First, let me tell you, I'm one of those that hate excessive micro management. For example, I consider MOO1 the pinnacle of the MOO series. MOO2, while decent, is neither as fun, nor as elegant in design as the first one - in big parts due to added micro. Also, I rarely try to run a "perfect" winning game by the numbers when playing 4X, but instead let staying in role and whimsical notions take presedence (It doesn't really need mentioning that the much lauded Stars! is one of my nightmare 4x games.).
Game Time: 2771
Galaxy: Outer Rim
Race: Mortalen
Government: Despotism (Until 2770)
Empire age: Starting
Aggression: Normal
Research: Very Slow
Space creatures: Normal
Pirates: Normal
Starting Location: Outer Rim
Home System: Normal
Tech Level: Basic
4 Other Empires, Random Races and Govts. Same starting conditions as me, also set to start far away.
I chose a random race and random government, the RNG decided to deal me Mortalen under a despotic government. While I'm not sure how harsh the 40% corruption penalty Despotism carries is, it should be one of the worst governments from an economy standpoint for sure, even with the lower upkeep. Mortalen shouldn't really be an economic powerhouse either, and that maneuvering thruster probably is the worst racial tech ever. I therefore decided to really test these allegations of the harsh economy, and just stay with the despotic government.
My starting system was okayish. In the orbit next to my swampy capital Tallaan 2, I had a continental planet by the fancy name of Tallaan 1. With a size of 30k and both gold and steel in the crust I made this my first colony target. Exploration revealed that I had no populated planets whatsoever in the vicinity of my home system, and the only ruins in the neighbourhood was on a non colonizable ice planet. I did catch a break with luxuries though, and had the important 10 different luxury resources secured within the span of two years. (To note is that I don't build mining stations manually at all) I also had a third and fourth colony (21k continental moon and 30k desert planet with 2 luxury resources) by the end of the second year
During the next two years I held back on expansion, waiting for my colonies to mature a bit and turn a thousand or two in profit through taxes. On the security front, pirates where causing some minor problems, though my tiny fleet kept up decently. I did find a low tech capital ship, the "Indomitable Deception" during the third year. With 1440 shields and 96 firepower it made an excellent pirate buster (It actually still serves that purpose in my navy, some 16 years later.) I quickly dealt with the 2 pirate bases I found so far and I kept whacking them as they crept up from their holes. On the exploration front I found a few ruins. One netted me some system maps, another a treasure of 5k. The one closest by (almost two whole sectors away from my home planet lol) was a real paradise though. 32k continental planet with Rephidium Ale, Lead, Gold, Steel and Nekros Stone. Of course I managed to trigger a Kaltor swarm in the ruins. I didn't want to risk my slow, unarmored pirate smasher so at first I built and sent a lone colony ship, trying to slip by the Kaltors. Of course I didn't succeed and there went at least 5k down the drain. Thus I slowly began building a small armored destroyer fleet to deal with space monsters.
The end of the fourth year still saw me adding a fourth colony to my budding empire. A big, resource rich desert world in the neighbouring sector. The fifth colony came but half a year later. A continental planet of modest size. I also found a hidden high tech cruiser which brought me some sweet engine tech when scrapped. I also dealt with the Kaltor swarm during year 6, using my small fleet of armored destroyers and subsequently colonized Raldon 2, the paradise world mentioned earlier.
From then on I just continued in the same, slowly increasing pace. One or two colonies a year, an extra constructor every bunch of years, an added explorer here and there. As the population of my early colonies grew, taxes increased, and the pace of expansion went up. Some of the notable happenings:
- Finding a ruin containing a huge population of independant Teekans in a system 4 sectors from my core worlds and having to send three colonizers to win them over (In retrospect, what the hell was I doing being friendly? I'm bossing a race of militant lizards with ground combat as their forte!)
- Having more ships and bases exploding on me than I want to remember. A quick look through the news tells me that a bit over half of all bases and ships I've found exploded on me. After having revealed a bit less than a quarter of the galaxy I've found exactly three working ships, and four bases.
- Finding a world destroyer I missed at first in a system *after* colonizing it. My armored destroyers were used on the space slugs guarding it to great effect, and the derelict fleet around it netted me some much needed tech (fusion reactor, hell yeah!). The world destroyer? My advisors assure me that it will be completed on schedule...
As I reached the 16th year of the reign of the grand great kahuna of the Mortalen Authority (2770 in the galactic standard calendar), I had 15 colonies in 13 systems under my belt (around half of them ruins). End of year profits, with 4 frigates, 4 destroyers, 4 constructors, 1 capital ship, a small space port at every planet and anything from 1 to 3 colony ships travelling the stars and being constructed was around 10-15k, with my coffers holding between 40 and 60k depending on what I was doing. Even with the wims of my God Emperor and the rampant corruption that brought, I was seeing the end of the tunnel. If I were to find a competing empire I could fight a war, or I could just continue growing outwards. But in the end of 2770 a lone explorer chanced upon a strange ruin:
We have discovered the Temple of Eternal Blackness, ancient ruins from a lost civilization, at the ice planet Rallteer 2 in the Rallteer system.
