Right Im new around here so Ill get to the point - How on earth do you make money playing as the Yor - Ive looked everywhere for strategies - Ive found all sorts of things but no guide on how to play as the Yor.
I Have played custom games as the Terran and the Korath I won't claim to be awesome but I am competent I am playing at a level or two above normal, and I seem to do quite well.
But the Yor vex me they don't have economic structures - they have economic techs but no equivalent to the Markets - I could of course trade for them - but that does not strike me as efficient because I can't build economy worlds
Any ideas?
Well, the first solution is to trade for economic buildings from another race, but I prefer not to do this. I am playing the Yor right now as well, and have found that their economy is actually quite efficient once it gets going.
1. Building all of your 1pp structures on each planet, along with a stalk. This will have each planet generating research, as well as boosting population and moral.
2. Work your way down the Efficiency tech tree, and get the efficiency centers, which is their economic building, and place one of these on each world as well.
3. Build a recruitment center on each world, for their econ bonus.If you do this, combined with trade, you should have planets that end up producing more than they spend, and in the end you are taking in a significant surplus. You can create econ worlds as well, by building 2-3 charging stalks on each world, along with the other buildings, and little else. Build as many stalks as you think the population can handle. One bonus of only being able to use imperial government is that approval matters little except for population growth, so you can crank up the taxes.
Thank you that was a great help I did that and my econ stabilized.
A thought occurs to me in the case of the Yor is there an argument for not specializing?
Well, let's assume you're playing without foreign techs then building super-econ planets with the Yor is not possible, as their only economic structure (the Efficiency Center) is 1-per-planet only.
However, researching down their "Efficiency Studies" techtree will give you +45% econ increase, alongsinde with the +25% from the structure, as well as +10% from racial which will built up together as +80% throughout all planets which is quite strong, although not so strong as other civs (when you focus on all-econ and build 2 farms, 1 moral, rest all stockmarkets.)
I think the Yor were designed as a big industrialist - producing lots of stuff, as the only thing thats really spamable are their factories. (the basic stalks are somewhat inefficient)
The basic problem with that is that without doing proper research there's not much to built anyway - even if you're going so far as clustering whole sectors with starbases - these will become so costly that they can't be afforded anymore.
With research, the problem is that, again, their starting building is also 1-per-planet only, and the later research buildings are too expensive to built and maintain.
On the other hand, their 1-per-planet buildings are really strong, they have a lot of return or output, and a low maintenance. In order to cash in on that try to colonize as many planets as possible - even if they are low in PQ/tiles, or barren worlds or deep in foreign terrain (the Yor will not flip and their Super-Ability might slow down others).
Try to get the Research Matrix, Efficiency Center, Recruitment Center and MaintGrid on all of them. You'll need 2-4 stalks, too. Most of the initial research can easily be done by steming from the capital building + matrix.
As far as you need factories, build only tier 1 or 2 factories as they are incredibly cheap to maintain while still having good output. If I remember correctly their endtier factory has the greatest output ingame but it's really costly. So if you have enough tiles just plaster them with tier 1 facs its very fast upbuilt and there's good output.
Then you should aim to get population up, not superhigh but around ~14b. Once you've researched "Advanced Charging Stalks" you can overbuild the "Maintenace Grid" with one as the stalk will net the same moral bonus (+20%) but bring in another 3b people.
On extreme planets with +50% production penalty don't built facs but instead built stalks, aim to go high pop there. One downside of their stalk is that it ingraines two separate bonuses, thus, if you find a planet with both moral+pop bonus tiles present, you'll only be able to net 50% of these bonuses while other cultures can exploit them fully. That's another reason why their specialization is hampered by their tech ^^
Having a high population is about the only thing that you can actively do in order to get your economy running (and you should aim at that also because combined with the Yors +30% soldiering their worlds are hard to invade), and there are some basic tips I can give you.
Occasionally you want to lower taxes in order to get 100% approval rate for some time, esp. if the population of some/most of your planets is still low (around 1250m-4b) as these planets will not net much tax anyway so not much is lost. Later on this changes and around 7b-10b go up until the lowest approval rate is 45%.
Check each turn if this planet dropped to 44%, and lower taxes again. Most of your planets should be around 50-70%, and assuming you've got Fertility Centers everywhere there should still be a significant increase in population.
