Offensive Strategy Guide.

This guide provides some basic guidelines on how to build your empire in order to attack other empires.  The key to this is balancing your expansion and growth with the ability to attack others as well as defend yourself.  To be an effective offensive player means you will need to have the capability to defend yourself as you will quickly become a target for others to attack.  This is by far the most complex type of game play currently available in Lacuna.

Species

To properly build an offensive empire, you will need to create your own race in order to maximize your potential.  The following is an example of how you might create species capable of both rapid growth as well as offensive power.

Habitable Orbits:  3-5
An offensive player is much like the expansionist in that you want to be able to grow quickly, however it is more important as an offensive players to initially have more choices when it comes to colonization.  For this reason, you should consider having orbits 3-5 available giving you access to both tier 2 food supplies as well as 60 plot planets early in the game.  You will be able to colonize other orbits later in the game with the use of Teraforming and the Genetics Lab.

Note.  If you wind up on a starting planet in orbit 4 or a planet that has below 46 plots and less than 100 phosphorus sources (Gypsum, Sulfur, and Monazite), you may want to consider restarting as this may make it more difficult to get to your next planet.  You will need 500 trona to build a Dairy Farm as well.  This is nice to have but not as necessary.

Manufacturing: 3
This one won’t matter too much as an offensive player but you also don't want to cripple yourself when you reach the point in the game where production from second level food sources and waste processing buildings becomes important.  I wouldn’t recommend going below 3 in this stat.

Deception: 7
As an offensive player, you must start with a deception of 7 in order to be able to effectively attack and defend. Do not go lower than this as you will cripple yourself early on and find yourself at the mercy of other offensive players.

Research: 3
Higher levels of research may be helpful later in the game, but early on you may decide the points are better spent elsewhere.  Once you have a genetics lab, you should be able to get higher levels of this affinity.

Management: 3
As an offensive player you are going to need to use Essentia to build quickly but at the same time you don’t want to cripple your build times.  Consider a 2 or a 3 here but don’t go down to a 1.  Once you can get a genetics lab this will be a very important stat to push to 7 since it can greatly decrease your ship build times.

Farming:  3
With access to secondary food types on your main planet, Farming is an area that you could stand to lose a point.  Don’t take this too low however or you will find yourself always needing more food early in the game.

Mining: 3
Ore shouldn’t be much of an issue once you are able to use mining platforms.  You can definitely afford to lose one point here.

Science: 4
Energy will be in vast supply once you are able to build Singularity Energy plants however as an offensive player you need more energy than others. Don’t take this lower than 4 and if you can work in an extra point here you may benefit from it later in the game.

Environmental: 4
Waste is going to be something that helps you grow initially and then something that gets difficult to manage later in the game, however you will be able to use Scows to get rid of your waste and even fire it at your enemies later in the game.  Leave this one at a 4.

Political: 5
As an offensive player you are going to need to expand quickly.  It’s not necessary to take this to a 7 but you want it as high as you can get it.  An alternative point of view would be to keep this low and then go for faster ship and resource production.  Happiness production becomes very easy to do at the higher University levels.

Trade: 2
In order to raise the other affinities needed as an offensive player, you need to take a hit somewhere.  This is an affinity that you can afford to take that hit.  While lower levels of trade may hinder your ability to move resources around efficiently, it should be able to be made up for with higher levels of your trade ministry.  Eventualy though you should try to get this to 7 as Trade also affects the capacity of Scows which is the only really effective way of quickly sinking a colony into negative unhappiness.

Growth: 5
A growth of 5 allows you to start with a level 5 planetary command center which allows you to start you better hourly resource production and more storage.  This would be a place that you could start with lower levels.  The only area it would affect would be your initial growth.  This is a place that you could consider losing a point or two but I wouldn’t recommend starting below a 3.  As an alternative point of view you could go low on this stat as happiness is something easy to generate at a higher university level.  But having this stat higher also makes it easier to Insurect colonies from other players.


Essentia
Offensive players absolutely need to use essentia.  Plan to start with at least 600 essentia to facilitate building and boosts and plan to use between 600 and 1300 per month depending on whether or not you are engaged in combat. Once you get to the higher university levels with management 7 you will be able to build ships quickly.  Though the rushing of key buildings may be very helpful.  Also Essentia is very handy to have to recover from negative unhappiness.

Infrastructure
It is important to get to your second colony as an offensive player but not until you are in a position to defend yourself properly.  For this reason you might consider waiting until your university is somewhere between 13 and 15 before expanding with a high level intelligence and security ministry on your home planet.  Don’t start building your espionage ministry until you are ready to colonize.

Waste
As soon as possible, built 2 waste sequestration buildings and 2 recycling centers.  These will allow you to store and use the waste you produce to grow faster.  As soon as you are able, start recycling your waste and make sure you never again overflow.  Try to maintain 0 or negative waste per hour by building or replacing resource buildings with centers that turn waste into resources.