Surveying from orbit indicates that the ruins are located near the edge of an icy tundra wasteland.
Should we investigate the ruins?
This, of course, brought the Way of Darkness to my empire. The God Emperor is no more, long live the council of Shadows! Now, towards the end of the first year of the Council of Shadows (1771), my bankroll shows 93k, with a staggering 68k as end of year profit! And here ends my story of the despotic Mortalen Authority. Who knows where my lizards will go without the guidance of their despot, I might get back to you on that.
What I micromanaged:
Smashing pirate bases with my pet capship. Killing particularly troublesome monster infestations with my destroyer fleet. Telling a few explorers to "Explore this sector." in the beginning years. Colonizing planets. (Mostly through the expansion planner.) A few designs, mostly adding some minor bits to military ships, explorers and colony ships, mostly I just marked the entire design list and clicked "Upgrade" after major technology breakthroughs. Building a small space port at each and every planet (This might even be a negative to the economy as a whole, but I feel it should even out with the med bays and entertainment together with the versatility this brings.) Salvaging the fleet around the Devastation Moon Project. Firing each and every agent except one (I did this after probably ten years into the game. The God Emperor decided to give his spymaster a lava shower after discovering he had hired four agents. While the paranoia of the late spymaster was worthy of applause, we felt this money surely could be better spent buying new slaves for our harem.) Constructing explorers, and four destroyers.
What I didn't micromanage:
Taxes, not once. Research and mining base contruction. Troop recruitment. Guarding bases, civvies and such.
In short, I mostly did what I found fun - and ignored what I didn't. Had I wanted to play a "perfect" game I could have done a great deal more. I could have micromanaged taxes and hovered around the economic redline in the beginning to expand more aggressively. I could have micromanaged my constructors to build precisely the required mining stations, more and better research stations and more resort stations at better locations. This would probably have made my empire grow much quicker.
General comments:
My feeling is that the economy is pretty close to being right on, at least for the starting and early mid game. By being thrifty and expanding conservatively I managed to grow decently with a bad economic race/govt. combo, and with IMO very little tedious micromanagement. If strategic resources gets to play a larger role and resource shortages becomes a real threat it might have to scale back a little bit. Granted, I haven't built much ships or been in an extended war so far, so my opinion might change. I also learned to not be afraid of the economy showing some red income, especially in the first half of the year. Due to growth and incomes from star ports and resorts the figures usually righted themselves come the end of the year.
How my despotic, largely disliked lizards would have delt with a start in close proximity to other races I'm not sure. Probably with early conquest, since the ground combat bonus, lower maintenance and lower war weariness pretty much makes this the only recourse. Both because the God Emperor wants blood, and because empires with powerful economic abilities would have left me in the dust if left to grow. Instead of building more colonizers and explorers, I would probably have used most of my starting cash to build a small but potent fleet and invaded my closest neighbour at first opportunity.
My feeling is that the economy is pretty close to being right on. By being thrifty and expanding conservatively I managed to grow decently with a bad economic race/govt. combo, and with IMO very little tedious micromanagement. If strategic resources gets to play a larger role and resource shortages becomes a real threat it might have to scale back a little bit. Granted, I haven't built much ships or been in an extended war so far, so my opinion might change.
Since this is my first post on the forums, let me end this tl;dr wall of text with a few general comments. First, I really, really like the idea behind the game and the general design. The private sector makes the universe feel alive and with some of the kinks ironed out of the AI I'm sure the automation will be just fine also.
When it comes to the planets, I absolutely love that there are no buildings to build or have automatically built for you. As a galactic emperor I don't want to worry about building farms on Lalande 21432, planet three. More planetary features (like the extra bonus ruins and ultra rare resources) are always nice though. While I probably haven't seen all of these yet, having a large deck of these to pick from serves to keep it fresh and makes you care about your planets. I'm not saying there should be more planets with them in the galaxy, just that there should be a lot of different ones.
When it comes to ships, I really feel that ship sizes need some love. This game, if there aren't mechanics under the hood I'm not aware of, is falling in the MOO2 trap of "bigger is mostly always better". Sure, you can project more force over a larger territory with a lot of small ships, but mostly small ships serve very little purpose except being blown up when defending a station or merchant. I'm not even sure if, given their upkeep and purchase costs, they earn their keep (I'm not sure if the AI for the opponents and pirates is smart enough to see them as an actual deterrent though.). I still have a large fleet of frigates and escorts since I like thinking I have a large fleet of small, defensive ships to keep my shipping lanes safe. The fact of the matter though, is that they often cost a lot more, both in lost ships and bang for your buck, than the bigger ships. This also hurts the AI since they build a lot of small ships to keep trade lanes safe. I don't know exactly what to do about this, maybe penalize upkeep a bit as ship size grows, give small ships a small evasion bonus, or maybe let components give diminishing returns as you add more of them I don't know, but I would like to not feel stupid for building small ships that seemingly are a lot less effective than big ones at virtually everything.
I have more, unfinished, comments circling in my head, but this post is long enough as it is. Thanks for trying some new ideas in a 4X and I look forward to what you are going to do with the game in the future.