Alright, creating an actual vote here. Notable differences from Winged One's summarised at the end. This will possibly change slightly when information such as which way the rivers flow becomes available.
Starting Resources
RP: 38.79 - EP: 50 - VP: 20 - Larvae: 36 - Actions: 5 - Drones: 9 - Scouts: 5 - Queens: 2 - Work Crews: 3 - Soldiers: 1
[X] Morph: Queen (-15 RP, -3 Larvae)
[X] Morph: Drone x13 (13 drones, -4.29 RP, -13 Larva)
[X] Morph: Hundling Swarm x2 (-3 RP, -6 Larva)
Carefully balanced for optimal usage, presume morphing by drone is still an option as I need exactly 13 drones and no more.
[X] Drone Swarm: Gather Trees x1.5 (+4.5 RP)
Need the RP, still cut it mighty close though.
[X] Work Crew (Dedicated): Gathering (Work at Lead hatchery to avoid creep distance penalties.)
Why wasn't this there already? Lead can be handy, might as well go for it.
[X] Work Crew: Build Road (-1 RP)
Let's see what some road does shall we? And I have so little RP to spare so one road it is.
[X] Dancer: celebrate the victory over the mother cat, in a way that respects your fallen foe (suggested effect: chance of CP, Myrrdin less likely to think he made a mistake)
[X] Dancer: exploit the bond of the hive mind for intricate choreography (suggested effect: chance of CP, promote Harmony within the Swarm)
Seems decent so copying from Winged One.
[X] Queen: Micromanage x2
Considered using one to boost Creep, decided not to. We have tons more larva than we can use now so that's useless, but we haven't hit enough Creep for it to be irrelevant as a concern, need several times more than we've got for that.
[X] Gather: Trade Goods (1 Scout)
Medicine is good, let's make sure we still have some yes?
[X] Hundling Swarm: Hunt birds
Let's see if we can't grab some birds as well right? Getting a reference for how hard wings are is good.
[X] Soldier: Escort humans leaving the hive cluster on business
Copying Winged One's action for soldiers, even if it's not too much use without the stargate.
[X] Buy Design: Creeper (-2 VP)
It's a small swarmer zerg for getting us more creep, see the next page for details but the point is to at as a resource/larva dump. Being much more efficient per RP invested than either Queens (0.066 Creep/Turn/RP) or Hatcheries (0.05 Creep/Turn/RP) at 0.24 Creep/Turn/RP while also having no competing interests.
Phase II Resources
RP: 20 - EP: 50 - VP: 18 - Larvae: 14 - Actions: 7 - Drones: 13 - Scouts: 4 - Queens: 2 - Work Crews: 1 - Soldiers: 1 - Hundling: 12
[X] Scout (dedicated until finished): Gather Herbs for study.
[X] Scout: Stalk Great Cat
[X] Scout: Sarcosuchus
[X] Scout: explore east, beyond the trinium hive cluster
[X] Hundling Swarm: explore south, looking for where the rivers go.
[X] Action: Build Hatchery Near Iron Vein (-10 RP, -1 Drone)
[X] Action: Build Support Hatchery (-10 RP, -1 Drone)
All aboard the power train! Hatcheries + Queens = Exponential Power Growth.
[X] Action: Build The Bridge (-11 drones, -1 Work Crew)
[X] Action: Draft Milita
[X] Action: Spar with Artur
[X] Action: Scout New Talent.
Building the bridge is to open up scouting to the west which is good, sparring is because of the potential buff to Artur, and scouting/drafting are to try and nab some boosts, I mean we probably won't get another Artur but something like an advanced scout or dancer could be quite useful, a specialist dancer particularly could be brilliant for culture.
[X] Evolution: Steel Carapace (0/10)
[X] Evolution: Steel Bones (0/10)
They are much cheaper than trinium and much easier to mass produce, trinium is a heavily limited resource so can be delayed while the one we can definitely get tons of is done for now. Also I really want aquatic morphs much more than I want the minor boost from steel to trinium, as steel to trinium is apparently about +33% boost from the base of 1 and aquatic morphs are worth far more than that to us.
[X] Evolution: Amphibian Bio-morph (0/100)
Water travel is great, and water tends to be the best source for poisons once we get a bit more. Plus the incredible distance that could be gained by scouting up/down the river is fantastic.
Final Remaining Resources
VP: 18 - Larvae: 14
That took a lot of going back and rebalancing to get things finished up, cutting super fine there at the end too using literally every last drop of RP I could. Even the extra 0.0266 RP for mass morphing by swarm had to be sacrificed for the per drone morphing, also because 2.166666... swarms is a stupid figure compared to 13 drones, that and it means the 0.29 remainder is gone as the changeover in rounding systems could've left that for a long while, a nice integer number of RP next turn hopefully. I did manage to squeeze in all three queens and two hatcheries though, along with twoish new swarms of drones and hundlings so I think I did pretty good for the RP. May add units once they are decided on, also at least if the river is confirmed to flow north scouting doesn't cost RP as there is nothing left.
Anyway my pertinent questions for
SamPardi about what is possible for minor adjustments.
- How big are the hundlings and is that big enough for scouts to ride on? or could they just scout themselves as they're our fastest and most agile units so far so probably the best scouts for mapping terrain at a distance.
- What way is downstream? Our people aren't stupid enough to not tell which way the water flows after all.
And the dot point summary of differences I promised.
- I build both hatcheries and three queens instead of one of each.
- I build seven extra drones, they build 36 extra hundlings.
- I build the big bridge over the western river instead of a minor one over the eastern river.
- Basically totally different hundling actions, scouting and hunting for birds instead of escorting and protecting.
- I go for amphibious morphs over trinium carapace.
- Most importantly, I do not activate the Star Gate yet.
For the star gate thing it's because I don't believe we're stable enough yet, in another turn or two maybe but as is I've already demonstrated we're still pushing our resources to their absolute limits in the path of expansion. We also have a distinct lacking of military capabilities, although steel armour from the forge is probably a thing so the soldiers probably aren't using wooden spears still at least as going through the stargate with the peak of tech being wooden spears? Really recommended against, honestly some kind of trapped fortification around it before opening would be suggestion, a hope in case something goes wrong to just swamp the area in death inducing nerve gas or something.