Do you use leases?

I always lease wonders under Mitro. I never seem to be hurt by that, but leasing ships would be a bit out of the question. Although I've had to during emergency colony ship creations (cause a planet is worth more than a lease)

only if i'm evil and i hit the event that reduces the lease duration at least a couple of times and typically only for trade goods/wonders.

I suspect that I'll be using them a lot more now that the system is much improved. Mitrosoft *used* to be a no-brainer to the point that I feel it was largely broken in terms of balancce. Now, the 2nd option is usually only a little bit more expensive than the outright buy but lets you spread the pain for a few years and keep an economy instead of just shutting down to rush buy that thing you need NOW.

I tend not to lease enough on things important like Trade Goods or Galactic Wonders, so I sometimes lose them. In these cases, leasing is just focusing you whole economy for N turns on a single planet.
I sometimes lease ships, but only in dire situations if I need a big defender (dread, hammer...) to get rid of an incoming transport on a defenseless planet for example.

I use leases for the really important wonders that aid my playing style.

Galactic Stock Exchange gets bought, usually before it is half way done, because the extra economy boost absorbs the lease. (Unless a quarter of your economy is worth less than the 14-15 BC a month the never-ending Mitrosoft lease, but I don't ever have an economy that small by the time I can build it.)

Gravity Accellerators get bought immediately. Speed is life in my fighter pilot type of guerilla warfare. And Eyes of the Universe get bought. Speeding through the night without headlights only means kamikaze warfare, not guerilla warfare. I don't want my attack ships getting overextended and destroyed because of short-sighted slashes that do not think about recovery. Sacrifice a ship when you have to, but not because some impulsive attack launched due to bad intelligence leaves you totally out of position.

Most other wonders and trade goods get built the old fashioned way on super systems that have starbase augmented production.

I find that I try to get 30%-70% of "normal" production in before a lease. The reason is that if an AI beats me to a wonder I just started, I haven't wasted much. If the AI beats me by 1 turn, I lose many turns of production. I find that I'm mostly buying outright, but that's because I do lots of tech trading for extra cash.

Also, when I acquire a planet late in the game, I will outright buy Soil Enhancement, Habitat Improvement, and Entertainment Network.

I've used the lease option early on, and generally only if I'm rushing constructors to beat out a computer in a foot race for a resource. I think the only other time I resorted to leasing was getting an emergency force in place because the AI felt that human genocide was an option

SeanB

Using of lease for me is quite different for different map size. For larger maps never-ending Mitrosoft lease 40-60 per month can be easily survived, but on tiny map it may crush your economy.

Certainly I use fsk+ strategy also. I found that after changing lease system in late game I sometime use other lease options than Mitrosoft.

I rarely use leases anymore. I guess it depends on your playing style and difficulty level. They are quite disadvantegous at higher diff levels, IMHO. Anyway, I stopped relying on wonders and trade goods and instead focus on getting resource starbases. And I don't care about the early game rush - it is just too easy to grab resources off recently destroyed starbases later in the game. Or just buy them outright from the AI (~10k gc's).

I use leases all the time.
Never for ships, always for trade goods and wonders.

They only time I don't do it is if I have a really good planet that can make a trade good in less than 10 turns.

I think of it as (for example, Galactic Stock Exchange) not just a bonus to my empire... but a bonus the AI won't get.

I lease, mostly just with trade goods and galactic wonders, as does seemingly everyone else. Do the AIs perchance have the ability to lease?

Anyways, I mostly use mitrosoft, but it depends on the situation really. If its a ship being built, and its rushed, it almost always is the galactic manufacturing Corps that does it; no long term pain!

Of course, only if the ship is partialy built; i use GMC to 'finish' building ships that are like 80%-90% done, and i've set military to zero, and devoted all else to social and research.

#10

Exactly, Henrik. My own play style has changed towards this as well.

Under 1.04 & .05, I no longer worry about the early game colony rush. Instead, I concentrate on resources, selectively colonizing those systems in sectors with them, especially Economic and Military.

Once I have 1-2 fully developed SB's providing a +30-68% bonus in each of these areas, I add the production modules (military & social building bonuses) to develop 2-3 ship production centers.

At this point, I research Dreadnoughts, produce 10-12 of them, and go to war with the weakest AI. Once subjugated, I redeploy and repeat the process. It is possible to effectivly win most games, even on Large/Huge maps, with this strategy. Rarely do I even bother colonizing planets less than 18PQ, unless they are the only ones available in a resource sector.

~SDC~

After the changes to the leasing code, it seems like the second leasing option (Terran Manufacturing?) is almost always _cheaper_ than a straight buy. I could be screwing up the math in my head, but I don't think so...