The TEC Economic Advantage

from Sins Forums

Hi, there have been reason several posts on the pros and cons of each race, balancing discussions and late game strategies. A common theme is that TEC is weak late game military but this is somewhat offset by their economic advantage.

Some references:

I'm moderately new to Sins (via Rebellion / SP) and am likely missing something, but I'd appreciate if someone could articulate just what the TEC economic advantage actually is.  I loaded up a Galaxy Forge map with 7 terran home planets to remove asteroid randomness and played as each race with my starting metric being 'full research + population'.  Each race had the same fleet costs and number of capitol ships.  The idea being to discover later game income rate for similar empires to see if late-game TEC could hold by attrition.

In did several other metrics with adding trade ports and refineries in various combinations, but with each race deploying the structions in an identical manner.

With no trade/refineries, the Credit income was equal for all races and the resources were actually slightly in favor for Advent.  Now, things were not 100% balanced - since I used Terran planets the TEC should have had a population advantage here but it seems it was offset by Vasari's Civilian Evacuation/Priceless Goods research and the Advent's higher allegiance. But that means my test was in favor of the TEC and they only came out even.

After adding trade ports and refineries, the Advent did lose ground - in part because of their 'special' refinery tech not being up to snuff.  But surprisingly, the Vasari stays toe-to-toe with TEC in both credits and resources.

So when people refer to the TEC economy being the best - what is really meant?  I do see the following advantages that were not exposed by my little test... but I'm dubious that these constitute the perceived TEC advantage.

  • TEC gets an extra civilian slot - possibly to deploy extra trade ports
  • TEC can deploy a trade port in a starbase
  • Better black market with Pervasive Econ and Favored Client research

Is the extra trade port capacity really the slam dunk people are referring to or am I missing something?

Thanks for any insight.

8,154 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

TEC gets an extra civilian slot - possibly to deploy extra trade ports

TEC can deploy a trade port in a starbase
End of quote

TEC starbases get a second trade upgrade that adds nearly two extra trade ports worth of income over what the other factions get and yes, that on top of the extra civ slots and pervasive economy does make a significant difference. 

Remember, these extra trade ports are also taking advantage of the 10% bonus * the number of links in your longest trade chain which is a benefit you don't get with loyalty bonuses on planet income.  Additional trade structures on all of your colonies and starbases getting that bonus puts you well ahead of the curve in income.   

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Is the extra trade port capacity really the slam dunk people are referring to or am I missing something?
End of quote

Yes, an extra trade port on every world including dead asteroids is a huge bonus.

The next biggie are the cargo upgrades.

Then pervasive economy really seals the deal though.

"Your empire earns as income a fraction of the cost of all empires' expenditures whenever purchases are made."

DerivativeCreditsFromPurchasesPercent: 10% per level

DerivativeCreditsFromTradePercent: 7.5% per level

 

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks for the replies.  I didn't realize there was a 2nd starbase upgrade.  Some quick tests show its actually greater than the value of a 2nd trade port. I can see how that's a big deal.  And I hadn't quite put together that extra logistics means dead asteroids become not-useless.

Cheers

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 2
Then pervasive economy really seals the deal though.
End of ZombiesRus5's quote

The other thing with Pervasive Economy that may be throwing you off is that the bonus doesn't show up on your income rates.  Because it happens in a non-regular fashion, you get the credits but it doesn't tell you in the dropdown lists.

Check the after game stats under 'other income' to see it.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Don't forget speed as well. In competitive games, if you're an eco player, the fact you only need 2 civic labs (that you'd get anyways for planet colonization techs) to get trade up, compared to 4 for the Vasari, can be a notable advantage.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Also don't forget that the Akkan's Colonize ability probably has the best early game secondary effect of any of the 3 race's colony capships(since early game players are generally trying to keep resources spent on planetary upgrades to a minimum).  This provides a handy early game economic advantage when starting with the Akkan.

 

Also, in addition to the strong economy it's self the TEC also has good tools for uttilizing that strong economy by ofrcing the opponent into a war of attrition the TEC player is betetr suited to fight.  Their Ogrovs can make even very small attacking fleets a mortal threat to enemy defenses, allowing TEC players to easily attack on multiple fronts and almost certainly cause some destruction somewhere before the enemy manages to mboilize a defense at each attacked gravity well.

Likewise the javelis is amazing at this role- it's cheap, has extremely long range(even for a LRM) and has the highest single target DPS per supply of any LRM.  It's fragile, but between it's range and damage, in numbers it's sure to cause some enemy casualties before dying.

The Corsev is practically attrition given form- allowing for the sacrifice of a few ships to deal enormous AoE damage.

 

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I forget the name of them, but TEC also get access to a few civilian researches that drastically reduce the cost of a lot of buildings, and even ships if I remember right, sometimes by up to 50%.  While it's not relevant for INCOME exactly, it still makes a difference when you don't have to spend nearly as much as your enemy to get the same size fleet/empire.

-Twi /)

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Modular architecture (tier 1, 2 levels) reduces cost of all factories and extractors IIRC by 20% per level...

Expedited permits (tier 2, 2 levels) increases build rate of all structures by 16.67% per level...

Industrial Juggernaut (tier 7, 3 levels) increases build rate of all ships by 16.67% per level...

Labor negotiations (tier 5 or 6, 1 level) increases build rate of all ships and structures by 10%...

Nothing that reduces costs of ships and structures (that's vasari), though they do have a tech (tier 3, 2 levels) that reduces the cost of all planet logistic upgrades by 7.5% per level....

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

I must have been thinking of the build rates for ships then.  I'll have to look again, I could have swore there were more of them.

EDIT: Yep.  Nothing for ships.  There is also the  Favored Client Discount- 8%/15% black market discounts, if you use those though.

-Twi /)