Here's my first Totally Clueless Noob 30-Turn Challenge. This is the first challenge I have posted - so please be kind. It's a tiny sized twin elliptical system, played as Sophons on hard difficulty and fast game speed with 4 other factions. Please download the zip file, extract the two savegames in it and place them in your My Documents/Endless Space/Save/ folder. Start with the turn 0 game and please post your results at the end of turn 30 (end turn button will say turn 31) and attach your turn 30 savegame so we can all look at it and learn from it and discuss your strategies. There is no right or wrong and feel free to post your results no matter how good or bad they are - it's a learning experience.



I'm still learning the ropes on ES so my results were as follows:



Population: 22

Food: 60

Industry: 121

Dust: 79

Science: 166

Total dust: 148(+73)



I had one colony and two outposts, 1 hero, and one fleet of three slightly advanced protectors (rev 2), and a peace treaty with one neighbor.

Here are my saves (10,20 and 30)



Endstats:



Population: 53

Food: 141

Industry: 392

Dust: 88

Science: 558

Total dust: 76 (+21 @ 25% tax)



Endfleet consists of:



- 2 advance scouts (outdated by tech) (4x T2 Kinetics, 1 T2 engine, scanner, 1t2 deflect)

- 12 Desi in 3 fleets (2x5 and 1 2x to reinforce the left fleet) - config is 7x T3 Kinetics, 4x T3 Flak, 1x T3 Deflec)



only lost 4 scouts due to scout ( i use 2x scout in one fleet to scout as they can fend of 1 destroyer)





To "learn the ropes" I would suggest to play on "normal speed" - this tech tree blizzing makes the early game pretty fast but also easy to mess up.



Endscore (by empire)



Red (So): 737

blue (UE): 224

green (Cr): 299

organge (Ho): 430



Sincerly



PS: allways try to get the hero with the food - he get +production (level 3) and +food tech (level 5) if skilled right which makes the early game easier - sadly in this game there were none - but good fleetheroes
Sophon Challenge by craigbic.zip

I have a save file, but how do I get all of those statistics? I know where the total points are listed, but some of the other stuff I have no idea.

Tavar wrote:
I have a save file, but how do I get all of those statistics? I know where the total points are listed, but some of the other stuff I have no idea.

Open up your empire summary screen and add up the values for all of your colonies for Food, Industry, Dust, and Science. Add up the populations of all your colonies. Total dust is displayed there as well.

Thanks for participating and for the tips! Awesome job, by the way!

Continuing the Challenge.zip



Population:31/58

Food:28

Production:228.7

Research:176.665 per turn

Dust: 98(+19), Tax rate 30%

Approval: Content(54%)



One Colony, 5 outposts, one hero. One Outpost was 2 turns from a colony, and another was only 10 turns away.



Two fleets: one of the initial protectors, the second the result of some initial Weapon research and combats. Offensive split between 2 kinetics and 4 stage 2 torpedoes. Defensively, 2 layerd hulls and 4 reflexive isotopes.



Points Wise, it's as follows:

Horatio with 522 points

Me with 334

Cravers with 299

United Empire with 208



Course, I'd yet to really focus on military might/research. In the continued version, in about 16 turns my score had more than doubled, and the Empire was gone.



Also, population wise, I researched Barren World Colonization and started colonizing barren worlds. Increased Science, Dust, and population.



Saranea, to get that population, what exactly did you do?

I included the savefiles of round 10, 20 and 30 so you can see the progress yourself.

(see my last post with the files)



Seems I need to make a video the next time i play I guess - as after 2 other games i hardly know what I did.

Still, i try to describe it as i remember



normal tipps:



- Build a foodsupply in starting system

- ind > dust for the hero, else ind > tech

- if you have not the hero at turn 6 you do something wrong (some races can get it even at turn 2)

- 2nd heropick depends on what you have and need - economy or a fleethero (you can level him vs pirates, care about the upkeep)

- set tax as low as possible as it improves Food, prod and teching

- get the N-way fusion as early as possible (normaly my first or 2nd tech depending what i scout)

- another tech that is really good is Soil Xenobiology - at latest it's my 4th tech, normaly my 2nd or 3rd

- I get all tier 1 colotechs (depending on the need - you might delay one or even both)

- your main goal is to colonize in the first turns as much as you can

- scrap the "warrior" corvette, upgrade the scout (2x scouts are best for scouting and can hold their ground vs 1 kinetic destroyer)

- fresh colonized planets get: Alien graftig + heavy isotope (if you can shorten the grafting building with buyouts)

- continue to scout at all times, only hold ground if you see an imbound fleet - kill the other scout(!), also the reason to upgrade your scout and normaly pair them if you have enough of them (which means: pair them when you have 4), use them as your early scout

- deny scouting at chokepoints to your part of the map

- try to be 1 pop under your population cap so you don't waste food

- try to get the military techs as late as possible, make sure you can build that modules (hyperium for laser, titanium 70 for missiles and so on)

- favor science early game (magnetic field generators !!! don't forget to build them), then shift to the bottem tree (get the lava planets for midgameproduction! with all the upgrades on the left tree (seedings t3), right tree (core mining T2, High energy magnetics T3), bottom (baryonic shielding T4, graviton manipulation T5)





colonisation:



- hydrus turn 4 (hydrus VI at turn 14)

- Micre turn 8 (so Sustainability was ready - scout it, research it, colo it - desert is a decent prod and dust system, also note it's strategic value)

- perseus turn 16

- electra turn 16

- kuma turn 22 (you need to escort your coloship there - you play with pirates - use the 2x scout patrol to fly ahead, do NOT pair them up with the colo!)







