How to win 1.03

Isn't this build rather vulnerable to a rush?

You have a replay showing this in action? I'd love to see this in effect, particularly against an experienced player.

You can scout then go to step 4 at any point a battle is coming. In the mean time you also have much higher income to make cobalts.

Hmm, but with the 1.03 patch fixes, your research times are severely delayed, and LRMs are much costlier. You can probably pump the Cobalts without difficulty, but you're strat will be stretching your resources across at least 3 labs, not to mention the cost of initially getting your trade ports up and upgrading the logistics slots you'll be needing (a fair deal of which will already be taken by the aforementioned labs). Those trade ports won't pay themselves off until they've been up and running for a while, so while this will lead to a strong late game economy, you'll be severely delaying the construction of your fleet. This is also very susceptible to simple harassment of your construction units, no?

Hardly a guaranteed win, at any rate. Still, replays please? I'd like to see it in action, and see how your opponents handle the fact that your basically investing your entire early game in teching.

Accompanied by an early harassment force to distract them, I can maybe see this being effective...

lmao it's basically what i've been doing in 1.03..

I just spam light frigs now and tech to lrms slightly latter. (can overwhelm someone rushing to get 5 lrms with your 15+ cobalts and then kill some stuff)

Credits are sooooooo much more important and tec soooo much better now because of the new black market. Vasari's eco has been nerfed pretty hard.


And javs aren't MUCH more costly. Assailants and ESPECIALLY illums are. Javs I barely notice a difference. :/ It's just 25/10/5 increase. Illums got their crystal increased FIFTEEN to 55.

You are right timing is important. I posted an early game guide a while ago and it talked about when to expect battles. Bascially from #planets/#people ratio + scouting, you can guess pretty well how your opponents will expand, and when and where the first battles will be, and time step 4 accordingly.

Edit: For some reason my last post came up twice? No clue. Anyways, edited this one to fix. Sorry people.

..If the TEC is spamming trade ports, that gives Vasari and Advent time to do the same. Hello? It's only 1/2 extra science, you'll be behind by a single trade port once things roll around, and then late game is affected by a much greater variety of factors. Once you have enough money to start pumping out frigates nonstop, you run into all sorts of things like fleet cap and other issues.

TEC certainly has an advantage with cargoship technologies, but they don't have the best combat ships. The similiarity between races means one can duplicate the other with some finangling- has anyone -tried- a concentrated economic build with Advent or Vasari?

And now for some reason I can't edit the above post! Awesome!

innociv: I haven't had the chance to play the patch yet, but how different is the black market now? I personally play Vasari, and I've noticed that the black market is more or less my primary source of credits in the early game . They're short on credits as it is, so does that mean they basically are broke-ass now? It's hard enough to get my economy running as it is .

No it is not just one port. You forgot that to get trade as Vas, you have to make 4 civ labs, that's 2 less trade ports on your 1st planet. You also do not get any trade payoff at all until much later than TEC. By the time Vas gets payback on all the trade investments, the TEC fleet is already wiping him off.

Well, it may appease some of those that thinks TEC has become overpowered (I haven't played online yet, buy fooling around in singleplayer seem to indicate that there might be something about it) that it seems like the second level of Development Mandate have been removed.

So much teching will prevent you from expanding, and you are vulnerable to harassment. I do think the black market should be more responsive and should stay in boom/crash longer.

I agree with OP. In 1.03 it seems no matter what race I play, I always buy stuff from the black market 500 at a time (Unless really early in the game) while there is a crash. It's retarded. The old resource pool manipulation was way better. I would buy and sell CONSTANTLY. As Vasari I tended to have higher resource income and sell more because my credit income was lacking. On some maps I even had too much crystal! Not enough metal!

The whole thing gets even worse because of the change in game options. Wow they claim to have "added" more option because it's "good." So where the fuck is my resource option? Why can't I play on High Resources, or make things interesting with Random Resources? You know how much slower game is with only 2 frikin extractors per asteroid? The game takes at least 30% LONGER on the same speed as before! You never have enough resources without buying. And you are forced to go to tradeports, and then you have to wait the 15 minutes for it to pay off before you make a fleet.

