Why am I so slow?

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

So I've played a few skirmish games as well as two ranked MP games and I can't understand why am I so far behind everyone.  The one player I played against in multiplayer tried to explain to me about tech lab but, didn't completely understand what he was saying as the game ended prior to that.

I've always been playing PHC is this faction weak or slow?

I start off by building the building that allows me to create military units and start pumping out 6 at a time, as soon as I get my first squad I send it out to start capturing radioactive resources and send an engineer to follow so it can build on it, this way the game unlocks those buildings/units.

While I'm doing that I take a second engineer and start placing metal mines on the various spots around my base.

I spend my first tech points on either weapon strength or logistics as I always appear low on units or low on overall strength.

After this I start to notice the enemy is quickly starting to expand and their power ranking is quickly surpassing mine.

I start to build medium units and the other human player in ranked games or Tough or better AI is starting to over power me with heavy units that I haven't even begun to think about producing not to mention even have.

What am I missing?  How does one gain tech points? How does one build that many units that fast, I'm running out of resources and it seems they aren't? 

Please help.  Thanks

29,416 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Uh, your resource acquisition would be why.

 

You need to cap metals, not radioactives, first.  You need to cap them with your starting engineer too.  The best strategy at present is probably to build your factory at the metal point, in range of capping it while you do.  The game loads, you move your engineer and click in a second one, not a whole lot of alternative here.  You should be able to fund two factories right off the bat as long as you expand properly fast.

 

You want to get metal first because you really need to plop down two factories and spam the bejesus out of frigates as fast as possible, to cap more points.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting psychoak, reply 1

You need to cap metals, not radioactives, first.  You need to cap them with your starting engineer too.  The best strategy at present is probably to build your factory at the metal point, in range of capping it while you do.  The game loads, you move your engineer and click in a second one, not a whole lot of alternative here.  You should be able to fund two factories right off the bat as long as you expand properly fast.
End of psychoak's quote

I did see this on one youtube video I watched.  But, based on that video and what you're telling me there is only one way to play if one is to have a chance at winning the game?  It seems if you don't do the quick spam your SOL.  Hmmmm....  I guess I was hoping for multiple strategies to choose from and even be able to venture out on your own and still have a chance.  Oh well, I appreciate your suggestions and thank you for the insight of where I have stumbled.

Thanks.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Odds are there's quite a bit of variation in what you can do, so long as you use your engineer to cap the first metal point.

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I find that military might can change pretty quickly. A loss of an army can hurt. It really depends on fleet composition when two armies meet. Rock, paper, scissors style. A Prometheus is an anti-dreadnought dreadnought and can kill any single hard target quickly, but is not good at killing multiple enemies at once. I've killed dreadnoughts using nothing but a lot of brutes and rocket frigates. Most vehicles don't have anti-air ability so bombers can kill most things easily. But they are fragile against anything prepared to deal with them.

If you have good intel, you can try to tailor your armies to counter whatever the enemy has. If don't have good intel, making your army a mix of units is a good bet.

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I've seen a couple of 1st-move tactics. One is to use the first engineer to assist you base making a 2nd engineer until just under 20 seconds have elapsed (clock's on the right just under scorse). Then take that engineer to mfr a Factory next to the nearest metal resource point. That way the engineer takes the resource point while building the factory. When that 2nd engineer comes out have it create metal extractors on every metal extraction point at the base and then at the factory.

This is a decent approach unless the first metal resource point is further away. Then you have to leave earlier for it. Metal's going to be tight so you need to form armies and take more resource points very quickly.

 

Another I've seen is to take the first engineer and have it create metal extractors at the base. About the same time as the 2nd extractor is built, start building the 2nd engineer. Whichever engineer is ready first makes a Factory at the base and starts building Brutes and Artemis (? rocket unit) having the engineer assist. This cranks out the first few units very quickly. The 2nd engineer pauses before building an armory.

I think this latter approach is better for turtling as, by the time you're finished with the above, you have precisely zero resource points taken.

 

The ideal is probably somewhere in-between. Metal's imperative to the very early game and must be maintained. How soon you take a radioactive resource is based on how soon you want the other unit types it provides or, perhaps more likely, how soon you want to start building Quanta Generators (I think they're generators, anyway).

Watch some Twitch feeds or Youtube videos. You'll see different approaches and sometimes the creators of them will explain why the do what they do or, even that they don't know what's best. LOL