I hope that was helpfull





Sincerly

Thanks to everybody for the submissions - this is fantastic! I hope we get more submissions.

Saranea, thank you for the detailed tips!



I obviously have room for improvement and I think I'll make those improvements based on what I am seeing here. I am going to look over all the savegames we have so far and post my thoughts,

Saranea wrote:
Here are my saves (10,20 and 30)



Endstats:



Population: 53

Food: 141

Industry: 392

Dust: 88

Science: 558

Total dust: 76 (+21 @ 25% tax)



Endfleet consists of:



- 2 advance scouts (outdated by tech) (4x T2 Kinetics, 1 T2 engine, scanner, 1t2 deflect)

- 12 Desi in 3 fleets (2x5 and 1 2x to reinforce the left fleet) - config is 7x T3 Kinetics, 4x T3 Flak, 1x T3 Deflec)



only lost 4 scouts due to scout ( i use 2x scout in one fleet to scout as they can fend of 1 destroyer)

Saranea, I took a good look at your savegames and I have a noob question about the approval rating & production queue for your Electra colony in your turn 30 game - Why build Infinite Supermarkets on a colony with a "happy (64%)" approval rating and cut your dust production for that colony in half?



Really good work by the way. I have a lot to learn.

Tavar wrote:
[ATTACH]1292[/ATTACH]



Population:31/58

Food:28

Production:228.7

Research:176.665 per turn

Dust: 98(+19), Tax rate 30%

Approval: Content(54%)



One Colony, 5 outposts, one hero. One Outpost was 2 turns from a colony, and another was only 10 turns away.



Two fleets: one of the initial protectors, the second the result of some initial Weapon research and combats. Offensive split between 2 kinetics and 4 stage 2 torpedoes. Defensively, 2 layerd hulls and 4 reflexive isotopes.



Points Wise, it's as follows:

Horatio with 522 points

Me with 334

Cravers with 299

United Empire with 208



Course, I'd yet to really focus on military might/research. In the continued version, in about 16 turns my score had more than doubled, and the Empire was gone.



Also, population wise, I researched Barren World Colonization and started colonizing barren worlds. Increased Science, Dust, and population.



Saranea, to get that population, what exactly did you do?

Tavar, your savegame file link comes up invalid

craigbic wrote:
Saranea, I took a good look at your savegames and I have a noob question about the approval rating & production queue for your Electra colony in your turn 30 game - Why build Infinite Supermarkets on a colony with a "happy (64%)" approval rating and cut your dust production for that colony in half?

Even if that was a 30 turn challenge, i played it for the long term game.

When you look at electra you see a good arid planet, a desert (high production) and 2 barren planets.

My tactic is to colonize both barren planets (-15 aprroval each) which negats the effect of the infinite supermarket.

And you build it early because for a few turn your citizens of electra will be exctatic (more growth, prod and so on) for a few turns (if you take the tax down 5% - if you want more growth that is)

So its build to keep the population happy while colonizing both planets. (rule of thumb: build happyness if it would fall below happy BEFOR doing anything that it let fall it under)



The next question would be "why dou you plan to colonize both quickly after each other?"

The answer to that is the following: It's going to be a producing system so you terraform both barran into lava plants.

They can grow along



The prepartions for that are all done:

- Epigentic crop seeding

- interplanetary transport network

- graviton manipultaion finishes in 1 turn (lava transformation)

- because the tiny barran is the first thing that gets terraformed: prepartion with endothermic structures to get it to a 3 inhabitant planet instead of 1 (and because it has a moon it will be a +5 in the end, in the endgame a +7 lava planet for production)

- the following would be also in planning: Soil revivification (to get rid of the "acid rain"), optimized logistics (for the colonial rights -> happiness + boni on ecstatic)



The same preparation is done for Hydrus

- because they are only "content" the colonial rights are important to get them to happy (ignoring the bonus here) and try to take the barren with keeping them happy

- as you see it will get them to ~60 and will decrease because of your overall poultaion (the -3,6 from empire will grow with the size of your empire) so you can forsee that they will fall or even never get over happy when you get the barren

-> in conclusion you need to get Inter-species HR for the "unlimited information highways" soon (not imidiatly).

- if you look at the population you have 4 free slots left which will fill in ~8 rounds, building the endothermic structures u will get around 2 turn more (desert +1) and prepare the barren (future: lava) to get +3 instead of +2





Also note that production planets (as long as they produce) will allways be planets with a negative dust income until late midgame

- to coop with that you will need "money planets", 2x arid systems with Atemporal finance or any other ind> dust convert is fine (i prefere not to use ind > dust if i can as ind > science is more usefull in the long run) , but only if you run into money problems (which can happen, depending on your system, but must not).



- when you get the following techs your money "problem" will solve itself:

Gravitron Manipulation (Planetary institute - will pay itself if the tax is 25% or higher)

Low-Temp Hydration (Hydrosequencing - +1food/ind/Dust/science for 5 upkeep per inhabitant - it pays itself around 10 inhabitants, normaly i build it even on a 4 man planet even if it is a negative upkeep, but science is more important then dust for any race, and as small systems normaly are Ind > sci systems even the production helps)

Advanced Scholastics (Adaptive taxation System - +2 Dust/Inhabitant 8 upkeep - so it pays itself around 16 inhabitants which most of your systems have by the end of midgame

Vocation-oriented Socety (finance commision - will help your dust producing planets/system alot)





Sincerly

Wow, awesome explanation - will put that to good use. Thank you!

Okay, not sure what happened, but I think I fixed it. At the very least, I was able to download the file now.

Tavar wrote:
Okay, not sure what happened, but I think I fixed it. At the very least, I was able to download the file now.

Ok, cool! I have downloaded the file and will take a look at it. Thank you!