Flipping minors, a question.

Alexians are easy to flip.

Some other minors are flippable, I-League for instance.

But most of the remaining minors can not be flipped.

Minors get a very high cultural resistance rating. I think the I-League gets the highest rating, plus they tend to get more planets so they have a higher base influence.

It is possible to flip any minor, but sometimes several party palaces may be needed.

Also as most minors only have a capital and capitals are almost impossible to flip this makes it very hard to flip minors but why AI planets with no capital will flip to your side.

~SDC~

Not true - capitals will flip. I've had both Major & Minor race capitals convert in games on the higher difficulty levels.

Extort the minors in your sectors as soon as you run into them. This will limit their ability to create a good defense and you can simply irradicate them at a later time. Why wait for culture!? LOL

~SDC~

#2

Agree with fsk+. It is possible to flip any Minor, but a large culture superiority is needed. Generally, I set up not 1, but 2-3 culture palaces: 1 in the target sector, and 1-2 adjacent. This usually puts it into dissatisfaction (red smiley icon).

To accelerate the process, trade with the Minor to deplete its treasury. Minors will spend available cash reserves on propaganda and morale-improvements to resist your cultural influence.

~SDC~

Remember that a party palace in the target sector is 5x as effective as in an adjacent sector. Unless you're looking to flip several sectors, or don't want to piss off a major, you should build the party palace in the target sector. As a bonus, you can put your +production modules on the starbase after you flip the planet.

Also note that multiple party palaces appear to *MULTIPLY*, not add. That is, two +200% culture starbases appear to yield a +800% bonus, not a +400% bonus. Try it: build 5 party palaces in a sector, and use F8 to compare influence with 4 palaces, 3 palaces, etc.. So, you really want to have them in the same sector.

There tends to be a "domino theory" for flipping planets. Once you flip one sector, adjacent sectors tend to fall quickly. So, targetting one sector is usually most efficient.

Let x be your base culture value.

Build one party palace, culture = x + 200% x = 3x
Build two party palaces, culture = 3x + 200%(3x) = 9x = x + 800% x
Three? culture = 9x + 200%(9x) = 27x !!!!!

Am I right about this?


~SDC~

#5 by Citizen OronHaus - 6/18/2003 9:01:01 AM

Extort the minors in your sectors as soon as you run into them. This will limit their ability to create a good defense and you can simply irradicate them at a later time. Why wait for culture!?

I do the opposite. I sell stuff to the nearby minor early on to finance my growth (including selling them a colony so they colonise a second sector). I only charge them enough to pay for my needs so they can finance a fleet and pay for their improvements. Then I trade with them and give them techs so they get very powerful and relations become close. The downside of this strategy is the other majors appear to extort some of this tech from those minors until the minors are strong enough to stand up for themselves.

Later on I get a "close" minor, which depends on trade with me for a maybe half its' income, with 20 or 30 (or more) battleships and dreadnoughts in or near my territory. I find this most comforting. I find they are normally very, very quick to back me up if I get into a war.

As I tend to be rather slack about my military this proved very useful in a couple of games.

One game, although I had dreadnought technology I had only built a few battleships. The Drengin built up without me paying any attention to the military strength graph. Umh, they sent a hordes of battleships to invade. Carinoid and Alexian battleships and dreadnoughts (with some help from my lousy obsolete little fleet) made mincemeat of the Drengin navy. So much so that I could send in UNESCORTED transports. I gave the minors dreadnought technology at no charge, it was worth it. Without the minors, I would have been deadmeat. The huge amounts of starbase enhanced trade I was doing with the minors enabled them to support large fleets, my reserve navy.

Strengthening the minors works very well for me at normal difficulty level, medium galaxy. (I do not go for a conquest win and I want to avoid becoming so large that I trigger a cultural victory).

For me minors are worth far more alive than dead.

Minors are great sources of income. The biggest problem can be keeping them alive as the AI loves to extort & conquer them. In a couple of games I've had to build max strength defensive Starbases in their sector & gift them along with multi Rangers to keep them alive: something that was very important as I had 5+ trade routes to them!

There is nothing wrong with this approach! It really depends on the style you are playing that particular game. I'm in the middle of one right now where it backfired. After beating down the culture economically, the Torians were able to exert more influence than I, and the system defected to them!

