Pandora: First Contact...Now featuring good AI!

[Dp101]

Currently on sale for $11, will probably pick it up.

[HansLemurson]

I thought it was high time to remind everybody that not only does this game still exist, but that it is STILL FUN. 

AIL, (the guy who took it upon himself to fix the original AI) hasn't forgotten that, and he's still plugging away at it. 

The game gets better and better with time.  When was the last time you played a 4X game where the AI posed a challenge without ridiculous cheats?  His AI was actually too good, and had to be deliberately dumbed down for Easy level, because even with economic penalties it was still too strong for noobs.  

For an experience player like me, I do need to give it bonuses (+20%).  But it never acts foolishly, just less efficiently than I do.

[yuris125]

Seeing how it's on sale for £5.74, and £7.33 with the DLC (is it worth it?), might as well pick it up (the Steam sale mentality )

[HansLemurson]

The DLC is essential. The advanced AI is present only in the "Eclipse of Nashira" expansion.

This expansion also adds ocean-development and an early-game wildlife threat that creates a tension between expansion and protection right around when your housing starts to run out.

[Mardoc]

If a new player, unsure of the mechanics, pacing, and tradeoffs, arrogantly assumes they can tackle the AI on medium...they will find that the AI knows how to play the game better than they do.  When you become a veteran, you will notice that the AI doesn't quite play as well as you.

So, I bought the game this weekend, and played a bit on Medium. I took the Dynasty faction, got declared on by the militarist faction pretty early...and now I own all of their stuff and am trying to figure out how to deal with the assimilation penalties. Am I going to be facing a challenge later? It seems to me that getting rushed by the militarists ought to be crippling, yet I appear to have come out ahead. All it took was beelining the tanks tech after war was declared.

I'm still wondering about some fairly basic things. Like, there's this 8-strength native animal wandering around, but it doesn't appear to be doing anything. Do I need to spend some of my tanks to kill it?

Are there any defensive bonuses? I see a fairly minor benefit for being in a city or HQ, but fighting in terrain seems to be all about standing on terrain that matches your unit type.

Does the 'occupation migration' completely empty out the population I captured? Did I gain anything besides land, pre-built buildings, and saving on a colonizer unit? Does that population go anywhere or is it just destroyed? I'm still losing population now that the militarists are completely destroyed as a faction...are they respawned in the fog somewhere, or is that population going to my other foes, or what?

[HansLemurson]

If a new player, unsure of the mechanics, pacing, and tradeoffs, arrogantly assumes they can tackle the AI on medium...they will find that the AI knows how to play the game better than they do.  When you become a veteran, you will notice that the AI doesn't quite play as well as you.

So, I bought the game this weekend, and played a bit on Medium.  I took the Dynasty faction, got declared on by the militarist faction pretty early...and now I own all of their stuff and am trying to figure out how to deal with the assimilation penalties.  Am I going to be facing a challenge later?  It seems to me that getting rushed by the militarists ought to be crippling, yet I appear to have come out ahead.  All it took was beelining the tanks tech after war was declared.

I'm still wondering about some fairly basic things.  Like, there's this 8-strength native animal wandering around, but it doesn't appear to be doing anything.  Do I need to spend some of my tanks to kill it?

Are there any defensive bonuses?  I see a fairly minor benefit for being in a city or HQ, but fighting in terrain seems to be all about standing on terrain that matches your unit type.

Does the 'occupation migration' completely empty out the population I captured?  Did I gain anything besides land, pre-built buildings, and saving on a colonizer unit?  Does that population go anywhere or is it just destroyed?  I'm still losing population now that the militarists are completely destroyed as a faction...are they respawned in the fog somewhere, or is that population going to my other foes, or what?

Did you buy the "Eclipse of Nashira" expansion?  The AI improvements are only present in that expansion.  The base game has dumb AI.  That said, the improved AI that is patched into the latest version of the Expansion can be a little bit trigger-happy in declaring war if it perceives you having a weak military, and doesn't take the transit-time of troops into proper consideration.  Further mod updates from AIL have fixed this, but they have not been integrated into the Expansion.

The alien life forms wandering around are mostly harmless until you get notifications that the "natives are getting restless".  The level of alien aggression increases over time, and so the large scary beasts will end up attacking you.  The arrival of humanity causes mass extinction on this planet.

