Economic victory? Ever?

Anyone ever acheived an ecomic victory properly?

ie not cruched everyone first with coptors, then bought out the last few bases.

I have tried, but unless I am way out in front, just seems to race away from me.

As a result, it seems to be a way of choosing how to win, and not whether you will.

Then again, it may just need a little more dedication....

[Qualicide]

As the pirates I always seem to end up with an economic victory. I got one as soon as 2220.

[CEO Aaron]

Winning by Economy is easy, if you have the right stuff to back it up. A economy city with the Longevity Vaccine and Merchant Exchange, coupled with a modest energy park can garner TONS of energy credits. Couple this with a robust group of bases with GeneJack Factories and the Planetary Energy Grid, set to stockpile orders, and watch the credits roll in. Go Free Market/Wealth Democracy, and you'll have the cash to buy everything before you know it. It's as-yet undetermined whether your probe rating effects the cost of buying out the world, at least as far as I know.

Mind you, this is going to be exceedingly hard to pull off as the Gaians, Spartans or Hive, but anyone else should be able to do it, with arguably less effort than a diplomatic victory, since opposing factions can defy the will of the Planetary Council, but NO ONE can defy the will of the Energy Credit.

[Lazerus]

They do have a certain number of turns to kill you though?? and morgan isn't famed for his military which will be even lower if you're just sitting about stockpiling

[Kaptain Ken]

Interesting that some think its easy, maybe it is if you play properly for it, but as a builder I never seem to be able to do it. I have played many times and won all the other ways, but disaster or war seems to get in the way whenever I think about economic victory.

[Lefty Scaevola]

The amount of money needed to win an economic victory is tired to some proportional either to the biggests opponent's "dominance" or the sum of the "dominance" of the opponents or some how else rolls over with the dominance graph. As you can see from the the dominance line graph, the register for it rolls over to zero when it gets real high, around 200+/- large bases. The also cause the EC needed for economic victory to to reset. If you are in a game where a hugh empire is possible, you need to turn off economic victory, or you wind up with the AIs anouncing 20 turns to economic victory with just a few hundred credits, when you have 250 bases to his 10.

[CEO Aaron]

No, the amount of money needed to corner the energy market is equivalent to the amount of money it would cost to subvert all opposing bases using probe teams at the time you attempt to corner the EC market.

Laz, they do have a number of turns to kill you, but I've never noticed that the AI gets any more aggressive when you make your move. Of course it's in your best interest to beef up your defenses before moving to capture, and keep building them while you wait for your energy chokehold to solidify. If you're in a multiplayer game, you'll need to make even bigger and more complex defenses.

Remember that your rivals need only conquer your headquarters, so don't stint on the defenses for that city. Consider raising any coastal squares to prevent amphibious assault and or naval bombardment.

Once extremely shifty trick is to plant a remote base where your rivals don't expect it to appear, and start building some extremely expensive (time consuming) unit or project. Should your HQ come under an assault that must win, you can change production at this remote base to building a new headquarters. The time it takes their forces to re-deploy to destroy this new HQ may be enough to give you the win, especially if he can't find the base, though if he's overrunning you, odds are he's probed you enough to get your map. Even so, if he ups and leaves without destroying your home region, you can just play a shell game with your HQ, moving it when his troops move within range of the your remote HQ.

[Lazerus]

Sounds rather sly, means the enemy in effect has to conquer you fully rather then just take your HQ, since by this time mineral production will be quite high esp. with crawlers so moving your HQ around will be rather easy. Would be extremely annoying to get the enemy down to his last base then lose
Also i'm pretty sure its 20 turns ...

[lethe]

I never found warring as morgan to be problematic from early midgame and on. Once you have missiles or better it's just to blast away. Even running wealth during entire wars it's pretty easy. Offensive troops always win, and defenders always looses no matter the morale. Morgan troops suffer slightly more attrition, as they get hurt a bit more in each battle, but the rush-building powers of a +2 economy more than off-sets this.

