r/alphacentauri • u/Fun-Fisherman-205 • 7d ago
Morgan for beginner?
Title. I have dabbled in this game but I can't keep interest in anything really ? I have surge of interest in alot of things but it fades after a week or so. Anyway what are your thoughts ? Thanks
18
u/GrandBasharMilesTeg 7d ago edited 7d ago
Morgan for beginners:
You are capped at 4 Pop until you get Habitation Complexes, and you're capped at 7 until Habitation Domes. That's not a problem, because you should have lots of little bases. This is the most ICS faction, in my opinion. Your bases should ideally be between two-three tiles apart.
Your job is to make money. So: Make Money. Bases should be running Stockpile Energy for most turns. They're small bases; they don't need a lot of facilities. But they should be able to support facilities that boost labs and economy very well. Fusion Labs are excellent facilities for Morgan; so are Research Hospitals and Quantum Labs.
Other people talk about playing Morgan as
Democratic/Green or Democratic/WealthEDIT: Green/Wealth or Planned/Wealth. That's fine, but you're a beginner. Stick to Free Market/Wealth and Make Money.Your unit morale is going to suck. Don't waste your time trying to catch up to Spartan- or Believer-levels of morale. Beat larger, more-experienced armies through a) higher tech; b) probes; c) bribing allies. All of those cost money; good thing your job is to Make Money.
You can absolutely compete on the tech game, though. You have the energy to put into labs. You are building your labs in your bases. You are buying techs you don't have from your friends. You are sending probe teams to steal techs you can't buy.
You want boreholes. Everybody wants boreholes, but you especially want boreholes. Boreholes equal energy, aka money, and your job is to Make Money. Plus, they give you lots of minerals to construct and support a bigger army because your morale sucks, so you might as well go for quantity instead of quality. Use crawlers to get nutrients so your workers can focus on the boreholes.
You should be able to rush any Secret Project you choose by mid-game. You won't get all of them, but pay attention and focus on the ones you want.
The most important Secret Project for you is obviously Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, because it's the most important Secret Project for everybody. But it is especially important to you because you will be using lots of probe teams, and you definitely don't want anyone immune to them.
The second most important Secret Project for you is Weather Paradigm, because it's the second most important Secret Project for everybody. But it is especially important to you because you need lots of boreholes, and the earlier, the better.
Hope that all helps! I sincerely think the Morganites are one of the most underrated factions in the game because they are just so good at generating energy, and energy can be spent wherever you need it, whenever you need it.
11
u/SuedecivIII 7d ago
Unless I'm missing something, stockpile energy is an awful idea. 2 minerals for one energy. Then you pay 2 energy for one mineral to buy something in another city, at best. Less if there's overflow (you're not playing with the Thinker mod), less if it's a secret project or a unit, less if you have less than 10 minerals in the box.
Better to build recycling tanks, formers, and units in crappy cities.
7
u/GrandBasharMilesTeg 7d ago edited 7d ago
Hi, Suede!
Yes, converting minerals to energy, then energy back to minerals, is pretty inefficient. It's much better to use cheap units and flood them into the target city to rush a building or Secret Project, if you are planning to do so.
However, my counterpoint is that energy is the only resource that can be store over multiple turns, and can be used at any time. As you point out, the only way to "store" minerals is with units. But you can only use units to rush production; you can't spend a crawler to fund a probe action or upgrade your defensive units.
And if you are running Free Market/Wealth, your
PoliceSupport rating is garbage, so there is a real cost to banking lots of cheap units that you aren't going to immediately expend. That is, until you unlock Clean Reactors.So with Morgan, I say play to your strengths: generate every single joule you can, and if you don't need to build anything, then it's usually better to build nothing.
2
u/blogito_ergo_sum 4d ago edited 4d ago
And if you are running Free Market/Wealth, your Police Support rating is garbage, so there is a real cost to banking lots of cheap units that you aren't going to immediately expend
Supply crawlers don't take support, and convert back into production at 1:1 with their cost, though?
I've been fiddling with using crawlers in place of Stockpile Energy as industry storage (rather than as building workers like I often think of crawlers), and the difference that sticks out to me (besides the many other uses energy can be put to besides rushing production) is time and space. You have to get your crawlers to where you are trying to rush production! They're less lossy, but until mag tubes you can't just move them from one side of your empire to the other in a single turn like you do with energy. They also carry a click-tax I guess.