There are defensive bonuses.  Infantry units in Forest and Mountains get bonuses, and you can build "city wall" improvements in your cities that grant +100% defense.  The bonuses can seem small, but the big thing about combat in Pandora is that you just need to have MORE strength than your target.  If your strength is equal to them you have a 50/50 chance of death.  If you are 25% stronger (5:4 strength ratio) or more, then you have a 100% chance of victory, but your unit will be weak afterwards and vulnerable to reprisal.  Units in fortified cities can be tough to defeat without extensive bombardment or a sacrificial assault (or two) to weaken them.

Occupation Migration looks severe at first, but decreases over time.  In total, about 50% of the original population in a captured city leaves.  If their faction of origin is still alive, then they fill up its cities, offsetting some of their losses in the war.  If the faction is eliminated, then this population just...disappears.  Capturing a city gives you a lot of free infrastructure, but isn't nearly as juicy a prize as in some other conquest games.  After capturing a city, your faction's total population (as measured by the food consumption) will jump, but then be flat for several turns as the population growth in your core cities is offset by people abandoning the captured one.

Capturing cities is actually a long-term investment, and is done more to weaken your enemy than give you strength.  Drop the taxes in that city to 0 (to increase morale), reassign everybody to be a scientist or farmer (to minimize pollution), and then just wait ~12-15 turns, and the city will start to become useful again.  After 25 turns, the last traces of conquest are gone and the city is truly yours.

(Fun fact, the way population growth works, Capturing an undefended enemy HQ early in the game (your scout sees it empty and just walks in) is actually detrimental.)

[Mardoc]

Did you buy the "Eclipse of Nashira" expansion?  The AI improvements are only present in that expansion.  The base game has dumb AI.  That said, the improved AI that is patched into the latest version of the Expansion can be a little bit trigger-happy in declaring war if it perceives you having a weak military, and doesn't take the transit-time of troops into proper consideration.  Further mod updates from AIL have fixed this, but they have not been integrated into the Expansion.

Yes, although I didn't check whether Steam automatically installed it or just the base game.  75% off the expansion if bought in the bundle was a very strong incentive to just grab the whole thing.

How do you check other factions' strength level?  I admit this is likely what happened to the AI; I had been coasting on the initial Colonial Marines, but when it declared on me I was able to get enough numbers built to kill their initial invasion.  Didn't matter that they were strength 3ish and I was strength 2, because I had an extra unit to kill them after they were wounded, and then the cleanup unit got to heal.  Then my beeline to automated factories paid off by being one branch away from tanks.  Didn't hurt that the AI went with flamethrowers (anti-infantry) so they were totally unprepared for a mechanized force, when I counterattacked.

The alien life forms wandering around are mostly harmless until you get notifications that the "natives are getting restless".  The level of alien aggression increases over time, and so the large scary beasts will end up attacking you.  The arrival of humanity causes mass extinction on this planet.

Ah, ok.  So I should go ahead and clear it out instead of deleting my leftover tanks.

The bonuses can seem small, but the big thing about combat in Pandora is that you just need to have MORE strength than your target.  If your strength is equal to them you have a 50/50 chance of death.  If you are 25% stronger (5:4 strength ratio) or more, then you have a 100% chance of victory, but your unit will be weak afterwards and vulnerable to reprisal.  Units in fortified cities can be tough to defeat without extensive bombardment or a sacrificial assault (or two) to weaken them.

The only defensive building I saw so far was something called Mobile Bunkers, IIRC, which was 50% strength.  Which did give me a bit of trouble, but researching tanks gave me a lot of margin.  I'm having trouble seeing why I would rather build bunkers than a couple extra units, though; extra units will let me counterattack.  Maybe it changes once you've already got a lot of units.

Occupation Migration looks severe at first, but decreases over time.  In total, about 50% of the original population in a captured city leaves.  If their faction of origin is still alive, then they fill up its cities, offsetting some of their losses in the war.  If the faction is eliminated, then this population just...disappears.  Capturing a city gives you a lot of free infrastructure, but isn't nearly as juicy a prize as in some other conquest games.  After capturing a city, your faction's total population (as measured by the food consumption) will jump, but then be flat for several turns as the population growth in your core cities is offset by people abandoning the captured one.

I had figured out that it was getting better, but not whether it was going to end up at a positive number or not.  Half sounds like a reasonable trade.

Capturing cities is actually a long-term investment, and is done more to weaken your enemy than give you strength.  Drop the taxes in that city to 0 (to increase morale), reassign everybody to be a scientist or farmer (to minimize pollution), and then just wait ~12-15 turns, and the city will start to become useful again.  After 25 turns, the last traces of conquest are gone and the city is truly yours.