Around 14b you can try to apply maximum taxes - so that the approval rate of your worst planet is still 20% (or above). Most planets will then be red (no population growth anymore, try not be at 19% or less as then you will loose pop)
Most planets will be red between 20% - 44%, while some might be yellow above 44%. If the red ones aren't popcapped you can manually ship population to them (from the yellow ones where there's still growth) untill all planets are at 20% approval or capped. This will let you net maximal taxes. You can even go so far as to design a planet for this popgrowth by building lots of stalks + grid, and taking away as much pop that approval rate is at 100%. If that planet has moral tiles it will be easier, and here you can see that doing this wih the Yor is twice as difficult as with other races.
Ad if you don't expect an invasion on the red planets etc you can overbuild the Recruiting Center as well.
Btw you're Efficiency Center will be the prime target for enemy spies, and at a certain point it will become too expensive to get own spies for nullification. In that regard if you can spare a tile it's way better to destroy the Center and rebuilt it on another tile than wasting 10k bc on a spy.
Later the game will unlock a 1-per-planet production increasing building, and a similar for research as well. They are really costly to build and rather weak in what they are doing. On most planets, adding an extra lab/fac will net more return. Only on planets up to 20 tiles or more I'd considering these 2, and naturally, besides your basic buildings (starport, matrix, centers, stalks, grid) you must have build only either facs or labs additionally there.
I've tried to play quite a few times an all-lab or an all-fac strategy, and I can say that without techbrokering all-lab is too expensive in the start (if you built the additional labs) but all factory was even worse - tech research was way to slow so you would only end up producing crap.
So what i would do is to flip constantly between them, initally focusing more on research + colonization while filling extra spare tiles up with tier 1 facs so I could swap immediately to all military or social production once a critical tech has been researched - for example, Miniaturization II together with the Yors innate miniaturization racial will let you built colony/miner/trade/construction modules on a tiny hull - which then can be cranked out turn by turn.
Well, you can do that under any government (even Star Federation etc) but then when the game informs you that election is being held next week you'll just lower taxes and therefore win (the game only calculates with the current taxrate^^)
You may want to check out the TA 101 guide I wrote. Its at the top of the strategies forum directory. I've tried to update it, but I lost focus at some point. I should get back to it.I'll provide a link to it (click the link to the old version as the new version barely exists):https://forums.galciv2.com/310907/page/1/#1730212Anyways, the strategies already mentioned are valid. You need to keep a seriously tight budget to do anything. Here are a few other things you should consider:-Nab galactic resources. Green and Yellow galactic resources boost both the economy and morale. This would allow you to increase taxes higher and get more income per tax level. Nab Purple so you don't need to build so many research planet improvements to remain competitive. Blue increases influence and thus increases tourism income (determined by the population of the galaxy and what percent of the galaxy you control. More is better). Influence also improves the area of effect of your super ability, which slows down ships giving you the chance to pick your fights. Nab Red to increase military might and favor powerful ships (as red galactic resources benefits are more strongly felt on powerful ships than weaker ones).-Hold off on upgrading the factories. The Yor's factories take a long time to build and the expenses of maintaining advanced models isn't good for the Yor's economy.-Consider upgrading factories to max out galactic resources. It might be strange to consider, considering the harm that factories can do to the Yor's economy. However, with good group of galactic resources, it might push you ahead of what you might be able to achieve without them. Be certain to upgrade the mining starbases with mining modules or it will be for naught.-Defend galactic resources. Especially greens and yellows. The Yor can still exploit galactic resources, but to do they need to research factory techs which are not good for their economy. If you decide to upgrade factory techs to exploit galactic resources, it will be tedious to prevent your factories from auto-upgrading to their more expensive versions. As such, any action to upgrade factory techs to exploit these resources effectively means you can't go back. Make sure you defend your galactic resources, otherwise you will find yourself in a financially difficult spot.
Hmm several things I notice playing as the Yor
They have exceptionally powerful manufacturing like you might expect.
Economic bonuses are not quite as impressive at the point I am at in my game I would expect to be running at 4000BC per turn I am actually running at 1400 BC
I imagine that the Yor are more impressive the larger the map (it may also be that I moved up a map size and that is whats doing it but still they seem to be unstoppable beyond a certain point.
Ps building on yellow and green resources was a really good idea thanks DW
I consider the Yor so far to be a bit of a troll race, in that:
You can't invade them very quick because you can only move at 3 per turn. This makes defending starbases easy as well.
You can't culturally convert them period.
