When I play necrophages in late game, my mind is balanced beetwen two possibilities :



- The choice of an infinite district spawn, where your cities are focused in production and someitmes, food. You try to entirely covert yours regions with district in optimal dimensions (triangle if possible).



- Or to prefer to stop the district growth to a certain limit (for exemple, a triangle of 10 districts) and focus more and science/food growth (and off course into buildings/units when needed).





I got an opinion of what is the best choice, but my opinion is not perfectly solid. So, I ask you : What is your opinion about this dilem ?



PS : For the non necrophages players, the main reason to build district with necrophages it's their racial trait Cellule Mutation which do that :



For each new Population Unit (two population for the others races), they can build a new district (Borough Street). And districts cost -50 % production (the most important bonus).

there's a diminishing returns for a new district because the costs increase exponentially. the industry or dust required to build that 10th district can be used for better things, you know. if you could afford to build the 10th district, you already won the game and do not need the district.

- That is too what I think, about the prohibitive exponential cost of the districts. I think it is better to stick at 10 districts then aiming for new cities or science/food/units in your 10 districts cities. It's a bit sad, I would have loved to have gigantic insectoïd cities, but as it's exponential as the broken lords population buy, it's not interesting.



- I think it's the same problem with population growth. It's not interesting to pick food production to reach a pop of more than 15. It's so much simple and efficiant to just spawn new cities or make science/dust. It's a bit sad because these artificial limitaitons (by loggarithimic progression) tend to uniform each strategy to the same goals : the 10 district city with not more than 15 population. I would like to have another limitation mechanism than these logarythm progressions.



- Another problem with this limitation is about the food buildings : it is not much usefull to aim the tech which increase the food, because at ERA 3 you should have already reached at least the 10 points of pop in each of your cities. So why aiming new tech in food, if you face to these hard diminish returns ? Aiming industry or science technology are so much more usefull, because you always need industry or science or dust, compared to food...



- An idea to change the situation without touching to these limitations mechanisms picked by the Devs : creating new stades of cities size. Cities of more than 10 pop could be "Big City", more than 20 "Metropolis". A big city could have acess to a new kind of district, more expansive (a size of 3 hexagones ?) but without the diminish return of the normal district. Idem for metrepolis. The idea is maybe not good, but it would be good to create qualitatives differences, then differents choices than the eternals 10 district triangle -> New city etc.

They could take a lesson from FAll From Heaven 2 and have major negative events later in the game that decimate city population. Then the ability to produce more food to bounce back faster would be valuable.



They already have winters that gradually get worse. They could have surprise winter storms that freeze-kill populations later in the game.

It is possible, but the others reflexions about the uniformisation tendance of the games would be still trues. I think the mechanisms should be changed to create new stades of cities, more diversity of developpement beetwen the games (see my previous post).

Pretty much like the others said. Science and Dust win the game for you. Food and Industry just help you get the Science and Dust. Influence is great, too... but that's kind of separate.



Also like others said, this is because Food and Industry are dealing with exponential problems. The Necros bonus + extreme amounts of food will only get you 2 or maybe 3 more districts than any other race can get. District bonuses really aren't that great either, and are linear. Exponential cost with low linear growth is bad. Industry runs out of use far too quickly. Any race can build all city improvements, stack their garrisons full, and have nothing left to do with that Industry later. The one thing you can't finish building are the districts, as was mentioned before.



I do wish they'd tweak some of the numbers, as every faction can win the game faster by focusing only on Science, Dust, and Influence... that includes Wild Walkers and Necros.

Arqane wrote:


Also like others said, this is because Food and Industry are dealing with exponential problems. The Necros bonus + extreme amounts of food will only get you 2 or maybe 3 more districts than any other race can get. District bonuses really aren't that great either, and are linear. Exponential cost with low linear growth is bad. Industry runs out of use far too quickly. Any race can build all city improvements, stack their garrisons full, and have nothing left to do with that Industry later. The one thing you can't finish building are the districts, as was mentioned before.

I find that focusing on and will allow you to do all the things you mentioned faster than the other factions. So and focus is great for an early game advantage and speed >> military factions (early conquest)



Everyone else will eventually go for the long-term and with no use for

It's not bad... like I said, it helps to get everything else. But I'd still say it's always secondary. A well-equipped single army will beat any number of armies, so that sadly removes the heavy production focus. It also doesn't help that the warmongering factions (especially the Necros) have rather weak starting armies that can use advanced tech. Maybe it's just that I've been playing Drakken a lot lately, and their starting army is so powerful. Still, I've found it better to settle my first Necro town near as much research as possible. It's been a lot more useful, but seems against their lore.

Arqane wrote:
Pretty much like the others said. Science and Dust win the game for you. Food and Industry just help you get the Science and Dust. Influence is great, too... but that's kind of separate.

Influence gives you science, dust, industry,and food. (I really love the +20 happiness to all cities one. and the +dust and industry and science ones)

And if industry and food provide you science and dust, and science and dust wins the game, then food and industry wins the game if a focus on them provides more science than a direct focus on science.

Personally I think the game is won via science, but that long term science is best achieved by NOT focusing on science itself, but by focusing on the low hanging fruit. Food, industry, influence, and dust are all awesome ways to accelerate your science acquisition rate.

By low hanging fruit I mean that you can never have a rule of "science is better than dust", its always "ok, comparing these two options, which gives me better ROI". it can be any of the FIDSI That gives best ROI as your next build priority



That being all said, if you want to bootstrap a colony in late game, dump your dust on food production. It will rapidly go to over double digit population (pop can grow more than one a turn) and then the AI will take over and rapidly build it out to completion using that pop to provide industry to build city districts and structures as needed.



that all being said, my personal strategy is to turn on the AI governor for construction on all cities. Because it is more fair to the enemy AI in single player and because there is no TIME to micro in multiplayer, and it is ridiculously tedious otherwise. I only micro on endless difficulty or maybe my first few cities or first few buildings on a city... or when the AI is fail like when i need to prioritize strategic resources.