So the pollution thing - the problem is that workers' pollution isn't modified by morale but their output is modified, which changes the balance of what's preferred?

(Fun fact, the way population growth works, Capturing an undefended enemy HQ early in the game (your scout sees it empty and just walks in) is actually detrimental.)

Huh, really?  The only penalty I see to my original cities is that I need to feed the captured citizens for a while, which means more farmers and less production for a while.  It doesn't seem to affect growth at all.  Meanwhile I do get a bunch of infrastructure for free.  Plus, the way farming and mining appears to work, it's much better to have two cities working their best tiles than one city working twice the number of tiles, even if you didn't also capture some population.  What am I missing?

I do like the production model, I think.  On the one hand, there are strong reasons to spread out - free housing, pollution control, working only the strong tiles.  On the other hand, the local multiplicative bonuses to a specific type of production, combined with global pools for food/minerals/credits, seem like a strong reason to build cities tall and specialize their production.

Is there any way to put citizens toward credit production?  It looks like the only knobs I have are the tax rate, population of city, and (later on) some bank-type buildings.  Would be nice if I could optimize my gold city to paying for my whole empire, while other cities focus on other goals.

[HansLemurson]

Did you buy the "Eclipse of Nashira" expansion?  The AI improvements are only present in that expansion.  The base game has dumb AI.  That said, the improved AI that is patched into the latest version of the Expansion can be a little bit trigger-happy in declaring war if it perceives you having a weak military, and doesn't take the transit-time of troops into proper consideration.  Further mod updates from AIL have fixed this, but they have not been integrated into the Expansion.

Yes, although I didn't check whether Steam automatically installed it or just the base game.  75% off the expansion if bought in the bundle was a very strong incentive to just grab the whole thing.

Double check that you are using the expansion.  You may very well be, and it may just be that your innate competence allowed you to prevail over an overly aggressive foe that overextended themselves.

How do you check other factions' strength level?  I admit this is likely what happened to the AI; I had been coasting on the initial Colonial Marines, but when it declared on me I was able to get enough numbers built to kill their initial invasion.  Didn't matter that they were strength 3ish and I was strength 2, because I had an extra unit to kill them after they were wounded, and then the cleanup unit got to heal.  Then my beeline to automated factories paid off by being one branch away from tanks.  Didn't hurt that the AI went with flamethrowers (anti-infantry) so they were totally unprepared for a mechanized force, when I counterattacked.

The UI is a little weak for viewing other factions, but the Diplomacy menu will tell you the relative strengths of the factions compared to you in Science, Military, and Economy.  If it says they have a stronger military, they will be more prone to attacking.  Your military advisor in your military tab will also give you an evaluation of how your military stands overall in the world rankings, but no numbers are used.
In general the diplomatic model in Pandora is: "Si vis pacem, para bellum."

It looks like you did ok in Military though.  Tanks are valuable because they are the first unit that really holds a lot of strength.  Because fights greatly deplete the strength of the victor, though you can win with superior numbers of lower quality troops.  The "total strength" rating is what matters for winning battles.  However, be wary of wars of attrition, since your victories will be costly.

Improved military technology in Pandora results in you being able to pack more power into a unit, but the Cost/Power remains roughly constant.  Tanks are 2x as strong ans Infantry and 2x as expensive.  They are 90% less likely to die, though.  Infantry's main role is as cost-effective defenders due to the bonuses they can get.  But beware wars of attrition, since although you can use numbers to make up for lack of tech, the total cost of the two armies is actually the same.

The alien life forms wandering around are mostly harmless until you get notifications that the "natives are getting restless".  The level of alien aggression increases over time, and so the large scary beasts will end up attacking you.  The arrival of humanity causes mass extinction on this planet.

Ah, ok.  So I should go ahead and clear it out instead of deleting my leftover tanks.

I strongly recommend NEVER disbanding units.  Their maintenance cost is really quite low, and obsolete units can still serve as garrisons or scouts.  You paid good minerals for those units, and minerals are the primary bottleneck in the game. They can also be upgraded to newer models, though this can be expensive.  Best to reserve this for your most elite units.