All that said I've won proper economic victories. Well, the two times I can remember I crushed one faction into submissive pact early on, but as I generally play on normal or smaller maps that's pretty inevitable, as someone _is_ going to start in my lap.

Once as morgan and once as peacekeepers. I generally don't go for an economic victory though, when playing the game to a victory I vastly prefer transcendence.

[Frankychan]

What? people have actually WON by economic victory?

Whenever I try for econ victory it says I need 10,000+ energy credits.....when I only have a coupla hundred.

I've never won by econ victory...it seems like a lost cause because by the time I save up enough credits, I could just take over Planet with my Hive army.....or planet buster everyone so I'm the only faction left.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
No, the amount of money needed to corner the energy market is equivalent to the amount of money it would cost to subvert all opposing bases using probe teams at the time you attempt to corner the EC market.

Laz, they do have a number of turns to kill you, but I've never noticed that the AI gets any more aggressive when you make your move. Of course it's in your best interest to beef up your defenses before moving to capture, and keep building them while you wait for your energy chokehold to solidify. If you're in a multiplayer game, you'll need to make even bigger and more complex defenses.

Remember that your rivals need only conquer your headquarters, so don't stint on the defenses for that city. Consider raising any coastal squares to prevent amphibious assault and or naval bombardment.

Once extremely shifty trick is to plant a remote base where your rivals don't expect it to appear, and start building some extremely expensive (time consuming) unit or project. Should your HQ come under an assault that must win, you can change production at this remote base to building a new headquarters. The time it takes their forces to re-deploy to destroy this new HQ may be enough to give you the win, especially if he can't find the base, though if he's overrunning you, odds are he's probed you enough to get your map. Even so, if he ups and leaves without destroying your home region, you can just play a shell game with your HQ, moving it when his troops move within range of the your remote HQ.

Never thought about this tactic. I usually have my bases adjacent to one another, figuring that their proximity with one another gives them good defense and quick response actions if enemy factions decide to invade. I usually have a couple of "far-ranging" bases to expand my territory.....these usually act as "listening posts" where I make air units to intercept approaching transports.

Your tactic would, in effect, make these listening posts "backup HQ's" if it looks like I may lose my capital (i.e. The Hive).
Good idea! Thanks.

[Qualicide]

Like I said, economic is cake as the pirates. Pirates = money, not even morgan is close. All you need is free market and energy restrictions lifted, you will have huge bases with 4 energy each square, with boreholes for minerals.

Sure they can take your HQ, that is why you hide it on the bottom of the world.

[Diva]

I have done it once or twice, but I am not sure if they were proper or not.

[Lazerus]

I remember playing as Aki once on a huge map where it was the space age and i had the sky filled with power transmitters aswell as boreholes and such on the surface and i dont think i was running FM and i wasn't stockpiling i was still making around 14k ec per turn ... i transcended soon after but i guess i coulda won by economic victory then

[thinkingamer]

Originally posted by Qualicide
As the pirates I always seem to end up with an economic victory. I got one as soon as 2220.

What?? 2220?? wow, that IS fast.... would you mind if u can tell me the % of water of the map, size of the map, difficulty level, and how you achived this? my fastest economic victory was with gaians in 2305, transcend level, standard map size, water, native, and i believe that i was a bit aggressive with my worms in early game, then took 3-4 cities from my neighor and also expanded a lot too. Afterwards i started to build money facilities, then bribed the world with 7000-8000? credits.

[spartak]

I did it once, but its not as much fun as crushing your opponants.

[Qualicide]

It was uhh.. 70-90% arid. It was on transcend though. I was getting about 400 energy a turn too, which is more than you can shake a stick at. You just can't beat the pirates for energy.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Eh?

Even as Yang I can make upwards of 1000 per turn. I wonder if your Economy rating has anything to do with the amount of money it takes.

