All Factories (EA)

Hi!

I have only DA, but most of game mechanic didn't change for TotA, so I can give you some advice.

You're in an extremely long game with those settings. Are you ready to send at your anemies 1000+ transports and repeat planetary invasion 700+ times?

With all-factories you'll want research bonuses - as much as you can get. So drop soldiering and Universalists and get research and Technocrats.

For all-fac's you want sliders at 1/99/0. Unused social production is diverted to military, so you're losing nothing. But you need that one percent in mil production to actually build ships. If it would be at 0, no ships would be built. And on ships-producing planets you should set focus on mil production.  That's especially effective, becaue the focus transfers double amount of "points" between social and mil production (at least in DA it worked so).

Don't use entertainment buildings in initiall phase. Drop taxes to get planets to 100% approval to have 8-times growth. In DA I've been running as low as 18% taxes in the opening phase of the game. With SuperBreeder you can afford to "jump" taxes up or down as you need, because they grow pop so insanely fast. If you get the Aphrodisiacs and those two(?) growth-enhancing techs, you can grow about 1B pop per turn on a 2B planet.

Same to you!

BR,  Iztok

They nerfed All Fac in TA, or so I've seen posted.

In DA, I've beaten it on Suicidal with All Fac and only play the largest galaxies, all abundant, etc.  However, I do a twist that you might need to use also in TA.

I use the Control-N maneuver to get a homeworld with bonus tiles for morale and research, and maybe even another for production.  The 7x tiles are very rare, but I can generally get one or two 3x ones.

Buy a research building on the research bonus tile(s), and put nearly all your resources into research, tweaking the sliders very carefully almost every turn so as not to get more research done than you need in each research path.  Use the rest of production for building stuff.  Expect to devote the first 10 - 20 turns grinding out the critical early research that gives you empire-wide bonuses, and maybe decent engines, and maybe sensors.  You'll be doing this while your first colony ship and your miner converted to another colony ship found your first colonies, and your scout finds the next ones as it maps and grabs anomalies.

At some point, and it varies a little each game for me, shift all the way to 1/99/0, just as Iztok said.  When it is convenient, build over dormant research buildings.  You may need to take a tactical pause to build a constructor to grab a mining anomaly or colonize a particularly juicy planet.  By the way, I never build the tech capital, though many other do, because I can get my research done w/o it anbd it is worthless in All Fac.

Oh, and I agree with Iztok that soldiering bonuses are worthless in long games.  When you get around to invading, you will have maxed out the soldier research and the air superiority bonus will always be enough of an edge.  If you must take a huge pop world of some warrior race, just use the mass drivers trick with the first transport, and capture it intact with the second.

I have a question, why putting racial bonuses in Tech when slider setting is 1/99/0?

I´d rather put all racial bonuses in Social Prod for a max effect, you can get +70% by choosing Industrialists + 50% Social bonus, and it´s just 1 point more then Technologist + Research. Unless I calculate something wrong that will yield a higher focused research output, as well as a much more higher Mil+Soc production.

Anyway, I am just curious, because I usually don´t go for the all-fac approach...

Hi!

In DA focus doesn't transfer bonus production. AFAIK it's the same in TotA, just that there you get only 20% points converted into the other type of production. So if you have 200 points of total social production with 100% social bonus, is the amount of research you get with focus in TotA only 20 points (20% of base production), but then that research is multiplied by research bonus.

With all-factories and 1/99/0 sliders you can finish planetary infrastructure rather quickly. Then all those social bonuses are wasted. With all-fac's you seriously lack research, not production.

BR,  Iztok

Yes, Research is the issue in all fac.  That's why I do the work-around I posted for the first dozen or so turns.

Later, once you've expanded, there's more than enough research flowing in with focus, just as long as you're using good factories.

Basically I don´t feel comfortably with the idea that my racial bonuses only apply to 20% of my complete output. This is somehow inefficient if you count together Mil+Soc+Res points.

But I can see the disadvantage of All fac vs. All lab now, because, following your example the research will be upped to 26 with a 40% racial bonus - well and that´s still not really much to make for a good research, at least compared to the 80 in Soc, which will still finish Planetary Improvements in time, and then? Focus on Mil Prod?

There's several ways to look at this.

Consider that you are in for a lonnng game.  What % of the time will you be building improvements on any specific planet?  Or, once your Empire has reached its natural boundaries and you begin to gear for serious war with high-end systems on your ships, how many of your planets will be your main fleet warship source?  Or, how long will you be researching?  Eventually, you have gotten done what you need and shift away and almost totally stop researching.  I'll leave a planet with a specific research bonus on focus, maybe, and keep the treaties, and sometimes tweak the 1 turn left planets to research focus, but not much more.

