University Tech Strategy: Alpha Centauri

By Furril the Fox

The Builder ideal and the University faction in multi player.

If you are like I am, you enjoy the advantages of being tech top dog. You get access to secret projects others don't. Your units are more advanced. Getting certain techs can even give you a military advantage if discovered first. (like fusion power, double hit points) The main problems with being a builder are getting harassed by a militant faction, making you pull away from building research, and making you hurry defensive research. And starting in a place that makes the required growth impossible. ( tiny island, starting in the great dunes, or east side of a big mountain with little or no rainfall) So, for the greater part of this article, we will assume that you start in adequate land, and do not meet any aggressive factions until you are well ready for them.

Unlike everyone else, Uni is the only faction ( I believe) that starts out with a headquarters of 2, while every other faction gets 3 population. However, Uni also gets the most tech to start. Getting Planetary networks as well as Info networks, and a random level 1 tech, on top of their first researched tech on the first turn.

The first few turns.

Your tech choice should push you towards secrets of the human brain, you want biogentics and social psych first, then secrets, then to grab Centauri ecology or industrial base as your free tech, then push towards free market and industrial automation. Before you start, go to the social screen and set up your colony for planned economics. The efficiency penalty will not be a factor for some time, and we will have free market by then. The speedy growth and cheaper colony pods will help your early expansion and is well worth the credits.

Your money:

With your first bit of cash, spend it on changing to planned, hurrying your first colony pod built at uni base, and hurrying your 2nd bases' recycling tanks. You will be pulling in 1, maybe 2 energy a turn. So further purchasing of other colony pods and rec tanks will depend solely on what nearby unity pods bring.

Your pods:

The first thing you should do is find a good base site, take into consideration however, that the starting area gets tweaked by the game to have a little more rain then when the map was generated, so starting where you land is a good idea. Plus, every turn your pods aren't set up is more turns your opponents are getting ahead in tech.

Your military units:

After you set your main base down, you will have various pods lying around.. move your rover to get one, and move in your scout to support it if the pod gives up worms, move your second colony pod to the best looking square 2 spaces away. Move your former into the space between these bases and start building a forest square, then a road, then another forest in an adjacent square.

On alien artifacts:

I highly suggest that you horde any alien artifacts for projects. not free tech, the main reason is that on my plan, you will be getting techs every 3-6 turns the entire game. cutting 10 turns off a project is worth more than 5 turns off early research.(that may not even be something we need right now)

For the next fur turns, set your bases to this regimen, build colony pods as much as possible, new bases build recycling tanks first, hurry them with energy, then set them to build more colony pods. With ecology discovered take a break to churn out one former per base, then resume. With the discovery of secrets, go into the workshops and design a scout with the trance ability. Its basically a free upgrade that lets you utilize one or two units to move and protect your bases, while you concentrate on growth.

Base placement and former regimen.

Your former fleet should be constantly working, at this stage work on roads and forests in poor places, if you can plant a forests on a barren square producing only one mineral, stick it there instead of the square making 2 nutrients and one mineral. Simple logic here. Some of your pods will come up energy/mineral/nutrient resources, a forest square produces ½/1 a nice balance, and a bonus square adds +2 to the appropriate resource, also, they add to a base if a base is built on these squares. so prioritize the bonus squares.

Sometimes the exploration will discover a planetary landmark, lets go over a few..

Crater: +1 bonus energy and minerals in the inner squares, farms and forests make every square a great one. I suggest planting 3 bases surrounding on the rim.

Mesa: while the ability to get a little more energy out of solars is nice, I don't see much use, maybe later with supplies sucking out this energy for a heavy tech you could have that base do the same with foil supplies and tidal harnesses, doesn't seem worth the effort unless your right on top of it to start.

Jungle: extra food is quicker growth, this landmark is something worth fighting over. Expand into it as soon as you can.

Unity wreckage: it's a nice Easter egg, use the copter to cut down heavily on scouting time, the extra energy will purchase a few recycling tanks and, and getting the starting positions of the other factions help you know where to look for them, and where it would not be best to expand.

The ruins: I advocate a forest biased economy, but this area is an exception, most people stick a pod right in the middle, but of you have time to plan, surround the base with a few extra pods, letting each feed off two or three monoliths.

Volcano: In a strategy I will detail later, you can let your bases get extra minerals with supply crawlers, while the base workers get into the forests, the volcano squares offer up +2 minerals, making mineral output as such:

Land type-With mine and road/bare/Mine and road on volcano square/bare on volcano square:

Flat-1/0/4/2

Rolling-2/1/5/3

Rocky-4/2/6/4

so a flat volcano square with a mine and road produces the same as a non-volcano rocky square with a mineand road.

To simplify, build roads and mines around the rim, and have your supply carriers go crazy.

Turn 15

About this time, you should have about 4-6 bases set up, or soon to be set up, Send your units out exploring and picking up pods, the cash and bonus squares should give you a direction to move. You will be pushing for about 8 or 9 bases ( as soon as the game warns you further expansion will make exrta drones, take a break) spaced no more than three squares apart, have them set up receraion commons, childrens creaches (more so if a base is getting energy loss) and formers. Keep your bases tight and the land fertile with formers. The only reson you should break from this rule is if your pushing to get control of a landmark, then push a base out to get close or claim in, and fill in the holes with more bases and roads later.