You can't wipe them out early because they get a different lazer tech that is much smaller and get fit much more one ship added with miniaturization making it really deadly and rushing them impossible when you have fleets with 70 attack power against fleets with 6 (no joke)
They get Huge bonuses to research - whist some races where still on Xeno labs I had research centers - and I get those earlier than them. This makes it easy for the Yor to 'out tech' people
This is a theory but I think The Yor could be really deadly in player to player combat.
Ive come to like them over the last few days
They are perhaps slower to get up to speed that is their only real weakness.
Their SuperAbility is completely overpowered in certain regions, esp. if you need to play defensively in a warfighting suicidal game where the AIs outtechs you and gain space superiority. In such a case you may want to prevent the AI from invading your worlds.
You can built Military Starbases and equip them with -2 speed, which means enemy ships will move with +1 only. Set all starports on planets that are targeted for invasion to built a tiny hull each turn. The AI will not be able to invade because you'll have constantly ships around that planet.
Of course Military Starbases are often targeted too but with Tiny Constructors very early available due to their Miniaturization racial @ 95mp cost they can replaced right immediately keeping enemy ships always at 1 speed. Works best if you got a few clustered planets nearby.
And even if a transport or two get through, Yor have good soldiering anyway.
That's true, their kinetic streams take very less space (to be fair this goes for Laser as well) and make up for great force per ship. However, these are also very expensive to built which somehow is a bit compensated by their strong Military Production. So if you wanna have a few overtly strong ships early in game go this route.
The other weapon trees are also not that bad either.
For example, their Scatter Guns are extremely cheap to build - in fact, so cheap that you can built ships twice or even trice as fast as those with Kinetic Streams. That will give you even more and faster Military Might Ranking although you'll have weaker ships/fleets but in great number - which, if you play around with Military starbases powering up your ships is the way to go.
I remember a game long ago on suicidal where i couldn't beat the AI with normal ship to ship combat because he did outsearch me on weapons endlessly. So what I did was just cranking out the cheapest 1Att 1 Deff Tiny Fighters as fast as possible and invading his sectors by taking a fleet of constructors with me in order to build up MiliatryStarbases which made my fleets 10*more powerfull as they were equipped originally. And it did work well
Missile is also good. Seeker take also very less space and Harpoon compensate with added attack. If you plan to go evil then missile-route is a no-brainer anyway because Psionic Missile is the fastest to get and is superior to all other weapons by a large margin.
In the end it boils down to individual play, if you focus more on research -thus lacking production- you may want to built cheaper warships, or vice versa expensive high quality ships with an all-factory strategy - but always keep in mind that the more military power you use the more maintenance you'll have to pay each turn; and the economy seems to be the limiting bottleneck in the Yor's design.
Principle problem with this is which without performing proper research there is not much in order to built anyway despite the fact that are going as far as clustering full sectors together with star bottoms. These might be so costly they cannot possibly be afforded anymore.
Im surprised this is still going anyway
The Yor get several advantages over other races in regard to research they get a very powerful starting research building as well as a tech that is immediately available which gives better research centres at about the time the AI is building basic research labs - outteching your opponents as the yor tends not to be an issue in my limited experience
buy other civi's econ tech. Yor's econ tech is bad
The prior posts all have good stuff, so I'll limit this to what I can add. I always play as Yor, and find that the economy is always a concern but usually works out ok.
1. Your first priority in research is the techs necessary to get the recruiting center and efficiency center. After that, you need to research ion drive and sensors, so you can put out two or three survey ships. Grabbing anomalies faster than the AI will save your butt.
2. Your next priority in research is the early diplomacy techs, then diplomatic relations and trade. Even if you don't build Diplomatic Translators (usually someone else gets there first, but sometimes I luck out), you'll have a good diplomacy bonus from these.
3. After that, your priority is to build up to habitat improvement and build aphrodisiac. I get there before the AI almost every time, and the pop bonus is a huge help for the Yor, especially when you're on the move.
4. Counter-espionage centers aren't an early priority, but get those going before people start dropping spies on you. It's an additional 20% morale boost, permitting more stalks and/or higher taxes, and will save you billions down the road in spies you don't have to buy.
5. Shamelessly trade influence for cash. The Drengin and Thalans are usually a good bet to have money laying around and are way worse than you at diplomacy, so cha-ching. 999 influence points can bring 3 or 400 bc a pop.
6. For smaller planets, assuming they don't have production bonuses, only build the research matrix, efficiency center, recruiting center, maintenance grid, and charging stalks. Same goes for extreme planets, their primary purpose is to house more evil robots.
