked by three factions.

4x_Fan wrote:


Hmm. Def. a good idea to clone there, I forgot to. However, I see a lot of people choosing the flat rate +25 bonuses on heroes, which works in these challenges, but I refuse to take them ~ you gimp yourself for the long term, imo.

That's interesting because those are my most prized bonuses I always go for first. I often use one of my leaders to quickly get new promising systems off to a quick start. They can become productive members of my empire in about a third of the time with a good +25 bonus to food and production. I especially like using strong food leaders for low food/high production systems, since it would take them forever on their own to gain enough population to reach their potential.



What does everyone else think of the flat 25 bonuses?

Here are my results :

4 systems with Pop : 17, Food : 148, Ind : 99, Sci : 66



Quite low yes, but :

- 8 ships fleet is ready to attack, I do not have decided yet who, but the UE spot looks sweet

- 3 cloned hero (3xlvl4), which is a good bet, with a retunr on investment before T60 I think



Given Hyperium and the good starting position, I think it will be fine @T60



HORATIO - Turn 29 Kruos.zip

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
Davea, I looked a little your save and I have one main question : Why don't you build the first food improvment : Sustaible Farms ?

See, I am learning. I will try that in my next play on this map, to see if I can apply all the lessons.

4x_Fan wrote:
However, I see a lot of people choosing the flat rate +25 bonuses on heroes, which works in these challenges, but I refuse to take them ~ you gimp yourself for the long term, imo.

I have just tried for the first time to take the +25 ind leader and move him to each new colony. It seems to make a huge difference. One such leader, moving to each new system, seems like a good idea.

4x_Fan wrote:
Looking at your save & comparing it to mine: You have 3 less farms [you'veusedfinance], and Aldebaran is -1 pop & a colony down, and you're getting ~25 less food / turn. The two main systems have +1 pop though. Ah, I see what you did ~ you cloned the hero early on. Your hero has 11 prod plus the flat rate +25 prod, mine has prod 15, and yet you're +1 pop in the main system: I presume this is due to rush building it @ the start.



Hmm. Def. a good idea to clone there, I forgot to. However, I see a lot of people choosing the flat rate +25 bonuses on heroes, which works in these challenges, but I refuse to take them ~ you gimp yourself for the long term, imo.



I'd be interested to see your T60 save, interested to know if the dust/econ route works when you're attacked by three factions.

I just finished the turn 60. I only discovered the sophons turn 58 but being already Hostile, I suppose they will declare me a war soon like the two other factions.

By the way the United Empire and the Hissho are on the way of their destruction. Cruiser+beam also and slowly but surely I win. I took each of them already a planet and started the home land.

I watched your save and it looks the start I took was the good one, mainly with three administrator +25ind/+20food clones. It's my first game as Horation and I'm impress by the clonage...

I succeded to become 1st in knowledge also and it looks I'm far in front of the others.

I have the expansion (I think it's one when you need 75% of all the colonized systems) victory around 80%. I think it's won also.



Here is the save : hc3-t60 Photon version.zip



Nevertheless, I know despite all this I could be even better. Always learning, thanks Davea

For a couple of the posted saves, I see that you haven't explored outside the first couple of systems. I suppose this is because you explored first, then restarted, and for the second one you didn't bother exploring. That is an excellent way to meet the terms of the challenge, which usually seems to be max pop. I guess I need to think of another way to structure the challenge. If you don't know what is out there in a new map, how do you decide what to do? Once you know what is out there, a repeated play seems easier.



I have definitely found weaknesses in my play from this, so it has been useful. People seem to find them fun, so I'll keep making them after alpha 2 comes out tomorrow. I highly doubt it will be save game-compatible.

Nope, I didn't do it twice. It's my first try

Usually, at the beginning of the game I stop scouting when my scout is destroyed, which happened quite early here.

Prefering focusing on development, I don't build another one.

I'll scout with my cruiser, it's safer for the people inside

On tiny / small maps, it's often a good idea not to explore too far, given that races will inevitably be hostile & war you. Added to this is that a scout will inevitably be insta-ganked by aliens as soon as it finishes a turn in a system [badcodingthere,sigh] and it's worth a lot more as a refitted colony. So ~ mostly I scout around 4-6 jumps away, return the scout to refit as a colony, then wait until phase 3 of expansion to explore the entire map.



I rarely play on anything less than huge though



Regarding the whole "do you reload the start?" issue: I tend to explore the immediate surroundings, then if I've not used the colony ship within 3 turns, reload. This is the only reload I do ~ everything else is a one shot deal. You noticed it on that save because the map is so small that there's only one way to expand. If anything, that's the major failing / benefit of your posted scenarios: there's often a single best way to conquer them ~ a viewer will learn more quickly from them, but there's less options for singular style. i.e. that last save, the only difference between my game & the other person's was 3 farms vrs 3 finances, a rushed colony swap [s/herushedthejungle,Irushedalateroneonthetinymushroomplanet,whichleadstolargergrowth30->60] and me forgetting to clone a hero.



That's it: apart from that, the games were basically identical, which does support a 'maximal tactics' theory. Larger map + slightly more time (30/60) = more variance / personal style.





I'm going to play around with these +25 flat bonuses and see how beneficial they are ~ if they're decent for fast starts, I might start using them (be afraid, very afraid ).