It has seemed to me to be important to put the racial bonuses where I will use them all game and in aspects that are critical.  Social production is one place I almost never spend those precious racial points to improve.

Economic bonuses I always max out.  I almost always take Luck, as that helps in every combat all game.  I almost always take some in Morale.  Anything left generally goes to Research.  I used the Technocrat for a while to win, but like the Universalist for that extra Luck and other bonuses.  Once you've done all the Research, the Technocrat bonus is wasted, but the Universalist bonuses are helpful all game long.

The balance, esp in All Fac, is that there is a distinct "hump" to get across.  There are competing "needs".  You need to get diplo advanced.  You need to expand enough to get your fair share of the initial map.  You need not to be shut out of mining bases, as just one single Green with modules can help get you over that hump, and Red ones with modules can keep the AIs off your back a little longer.  You need a few survey ships.

The Research part of the hump is why I wait for All Fac until after I have gotten that first Research round done, and it is important to get factories one or two higher than the initial one.

One All Fac note - I never build Industrial Sectors.  I eventually research them just to get that last Starbase module.  However, I go around the Empire and turn off the auto-upgrade Governor before I do that research.  It is a real pain when I forget to do that later in the game or if one of my spies mistakenly steals it, and I find the Treasury just went a gazillion negative asall my planets stopped whatever ships they were building and shifted to "upgrading" hundreds of perfectly good Manufacturing Centers into those pieces of junk.  I already have to do that each time I invade, but deleting hundreds of upgrade commands one by one throughout the Empire is a major pain.

This is a good discussion.

Maiden...either all X work in DL/DA.  The big plus of all fac is a fast rush.  You can build a colony ship each turn, starting with turn 2.  It's also useful in warfighting and obviously building structures.  The big downside is the rate of research.

The grand strategy...warfighting vs. diplomacy...dictates the all X tactic I chose, even though I have used all fac with a diplo strategy.

In DL I use both in the same game.  Beginning all fac for rush and switching to all lab during year 0 FTW.

What is just bothering me is the 99 set into social, as well as the 40% to research. One way or another there is a huge loss of potential there, and there should be a better approach. Not that I am saying there is, just that I´d look for one.

I understand that the 99 social have the great effect to get new planets producing rather quickly, and once the queue is empty alot of Social power goes to Military. However still some points remain on social which won´t be used. Question: Does one have to pay for these unused Social points? One danger I see is if one isn´t able to raise a significant income per round from other sources (as e.g. Techbrokering, anomalies or tax) then it might mean the whole thing collapses because of the maintenance cost of the huge amount of factories. Couldn't the sliders be set to 100/0/0 - and focused on Social on new planets, and later on either Research or none. That way no unused points would ever be generated. Also, the weight of fast-growing maintenance costs would have been reduced, maybe halfed... I even think that initially all planets will allow for a greater ship-output.

And about research, well, it depends all on the speed of the research-slider: If it´s set to fast or higher a basic research of all necessary techs can be made in time. But below, I wouldn´t bother. Because the AI doesn't wait that long with his colonial rush. I´d start instantly and I´d get all necessary techs by trade, I further would make tech trade/ brokering a latent source of my income, and a guarantee that all opponents spread around equally. I´d focus on the Yellow-diplo techs for this goal entirely, lease-buying the DiploTransl once they´re available. Luckily most of these are easily to research.

Maybe there´d be too much ship-output, I´d built blank hulls then because they are maint free - and they can be upgraded to whatever if the need arise. The AI won´t declare war until later after the colonial rush is over, therefore I never bother with even smaller warships during the early phases of the game.

 

Excactly, that´s why this game is getting more intersting the more you play. There are so many different ways to reach a goal that I´m afraid I´ll have overlooked half of them. [you'll be surprised to what obvious stuff all I overlook     ]  That´s why I ask, because basically I come to the same goals but through totally different methods, and that´s just surprising me.

Well, I´ll built as long as the last enemy is conquered, and then the game is over. But only on the outter planets. The coreplanets of my reich will be outbuilt by years then. The only way to keep them synthetically alive is to either upgrade the 'efficient' Fac to 'expensive' Fac and/or built some rather irrelevant wonders like Temple of Evil - both I wouln't do. So what do I do with 50-75% of the inner planets that are outbuilt and have Social points for nothing?

