| Early pop management in slow tech - Con expensive or not? |
Tue, 02 January 2007 11:02  |
|
 Skaffen |
 | Senior Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 90
Registered: December 2006
Location: Germany | |
|
Hi,
this discussion is triggered by the current Babylon 5 game announcement. Please check that for details on the special rules but for this discussion basically it boils down to:
-slow tech
-no IT/SS allowed
-no cheap tech
-AccBBS + 1 turn pop growth as starting pop
Iīve been looking for a way to take con normal for a non-JOAT race and just couldnīt make it work. The way to con 3 for medium freighters for early pop balancing under these conditions is just too long to get the reseach done before the HW is seriously overpopulated.
If you take start at 3 for 4 expensive techs itīs roughly 1700 resources to con 3, around 1000 if no start at 3 is chosen (depening on PRT starting tech of course). Even with LSP the latter gives a bit more than 40% on the HW before shipping can start but during that time nothing has been done except for building a couple of scouts and mines and research. No factories, nothing. If you chose start at 3 itīs even worse, 50% on the HW and it takes several years of shipbuilding to get it back to a 25 or 33% holding level, especially if no green is in a 1 year range (which was the case in my testbed).
Start at 3 under these conditions is worth around 10k btw, quite attractive as you immediately have early terraforming tech, better scanners on the scouts etc. depending on the expensive fields.
Itīs difficult to compare the testbeds exactly as there was quite a difference in quality of greens but I guess I was more than 5 years behind a "start at 3" race without LSP and 19% for both.
So what to do? Iīm sure many people will chose the "easy" way and just take con expensive (or play a JOAT in the first place...  ) so taking con normal could be a strategic advantage. On the other hand being 5+ years behind in growth could be almost suicidal, especially if you get unlucky with nearby planets or neighbors.  Alternative: go normal and no LSP and not not worry about overpopulating, but even then no factories get built...
Is it worth it? The difference in normal to expensive is roughly 200k vs. 350 k to get from con 10 to con 16. So roughly 5 years full scale research later on...
I have a feeling that itīs better to bite the bullet and go con expensive as I donīt think nubians will be available during this game (where the difference would of course be even greater).
Anyone with experience in slow tech games that wants to chime in? Is my assumption about nubs wrong and some JOAT powerhouse can afford it?
Anyway, any suggestions appreciated,
Andreas
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