#11 OronHaus

Umh. I really can't say whether it is best to snap up the minors or keep them alive and onside. For me, with my peaceful strategy, it works out much better to have at least one pet minor. OTH I grabbed both minors very early in one game and that worked out very well. I was trying an aggressive strategy and there was little room for me to expand.

I think it may depend upon both playing style and game circumstances. Keeping pet minors seems more of a long term investment strategy whereas capturing them (after selling them stuff to get all their money)provides immediate benefit. Oh, and those Alexians can be hard to keep as they so prone to flipping.

It seems from your post that you have tried both ways with minors. I would be interested in hearing your ideas about when and whether they should be kept or captured. What do you think?

Not quite. They're additive, not mulplicative. x+2x+2x+2x=7x

And with reference to flipping minors, all non-event minor races (to include generic 'new minor' races) have an inherent Loyalty rating (the racial version of influence_resist).

Event races have specifica starting stats that likely also includes some degree of Loyalty for most of them, plus they aren't run like minors, which means they can also gather significant culture, just like the majors.

Whether to keep them around or subsume them depends largely on your playstyle. I tend to use them as a secondary research source (research long techs myself and trade money or ships for the lesser ones).

~SDC~

Peter,

Minors can be milked. If you can keep your technology a bit ahead of theirs, you can offer them your newest techs for BC at month intervals. This usually keeps them at bay as they can't front a decent military. I've tried doing it by attacking them first, which also works but the monetary potential isn't quite the same at first (until the colony/colonies exist under your control for some time). I've also ignored them and had decent battles late game taking them out. It really depends on the approach to winning you are taking. If you are taking a militaristic approach, by the time late game comes, you should be able to walk over them.

Arturus Magi: On the culture value of starbases, I think the truth is somewhere in between. Take a sector where you have some influence, but not a large amount, build 10 maxed cultural starbases, and you'll wind up with a cultural multiplier well over 1000. If that were purely additive, each starbase would have to have been worth 100x.

not so, every starbase contributes quite a bit of influence

the bonus culture is additive, but the total effect increases according to a square function

for example:

1 starbase with +200% culture
produces X base points of influence for 3X total influence


10 starbases with +200% culture
bonuses + 200% * 10 = 2000%
every starbase contributes X points of influence
10X base influence in sector

210X total influence (from starbases alone)

(this will flip just about anything)

The net effect appears larger because of how influence leeches out into other sectors. Those outside sectors now higher influences then eventually leech back into the original sector (as described in the undocs, and presumably included in the new manual). Starbases are not needed at all for this effect, and the increase is exactly as noted if you wait until the final state before building the starbase. The problem is that the final state is rarely ever actually reached because the base influence is changing as population and planet quality at your colonies, and your total number of colonies, increases.

~SDC~

I understand the mechanics, and the feedback loop. The 20M sector influence I described in the other thread was on the turn immediately after I built the cultural starbases, before the feedback could boost the influence.

What the hell does flipped mean!!!!
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

Flipped refers to using culture to take over a planet. Basicly, it 'flips over' to your side.

Woe be we who are up at all hours... The joke is a lost art form on us...

~SDC~

OronHaus

Do Minors attack? I have never had a Minor attack me or threaten me. (Although I assume the Fundamentalists may attack if I were evil).

OTH I did once see a message that the Carinoids destabilising the Drengin and I though Minors were completely docile.

minors can be very annoying if you dont take care of them, and/or make them allies.

on higher difficulties they (The Carinoids) (are they not the strongest minor race in the game?) have desolated my fleet of dreadnaughts and 2 excaliburs ( !!! they took out my lovely excaliburs!!! )
and although they had destroyed my fllet... i do not think the minor races are programmed to take new stars... cus i was wide open and they just acted like my star didnt exist.


just a question, since excaliburs have 400+ hp, how can 10-30 dreads take 2 out?.....

and that is after fighting about 15 dreads

The I-League, the Draginol, the Dark Arnor, the Fundimentalists, and the Calor/Venge are a speical class of minor races that have all of the abilities that major races do. They can, and often will, threaten and declare war on various races, culture flip planets, and could potentially win the game. They just don't count for your competion of the victory conditions.

Other minors will not declare war without some special motivation from another source, and cannot expand beyond their initial sector, although they can invade existing colonies in that sector if given transports (they never build them themselves, AFAIK).

~SDC~