Well, if you´d ask me, personally, once I'd have the majority of planets in game I´d simply peruse an Econ strat - rushbuying warships at the front instead of flying them through half-of the galaxy - and settign slifers to 0/0/100 once everything is built-over by Stocks. But that´s not the issue of this thread here, point is, how would I further follow the all fac strat without having that Social loss??

Hmm, actually I´ve never ever encountered this situation. On suicidal the AI´s (all of them) did outsearch me in weapon techs at any time - so I wouldn´t even think of the possibility that with such a ludicrous approach to research I´ll even get a high-end weapon tech  - I will not. But I have more planets than every AI and that'll give me en edge in the long run. Basically I will do everything to avoid getting into a war - and also gang the others up (or on some "Evil" neighbours) to keep the Military in the galaxy low. Always mindfull to grab any resource once it got free due to war. Then, once I control all gems I´ll conquer them all one-by-one. There are exceptions. Especially around the "Psionic Beam" weapon....

Indeed, same here. I was just curious, because I always put my racial points into categories where they'll either apply fully & always (as in Econ, or Luck) or, at least, to a great deal (like in all-lab on research).

However, under the premise of having Tech trade/brokering disabled I can understand the need for extra tech now. [although my heart bleeds...]

 

I do fully agree with that [and what comes later on...], Universalists + your points attributal in my eyes is optimal for warfighting games. In such a game I´d set Techrate to slow/normal, thus the Tech bonus will still apply even late in game, somehow there´s always something left that could be researched + usefull, too. Although Federalists is also never an error.

btw thx mate for your extensive reply

What precisely do you mean by "all X tactic"? Like changing the tactic from this to that and else?

Hi!

Yes, that's true, but it isn't so black as it sounds. Research "points" can be obtained with research treaties, techs can be traded for or be obtained with invasions, and research "production" can be improved by building econ starbases and by mining research resources. And for 3 of those 5 options the all-fac's has plenty of output to spend on warships, troop transports or constructors.

You're kidding, don't you? If AIs allow you enough time to research all techs, you're playing in either too big galaxies, or at game difficulty level below your experience level. I simply don't remember ANY serious game (besides the one where I've been checking what every particular tech does) where I had all the tech.

BR,  Iztok

In a word, yes.  As you know, so does overspent military, only tech carries.

My slider goes to 90% social when I own all planets, but one.  Like you (I think) I pretty much do one thing at a time and that is how I set sliders and limit overspending.  Focus on research is by and large a requirement using all fac.

Racial points, IMO and style, are based on score.  In DL/DA I choose econ, morale and pop growth.  In TA research may play a far more important role.  With any game...very fast research.

I play all fac in only in DL and only because the Drath starting goooood ethic requires new planet colonization or pay out the ass for evil.  Diplo strategy and all Lab is my overwhelming preference.  After all, very deep in my heart, I am a diplomat.

 

That is precisely what I meant.  If required all fac, then all lab and then, as you pointed out, that all important (and under publicized) all econ.  From there 1/1's or hulls, upgrade, hit turn key.

In my way of thinking strategy is how you do it.  Tactics are what you do.  The game is rich in possibilites.

Iztok, with all respect, no galaxy is too large and maxing research is routinely done.

Iztok -

I only play on Suicidal.

As jacklv already noted, researching out everything is routinely done in larger games.  For that matter, I have found it very tough to win at Suicidal with the largest all-abundant galaxies simply because the AI bonuses will take them to the Research Victory before I can exterminate them.  One long game I lost was when I was racing to kill off one enemy because I had gotten their 10-turn warning and, two or three turns before the race was going to be over one way or another, I got the 10-turn warning for a large Ally on the other side of the map.

Additionally, though you may be surprised, Technocrat gains you little at the slowest tech rate setting at Suicidal.  You will find that you may or may not be able to keep up in research, but all the AI bonuses everywhere else means they will probably bury you.  Better, I would suggest, is to have Technocrat and have the FASTEST research tech setting with the Research Victory off.

That combination lets you get all the Research done you want fairly early and you can shift your attention and all your resources to the rest of the game.  The key is to have a Research pattern based on your specific game settings.  For example, at Suicidal, I rarely bother with Extreme Colonization until I have stabilized my Empire.  The one exception is at highest tech research rate with a cluster of the same planet type where I have a decent chance to get at them ahead of the AIs - - very rare.

The Mumblefratz research pattern is very good, though I use various variants.

Hi!

I'm affraid here you're wrong.
Player doesn't pay for unused social points. Those are diverted in mil production, and if he doesn't have ships in production, are returned to treasury. Player even doesn't pay for overspent social production. Even if it looks like he does at the end of the turn, are excess funds returned to treasury, when game processes the turn.