By now your formers should have a small net of roads and forests. you should build a road over a rocky square at the rate of one per base. Later these will become mines. About this time you should have free market, I highly advise you push to free market, it will give money for facilites, make tech come faster, and the only cost to you is that mind worms are tougher (offset by trance units), you cant send any base suppored units out of your territory,(we aren't plaing agressively, and the units we start with are independant, will not produce drones) and bases that have 2 or more turns of drone riots are likely to join another faction. (good management of drones and pushing drone calming facilities early offsets this.) Its well worth the cost.

Turn 20

Your bases should have the basic facilites or soon should have them. The best base with a creche and rec commons should start on a project if it hasnt already. Three alien artifacts and 4-6 turns of production will get you genome, and your opponets wondering how the hell you manged that so quickly. I stress however, you make virtual world a top priority, even more than genome. Projects that take away upkeep costs are VERY GOOD. Each hologram theater costs three to upkeep, so its like 3 energy per base in your pocket each turn.

Your aim in research should be industrial automation, and start having well off bases make supplys. Send these carriers to the mine squares and start pulling in minerals, have decent bases supply these carriers for the newer bases, simply move it to the newer base, go to the base scren, right click and pick "Support from here" then send the carrier to work. Of course, since our goal is to get one supply feeding of a mine per base, it will take planing and shuffling. The end result howerver is this.

Typical base should be size 3, getting 6/10/11 feeding off of 3 forests pulling 1/2/2 (with free market) adding to the 3/2/5 (accounting for the recycling tanks) the base gets and the 2 the bases mine supply is pulling. This will increase to 6/12/11 once you get ecological enginering, which is the next tech we are going to push for. This little base is giving off 9 research a turn (6 + 3 thanks to the node) so that should make it easy, switching to wealth values will give more energy and will probalby suck a turn off the research time. IF you haven't yet, get democracy, the extra minerals from the mines will offset the support penalty, and let your bases grow into this state.

Turn 32

By this time we should have, or soon should have tree farms avalible, if your not in any danger, push for them, your bases will go from hanging around size 3 to pushing size 6. If your low on room make more with rasing terrain, this is handy to link up landmasses, fill in lakes, divert rivers, and fill in costal squares to build more forests on, because your close knit bases are going to start running out of squares to feed off of.

This is a good start for uni, if your still behind in tech, dont worry, nab the empath guild and take a look, you will be pulling 125 tech a turn while the closest opponet is getting around 50, this is where uni's strength lies, you may not always have the most tech, but you can push and speicalize, and get certain big techs first. We pushed for tree farms and have laid out a strong ground work for growth and research, if left be soon we will have a flexable research and war machine. Those big techs could be traded around to fill in the holes in our research. A common early game attack plan is with hordes of impact rovers, if you encounter this, plasma armor and perimiter defenses will ensure that the worst you lose if a few formers or supply crawlers.

So now what?

Well that depends on your game, if you want to invade someone once you get ahead in tech, downshift to planned and have at them, getting the astetic virtues (in free market econ) reduces the drones per away unit to one, so you might not have to leave free market if your careful. Plus hybrid forests take awhile to make (200 production!) but pulling 3/2/3 per forest squares will make the base grow in all factors like nothing else. A strategy I picked up thanks to the plane bug *needlejets and copters produde drones as if they are out of the territory, even if its sitting on the base that made it* pick a city that isnt getting great tech, and build a punishment sphere there, then take your planes and move them onto the base, supporting them from there. Problem solved, this is good a base to start an attack from if no other options are avalible, just assingn extra mine supplys to keep up for your lack of support.

As far as techs, I suggest pushing for pre-sentient algorythums, in your push for tree farms some players will have goten techs like polymorphic software and the like, trade well for these and push to get that hunter seeker, also build up facilites now that you have great income and mineral production. If you can get the planetary energy grid you may find yourself producing so much you run out of facilities to build. After you get pre-sent push for fusion power, fusion labs will give extra cash and speed your research even more. then get MMI and the skybase academy (free aerospace complexes do not generate upkeep costs, mo mo money!) for air defense (handy since now other players should come into needlejet production. ) and then spaceflight, making a hydroponics lab will give you the whole map. (and a nice trading chip to certain players)

As or long term goals, consider these things. Push for the "money" projects, cloning vats, supercolider, theroy of everything. As well as more labs for your bases. Out think your opponet, eventually your opponet will realizes hes gonna lose and the planet buster card will come up. Some times I've had to slip in probe teams to dismantle almost completed Busters, and stalled them until I had orbital defense pods in the air. A desprate foemight be willing to be hated by every faction to slow your research machine down.

Conclusion

The key with Uni is to understand you will need a strong base of operations, you will need to expand to your limits to make more labs and more research, and that you may not always have the most tech, but as long as you have the more research per turn, you will always be in the lead at the end of the game.