TheSAguy14

Join Date 11/2008

Opening Moves for each faction

I’d like to know how to start with each faction. I currently play almost exclusively with Science and do pretty well in each game, if I don’t win. The reason is that I know what to look for when the game start and just beeline with my set starting moves...

I usually paly 4-8 player FFA, human matches on Manager, with all the default settings.

Science:

Ideal Starting Resource Formation:

Look for a cluster of Alu, with at least one 3 stack. A cluster of Iron close by.

Opening Moves:

Settle on the Alu, getting a lot of free Alu, and build a mine on the 3 stack. Build two Steel mills on the iron, that’s close by your base.

Buy the Plot from the Black Market or wait and upgrade.

Now depending on the map conditions, you can do power or glass. In large FFA games, you should consider food, since that will go up.

If power spikes, consider doing a mutiny on someone else’s power.

This is my opening moves and usually sets me well for the rest of the game. I'm not saying the is the only opening or will win each time. It just usually gives me a good opening edge. Each game is different...

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Again, these are ideal conditions I look for when scouting the map.

I’d really love to know what the other faction’s ideal conditions are that I should look for while scouting the map, so I can play with them when I don’t see the above ideal conditions for Science.

What I know of the other factions...

Scavenger:

I know you look for large stacks of carbon. I’m assuming the ideal start would be a 3 stack carbon (maybe 2?) and a 3 stack Alu.

Settle on the carbon surrounding the 3 stack and immediately build the carbon and Alu mines on the 3 stacks. But what then?

Expansive:

Here your strength is in expanding fast, and using your free claims you get form expanding. But what are the ideal starting conditions I should look for and what should I do during the first few expansions?

Robotic:

They don’t use food, water & oxygen – so you can focus on other resources. Very useful, especially in big FFA games with a lot of food eating factions, but I have no idea what the ideal starting resource formations look like or how to put myself in a strong opening situation…

Appreciate any feedback helping me play with non-Science factions.

Thanks.

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For Robotic, Ive been setteling on aluminum to get that instant burst, as well as putting down two steels and a iron. This allows me to go into Tech 2

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Hi, I win about 35% of my games in 8p games, including my newbie games from a week ago.

When at first scouting the map, look around before starting to scan and scan in the direction of where the resource pips aren't showing up because that's probably not where people are going to start scanning and therefore you will statistically have less competition when you find a good spot.

Do not in advance decide which company you want to choose if you can help it. The map will dictate which is best (or at least, which company NOT to choose).

I frequently decide to be scavenger when I find a carbon triangle or 2 high/med carbon next to each other and alu nearby too, wherever it is that you can mine 2.5/s or more from with 2 mines. If you have open space next to your hq, start adjacent to your carbon and quarry both of them right away and put an alu mine on an aluminium within ~30 tiles. If you started late (as I frequently do as scavenger) then you will get a free claim and early time on the black market. On 6+ player games this means nearly free claims from the black market, at least 2 to 3 of them. This is how you get them, after deploying your mines press ctrl+shift+down to sell all your resources, if at this point you can upgrade (which you can if you started on alu) you should but only if you don't spend more money than you need to buy a free claim from the black market (provided you started late). This is why it is important to be adjacent to at least your carbon or aluminium because there is a 30 second or so delay in receiving your resources without adjacency and you need those resources to upgrade to lv 2 early and get your other claims out ASAP. I demonstrate this opening here (I started early because the value of the location was worth it).

In this game I demonstrate an expansionist opening similar to what SMG likes to do. Expansionists can usually plop down a few mines and upgrade their HQ right away by selling their starting resources. When starting next to iron mines this means an almost instant 3 steel production opening and lv 3 before midnight.

I think Robotic is underpowered and doesn't have enough advantages to justify picking them in competitive games (1v1, FFA or otherwise) so I rarely play them. They have no hard bonuses and only a couple soft ones. Their singular dependence on power and electronics makes them pretty good long distance miners because power is considerably easier to produce than fuel or oxygen. Even though their HQ needs no glass they still need it for other structures including their offworld markets.

I don't often play scientific and don't see competitive players play them very often so I can't comment. Their on top of resource bonus is ok but very dependent on iron triangles and diamonds. They too can insta upgrade when they hotdrop on alu but they have to receive 80+ of any non-water resource because otherwise they're going to end up at lv 2 and <100$ which means instant death because then they cant build anything. Send out claims right after upgrading.

Most of the openings on my YT channel are scavenger openings, I think you can learn a quite a bit from them if you're a budding newbie.

Best of luck in your games.

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Thanks Sander Buruma, very helpful.

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