7. Be efficient about how your fleet is built. With medium ships, tons of miniaturization, and strong defenses, you can do well with a smaller (and therefore cheaper) force. Also, the more battles they survive, the more experience and hit points they accumulate.
The problem with the Yor is they don't get farms. As a result their population and thus their tax base is always in the dumps.
Compare this to the Torians. If you can get Xeno Ethics through creativity (with custom points), the morale boost from being neutral and the Harmony Crystal with Super-Breeder means you can expand indefinitely without ever worrying about an econ crash.
The Yor do have farms. They are called Charging Stalks. Unlike regular farms, however, Charging Stalks not only increase the population limit, but also planetary morale.
I think you've confused the Yor with the Thalan. They are the only race without farms.
Charging stalks are like the crappiest farms ever. Considering the research expense, and the amount of food they produce I consider that entire tech line to be blah until pretty late in the mid-game. I don't consider them to be farms because they suck.
Compare charging stalks to central harvesters. Central harvesters produce 4 food and a pop growth boost, and come with no research. It takes a crapton of research to get charging stalks to produce as much as a basic farm.
Furthermore as the Yor I don't think you can even trade for farming tech. Can't the thalans trade for farming at least?
Personally I think power comes from population. What's the point of having Collectives/Manufacturing Matrices if you don't have the tax base to support it?
Central mining outproduces both the Yor and Thalan tech lines because it sucks up very little maintenance and it can be run at 100% spending thanks to the Torian population boosts.
Hmmmmm.
Major issue though: you're extremely reliant on settling high quality planets because of the amount of space those stalks and collectives take up. Also you don't get as many benefits early on from bonus resources.
Central harvesters + Central Mine + Temple of Memories only takes up 3 spaces. Yours take up 5 spaces even with the charging stalks upgrade and you don't get the influence boost. Also, the morale bonus is 5% lower.
One unrelated (but important econ question) and my quibbles with the Yor tech tree (as opposed to the Torian tech tree):
Planetary Improvements gives you +10% to research, social, and military. Are those FREE bonuses that you don't have to pay with bcs? Or do these bonuses increase the productivity of your factories/starports/schools but you still have to spend the bcs to get the benefits?
Back to the topic at hand:
Yes, except that 2 Charging Stalks, and 3 Collectives cost a lot more bcs to produce than 1 Central Mine, 1 Harvester, 1 Temple of Memory (which are three of the cheapest and most cost-efficient buildings in the game). The charging stalks and collectives also cost 2-3 more bcs in maintenance. Finally, the fact that you have to build over them means that you lost those bcs.
In contrast, harvesters, mines, and Temples of Memory will last you the whole game. They're just that good. The main advantage of central harvesters is that you can delay getting the otherwise useless farming techs.
Now, the Yor tech tree is GREAT. I've look at their stuff and if it wasn't for the Torians, I'd be playing them (or the Krynn tech tree). But the point is that the Torian tech tree is the best. You start automatically with arguably 3 of the best buildings in the game. Those 3 buildings cost a total of 5 maintenance, and produce 10 production, 15% influence and moral, add 4 to your pop cap, and increase pop growth by 5%. They're also 3 of the cheapest buildings in the game. Nothing else can compete with it.
Also, if you start with a +300% precursor production spot, central mining become much better than Yor collectives.
The thing with central mining and the Super-Breeder trait is that you try to turn EVERY new colony into a colony-producing colony. Only the Torians can get away with this.
If done right (and with some luck) your colony numbers grow exponentially. 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, 16 becomes 32, 32 becomes 64, 64 becomes 128, at which point you win.
If the human can get to 100 colonies, he auto-wins.
no, your population will not double always because there's a cap (of the *base* growth after which your racial bonuses are added)
im not familiar with the number in TOA but if I remember correctly in DA that wqs around 1,250b ppl.
***
right now I'm playing quite some smaller games in TOA with races I've never tried before, 2 on crippling as Drengin and Thalan (found out halfway of the game I couldn't research farms with them but still I could achieve tremendous economic income and had no trouble supporting their high-productive high-maintenance factories). besides Drengin is very strong to overhelm the AI during the colonial rush I was at war with 50%-70% of all civs after the first half year.
for Altarian had to revert to suicidal again I'm virtually ahead of all AI in every category halfway through the game. (Im not using an cheesy strategies though)
speaking of Yor, right now my point would be that their inital buildings are too costly. with Drengin and Thalan, I could rushbuy their factories at really low cost. If I recall correctly you can have 2 slavepits for the cost of one collective and these will have a pretty higher output. you just need more tiles but thats no prob with drengin simply invade some planets
with Altarian went all-lab so cant compare.
so maybe the Yor have lesser maint which "should" subsequently pay back the higher buildcost but this situation actually will stiffle the colonial rush.
im also still confident in the fact that as more the game progresses the maintenance cost diminish in their importance. most cost stems either from military ship maint, or the actual mp, sp, tp incl. bonus prod cost of your planets.