The bonuses can seem small, but the big thing about combat in Pandora is that you just need to have MORE strength than your target.  If your strength is equal to them you have a 50/50 chance of death.  If you are 25% stronger (5:4 strength ratio) or more, then you have a 100% chance of victory, but your unit will be weak afterwards and vulnerable to reprisal.  Units in fortified cities can be tough to defeat without extensive bombardment or a sacrificial assault (or two) to weaken them.

The only defensive building I saw so far was something called Mobile Bunkers, IIRC, which was 50% strength.  Which did give me a bit of trouble, but researching tanks gave me a lot of margin.  I'm having trouble seeing why I would rather build bunkers than a couple extra units, though; extra units will let me counterattack.  Maybe it changes once you've already got a lot of units.

The Adaptive Bunker Wall does only give +50% defense, but it's pretty cheap, about half the price of a tank.  If your military is good though, you will rarely have your cities attacked directly, so the bonus you will appreciate most from it is the +100% defense against "Operations" like Orbital-Bombardment or Nuclear-Strikes.  The AI knows how to use orbital bombardments to besiege your cities and prevent the defenders from healing.  It can be pretty frightening watching your HP whittle away as the enemy fleet waits for your defenders to falter.  The Adaptive Bunker can let your units hold out long enough until they get reinforcements.  Mid-game units cost around 200 production, so your perception of prices shifts greatly.

Also, the 2nd-Age and 3rd-Age defensive buildings provide a +100% and +200% combat defensive bonus to your units (cumulative, for a total of +350%), which can make conquering cities very very painful in the late game.

I had figured out that it was getting better, but not whether it was going to end up at a positive number or not.  Half sounds like a reasonable trade.

When you capture a city, it starts with 25 "Takeover Points", which each cause -1 morale and the exodus of 0.2% of the population.  (This means on the first turn you have a -25 morale penalty, and lose 5% of the population.)  Each turn the "Takeover Points" decreases by 1 and the effects lessen proportionally.  After 5 turns, you've already lost half of all the population that you are going to lose, so the bleeding stops pretty quick.
The big plus is that you capture all of the city's buildings intact, which usually have a total value equal to the army you used to conquer it.

So the pollution thing - the problem is that workers' pollution isn't modified by morale but their output is modified, which changes the balance of what's preferred?

Yes, all workers produce a fixed amount of pollution (based on their job) regardless of their productivity.  In truth it doesn't really matter what you assign the labor to in a newly captured city, since -25 morale means a -100% production penalty.  You just don't want excess pollution pushing the morale down any lower than it already is.  Your pollution problems will quickly disappear however as the population flees the city.

(Fun fact, the way population growth works, Capturing an undefended enemy HQ early in the game (your scout sees it empty and just walks in) is actually detrimental.)

Huh, really?  The only penalty I see to my original cities is that I need to feed the captured citizens for a while, which means more farmers and less production for a while.  It doesn't seem to affect growth at all.  Meanwhile I do get a bunch of infrastructure for free.  Plus, the way farming and mining appears to work, it's much better to have two cities working their best tiles than one city working twice the number of tiles, even if you didn't also capture some population.  What am I missing?

Yes, this is a subtle thing.  The population growth in Pandora starts out with Linear growth, then later transitions into an Exponential growth regime.  "Baby Points" are produced by each citizen, but the growth-cost increases the more citizens you have.  In the early game (first ~10 turns), if you capture the enemy HQ, you double your population (and hence the early linear growth costs) but you do so with totally unproductive citizens.  The new city adds nothing to your strength, while your Capital is now growing slower than before.  Once things stabilize, you have about as much population as you would have if you'd stayed home, but now it's split between two different cities that each need their own defenders and their own buildings (because the AI wasn't polite enough to build them for you yet), which cost minerals you don't have.  Also the AI factions get annoyed when a player captures a city, and downright angry when somebody eliminates a faction.  

If you conquer too early, you quickly find that your reach exceeds your grasp.

I do like the production model, I think.  On the one hand, there are strong reasons to spread out - free housing, pollution control, working only the strong tiles.  On the other hand, the local multiplicative bonuses to a specific type of production, combined with global pools for food/minerals/credits, seem like a strong reason to build cities tall and specialize their production.

Yes, it's quite interesting.  Always looking for a balance between two different efficiencies.  Building and developing new cities is very mineral-intensive, but the extra housing and pollution-capacity lets you use the land around you with much greater productivity.  A Mine is much more valuable than a Suburb.

Is there any way to put citizens toward credit production?  It looks like the only knobs I have are the tax rate, population of city, and (later on) some bank-type buildings.  Would be nice if I could optimize my gold city to paying for my whole empire, while other cities focus on other goals.

