Fighting Slavers Early Game

[MarbleToad]

So, playing on a small Seth world on normal and started next to some slavers. I figured I'd share my experience and what seems to be working.

There were literally no resources around me except for an ice mine. So the first thing I did was nationalize the recycling center. I then immediately upgraded it to level 2. I've been selling off rare metals for profit. I then nationalized the truck station. I have been choosing meritocracy, commerce, and heart boosting decisions. Every couple of turns I increase the public spending in my city-state by 25crs. I've been buying food from traders even though I don't need it to keep the prices at least decent. My private economy has a dome-farm 3 and it seems they are selling the food and reinvesting it into all sorts of QOL buildings.

As far as self-defense: I've built Independent MG Regiments and Independent Buggy Battalions. I've slowly marched my MGs forward while my Recon Buggies encircle and encourage the enemy to back up. After the slavers have dashed themselves against my MG Regiments I counterattack when they are weakened enough to get good odds.

It's now turn 18 and what looked like a very grim start has finally stabilized.

This has been a ton of fun!

[GodwinW]

Thanks for sharing, always cool to read nice experiences like that

[76mm]

hmmm, I've been increasing my zone investment by single credits every now and then...what do you get by boosting it so much? More tax income?

[MarbleToad]

Income tax does help offset some costs. And between the Commerce Private Investment Stratagems and the high investment, they seem to be building private QOL buildings much faster than usual. So right now, I lose about a net of 30cr a turn before I go to the traders. An epoch of corruption is currently happening, so I've definitely seen my profits go down. But my populace is happy and is steady growing and the Commerce Opportunism is giving my populace +50% happiness as well. My next goal is to get my tech level up too so I can build the next level of Recycling Center because it's still my only source of natural metal. I'm not sure if QOL buildings are helping boost my tech level, but I'm keeping an eye on it.

[diamondspider]

More tax income?

In my current game I am investing 200-300 credits in private per city (I have 5 cities on turn 71) and have never requested a dime of income tax in any city. What do I get? More population. Why? Happens to be the main winning criteria I am at 28% on population with the closest rival on 18%. When my score hits 50 I expect the closet rival will be just a bit over 25%.. so it should be a short war to finish the game. I may actually make it to 50 before he hits 25,