My objective is early game hyper-expansion to most systems in the starting segment, as quickly as possible. There are some possible ways to do this.



First, I was trying to think of complementary traits for Tolerant. It seems to be unpopular due to its cost and I wanted to see if there is a way to justify it. I am speaking only of Tolerant 2/2 because I don't see Tolerant 1/2 being effective at all. I decided to start with Sowers.



Affinity: Sowers, "The Great Sow" (.png" alt="smiley: " title="" />)

2/2 Dust Archaeology

2/2 Dust Impaired

2/2 Feeble Warriors

2/2 Legendary Heroes

2/2 Masters of Illusion

1/1 Mineral Rich

2/2 Optimistic

2/2 Sloppy Sawbones

3/3 Spendthrifts

2/3 Spray n Pray

2/2 Tolerant



The Sowers are not as sensitive to the lack of food on hostile planets. A decent Desert/Lava/Methane/Asteroid becomes viable for food/production. Most exploitations will be of the production variety and you can grab any system in reach. When I tried to play this one, I always felt population growth was stunted making it hard to keep up with building colony ships. It seems to do with the Sowers limitation: a food focus planet makes half food, and a production focus planet also only makes about half food. Similar with food and production exploitations, you are only growing so-so which doesn't work well with hyper-expansion. Then you do have the -25% FIDS on almost everything including the homeworld. I started with an asteroid belt, a large gas methane and a large gas hydrogen, so my production was better than expected in the home system and I quickly got the methane planet and the one next door. It didn't help to spawn next to the Hissho which immediately started invading the new planets (perhaps spiral arms next time to split us all up?). Early combat was a constant distraction and I started to fall behind although my FIDS was still #1.



Thoughts: Grabbing specific production planets that are typically mid game, like Methane/Lava, and getting any growth out of it, is the one unique part of being Tolerant+Sowers. For other races you have much more of a food problem on all hostile planets, although food exploitation is more effective for them. I had enough production with -40% costs to pump out colony ships, but my population would only grow every 3-4 turns on the home system even with the hero on it. There isn't much you can do to boost Sower food because it gets half from each resource. The Sower homeworld is painfully mismatched, but the techs for tier 2/3 planets are not hard to get. 40 points for Tolerant does seem too expensive given what else you can get, but it does seem to fit with Sowers who do not require strong food planets. The combination seems very conflicted at times more than complementary. I wonder if Tolerant 2 + Cloning 2 or 3, non-Sowers would fare better on food and planet selection. A Crop Geneticist hero rotation can help with +20 food.



So... anyone figure out a good Tolerant build or is it just too expensive ?





Affinity: Amoeba, "Bubblers"

3/3 Builders

2/2 Dust Archaeology

2/2 Dust Impaired

2/2 Feeble Warriors

3/3 Growth Plan

2/2 Legendary Heros

3/3 Offense First

2/2 Optimistic

1/1 Rich Soil

2/2 Sloppy Sawbones

3/3 Spendthrifts



My first major success was with the Amoeba. What can I say ? Seeing the entire map is incredible for expansion planning. In this case you want to expand fast but you can be more selective. I had an open disk map, so I was able to get 40% of the map (all on my side of the wormholes bisecting the map). Once the systems started to fill in, I had a strong lead in FIDS and research and I used it. Growth Plan was very useful to all systems, where I used food exploitations to get growth going, and a hero rotation to accelerate it. I like this affinity but I feel like I am bypassing exploration as a sort of "newbie crutch" when there are others like Sophon that give direct bonuses.





These are my favorite picks so far for unfettered expansion:



Rich Soil (food/initial growth)

Growth Plan (food/initial growth, then ongoing growth)

Militarists (cheaper colony ships, then cheaper all ships) or Masters of Illusion (cheaper colony ships, then cheaper defensive ships) , usually can't afford both and the second one is more affordable for just colony ships in the beginning.

Sophon (cheaper colony ships, tech blitz)

Builders (cheap improvements)

Optimistic (helps with expansion and planet penalties)

Spendthrifts (low taxes = minimal impact, use production->dust instead)

Dust Archaeology (get hero on turn 1 , and run a deficit for a few turns)

Legendary Heroes (turn 1 boost to production)

Optimal Structure (1/2, to fit seed + second engine on a corvette for speedy colonization)

Fast Travelers (for speedy colonization)

Misc. negative traits that most people take for extra points.





I reasoned that you have to remove the limiting factors to hyper-expansion:



1) Pop growth on the home system to build colony ships quickly (1 to 2 turns). Even if the production is there, you'll hit a limit unless pop is growing every 1-2 turns to offset it. So: food traits.

2) Get the cost of the colony ship low enough to build it every 1-2 turns. Sophon / Master of Illusion / Militarist, or some combination of two.

3) The speed to get out there before other people. Fast Travelers is immediate, but also Optimal Structure + a couple techs, Sophon can get to it quickly for +5 speed (2nd engine + corvette), and shortly after another +2 speed (Compact Fusion Reactors).

4) The ability to quickly build up new colonies. Legendary Heroes+Dust Archaeology, rotate a +15 production and/or +20 food person. Also, food traits to help growth along on new colonies, this also boosts a Crop Geneticist.

5) Counteract expansion penalties to morale. Optimistic + Sophon to quickly get +morale improvements.





Still learning, but anyone else have thoughts on rapid expansion builds ? Sophon seems particularly good at it. I am still trying to see if Tolerant can work into a build.

As long as your build includes a little food production you'll expand plenty fast.



Tolerant simply isn't viable. By around turn 50 it essentially just becomes wasted points.

