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Maso Games - how to survive?
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#30
by Citizen Sirian - 11/14/2003 1:23:08 AM
Cheese is for mice. Forget the 1IP trick.
Forget playing only with the "easiest" scenarios: high diplo picks, one-trick-pony setups that exploit a hole in the game design, etc. There are ways to survive on Maso that will work with any political party, any set of bonus picks, any alignment, any map size or habitability rating. The key, in my view, is to grasp certain key strategic principles and find a way in each situation to adapt them into your moves.
Staying out of early wars is the biggest key. Best is if you don't make early contacts with majors. Until you make contact, relations cannot go down, and wars cannot begin. If first contact comes when their trade ships arrive, you'll have diplomatic boosts from the trade to help relations. That is ideal, but you can't rely on it always happening. Sometimes the AI sends its trade ships elsewhere or lands its routes with closer neighbors and the ships don't "connect" when they arrive at your systems. Not good. You can't always help it, though.
There are several things you can do to help relations. One is to do influence scouting. Just knowing who your closest neighbors are, before you meet them, can be of enormous value. Right now, you can do this anywhere on the map at any time. I wonder if Stardock will change that at some point. Even if you consider this cheesy and don't want to do it, you can check the influence of any sector your ships are currently in, and be able to find out, as you explore, just how close you are getting to the colonies of nearby majors. By scouting out the neighbors, you know in advance who you will be contending with. This matters if you decide to suck up by leaning your alignment toward that of your neighbors. For instance, if start next to the Yor and Drengin, with no sign of good civs, might be a good idea to lean evil just to try to have better relations with your two evil neighbors. At the very least, remain neutral. You do NOT want to show up as a goody two shows with the Drengin and Yor right on your doorstep. (If you play nonstandard or random alignments, this may not apply, but don't do that until you are comfortable on Maso).
Leaning the wrong way with your alignment can spell your doom. If you are versatile, you can gain some diplomatic advantage by aligning with the right partners for any given map. And if you find you have leaned the wrong way, do what you can to reverse the situation. Push the other way. Every little bit of alignment difference hurts relations, so even minor changes to reduce that may help. The Metaverse allows you to replay a submitting game once, to see if you can do better. Sometimes finding that your initial strategy failed, if you have a save from the game start, you can go back and try a second time, lean your alignment differently, expand more efficiently, or whatever.
If their trade ships arrive, you should be safe. The AI does not often declare war on its major trading partners, even if relations tank. Staying out of wars until your trade ships have had time to reach the AI's is the biggest challenge, and where most losses will occur.
Although the 1IP trick works, you don't have to use it. Other gifts will work. You can give 100IP. You can give some money. A tech if you have it. Build a few spare defenders and give one away. If you get some free ships from anomalies, giving those away early can really help.
If all else fails, or if the strategic situation looks particularly bad (due to the terrain layout), you can go for the early bribe to start a key war. This will cost you an arm and a leg, but it is doable. Try to pit those who wouldn't generally war on one another against each other. The Arceans make for a good target for this reason. Having them attack the Yor or the Torians can buy you time. Then both parties involved in the war will be distracted for much of that early vulnerable time when you are trying to stay out of wars. Only the Drengin won't care. Only they will declare on you without any regard to how many other enemies they have. A Runaway Drengin superpower right next door to you is a bad, bad situation. Half my Maso losses (which haven't been many) come from that situation alone.
To bribe a war, pay cash over 99 turns. Try to pay to the party with the stronger military, who will be cheaper to bribe. Even though this sends your cash to the stronger civ, which may not be good in itself, the prices are so steep, you have to pinch pennies. As bad as the costs look, they will fade over time as your trade comes in. This can also cause the AI's involved to have to trade more with you, since any trade they had with the new enemy is ended.
Sometimes this is the only card you can play if you end up with contact too early or if your gifts are not having enough effect. Sometimes gifting a couple of defenders, one here one there, will do the trick, but sometimes not.
When you do send freighters, try the AI's method: send more than you need at the time. At only 50bc per, sending extras can often be worthwhile. Even leaving some parked near AI planets can be good. You can start a new route immediately if you get more tech to allow more routes, and you can start one if one is lost because war was declared on you. Can also be good to establish some short, cheap routes temporarily, then scuttle them when longer routes finally arrive.
Survival on Maso is also a matter of early efficiency. I saw someone advocate 91% military 9% research to start. I tried that. Doesn't get you where you want to go any faster than 91% spending on 100% military, followed by 100% research on whatever is exactly what you need to make a breakthrough.
I usually go 100% military until I've sent all the colony ships I expect to send. That may also include building some scouts, or maybe not. The lower the fertility, the more urgent the need for scouts to see just how many colony ships to build and how many colonists to put on them.