This is one of all-fac's advantages over all-labs. One can't turn off research that way.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

The largest all-abundant game I finished was DA large. If it wouldn't be a metaverse game I'd abandon it way before actual victory, because I was so feed-up with repeating {clear defenders, invade, move to next planet} xxx times. For me the only interesting phase of the game is getting in a won position. Mop-up is sooooo boooooooring. I've done it way too many times to remain interesting at all. Probably comes with the age...

BR,  Iztok

Are the Social pts entirely converted into Military pts once the Soc queue is emtpy - or will there be points left? I´ve just run some tests, but I come to the conclusion that the number of Social pts is false-shown when the Social queue is emtpy. For example, I had 18 Social pts that halfed to 8 pts after I focused on Mil - but added only 1 Mil pt.

Hi!

You better check what wiki has to say about social production.

BR,  Iztok 

I take that as a yes, although the wiki doesn´t say specifically "all" Soc-->Mil. But how is it then that the Mil pts will increase with focus?

In your 1/99/0 example a planets with a productional output of 24 will show 0/23/0 without any focus or production. If I then put a ship into built then numbers will change to this: 23/11/0. Then if I focus on Mil: 24/10/0.

Question 1 is: Why does "focus" transfer 1 pt? Because, there are 11 Soc pts, according the Wiki it should transfer 50%, which is 5 in this case. Which brings me to

Question 2: Where are the 11/10 from? How can the general planetary output be greater than what´s maximally possible?

 

 

 

Indeed there is not.  

 

Hi!

From wiki: "When a player sets a focus on social or military production, that field takes 1/4 of base research and 1/2 from base production of the other production field"

Please note the words BASE PRODUCTION: factory base production * sum of building bonuses + asteroid mines + focus. That's what is transferred from social to mil queue, or used when setting the focus.  

A question: does planet show 0/23/0 or 0/(23)/0 ? There's a big difference: in first case the planet is building a social project with all points from base production + social production bonuses, in second case it's already divering its base (23) social output to mil production. So when you put there in queue a ship, you get 23/11/0, because those transferred points are now used.

It doesn't. Put in queuen a social project and you'll see the difference. As for that 1 point of difference: the game does lots of rounding, and with focus and additional set of calculations. That 1 point could be from that additional set.

Like I said: put in queue a social project and/or/xor a ship and then play with the focus. Bigger numbers also help, because then the effect of rounding is smaller.

BR,  Iztok

Iztok, thx for taking yourself time to reply.

Let´s for the sake of shortness just concentrate on the one main thing I can´t "see" yet, and this would be how the game behaves when you have 1/99/0 slider-settings and NO social queue. In an all-fac strat there will be lots of planets which will be outbuilt by time and there is nothing to set into queue. In my testings I did not outbuilt any planets, I just left queue empty - however I think this will not make the game behave differently.

1. If I have both no Mil or Soc queue then game (TA) shows me this: (23)/23/0
2. If I have Mil queue the game shows this:                                         23/23/0
3. If I then focus on Mil:                                                                        24/10/0

Racial bonuses in this example is both 20% Military & Social. No other bonuses.

Meanwhile I´ve taken a custom-race without any racial bonuses to the same example - there the lines look as follows:

1. (23)/23/0
2. 23/23/0
3. 23/11/0

I do therefore deduce that the single one points that is transferred in 3. has something to do with racial bonuses, however I can´t say how these might apply because the wiki is really short on this:

" All later game versions and expansion packs transfer those unused hammers into military queue. To be used there, the military spending rate must not be set to 0%." Nothing else is said further....

However, we might easily neglect this 1 point. But what about the 11/10. This has nothing to do with focus, because I focus only one time (on Mil). I also don´t know how that planet can have 23+10=33 Prod pts when there is only the Initial Capital building there producing 24pts and no other racial bonuses or else (in TA the 10% Moon/Ring bonuses don´t give although it is shown) are there.

I will take some short tests in DA and DL as well...

EDIT: DL & DA without any racial bonuses behave exactly like 2nd example.

To me it seems like the 10 or 11 in Soc is a "Ghost"-number.

 

Hi!

Quite easily you've found a display glitch, that wasn't reported yet, or I missed it in the time, when I've been absent from forums. Such glitches aren't really rare things, but they also don't effect the game mechanic (your soc queue is empty anyway), what you could easily prove by putting sth. in the soc queue, like I already suggested you. ;-)

BR,  Iztok