Once i get on ill test some of these out... probably will fail but, why not.

I think two Affinities will help with the F+I requirement. Sophons reduce the colony ship cost. Cravers get +25% on both during the expansion phase and are free to tax 30% without the research opportunity cost that Sophons have.



The lowest I can get the colony ship cost is 37 (Sophon + Illusion + Militaristic). With a Civil Eng. I am immediately able to build a colony ship every turn, but don't have the food output to support it. I tried again with also Rich Soil + Growth Plan, and soil xeno on the Sophon's Terran within a few turns; I was able to support 85-90% growth which is almost 1 per turn. That's nice, but it costs a lot of points to get there.



I tried Cravers also. It appears the 25% bonus is applied to raw planet totals, then multiplied by other bonuses. Due to their Arid starting planet and bonus, I had no immediate dust deficit even with Spendthrifts (something I was not used to). I only took Illusion (which is cheap) for colony ship cost reduction, and Rich Soil + Growth Plan for food. On turn 2 (built a production exploitation) I was able to do both pop and the ship (with engine) every 2 turns.



Twice I did not get an Admin hero in the initial three. In that case growth is stunted, although you are then certain to have a Corp hero to get +10 science. I assume most people are Civ Eng. dependent at the start.



Thoughts: Sophons are able to get to 1 turn sustained colony ships quicker than anyone. They are also able to unlock planet types quickly so you have somewhere to put the pop. Cravers more easily reached 2 turn sustained colony ships with less traits. Masters of Illusion is the cheapest trait on the production side to get ships out fast. Rich Soil is the cheapest trait to get decent home system pop growth to get ships out. A food or production exploitation is needed, but typically food. A level 3 hero is essential, typically Civ. Eng. Pumping out colony ships lets you bulk up the new systems even though their food growth is low, to give them a boost. This lets you focus on other resources than food in the first outposts.



There is also a question of whether to settle back into the home system on turn 1 to boost production, but I think most of the time it is not worth it.

Some more experimentation ...



- Admin hero chance may be as low as 50% (~24 Admin heroes out of ~60; the odds are about 21% of NOT having any Admin heroes IF they were all picked randomly from the pool; this appears not to be the case and Faction selection may affect the outcome; I have had FAR too many games with no Admin and even with no Admin OR Corp heroes). This makes Legendary Heroes unreliable. I tried also removing it and taking Micromanagers and not getting any heroes. That yields 28 pts to the build allowing some other possibilities. Early production is the main hurdle without Civ. Eng. heroes, making Mineral Rich + other production cost reductions more critical.



- Tolerant does not help most races, because the class IV / V planets that are not immediately reachable in the tech tree have a difficult time growing without natural food output; a +2 food exploitation is required. This dynamic is slightly different for Sowers; Jungle and Desert are viable, Lava with Core Mining, and Asteroids barely viable. The interesting one is Methane, which is the Gaia of planets for Sowers. The pop limit however is only 3-4. A +2 production exploitation (from Core Mining) is essentially required on all planets, you could tech pick for 25 pts (requires N-Way Fusion) although Sowers start with a decent research planet and can get it quickly enough.



- The objective was to find ways to have a consistent growth plan despite an unknown mix of planets in the starting zone (assume spiral arms; in a more open galaxy Amoeba can beeline for the Class I and special planets). Typically you've got 3-5 random systems in your zone but they could contain anything. I find the hardest part is getting a new colony going, meaning building the Refinery for +10 production; it could take many turns. The exploitation is easy after that. There are really only two solutions I can think of aside from choosing the production heavy planets first. One is feeding colony ships from the home system to the new system; to do this at the start requires specific traits for food and ship cost. In this case you'd pop dump to fill up the new planet/system, so you can get production going that way. However, it becomes harder and takes more time 2-3 jumps from the home system and diverts your home system production. It still doesn't address some systems where there just are no good production worlds and it doesn't matter how many pop you have, the first building will take many turns.



- The second method which I haven't explored much but may show promise is using Dust to buyout the Refinery to avoid taking many turns to get a colony functional. This is because I got used to nerfing Dust income with Spendthifts when running low tax Sophon builds, or just to get extra points because I wasn't using Dust for heroes or much else recently. Now I am thinking about it more. To boost Dust income up to levels that can do the buyout early, what comes to mind is Cravers (Arid homeworld + exploitation (+2 or tech for +4) + 25% FIDS bonus) or United Empire (x0.8 dust multiplier instead of x0.6 at 30% tax). Then take Builders 3 (30% indirect buyout cost reduction), Dust Archaeology 2, and Entrepreneurs or Businessmen 2 or 3 (or both?), possibly Dust Lode but generally I prefer food or production boost on the home world.



- Refineries have a buyout of 75=>154 Dust. Builders 3 makes it cheaper: 53=>97-99 Dust (estimate; haven't tested). Exploitations cost 45 Dust to buyout (70 without Builders 3). In fact Builders 3 has a little quirk: -30% build cost, since buyout is raised to a power (1.25), the Dust cost is actually -36% and not -30%. Furthermore, an item up to about 125 production, can be purchased at less than 1.5 Dust per the original production cost. Items up to 400 original production cost at 2:1 ratio or better. This makes me consider the 1:4 production->dust ratio as pretty inefficient now. Ship buyout costs are similarly affected by Militaristic 3. For a 1.5-2.0 ratio to original production cost, Dust can be used in any system at any time, and that is the magic that works on new colonies. A +30% dust trait starts to make Dust exploitations look more flexible than production even.