While the later colony ships are in flight, but I am done building them, I run 100% research, spending only what I need to make a breakthrough. On Large maps, for instance, 41 research points will discover Communication Theory. (Probably only needs 40, but you don't want to come up short and lose a turn). Need only half that for Universal Translator, while Diplomacy and Trade need over 100. If you can't muster that in one turn, break it in half and do it in two, with no waste. I like to settle the PQ13 and PQ14 planets, but if you do that, you've GOT TO prioritize the soil/habitat to get them up out of the red ASAP. So my research path is always (always) Comm-Translator-Diplomacy, swap government to boost economy and production capacity, then either Trade-Medical-HabitatTech or sometimes skip Trade or trade for Trade if I can. (Finding minors early helps your tech situation, and finding majors very early might do so, too, though often not. Helps if you don't RELY on trading, though, since some games you won't get the chance). With just those five or six techs, you can build soil/habitat everywhere, and banking/entertainment on the larger worlds while the smaller, crappier ones finish their PQ improvements.
By the time you've grabbed your share of space and built soil/habitat, you will be under pressure. The AI's will have found you, or at least some will have, and you're on the clock to establish trade before relations sink and you end up at war. You can usually refuse up to two AI demands, but the third strike usually means war. Sometimes it is best to STOP your economy for a couple turns and save cash to pay out on tribute demands. Depends on your situation. Obviously, do not cave to demands for star systems.
The 100% method, military-research-social, lets you grab the planets as quickly as possible, then grab the techs you need to get started on improvements while your colony ships are still in flight. With no social spending anywhere until your colony ships have mostly if not wholly arrived, your planets will "grow up together" and you won't have late-game situations with your earlier planets sitting around wasting social spending on nothing useful, while later ones catch up on essentials, or else stopping the social spending while later ones are still missing essentials. With no way in GalCiv to spend on some planets but not others, your empire must be managed as a whole, thus the most advantage goes to those whose planets grow up together.
You can even spread out and go for half a dozen wonders at a time, and usually land most of them, with this method. I've found that if I only build wonders at my manufacturing capital, I get less wonders. There have been some games I've nabbed all the early wonders and trade goods even on Maso. Usually not, but if you hustle, you can get some of them. Wonder pursuit should be done in batches, though, and at 100% social spending, as someone else in the thread already mentioned. Your manufacturing capital can usually do two while other planets do one, so give the ones most at risk or which you most care about to the manufacturing capital. A round of wonder pursuit even helps crappier planets because they catch up on improvements while the big planets are tied up (delayed) building wonders and trade goods. I find that the only planets late in the game sitting around building nothing are ones taken from the AI's with everything already built.
And one more thing. Whatever your political party and bonus picks, play to them. Doesn't matter what they are, you can gain some advantage. High economy or high trade can grab even PQ12 planets, because they'll have the money to spare. High trade can do more bribing, not only because they pay for it, but because having the AI's fighting means they send you even more trade, which you boost. High research picks may mean you should forego the 100% this-or-that approach and run some research all the time, after the initial phase. High diplomacy of course means doing more brokering of tech. You have to learn to parley one or two techs into bunches, and pay attention to setting up chains of trades to maximize your return. High morale means you should try to grab the population growth trade goods, even if you have to pay for them, and high morale can also settle the PQ12's, as can +5% PQ bonus. High influence and high loyalty can poach PQ12-14 off the edges of AI borders, as long as they don't have a planet IN the same sector. Get yourself some of the influence resources and you can flip some AI's just by grabbing junk planets in their sectors, don't even need starbases. High sensors with boosted range can rule on rare maps. High speed can rule on huge maps. And of course, high military bonuses can dominate any situation, if you can kick your production into gear soon enough. It may pay to get aggressive early. Battle Hammers may be quickly accessible and allow you to conquer a neighbor before capital ships become common, and even earlier attacks may be possible.
If you can stay out of wars entirely, that is best. If you can avoid wars with your immediate neighbors, that is usually good enough. There are many ways to try to affect relations: gifts, choosing your alignment according to whom to suck up, establishing trade, bribing key rivals to go to war, delaying contacts, having cash on hand to pay bribes, and more. The same tricks will not work in every situation, but almost every situation has some solution. Even crappy starts... an alliance victory may be possible from even a dismal terrain situation, if you can make friends.
- Sirian
         
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Although the 1IP trick works, you don't have to use it. Other gifts will work. You can give 100IP. You can give some money. A tech if you have it. Build a few spare defenders and give one away. If you get some free ships from anomalies, giving those away early can really help. |
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1IP does seem cheesy. I like to make my IP gifts proportional to the number of IP in play (basically meaning how long it's been since the last UP vote). One click to the right on the IP slider kicks the number up to about 1% of your available IP (1359IP-->13IP gift). That proportion feels about right for a "make nice" gift to show respect or suck up to an AI civ.
[I'm almost embarrassed to post this after Sirian's massive post (and excellent advice).]
  
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What a post by Sirian. Nice job. 
    
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