Good day,

I was curious about which upgrades and research were considered by most people to be a waste of resources.

Upgrades, such as making towers 225% more powerful, are obvious choices, as are AT-AT upgrades, most war center research, and upgrading my birthday cake from regular vanilla to french vanilla.

Stuff like making troops 10% faster or ore miners 15% faster are more questionable. Plus there's the fact that no matter what the description says, some upgrades and research may not act as advertised. For instance, does upgrading Dark Troopers to level 2 really make them that much more bad ass for the price or does it merely give them +1/+1 and improve their knowledge of post-modern impressionist art?

Until later in the game, valuable resources like ore, carbon, and Lamb's candy should not be spent frivoulously. Does anyone know, from vast experience or rigorous testing, which upgrades and research are a waste of good resources?

(Let me add that I'm not asking what the best upgrades or research are; those are obvious. I would just like to know what NOT to do)

Thanks in advance,
SirKai

Increasing worker efficiency is not (as you stated) "questionable." It's essential to consistently beat your opponent, unless you want to rush and hope you've got him beat. For consistency in a "normal" game, you need resources, resources, resources. The upgrades are cumulative, remember. And you get one in each age.

So, for example (I'm just making numbers up, but the idea will remain the same when you plug in the real ones from the game), imagine an ore miner gathers 10 ore per minute.

Age 2, you make him 10% faster. Now he gathers 11 ore per minute.

Age 3 you make him 20% faster than he currently is. That's +20% of 11, not 10, so now he gathers 13.2 ore/minute.

Age 4, you make him 20% faster, again, from what he currently is. That's 20% faster than 13.2, or 15.8 ore/minute. If you do this, and your opponent does not, and you both have, say, 5 guys gathering ore, you're gathering it at almost 60% faster speed than he is. He'd need to have 8 guys on ore to equal the intake of your 5 guys.

Now, this adds up across worker types. Imagine your carbon and nova guys also get upgraded, and his don't. You can do the same work with 15 workers that it takes him 24 to do... those 9 spare workers, can be turned into builders, if you want, or better yet, you don't need them! You can use their 9 population quota to build 9 more military units than he can. All other things being equal, that would almost guarantee you a win, since you'll have a larger army.

I try to buy all the improvements over time. I consider, in fact, the worker improvements to be much more important than the military ones early on, because the build on themselves. If you get all the worker improvements (including the speed upgrades at the command center), by age 4 your workers will be pulling in so much food, nova, ore, and carbon you won't know what to do with it. Then you can use it to buy all those fancy-shmancy military upgrades.

Last night, I didn't have time to finish a 2-on-2 game against the comp (medium). I'm playing the Trade Fed for once (I don't like the TF much, so I only play them rarely). I stopped about 1.5 hrs into it... it's pretty clear from the way the battles have gone to protect my ally (the computer team has been pressuring him pretty badly, but I've managed to defend him successfully with a team of 15 Droidekas and a few worker/repairers), that I am not in any danger, and it will probably be just a matter of time before I win. As I quit the game for the night, the game took me to the ol' statistics screen. I clicked on the tech menu, and noticed I had developed 90 techs, while the computer guys had developed 60 or less each. Just seeing that stat, tells me I am automatically going to win. There's no way they could catch me, even if the computer "realized" that it should've developed more techs and started to try now. It's too late. All my development is done, and my workers are farming, carboning, and nova-ing so fast, and my troops (because of the troop building time upgrade) are made so rapidly, that I can build a devastating army in the blink of an eye and go crush the bad guys while they are still trying to develop techs.

The moral of the story, at least if you're not playing a "quick rush" type game, is that development is a good thing. Very few of the techs (except maybe the building line of sight ones) are useless. Most are essential to developing a powerful empire.

May the Force be with you.

Originally posted by SirKai
Good day,



Stuff like making troops 10% faster or ore miners 15% faster are more questionable



Thanks in advance,
SirKai

If you dont boost your eco you will severly get hurt by any half decent player! :rolleyes:

The best question u asked was regarding phase 2 dark troopers. Ive often wondered that myself. anyone with any opinions?

Of course with airspeeders, DD's and crusaders i try to avoid using at t3 becasue if your paying nova you really should double their hitpoints with the shields

those turret upgrades help tho...

i don't think the trooper speed helps any tho.

Originally posted by Rogue15


i don't think the trooper speed helps any tho.

Of course it does - it helps get him out of the line of fire quicker ;)

Phase 2 DT's get I think 20+ hit pionts and 2+ attack it's worth it if you have the money.

I've found that the best thing to do is build a Research Facility as soon as you can. That way, you have access to all the defensive upgrades. Once you have decent defenses, you should build a War Center for the offensive upgrades.

One upgrade that I usually don't bother with is Attack Programming, which you can get at the Fortress. What it does it give your workers +15 attack against buildings, turrets, and walls for the price of 400 food, 200 nova. Now answer me this: who's going to storm a base with their workers?

Still...+15 is nothing to sneeze at...perhaps I should try it some time. See how fast those little guys can take down a turret. Maybe they're a decent alternative to the pummels! I doubt it though. But at least they move faster and are cheaper...

Another I don't bother with is Bacta Tanks, which can be found at your command center (only certain civs though, I think). It heals garrisoned units 4x faster than regular (psst...did you know that garrisoned units heal at all?). I only garrison units in turrets, so why would you need this? Costs 200 food, 300 nova.

And maybe I'm just not one for healing my units, but Wookies have Regeneration, which I've never used. Costs 650 food, 325 carbon, and 350 nova. Ouch. I just send a few medics with all my biological units. It's not like they heal much faster.

But wait, what's this? Troop Center units gain +30 hit points and +2 duraarmor? Hmm...maybe it's not as useless as I thought. Still, it's an expensive upgrade. At least it's not taking more of your precious ore.


A good rule of thumb is, don't upgrade stuff you're not going to use. I usually don't use air bombers, so I don't need the Increased Bombloads and all that.