Late Game strategy: Creating PQ 100+ size planets
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Constructors are the predominant military units produced in the middle to end games, at least in my games. They do not cost any maintenance, build and upgrade starbases and produce some nice toys, like Terror stars.
How about an alternative? Building colony ships. Why? They are cheap, they also do not cost maintenance, and sometimes help in morale issues. But their real purpose has been overlooked, creating gigantic 100+ size planets.
It works the following; you take your best planet, preferably one with base PQ (without any improvements) of 26 and destroy the colony. Then you start building colony ships, but you load only 1 million people into each ship and send it to the planet.
When colonizing a planet you sometimes get a planetary event, which will affect your alignment. Production, research, starship, but also planet quality bonuses, remember the earthworms? Anyway send each colony ship to the planet, colonize, hope for an event, and destroy the colony. Repeat! Planet events improving the PQ do not occur often, but who cares if you send dozens of colony ships to the planet each turn?! Those benefits also do stack, meaning if you get an event improving your PQ by 15%, then destroy the colony and re-colonize. This time you get an event improving your PQ by 35%, now your planet has been improved by 50% turning your size 26 planet into a 39. Now you destroy the colony again an re-colonize again, this time you get an amazing event improving your PQ by 50%; guess what you have now improved your planet quality by 100% turning your 26’ planet into a 52.
To give an example, in my last game I took my best planet size 39(after improvements) and destroyed the colony, then I kept sending colony ships to the planet, destroying and rebuilding the colony. An hour, and about 200 colony ships later I created my size 105 planet. Nice! Two hours later, my second best planet reached size 101. I won't say too much about the production and economic ability of planets like this, just that a game by this point is pretty much over, since you can even create the biggest warships in a handful of turns, with a super-charged economy.
Alignement issues? Just pick a really bad planet, which you would never colonize and also send colony ships destroying and rebuilding the colony, just taking the good choices and voila your alignement will raise to a staggering 100 points.
So who cares about star creation if you can ‘create’ planets like those? By the way it’s cheap too. Is it cheating? Probably yes, since the AI will not do this.
Any comments?
How about an alternative? Building colony ships. Why? They are cheap, they also do not cost maintenance, and sometimes help in morale issues. But their real purpose has been overlooked, creating gigantic 100+ size planets.
It works the following; you take your best planet, preferably one with base PQ (without any improvements) of 26 and destroy the colony. Then you start building colony ships, but you load only 1 million people into each ship and send it to the planet.
When colonizing a planet you sometimes get a planetary event, which will affect your alignment. Production, research, starship, but also planet quality bonuses, remember the earthworms? Anyway send each colony ship to the planet, colonize, hope for an event, and destroy the colony. Repeat! Planet events improving the PQ do not occur often, but who cares if you send dozens of colony ships to the planet each turn?! Those benefits also do stack, meaning if you get an event improving your PQ by 15%, then destroy the colony and re-colonize. This time you get an event improving your PQ by 35%, now your planet has been improved by 50% turning your size 26 planet into a 39. Now you destroy the colony again an re-colonize again, this time you get an amazing event improving your PQ by 50%; guess what you have now improved your planet quality by 100% turning your 26’ planet into a 52.
To give an example, in my last game I took my best planet size 39(after improvements) and destroyed the colony, then I kept sending colony ships to the planet, destroying and rebuilding the colony. An hour, and about 200 colony ships later I created my size 105 planet. Nice! Two hours later, my second best planet reached size 101. I won't say too much about the production and economic ability of planets like this, just that a game by this point is pretty much over, since you can even create the biggest warships in a handful of turns, with a super-charged economy.
Alignement issues? Just pick a really bad planet, which you would never colonize and also send colony ships destroying and rebuilding the colony, just taking the good choices and voila your alignement will raise to a staggering 100 points.
So who cares about star creation if you can ‘create’ planets like those? By the way it’s cheap too. Is it cheating? Probably yes, since the AI will not do this.
Any comments?