Resources
Food:  In order to gain happiness, it is vital to get at least 4 different food types.  Build one of each of tier one food type that you have access to and keep them as close to max as you can.  Once you have a level 5 corn plantation or denton root farm, build a dairy farm or beeldeban herder as well.  Once you are building more than 4 food types, each time you spend food to build something, you will gain happiness so it’s vital to get your food types going as soon as possible.

Water:  Water is one of the most difficult resources to produce.  Build 5-6 water purification plants and keep them as close to max as possible.  If your planet produces enough minerals to allow Water Reclamation Plants, replace a few of your water purification plants once you have a level 7 university.  Once you are able to build singularity energy plants start replacing all of your water purification plants with water production plants.

Mines:  Mines produce a bit more than water and food so you don’t need as many of these.  Start with 4-5 mines and replace 2-3 of them with mining platforms later in the game.

Energy:  Geo energy plants produce enough for your first planet.  Build 3-4 of them and replace them later with either Fusion Reactors, or if you can hold out, Singularity Energy Plants.

Storage:  It is important to have storage so you can keep as many of your resources as possible.  Start with 2 of each storage unit and consider a 3rd ore and energy storage later in the game.  Keep these maxed out.

Other Infrastructure
University:  Make sure you can support your next level of university before upgrading.  The University sucks away more resources than any other building so rule of thumb is to only upgrade once all of your storage is maxed and your resource buildings are maxed or close to maxed.

Development Ministry:  You’ll need this building in order to increase your queue.  Build one and get it to 6 or 7.  Any higher is a waste.

Network 19:  Great source of cheap happiness.  Build it and keep it maxed.

Entertainment District:  Expensive but a great source of happiness.  Build and keep it as high as you can afford to keep it without sacrificing too many resources.

Park:  Once you are able to store 40-50k food, build a park, start throwing parties every 12 hours, and max out the building.

Intelligence Ministry:  Build level 1 for the Tutorial.  Don’t upgrade until you are ready to expand.  Before you colonize your 2nd planet, max this building out and build the maximum number of spies.  Once your subsequent planets have adequate infrastructure, build the intelligence ministry and max out your spies.

Security Ministry:  Once you’ve maxed your intelligence ministry and built your spies build and max your security ministry.  Keep this building maxed out on your home planet  and only build on subsequent planets if they get attacked.

Espionage Ministry:  Once you are ready to colonize and your Intelligence and Security ministries are maxed, build and max this building.  Make sure all of your spies are home so they are properly upgraded.

Space Port:  Build this to level 3 or 4 initially.  Get it to 10 as soon as possible.  Eventually you will need to have 2 or 3 space ports on each planet.

Shipyard:  Build to level 3 or 4 initially so you can queue a few ships at a time.  Build probes and start exploring as soon as you can afford to.

Observatory:  You will need this to build probes.  Build to 5 or 6 in order to be able to probe the stars in your general area.  Take this to 10 as soon as possible so you can know your general area.  Each of your planets should have level 10+ observatories with probes out.

Propulsion Factory:  Build to level 10 once you are ready to start mining.  When you are able to support it, max it out.

Trade Ministry:  Build and level to 4 or 5 so you can start shipping resources to your new planets.  You’ll eventually want this as high as you are able to support on your home planet and at least 10-12 on subsequent planets

Archeology Ministry:  Build this once you are able to support it and start searching for glyphs.  Glyph buildings will help your subsequent planets develop faster.  You’ll want to have this building up to 11 or 12 initially.

Munitions Lab:  Build once you have your space port and ship yard built.  At the time of the writing there is no reason to upgrade this past level 1.

Cloaking Lab:  Build this and being upgrading once your espionage ministry is built.

Pilot Training Facility:  You will need to build one of these once you are have a target to attack.  You’ll want to build both bombers and fighters to defend yourself.



Strategy Notes

1) Consider a 60+ plot planet for your second planet and make this your capital.  You will need to rebuild your University which will cost some time, but you will be happy you did this as you will greatly benefit from the extra plots

2) Choose your targets wisely.  If you attack someone that is part of a big alliance, expect to be retaliated against.  Take on a few loners to being with in order to get the hang of spies and attack ships.

3) Try to find an alliance with defensive players.  They will be critical in order to properly defend your planets after you’ve made a few enemies.


4) Make sure you are able to defend your home planet / capital at all times.  Do not rely on others.  You can use resources from this planet to repair damage taken on your other planets.  If your enemies are able to penetrate your home planet defenses, you may find yourself in a lot of trouble.

5) Be very wary of your reputation.  If you gain a reputation as a jerk there are a great number of players who will not hesitate to attack you.  Being rude to new players and absolutle smashing of their planets it likely to get the same thing done to you by the very top players.