I'm sorry, maybe there are lot of people so retarded they couldn't understand how and when to manipulate their resource pool to get crucial thing faster, but to kill it for the rest of us was pretty messed up!

Yes on a HUGE map I would play like this in 1.02, but on a small map there was no need. Now even on small map I have to get tradeports, and buy resources. You know refineries are even more worthless! In 1.02 sometimes dare I say I WOULD BUILD REFINERIES. I know I am shocked, but sometimes it is worth it to put 3 refineries that covered 3 ice planets, because crystal cost 2k for 100. But now it is not worth it at all! Hell only reason I would tech refineries is to get to pervasive economy as TEC. Other races don't need them at all. Unless you did something to refineries which we don't know about because you didn't put it in the patch notes, which would constitute as even bigger slap in the face.

How does tech1 metal and tech2 trade ports and making 2 tradeports prevent you from expanding? That is independant of your fleet and colony frig, and roids only cost 250+250+450/140/75.

You send your marza in solo and bomb their roid.

Tecs early game is so ridiculously strong now, and vasari's so weak. Advents only chance is rushing with disciples directly after capping 1st roid, before tec can outspam cobalts and then tech to lrms halfway through.




Dont' get me wrong, how the market works now WAYYYYY better. It's just this buy for 300-550 and sell for 100-150 that's bad. IMO should just simply double the sell prices from what they are now and increase buy prices 50% (so buy would start at 450).

Played a 10 player game last night with lots of buying and hardly say the price go over 550..

And as Astax said I would NEVER EVER build refineries now. Tradeports basically got buffed hard and refineries nerfed hard.. simply by how the black market works. IT seems like a gigantic oversight to me by IC and their QA team.. like the chat not sticking and lack of colors.

yep on the face of it it seems vasari got nerfed really hard. being a vasari econ player my primary strat on any med or bigger map was to rush for early refinery and dominate the black market. Now vassari is forced to go trade ports as early as possible to have any hope to compete due to the double nerf of resource cost and sale price.

please reexamine the market dynamics ic.

THEN SUDDENLY, SOVA, PARKKED IN YOUR HOMESYSTEM

sorry caps, but sova with lvl 2 embargo will rain on your parade so bad it isint even funny.

i think CptSiddy is right. there are lots of ways to screw it up. all you'd have to do is get a pretty small raiding fleet together and shoot down their trade ports and then get out of the system. thats pretty easy to do with any carrier cap ship with bombers (carrier cruisers with bombers if its a little later on), or any cap ship thats above average vs. structures like a Desolator with Assault Specialization.

There's not really any way to beat this one off on medium maps. You'll have to get your fleet to cross the entire system in order to kill some trade ports, something he'll ave detected in no time. The vasari's strengh was ressources on the black market. What happens when you make everything on the black market cheaper unless someone buys a lot of it right before you sell your stuff...?

OH how about a strategy not involving TEC...

There are none anymore!

I believe that the "fuck" where your resource option is is under... wait for it... Game Options.



While I'll admit that they removed the random setting, which I'm surprised anyone actually used, it's otherwise intact, so it doesn't really warrant the bitch-fest.

This whole thread seems like nothing but a good advertisement for how important decent AI is to a strategy game.

There is no resource option you tool. He's talking about an actual one, you know the one where you could make a different amount of resources spawn per planetoid. When everyone played on many? How this patch reduced total resources by half if not more? How with that change the races that had to sell (vasari/Advent) Can no longer afford to do so? Not the income speed which is % to everyone and doesn't affect the game the same way.

Wow. The last time I heard someone call someone a tool was like, in high school. Suddenly I feel humbled by your rapier wit.

Anyway, my apologies. I didn't actually realize that the new option operated differently than the old one. That's a surprise, and an odd choice on someone's part.

So, I suppose that means that everyone's incessant bitching and cursing is perfectly justified, so by all means, BITCH ON! (Throw in some name-calling, for good measure.)

Almost everyone used random resources I thought?

It made the game much more interesting by sometimes getting those really valuable 3 extractor roids spawned. And you'd get ice/volcs with either 2-4 extractors. It was much better that way in many peoples opinions(mine, most people in RaY).

We were quite ticked in losing this option and it replaced with the income rate thing ;/