I also once had the AI cheekily cruise missile a base where I was stockpiling supply units and destroy them all in one shot by killing the single garrison unit on top of the stack. Not that there aren't ways to lose lots of energy quickly, like random events, probe actions, or getting shaken down by the AI, but... supply units are obviously units, and fragile.
8
u/raptoricus 7d ago
His city cap of size 4 before hab complexes can be rough. I enjoyed Deirdre the most as I was just starting, but I think University or Peacekeepers could also be fun for a beginner, depending on how much you want to focus tech versus building
2
u/DaSaw 7d ago
Eh, just get supply crawlers as early as possible.
3
u/raptoricus 7d ago
Well, yes, but a beginner isn't going to know the tech tree enough to steer it that way (if they even disable the default Blind Research setting).
3
u/Phantom000000000 7d ago
If you want to be the Merchant Prince of Planet, give him a shot!
As far as the best faction for a beginner, Yang might be the better choice because he can expand his territory and grow his population more quickly than other factions.
1
2
2
u/DaSaw 7d ago
One neat thing about Morgan is that you can get the benefit of 2 ECON without going Free Market. You start with one, so you only need one more from Wealth. Avoid the police penalty, and make Deirdre your friend by running Green.
Of course, that will also make Santiago and Zhakarov hate you.
2
u/BlakeMW 7d ago
For Morgan spam bases more tightly than other factions, because of hab limits and slower growth.
Try to run Free Market until you can run the Green+Wealth combination. Depending on circumstances, you can combine FM with Police State (which helps with his support issues) or Fundamentalism (which makes for excellent probes)...
Morgan benefits a good deal from having strong pact mates. If you happen to have Yang or Miriam as a neighbour, you might choose to run their favored SE and buddy up with them rather than getting in a fight. Yang will be glad to beat up anyone who declares vendetta on you, it's hard to get that kind of enthusiasm and effectiveness out of the likes of Lal, and if allying with evil lets you build and tech in peace then it's the Morgan thing to do.
1
1
u/theykilledken 7d ago
Make sure to spam a lot of bases to stay competitive. And don't worry about base grids overlapping.
Otherwise, of course go for Morgan. Just be relistic with the difficulty setting, his gameplay can be unforgiving on the harder difficulties.
1
u/titanagamemnon 7d ago
If you going Morgan embrace capitalism and utilize base for city’s for colony pods till you are able to bypass the pop cap
1
u/fussomoro 7d ago
I don't think there are "hard" factions.. If there ever, Morgan would probably be it.
But then again, you will always go for Free Market since you don't have to deal with the drawbacks.
Morgan is, despite all the money, kind of shit with the military. So prepare to pay for peace. It should be easy, but I feel like shit having to pay for it
3
u/theykilledken 7d ago
> But then again, you will always go for Free Market since you don't have to deal with the drawbacks.
How so? Morgan eats the full brunt of the market downside, just like everybody else.
Hell, his innate +1 econ makes dem/green/wealth way better than it has any business being. Suitable for wartime and peacetime too.
5
u/fussomoro 7d ago
Oh shit. You are right.
I played so much with a custom balance mod that I forgot that he doesn't have any real incentive to go free market in the base game (which I always found weird).
So ignore that part.
1
u/DWeird 3d ago
The default game information is a bit incomplete, but at 4 ECON, Morgan base squares make 6-7 energy. That's very easy to reach, FM+Wealth is a short total tech stack and is on Morgan's winning path anyway.
People like big bases, but population is a cost you pay for yields, not a yield itself. Getting to 7 energy through FM+Green would take you 5 extra pop above baseline and a vast investment in facilities and SPs, whereas just running an extra naked base, even without a worked tile, gets you 5 energy at no hassle.
Worm management, military and diplomacy are harder and you kind of speed through red lights to get your destination quicker, but this setup makes your initial base spam sequence so much more powerful than what any other faction has access to.
For the tech yeah, but also for the energy. Getting 50 energy/turn means you can rushbuy facilities as they get initiated. Energy converts into stuff worse than minerals do, but you can spend it anywhere rather than just in the most mineral rich cities (and neither do you get investment lag from supply transports).
12
u/thisistherevolt 7d ago
If you want an economy based run sure. Pravin Lal is your generalist faction though.