I also find that specializing planets is way superior in opposition to homogenisize planetary design. this is so because most if not all of your buildings will become more efficient and you can also use more % increasing buildings that wouldnt justify on non-specialised planets. these produce bonus prod which you only pay 50% for so your general cost are lower than having alot of base production spread onto numerous planets.
double post sry
Edit: I just noticed another mistake I made. When calculating the min-PQ for my "econ" worlds, I forgot the Recruiting Center and the Efficiency Center. So, the actual PQ is 9, not 7. Seriously, how could I forgot those two?
In my version harvesters and temple of memories are 1 bc in maintenance. Either way, a minor point. So for a total of 5 bcs in maintenance.
About the Torian tech tree being the best: it is highly subjective. But I've tried some of the other tech trees and... arrrgh.
For example: the Thalans. Until you get Manufacturing Matrices Lvl 2, your new colonies literally can't build anything. Even after you get them, the lack of farms means econ problems running those Matrices (that's what I've found). Their start is so slow. For the first 80 weeks, the only productive colony is the Hyperion Matrix. I guess one idea is to mass research labs, but I always fall behind with them in the colony rush.
The Altarians: Social Matrix is awesome, but otherwise their starting structures are all bleh.
The Yor: all of their buildings take a lot more bcs and research to build than the Torians. Once you set it up, they're just as strong. The problem is setting it up.
The Korath and Drengin: Ok, the slaveling industry plant lvl 2 (3 bcs, 10 production) is a central mine except more spammable. Problem is you don't start with them in the beginning. Also, it takes a while to get farming. Also, slaveling imagination labs are pretty stinky. They have good war traits (especially the Korath) but in the early game on larger maps war is useless.
Iconians: Excellent research. Everything else is pretty terrible.
Terrans: all about Diplomacy. Otherwise meh. Innovation Complex is pretty good for culture domination strats though. However, like all the other races, they don't explode out of the gate like the Torians.
Korx: They have trade. That's all. On medium or smaller maps it's all you need. On larger maps... meh.
Krynn: Among the best tech paths for larger maps. Comparable to the Torians, but their early manufacturing is a little worse, though the ability to spam +20% econ building on ever planet makes up for it. Also, the base race gets this MASSIVE morale boost. If it wasn't for their awful trait "Super-Spy" I'd consistently play them.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that this game is about expanding as quickly and as early as possible, and the Torians have the edge on this compared to all other races. The larger map, the more OP the Torians become. The only comparable race on the larger map sizes is the Krynn.
I might consider playing Krynn with the "Don't Ask" reproductive quality.
The way I see it, you are trying to judge the value of civilizations by what they can do or build on the first turn. I think that is short sighted as civilizations as civilizations can research better things. There are many different ways to evaluate the civs. I for instance try to evaluate civs as to what they can do if they were to research everything on their tech tree. I've played games where I have research large chunks of the tech tree and have research to the end of many paths (including weapons and defense). I don't expect to get everything in a game, but I do try hard to research what I can, and I try to buy/steal the remaining techs from other civs, especially the ones only specific civs can research (some of them give bonuses).The Yor for instance, have powerful factory planet improvements. The final version has better output and maintenance than industrial sectors.I don't find the charging stalks inconvenient. I've played games where I've used pairings of farms and morale planet improvements, so using a pair of charging stalks isn't that strange for me (considering both pairs used 2 tiles any ways).The Drengin get early access to psionic beams if they go the evil route after researching "Xeno Ethics". That a 15 damaging weapon research able after Lasers 5.The Drengin farming techs give population growth bonuses for each level you research, or buy. The final version even gives a morale bonus as well.I don't consider the Harvesters that good. They have a low capacity for food production, and I don't consider population growth planet improvements valuable once you are at maximum population. In fact, it probably does relatively little once the Torian super ability is in effect. The traditional farming techs gives greater propulation capacity. The Advanced Farm gives a +7 increase, while the harvester gives +3 increase and a +10% boost (which isn't much even on a civilization capital).The Terrans and the Iconians get the top 2 best ship HP modules. The Terrans get the best, while the Iconians get the second best.
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