[Qualicide]

Yeah, but what year were you making that in? I was raking in the cash after 50 years with over 200 a year. Then it just went up and up. Making 1000 a turn in say.. 2300 isn't that big of a deal, especially with Eudomonia.

[Lazerus]

in 2300 you should be making around 10,000 with all the orbital pods and base facilities available

[Qualicide]

You can take your stinkin crawlers and stick them where the sun don't shine.

/me playes like a real man

[spartak]

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Lazerus
in 2300 you should be making around 10,000 with all the orbital pods and base facilities available

If you're waiting until you have orbital facilities to go for your Economic Victory, you're probably doing something wrong, however. The trick is to get Planetary Economics and Fusion power and grab it early, before your rivals have access to irksome units like choppers and planet-busters, otherwise defending your HQ becomes too difficult.

Originally posted by Qualicide
You can take your stinkin crawlers and stick them where the sun don't shine.

* Qualicide playes like a real man

If I stick my crawlers where the sun doesn't shine they won't harvest as many nutrients. I suggest you revisit your crawler strategy, it sounds like there's room for improvement in your game. Oh, and how, exactly does one play SMAC like a 'real man'? Do you only play sitting in the hot sun, not drinking any water or something?

[Lazerus]

I think i've only won by economic victory once to see what happened. This was against the AI and the reason i was making 10k (well actually 23k as i remember) at that stage was because i was going for a high score before transcending

[Googlie]

Hmm - just played a game as Morgan to see how easy an economic victory might be on a humungous map (256 x 256) at Transcend level

Achieved it somewhat belatedly (in 2402) mainly due to starting late - first time I hit the "," was told I'd need 117,000 credits, so set my entire economy to wealth, running 90/10/0 and stockpiling everything - I bought the techs I needed from my pactmates.

When I had accumulated 120,000 credits I checked the "," again, only too find that I only needed 59,000 (Lal had been running a two-front battle against the Angels and the Borgs, and Yang and Svensgaard were going hook and claw, so i guess the economies of five factions got decimated, making control much cheaper.

So I spent my surplus credits upgrading to clean shard singularity choppers and AAA 8-res sing shard garrisons in each base (I only had a dozen, but each was around 35 to 40 pops by 2400)

The ending is really disappointing, compared to the neat videos for transcending (or joining in a co-op victory)

G.

Been some good adive here.

Guess each time I played Morgan I just beeline D:AP and choppered it. Seems too easy not too. Been trying other strategies recently: Data Angels and probes....

Can someone summarize the 'energy park' concept. I remeber reading about it a few years ago, but beyond the 'pack in the collectors and mirros', I cant remember the details....

PS running FM and wealth is not so easy without SPs......

just noticed a post on this topic....

[Qualicide]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron If I stick my crawlers where the sun doesn't shine they won't harvest as many nutrients. I suggest you revisit your crawler strategy, it sounds like there's room for improvement in your game. Oh, and how, exactly does one play SMAC like a 'real man'? Do you only play sitting in the hot sun, not drinking any water or something?

Everyone always complains about how easy the game is, then the next sentance they are like "yeah, I only had 500 crawlers and 300 bases with pop 100, oh and was getting 100k a year and had every tech" Maybe there is a reason why it is so easy? It's like in FF7 where they are like "omg sephiroth was so easy I just used kotr+quadra magic on my lv99 chars". Try doing it at lv50 without kotr and see how easy it is..

[CEO Aaron]

Well, I think there are many ways to make the AI more challenging, but weakening my game by forbidding myself powerful options would not be my first choice. There are several threads rolling around about ways you can make the AI more competitive, I suggest you look into a few. Dismissing crawlers as some kind of 'cheese tactic' is just silly, IMO. If you're suggesting that crawlers make playing multiplayer too easy, I suggest you find a better class of opponent.

[Lazerus]

omg sephiroth was so easy I just used kotr+quadra magic on my lv99 chars". Try doing it at lv50 without kotr and see how easy it is..

I did, was still easy could never get the damn chocobo to go get the summon for ages