Colonization Techs

[Henzington]

Curious if there is any plans to have the colonization tech be different for races that start on different planets types. It is a bit odd that a race that lives on volcanic planets doesn't have say desert planets and volcano planet tech earlier then marsh and continental planets.

[Flinkebeinchen]

The race who starts with more than one colonization tech would be overpowered.

And take a look at the race itself, maybe you have a volcanic race - imagine how they bath in lava, need several hundreds of degrees in temperature just to live the way they do.. they could never survive on a planet that is way too cold or wet without proper equipment.

[Henzington]

What I mean is that the techs are different so if you say start on a volcanic planet you get desert and volcano in the techs after colonization rather then marsh and continental.

[elanaagain]

Your idea makes a great deal of sense. I'm not sure how easy/difficult this would be for Matrix to implement. Since the tech progression would be the same for each species, I just pretend the names are different when playing species that don't favor Continental. I'm not a DW modder, so I am not sure how difficult making a mod that changes only the player's tech tree labels would be. Perhaps if the colonization techs had multiple labels indicating what the "box" represents for each 'flavor' of species? In this example, for a volcanic species, the Continental box would be say, desert, or lava. and the extreme right end techs would be ocean and continental. DW modders are welcome to borrow this idea.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Honestly, I rarely ever go beyond the Basic Colonization tech. Just conquer an Independent of the appropriate home world type and gain that world type for free. Sure you have the limiter that your colonies start at 30M, rather than 30/50/100M, but think of all the Tech cost you have saved for use elsewhere.

But yes I have to agree that developing similar world types first makes more sense.
To a limited extent that is accounted for in the Colonization Tech Cost modifier, for instance Ackdarians get Desert and Volcanic world techs for half again normal cost, making them prefer other world types.

[Deathball]

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer

Honestly, I rarely ever go beyond the Basic Colonization tech. Just conquer an Independent of the appropriate home world type and gain that world type for free. Sure you have the limiter that your colonies start at 30M, rather than 30/50/100M, but think of all the Tech cost you have saved for use elsewhere.

But yes I have to agree that developing similar world types first makes more sense.
To a limited extent that is accounted for in the Colonization Tech Cost modifier, for instance Ackdarians get Desert and Volcanic world techs for half again normal cost, making them prefer other world types.

Except you also lose out on double population growth meaning twice the time until a colony becomes productive.

[CyclopsSlayer]

You have double growth as a given until 500M population anyways. As well, for the cost of 1 of the 2 world type tracks you can build the wonder that gives, iirc, +30% growth, everywhere, all the time.

Colonization + Supports + Individual world types = 24960 RP to get +100% everywhere.

OR!

Colonization + Med Tech chain = 8280 RP +100K cash for the Wonder for a +30% everywhere.

Almost triple the RP to get the better growth.

[Deathball]

Almost triple the RP for more than triple growth. Also you don't have to put up with other empires building the wonder first or alien populations. Not to mention that this is not an exclusive choice, you can do both chains for 130% growth.

[ASHBERY76]

I agree.There should be racial tech trees and I also do not like fact that conquering races lets you colonize their planet type.It might be realistic but kinda kills the motivation to get colonization techs in view.Terraforming techs are kinda limp too.

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I agree.There should be racial tech trees and I also do not like fact that conquering races lets you colonize their planet type.It might be realistic but kinda kills the motivation to get colonization techs in view.Terraforming techs are kinda limp too.

Conquering a race lets you colonize their planet type with their population. That´s not the same as simply being able to colonize those worlds, if you have a less than favorable policy set for that racial group.

[ASHBERY76]

The only reason for less than favorable policy is basically roleplay.The game is so stacked for pro assimilation the others only hurt.

[CyclopsSlayer]

ORIGINAL: Deathball

Almost triple the RP for more than triple growth. Also you don't have to put up with other empires building the wonder first or alien populations. Not to mention that this is not an exclusive choice, you can do both chains for 130% growth.

I'll just agree to disagree.
I see 16K RP in some other tech area as more valuable. But then I prefer Assimilation to Extermination policies.

As well don't forget, while the 100% may seem attractive, it is NOT +100% growth rate.
Take Humans, 21% base growth. "Double" growth will bring that to 42%. Meanwhile the Wonder brings it to 27% (27.3).
So what you are looking at for the 16K RP cost is 42% versus 27% in the case of humans.
(Unless their Math is screwy and they are adding the +30% Wonder bonus, ie bringing the 21% to 51%... They've done that elsewhere)

[Deathball]

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer

ORIGINAL: Deathball

Almost triple the RP for more than triple growth. Also you don't have to put up with other empires building the wonder first or alien populations. Not to mention that this is not an exclusive choice, you can do both chains for 130% growth.

I'll just agree to disagree.
I see 16K RP in some other tech area as more valuable. But then I prefer Assimilation to Extermination policies.

As well don't forget, while the 100% may seem attractive, it is NOT +100% growth rate.
Take Humans, 21% base growth. "Double" growth will bring that to 42%. Meanwhile the Wonder brings it to 27% (27.3).
So what you are looking at for the 16K RP cost is 42% versus 27% in the case of humans.
(Unless their Math is screwy and they are adding the +30% Wonder bonus, ie bringing the 21% to 51%... They've done that elsewhere)

I'm not saying your method is completely useless mind you. If you have plenty of independents and an assimilation policy and early on it would certainly be a viable strategy, I just wanted to point out that it is not a be all end all as the colonization tech provides a substantial bonus itself. In my games I play with independents and habitable planets set to scarce so there are few independents to conquer. Likewise I'm spending a lot of time at war and using extermination policies. Under such circumstances maintaining lots of alien colonies becomes problematic. But again, its circumstantial which is what I like so much about this game as there is no great strategy for everything.

[Flinkebeinchen]

I usually just send my spies to get the colonization techs from the Ancient Guardians^^

[Henzington]

I never thought to do that I am an idiot.

[elanaagain]

My spies never seem to be good enough to steal techs without getting caught. How do you pull it off?

[Flinkebeinchen]

Good spies have Espionage and Concealment. The second stat is really important so your spies don't get caught even when they fail. You can train them with Sabotage Missions until they have reasonable skill to steal the Technology you want [:D] Try a race with good Espionage bonus, they tend to start the game with good spies but you can always have a good one with other races too.

If you want to be on the safe side you can always save your game just before the mission is due. The game only checks on success/fail when the mission is finished.

[Deathball]

ORIGINAL: Flinkebeinchen

Good spies have Espionage and Concealment. The second stat is really important so your spies don't get caught even when they fail. You can train them with Sabotage Missions until they have reasonable skill to steal the Technology you want [:D] Try a race with good Espionage bonus, they tend to start the game with good spies but you can always have a good one with other races too.

If you want to be on the safe side you can always save your game just before the mission is due. The game only checks on success/fail when the mission is finished.

Do you have any actual support for that claim? As far as I know the only thing concealment affects is success rate for deep cover missions.

[Flinkebeinchen]

Just from my experience. I once had a game where I had several spies with high concealment. I could put them on 1 month duty and even with low chances they got away unharmed.