Bored

[Marvin Kosh]

Made it to the core.  Made it all the way back home.  Surprised someone didn't turn my homeworld into an asteroid field while I was gone.

Uplifting new empires can pass some time.  It's amusing to come back and watch the tribes dive for cover, or doodle next to cities when they finally become civs.  Best of all, whatever nasty things you do to them before they reach the space stage, they don't attribute to you.  So, let loose the epic creatures of doom and watch the stompage.

[Faizah]

I read somewhere that Mini-Me's recharge time is the same as its existence time. I just tested it on easy, and, it is. So it should be possible to keep a Mini-Me active indefinitely, just annoying.

I don't know if that's necessarily true for every difficulty level, though.

[J. M. Pescado]

I read somewhere that Mini-Me's recharge time is the same as its existence time. I just tested it on easy, and, it is. So it should be possible to keep a Mini-Me active indefinitely, just annoying.

I believe it was two minutes, and I don't think the recharge varies by difficulty. However, if it manages to get itself blown up, you will be without it until it recharges. Plus, all powers are recharged when the game is loaded.

Truth is, though, like other allies, the mini-me is mostly useless.

[Gus Smedstad]

Winning economically when you yourself are not economic to start is really a pain in the nutsack, yes.

Yeah, I just tried for this and screwed myself.

I managed Red -> Red -> Green, though going from Red to Green is not particularly easy in Tribal.  The suggestion you had earlier of killing a tribe member or two and then bribing doesn't work; you take a bigger hit from killing tribe members than you gain from the bribe.  I tried letting them decay naturally from Neutral to Unhappy and then bribing, but didn't seem to be making much progress.  Still, I managed it by converting all 5 tribes.

Then I started on a map with just one economic city.  I grabbed most of the spice geysers on my continent, but by the time I was ready to launch an assault, one of the military cities had taken it.  So there was nothing left but military and religious cities.

Then I did the dumb thing.  I saved the game.  Little did I know the consequences, but I didn't want to sit through Tribal again.

There's no option to restart, so I disbanded everything and sold all my buildings.  Soon enough I was wiped out.  I've never lost a Civ stage, and I expected it would restart me from the map start.

Uh, no.  It restarted from the last save game.  Which was already too late.  Crap.  I don't really want to go through all that again.

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

I managed Red -> Red -> Green, though going from Red to Green is not particularly easy in Tribal.

Sure it is.

The suggestion you had earlier of killing a tribe member or two and then bribing doesn't work; you take a bigger hit from killing tribe members than you gain from the bribe.  I tried letting them decay naturally from Neutral to Unhappy and then bribing, but didn't seem to be making much progress.  Still, I managed it by converting all 5 tribes.

It will be necessary to convert all 5 tribes peacefully in order to achieve a green finish starting from red. Still, it is not exactly hard to do this, as it is rather formulaic.

Then I started on a map with just one economic city.  I grabbed most of the spice geysers on my continent, but by the time I was ready to launch an assault, one of the military cities had taken it.  So there was nothing left but military and religious cities.

You can still achieve an economic finish without the benefit of any economic cities to capture through acquiring an economic vehicle or two from a goody hut. The yield of a goody hut is random and determined at pillage, so figure it out. You can receive randomly either money or a vehicle. The vehicle, specifically an economic vehicle, is what you want.

Then I did the dumb thing.  I saved the game.  Little did I know the consequences, but I didn't want to sit through Tribal again.

* J. M. Pescado P&L.

Why did you save AGAIN after already saving when you first started? You should save BEFORE leaving Tribal, and again immediately after examining the map to make sure there are tribal huts to pillage on your continent.

