I considered suggesting a version of this variant myself shortly after reading the no-tile-improvements RBtS succession games over at Civfanatics - specifically, a no factories variant on Average, probably as the Sakkra, with the homeworld edited to remove its free thirty factories, and invasions forbidden (enemy colonies must be destroyed and re-founded). This game features a much lighter rule (no industry spending, but we can use existing factories) and is therefore set on Hard difficulty. On the other hand, we're playing the Klackons, whose production per capita is crazy with or without factories. The other races we're facing in this galaxy - most notably the Meklar - will blow past us if we don't get a huge early landgrab and/or conquer lots of factories, but if the map isn't an especially difficult one, we will get a huge landgrab, and have the infrastructure ready for an early factory-stealing war to boot, because we'll get a faster start than in any normal hard game; not only will we have our Klackon bonuses, but (since our variant rule requires it) we'll be trading the long-term advantage of numerous factories for the short-term advantage of really early ship construction and/or research. Really early.
Planetology research will be the key to this game, as it's the only thing that will significantly help our economy until the game is effectively won. Terraforming gives us more bugs, controlled environments give us more planets (and therefore more bugs), and everything improves our worker production at twice the rate it would for non-insect species. I'm therefore opening planetology research (with 2 RP) on the very first turn of the game. I already know what I'll choose first for this variant, without seeing any scouting reports, so there's no reason to delay (and every reason to hurry!) - I'll explain in a moment, but first, notice that I'm building exactly one Scout 1.0, with everything else (apart from those 2RP) poured into growing population. Growing early Klackon population is just about on par with building early factories, depending on the immediate circumstances. Since population grows naturally, this strategy eventually reaches and falls below a break-even point, but it absolutely makes sense at this stage of the game. Our colony ship is going to the eastern red star because it looks a bit more coreward, looks like it will open more stars for scouting, and isn't in/mostly-surrounded-by a nebula. My Scouts as usual will go to the stars that I judge they are most likely to reach at the same time as an AI Scout, depending on homeworld locations; if I think my scout will arrive first, I can build a Scout 1.0 to get there roughly simultaneously instead, and if I think the AI will get there first, there's no point in hurrying there. In this case, the yellow and red stars at the far north of the screen look to me like the only ones that qualify, and I expect to have a turn to spare on the red one if any AI is within 6 parsecs at all, so the Scout heading up there will stop off at the other 3-parsec red star, just for the early intel.
For reasons first outlined by Sargon, Improved Eco is usually a great first tech - but that assumes it's cutting factory cleanup by 34 BC per year when the homeworld's at its early maximum (and more as factories go up elsewhere). IER has other value too, but not enough to make up for its high research costs when its direct effects can only save us 5 BC per year until we start conquering! Terra+10 would be my first choice - more bugs possible, faster growth rate, quickest (little) bump to per capita production, and quickest colship cost savings; we'll be building early colships here - but as it's not in our tree, I'm going for Controlled Barren Environment just to get up the tree (and get some kind of production bonus and colship miniaturization) as quickly as I can! Any barren worlds it helps us colonize as well will just be a bonus! My new Scout 1.0 heads out in the wake of my colony ship to immediately take advantage of the extended range when my colony is (hopefully) founded.
In 2303, I find that I made the right choices, as the nebula red star is an inferno (but rich! Artemis might become a great shipyard later in the game!) and the star to which I sent my colony ship is Esper: Just a Desert 35, but better than nothing. The Scout at Artemis is immediately sent up to the red star that was its true destination all along, and turns out to have lost not even a turn from the stopover!
The Meklar Scout revealed by colonizing Esper can only be coming from the big yellow star in the southeast (which must therefore be Meklon) and heading for Esper. Since we're three turns into the game, and Meklon is now at range 6 (from Esper) I know it won't arrive for three more turns, which is exactly how long it will take a new batch of Scout 1.0s to arrive via RELOC from Kholdan. I will therefore be able to send the first one out at once when it arrives next year, knowing the enemy won't be able to take the planet's orbit. (I wanted a bunch of scouts ready to deploy in that direction anyway, as you can see by Kholdan's preparations to build six of them.) Esper goes to work on ECO right away, to help grow population (I would later change my mind on this, and my future colonies would work on research, figuring 1 RP now was better than having 1 less BC to spend on a pop unit later. Artemis, being rich and hostile, would be different if I could nab it: Its population would all be supplied from off-world, and it would get to work on shipbuilding at once.)
Kholdan immediately sends ten million people to get Esper over the 1/3 mark. I don't have the Charis growth formula memorized or spreadsheeted, but I know the basics, and for this game, maximizing empire-wide population takes priority over just about everything else - including homeworld production!
One year later, I decide to open propulsion research as well. With Artemis an inferno, and nothing else within 3 parsecs of either of our worlds, we would need more range before we could ever get a third colony. Normally, I would wait for scouting reports to come in, and decide on that basis whether range 4 or 5 would be most useful, but with the need to start colony ship construction ASAP to help make up for our lack of factories, a number of decent-probability stars within 4 parsecs, and the danger that we might not have range 4 in our tree (meaning a long, long time to research range 5 for our propulsion-poor bugs) I decided to go with a gambit, and open the field early. It turned out we had both Hydrogen Fuel Cells and deuterium in our tree, and I continued the gambit by going for the quick H2s. If all the stars at range 4 are tundras or worse, this will turn out to be a terrible move, and it will limit me almost no matter what the stars look like, but I feel it's worth the risk to get a third world settled as soon as Klackonly possible. At the same time, I'm trying yet another gambit: Sending my first Scout 1.0 to try and scout Meklon itself, with my new fleet of 6 Scout 1.0s and (presumably) the Meklon Scout all 2 turns away from Esper. My calculations prove correct in 2305, as the Meklar Scout is still en route, and my backup fleet has an ETA of 1. And that's where I'll turn over the narrative ... to the Meklar emperor!
Read On!
