Advent - Flipping homeworlds like pancakes

from Sins Forums
It has finally been done. Me and another Advent player, despite all odds (and a few TEC incursions into our space) knocked out an opposing player's homeworld and colony using only culture. I suggest you try it too, if you enjoy turtling and "epic lols".

The player in question had an ally constantly raiding us and had nearly wiped out one of the major colonies of my teammate. We thought we were going to lose, but snickered as their tax income dwindled. Finally, we got the "*x* has been defeated" message and broke into e-laughter. It was a beautiful thing. BOTH of his colonies were flipped via culture, without firing a single shot. This player had a huge fleet with tons of LRM and all we had was a few Disciple frigates and yet we overthrew his homeworld without firing a single shot at his planet.

You can download the recorded game here. It is clearly just as awe-inspiring as the Advent themselves. All hail the Unity!
strategy
26,584 views 42 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Awesome, but a question on the Advent, I'm playing them now. Do the effects of the broadcasting centers regardless of their position in your empire stack on top of one another? Or do you build just one?
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Culture spread does stack :)

Note, though, that allegiance is not the same as culture, and it caps at .05 (increasing or decreasing). Basically, the more culture you have the harder it will make it for the enemy to push it back, but it will still take a while for the allegiance to drop because it's capped whereas culture spread is not.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
You would have loved the betas; you could take control of the planets. (Unless you still can)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Nope, you can't anymore. They go neutral now, don't flip over anymore :P
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
You would have loved the betas; you could take control of the planets. (Unless you still can)


I read somewhere on here that when someone looses a planet to culture it goes neutral. However after that supposedly only the player who's culture is dominant in that paticular grav well can colonize it. So not directly, it seems it takes a bit more work than it does in Gal Civ 2. Please someone feel free to correct me if I am wrong.  :LOL: 
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Awesome, but a question on the Advent, I'm playing them now. Do the effects of the broadcasting centers regardless of their position in your empire stack on top of one another? Or do you build just one?


They stack but I've found it's much more effective to simply build one per planet. In this game, i had one planet linked to one of the enemy's planets and one with a asteroid in the middle (the culture spread "around" the asteroid into the phase lane to the planet I wanted). That was mirrored on the other side by the other player, so we had one direct-link to culture and one through another planet. The planet was taken in about an hour and 15 minutes while we barely held off tons of ships.

You would have loved the betas; you could take control of the planets. (Unless you still can)


I was in Beta 2 :)

EDIT: Turns out he didn't have the other colony, after seeing the replay. Well, it's still pretty impressive :D

EDIT2: One allegiance point gone every 18 seconds (consistent with the 0.05 figure), so potentially if you maxed out allegiance you could flip a 100% homeworld in a half hour or a 110% in 33 minutes.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top


They stack but I've found it's much more effective to simply build one per planet.


The advantage to stacking lies in defeating enemy culture attempts. A fully "stacked" desert world can pose a significant threat to most of the galaxy, for example.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Isn't that kind of imba if the player can't do anything about it?
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
EDIT2: One allegiance point gone every 18 seconds (consistent with the 0.05 figure), so potentially if you maxed out allegiance you could flip a 100% homeworld in a half hour or a 110% in 33 minutes.


The easy to way to see allegiance changes is to select the planet in question, and if you have sight in its grav well, you'll be able to hover your mouse of the middle stat box directly left of the planet portrait on the bottom ;)

You can try it for one of your planets, it'll show you max/current/change :)

Isn't that kind of imba if the player can't do anything about it?


There are many things the player can do about it. There are research techs that slow the spread of hostile culture. Friendly capital ships push hostile culture back, and your own culture fights it. Plus, you can always go and blow up your enemy's broadcast centers.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Isn't that kind of imba if the player can't do anything about it?


this wont work against any decent player/team.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks for all the great responses guys. This will give me a needed boost to my current game.(First time playing the Advent.)  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Why waist the money and time to play thhis game if that is all you need to do to win it?......I'll stay with space empires in this case......
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

Why waist the money and time to play thhis game if that is all you need to do to win it?......I'll stay with space empires in this case......


Clearly, this is the only strategy employed by any player in a multiplayer game ever. In fact, I haven't seen a Cobalt in two months! We should rename this game "Action Movies Exported Interstellarly By A Solar Empire". You don't even want to know what the Advent are putting out these days. "Guide me" and "enemas" and all that. It's not very tasteful.

In all seriousness, this tactic is easily countered, I was lucky as were my allies. But if you think culture is not an interesting weapon, you shouldn't be playing this game, because it has more depth than just shooty laser guns. Culture is a very integral part of winning MP games, this is just a fluke exaggeration. This map tends to be one where if someone spawns in the "middle" you can surround them by taking their planets, in this case we surrounded them with culture instead because that's really what the Advent do well.

Thanks for all the great responses guys. This will give me a needed boost to my current game.(First time playing the Advent.)


Yeah, this is the big deal for the Advent. The TEC get trade early on, you get culture. The Vasari get something I forget about. Anyway, you need to be spreading culture as quickly as possible in the early game as close as possible to your enemies if you can. Depriving them of resources (credits) slowly but surely will guarantee your dominance in the area. Combine this with hit and run attacks on resource extractors and they'll be lucky if they can build a couple scout frigates.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
heck yeah, sometime ago i lost against Advent computer player mind you. Neither of us fired a shot & thus my culture tech (i was vasari i think) was so deep in the tech tree i was done :D. .. humiliating
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
this worked wonders on my first 2-3 days, but since then I've seen a lot of people who are smart about influence..etc, if you exclude the super weapons the advantage advent have overall across a longer game in spreading influence is tiny (assuming all players actually start making influence spreading buildings) and when including the super weapons some of the others are also quite good in damaging allegiance..etc, e.g. a smart tec player can instantly make you temporary lose ~30%-50% allegiance across the whole empire once he has 2 novaliths in the same system as your homeworld(2 to do 7000 damage to the homeplanet) and if the tec player finds your new homeworld, it will occur again.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
I have a question everyone. I'm playing as Vasari (sp?) and want to take over a planet that has a heavy culture rating. I destroyed everything in the planet system, and the planet is empty. What do I do to colonize the planet for myself?
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
wow that's going to take a long time. And what do i do if there's no planets where I can put media centers?

i appreciate the help though, thanks
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
yeah...thats really odd..same thing happened to me...i cant take over a planet becouse its culture.I have killed entire populace and i cant take it over???...thats, thats odd...makes no sense why i cant take over it now that its EMPTY :/

I hope they add soldiers, infantry, ground combat in the game. Not that it has to be playble, something similiar to GC2...

although prettys cinematics for combat would be appreciated :)
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
Bomb the living crap out of nearby media hubs in other gravity wells.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
I have a question, how far out does a media hub broadcast? 2 connected planets? or is it unlimited and spreads indefinitely?
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
wow that's going to take a long time. And what do i do if there's no planets where I can put media centers?


I believe that capital ships reduce the presence of hostile culture in a gravity well; so you could park one over the colony in question until enough culture was gone for you to colonize.

(Does that work, beta veterans? Or do capships only push back culture on worlds you control?)