If you haven't deleted your game in a fit of pique, RRGG is not so bad either. The Green-Civ perk is useless, but +50% spice production isn't all that awesome because production tends to be quickly limited by planetary capacity anyway. It's the BEST of the 3, but not good enough to REALLY fuss over. Also, RRGG immediately gives you the Zealot archetype, which is the best super-power to start with, anyway. All is not lost. Arguably the benefits of having Zealot to start are better than having Spice Savant to start. RRGB/BRGB is merely an exercise in ultimate endpoint power ignoring the path in getting there. An RRGB Zealot is better than an RRGG Zealot, but an RRGG Zealot will get there faster. You decide whether to keep going or not. RRGB gets you the kind of lame Knight archetype, BRGB gets you Bard (better, but not AWESOME). You will have to convert by finding Spodists, allying, and converting. The quest to convert to Zealot is pretty easy, though: Colonize 15 planets, which is what I got. Not sure if it is really 25 and it retroactively counts previousy efforts, or if it's really just 15, but either way, it doesn't matter: To do this the "cheap" way without the effort of actually having to max out 15 planets (45 colony pods, 15 uber turrets/spice storages/bioprotect/biostab, and a bajillion buildings), simply get 15 colony packs and drop one on a planet, bomb your own colony to death, and recolonize again 15 times. Or some combination of real-colonization and fake-colonization. Note that you must colonize, it does not count if you invade or buy.

[Gus Smedstad]

Why did you save AGAIN after already saving when you first started?

For the obvious reason: I forgot to save at either of the points you mentioned.  But yeah, saving was just dumb all the way around.  I wish I could blame fatigue (it was 2 AM), but the reality was it was stupidity.

I'm not really doing this for the benes, since I find Space pretty easy on Hard these days, no matter what my abilities are.  I'm doing it mainly to have a new goal.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

Winning economically when you yourself are not economic to start is really a pain in the nutsack, yes.

Yeah, I just tried for this and screwed myself.

See, I find it ridiculously easy. One of the first rival civs is almost always an economic. I usually end up religious. So just use your four vehicles (because you did grab all those spice geysers quickly and have the money) to convert/bombard the economic city. I usually lose one vehicle and nearly lose a second. No big deal, as I'm not going to be keeping them. Choose to keep the 2nd city economic and launch all trades from that city. Gift low-neutral cities into accepting trade agreements, or use Diplo Dervish. By the time you get the super-super conversion power, you should be able to use it to snag the remaining cities and still keep just barely blue.

I managed Red -> Red -> Green, though going from Red to Green is not particularly easy in Tribal.

Again, easy. Have everyone gathering and spawn tribe members the moment you can so that when they are adults they can gather. The second a mean rivals pop up, send the chief only to give a gift while everyone else is still gathering. Gift those suckers the second they start to decay. If you play it right, you'll have enough from gathering that you don't really need to do it after your first two alliances. Check progress right before your final alliance and if you seem too close to the line, gift someone. 

[Gus Smedstad]

I just tried it again, and found it impossible.

Sure, it wasn't difficult to capture the only economic city.  As you say, 4 religious land vehicles make short work of this.

But that's as far as it gets, because by the time I'm in any position to gift anyone, they're all attacking me and they all hate me.  -90 or so relationship because I'm "too big" and "a threat."  There are no "low neutral" cities to bribe into accepting a trade route.

Since I'm trying Red / Red / Green up until this point, "Diplo Dervish" isn't available.

Maybe you're playing on Normal...?

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

Hrm. I'm not sure if I played to econ on a hard run. One of my hard runs was straight red (the one I'm in now...I am killing near everyone and lobbing mega bombs while my 40ish colonies are well-defended with uber turrets) and the other I know was blue-green-green-green. I'm not sure if I have another on hard. Oh well. That's an excuse to start another save game. I only have 17 so far.

I do Easy or Hard. I don't see a point to Normal.

[Gus Smedstad]

Third time was the charm.  But I really didn't do much differently, it was largely a matter of luck.

The main problem is that the maximum bonus for bribes is +120, and it's not difficult for other players to dislike you enough that this won't be enough.  For whatever reason, I managed to get a trade route with one of the other cities on my continent.  Meanwhile I continue to bribe everyone, which was enough to keep them from declaring war, but not much more.

I certainly could have beaten the lot of them if I'd gone for an all-out religious offensive, but you just can't offend anyone if you're going for an economic victory.