No, the only knob is tax rate.  There isn't as much city-specialization in Pandora as a Civilization-player might prefer.  There are resources which enhance the per-citizen credit yield, which makes these cities work more efficiently at high taxation rates, and provides and incentive for the player to build lots of housing there to concentrate population in these cities, but it's unlikely to "carry" the rest of the empire.  The Tax-slider isn't about gaining money per se, so much as it is about trading Credit-Income for Production Boosts from the enhanced morale.  Think of it more like the taxation in Master of Orion, where you are exchanging Local production for Global production.

If you want to know even more in-depth information, I wrote a strategy guide for the game.  It's a good read.

[Mardoc]

It looks like you did ok in Military though.  Tanks are valuable because they are the first unit that really holds a lot of strength.  Because fights greatly deplete the strength of the victor, though you can win with superior numbers of lower quality troops.  The "total strength" rating is what matters for winning battles.  However, be wary of wars of attrition, since your victories will be costly.

This makes sense - but I suspect a war of attrition is still better than losing a war. Really it's probably about carefully picking your wars rather than the exact details. Seems like there's enough rock-paper-scissors aspects to the weapons and equipment to make strategic planning important - that is, don't just build military, choose your fight and build the military you'll need for that fight.

Improved military technology in Pandora results in you being able to pack more power into a unit, but the Cost/Power remains roughly constant.  Tanks are 2x as strong ans Infantry and 2x as expensive.  They are 90% less likely to die, though.

Plus, their maintenance cost seems to be the same per unit, which means half as much per power.

 Infantry's main role is as cost-effective defenders due to the bonuses they can get.  But beware wars of attrition, since although you can use numbers to make up for lack of tech, the total cost of the two armies is actually the same.

Maybe it's just the contrast between tanks and Colonial Marines, but defending doesn't seem worthwhile so far. Seems like the best approach is to take the initiative, at least enough to control the terrain and approaches to your civ.

I'm also leaning against garrisoning every city. Unlike in civ, it doesn't seem to grant any morale benefit to the city itself, and if you're controlling the terrain, your cities are safe anyway. Unless there are paratroopers or something equivalent later on, anyway.

I strongly recommend NEVER disbanding units.  Their maintenance cost is really quite low, and obsolete units can still serve as garrisons or scouts.  You paid good minerals for those units, and minerals are the primary bottleneck in the game.  They can also be upgraded to newer models, though this can be expensive.  Best to reserve this for your most elite units.

Huh, the game must change substantially once it's out of the early phases. At the moment my primary bottleneck appears to be population - if I had more population I could easily get more minerals. The upkeep cost of the army doesn't seem negligible either, and credits can turn into production later, so I was thinking of saving up the credits. I do have aliens I can fight, though, so I'll find a use for what I've got.

If you want to know even more in-depth information, I wrote a strategy guide for the game.  It's a good read.

Thanks, that was a good read. The general theme of minerals as bottleneck pervades everything you've written, so I'll take that as given. It makes me want to figure out a way to break that limit, but obviously I don't have anything useful to say yet.

[HansLemurson]

You are right in your observation that Population is the primary bottleneck, because Population = Power. However you are fairly limited in what you can do to increase your population. Building new colonies doesn't expand your population (unlike in Civilization), it just gives it more room to spread out.

There are only 3 ways to enhance your faction's population:
-Producing "Growth", which converts city production into population. Requires Minerals.
-Building growth-buildings, like the "Gene Therapy Clinic". Requires Minerals.
-Conquering a city, which requires that you build an army capable of overwhelming a city's defenders and holding it against counter-attack. Requires Minerals.

Your population growth is like a big heavy wagon that you can shepherd and guide, but you can't really change it's direction without some major effort, which requires minerals.

Minerals themselves on the other hand, you have much greater control over, since you can allocate population, build mines, build city improvements, choose how your territory expands, and choose your new city locations with an eye to maintaining a steady supply of Minerals. Thus, mineral acquisition is the primary "lever" you have for controlling how your Faction grows.

Once you have enough minerals though, then the game's strategy opens up, and you have to consider how to balance all your resources while maintaining defense and morale. But you can't sit still, because your population is always, always growing...and so is your enemy's.

...
Oh, I forgot to ask: What difficulty are you playing on? I forgot that the AI difficulty levels were renamed, so "Hard" is where the AI fights with no handicaps or bonuses.