So now I can say I've done Red / Red / Green / Blue on Hard, but I'm not going to bother again.  From now on, my last two colors will always be the same, it's less painful.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

How far you are into the color should affect things. Switching from a green tribal from a red creature is much easier if you were just barely red in creature. Most of my runs are Red-Red-Green-Blue. A few straight greens, two straight reds, and one straight blue. Two starting with blue that I don't remember the rest of. I have a lot of saved games, have I mentioned? And I'm still getting six available planets for new ones.

[J. M. Pescado]

The main problem is that the maximum bonus for bribes is +120, and it's not difficult for other players to dislike you enough that this won't be enough.  For whatever reason, I managed to get a trade route with one of the other cities on my continent.  Meanwhile I continue to bribe everyone, which was enough to keep them from declaring war, but not much more.

There will usually be one side that is military or religious that you haven't ever gotten into an actual fight with. Gift THAT guy. Once he becomes yellow, send in your military air fleet you captured from your first continent and proceed to mow down anything attacking him, then tell him to attack another city. Provide the air support needed to make sure he successfully attacks and takes that city. Tell him to attack another city, repeat. Start buying his old cities while he advances. Continue until your buddy has killed all the other enemies with your support (don't actually take the cities, let him do it, then buy the cities), and keep buying them in his wake. You should be able to secure an economic win easily that way.

[Gus Smedstad]

The implication seems to be that you should take at least 3 cities on your home continent with religion before starting the econ push.  One of which is the econ city, of course.

Isn't taking 3 cities enough to prevent you from getting a Blue win?

 - Gus

[J. M. Pescado]

The implication seems to be that you should take at least 3 cities on your home continent with religion before starting the econ push.  One of which is the econ city, of course.

Isn't taking 3 cities enough to prevent you from getting a Blue win?

Answer: No, taking cities by your "native" method has no effect on your "meter" because your native method is the centered method. Taking more cities after that by blue means will move you towards blue anyway, you only need to flip 2 or 3 actual cities by blueness in order to become blue. But be warned, cities flipped when your ally joins you at the end are considered to be flipped by your native means! So buy out your ally entirely when he reaches the final enemy city (which will surrender to you without an alignment shift, in my tests, plus a single city won't be enough after what you've done).

Also, it is not strictly necessary to take out the 3 cities on your home continent by religious means, either: If you acquired an economic vehicle by means of goody hut, you can economically conquer neighbors even before leaving your own continent. At least one of your neighbors is likely to become implacably angry as a result, although it's possible that the neighbor you conquer economically eats all the other cities for you, so you can buy him off your continent entirely and/or use him as your designated ally.

[Gus Smedstad]

Crap.  Now I'm gonig to have to try this again, just to see how that works.  I thought I'd be screwing myself if I took out those obnoxious neighbors through religion.

 - Gus

[Zazazu]

I tried this going from maxed red military (on Hard) and screwed up the first time. Luckily I saved at the beginning. Rival military nation took all but the econ nation I was in the process of grabbing and was then near-invincible. Next time I'll try taking them first then taking an econ. From earlier experience, 3 or so taken in your native means doesn't prevent you from moving one type.

[J. M. Pescado]

You HAVE to finish your continent before it turns into a "sole survivor" situation on the others. There has to be at least two factions you can take sides with. One of which will probably hate you because he has been sending one or two ships to attack you and getting shot to bits, the other of which will have been too busy fighting that aggressive faction. Both will most likely be military or religious factions (the other faction must NOT be an economic faction, and in all likelyhood will not be, as economic civs are basically screwed when run by the AI). Pick a side, get him to up to yellow, then blast the other side to get a +70 "You fought our enemy" and probably move up into blue or green. Help that side conquer your enemies and buy out their cities as they do it, which will push them into a migratory rampage.

[wes_h]

You've neatly discovered the fundamental shortcomings of Splotch. Solution: Go back to TS2! There's always something new to make there!

I agree with the inestimable and humble El Presidente. Despite having a lot of effort invested in Spore, I do not think it has the staying power of TS2. I would be surprised if it lasts long enough for EP2.