8-Man Federation Pro Tips

[NickAragua]

Hi folks. Got back into TLF recently, and am trying to go for an 8-member federation. This thread is meant to catalogue a) my so-far failed efforts and b) any tips from people who've done this successfully.

The last two attempts both ended when the Thoraxians conquered three weak neighbors and formed an uncrackable fear empire. Although,  out of spite, I did launch planetcrackers at two of their worlds, which caused everyone else in the federation to leave, forming "The Betrayed". Nice.

Things I've tried that didn't work:

1) Holding the Thoraxians off of their weak neighbors. By the time I finish a nice long battle against twenty five ships, the Thoraxians have landed "30 billion" troops and win in a single tick. This means the Thoraxians need to be weak, but if I spend too much effort weakening them, they go into the low negatives in influence, at which point I can't do anything with them anyway.

2) Getting other races to trade with the Thoraxians. They happily break trade routes to beat the crap out of their weak neighbors.

3) Not keeping up with research, which got me killed.

4) (pending) keeping up with research and spreading it among existing federation neighbors, who now have the firepower to repel Thoraxian attacks.

5) Mistakenly gifting some techs to the Thoraxians.

I guess my point is I'm having trouble keeping the Thoraxian menace down. It's actually trivially easy to make the Burlusts weak, and if you cozy up to the Acutians you can get them to do anything. But the damn bugs...

[TheVampire100]

I never achieved it but the best I managed was 7. Holding the Thoraxians and Burlust at the line is pretty hard. Burlusts can be easier if they are not getting enough strong attention. Some basic tips I think that help pretty much:

1.)Research fleet strength and soldier power very early for all races EXCEPT Burlust and Thoraxian. They have both an initial strong forepower and it's the best to keep it low and the rest high.

2.)Bribe the Queen as much as possible. Warlike Mood is not good ut I don't have to say it, have I?

3.)Rise the relationship between races. Races that like each other are less open for war. Except again the Burlusts and Thoraxians that have it already in their DNA to kill other people.

4.) Have always a surplus on credits. You can pay a race out of war with this. For the burlusts this means of course leverage (so you won't get anywhere of you haven't some brobe items or killed some warlords) but whenever war starts, bribe them to stop it. Works wonders and they is a minimum limit on how long peace has to last, so they won't start another oene with the same race right away.

5.)Keeping the Thoraxians down is probably the hardest thing to manage. You could pollute their population so they have not enough soldiers to keep a fight on. Or destroy their armadas on a regular base (no ships=no inavsion). Of course they will hate you for it but otherwise it would be too hard to keep them down.

You also moght want to change your settings on easy because, well, it's easier to keep all races alive. On easier difficulties races are not so eager on jumping into war.
And of course save everytime before you do something long/big that keeps you away from doing other stuff. This means reasearching, building, fights and other stuff. The Thoraxian can use that time to launch an invasion and the best thing is to reload the save and try again.

[Captain Jack]

I managed it my first game. Pretty sure it's because the Skylaxians had the Ark and the Thoraxians had the Mire, and the Acutians spent the entire game trying to kill me (and thus not doing anything to the other races), but I'll take it.

The Boarines are your best friend. Given enough time the Burlurst or the Thoraxians will go on the warpath, but hitting them with angry wampas will curb these tendencies. Manufacturing starbases are the best way to propel a race to godhood, the earlier the better, so get the Boarines one and watch them eat both alive (but one at a time--low birthrate). Then, before the Boarine take the planet, ask the Andor or Skylaxians or Acutians to force peace.

To deal with the Thoraxians, I recommend a bunch of bribe items. The queen won't go to war if she isn't in the mood for it, and you can reroll her mood by bribing her.

Forming the good Federation might deter her, but runs the risk of pissing off some potential allies if you do it too early.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing that might help. The Hydral homeworld gives the race that owns it an impressive bonus to manufacturing and research. See if you can get your favorite to take it.

[Zebeast46]

Mighty Watashiwa, how have you managed to get the boarines to attack the burlusts/thoraxians. And me, I never go for a 8 person fed, one race always pisses me off so much so that I have an urge to kill them.

[Captain Jack]

Pay the Thoraxians/Burlurst. Same result, but the Thoraxians are almost always in the mood for a fight. Just make sure the Boarines have the tech and engineering base to survive until rage builds.

[NickAragua]

Apparently, manual orbital bombardment is highly effective against Thoraxians. Last night, when finishing up a 4/8 federation run, I was certain that I would have to launch planetcrackers or have an interminable wait while my fed guys (skylaxians, peltians, acutians) slowly ground away. Then, I see the 'orbital bombardment' option. After spending a few months blasting the bugs from orbit, they were all dead, down to the last bug. Awesome, and probably useful in keeping a race weak for a full 8/8 run.

[Captain Jack]

Apparently, manual orbital bombardment is highly effective against Thoraxians. Last night, when finishing up a 4/8 federation run, I was certain that I would have to launch planetcrackers or have an interminable wait while my fed guys (skylaxians, peltians, acutians) slowly ground away. Then, I see the 'orbital bombardment' option. After spending a few months blasting the bugs from orbit, they were all dead, down to the last bug. Awesome, and probably useful in keeping a race weak for a full 8/8 run.

If you want to make it super effective, try assassinating the queen. That'll permanently damage your relationship with the race, so you'll have to backdoor her into the Federation (if that's a thing you want), but that's the way to speed the process up or wipe the Buggers from the solar system.

[bobtheaverage]

I was playing a 8 man fed game last night. It is so hard to do, but I got lucky. The Thoraxians had the mire, and the Peltists had the ark. This made the game so much easier.
I started the federation with the Skylaxians and Boarines, and built it from there. I got most of the races in by bumping my influence with them up to a ridiculous level and then having them vote to join. Every time I saw a ground invasion I had to take off and defend the planet. Tactical support for ground defence is your friend.
I was able to get the Thoraxians in to the Federation by building up their mutual rep with the Actuans via expense dispatch. Ugh. Eventually all I had left out were the Evucks. I was building my influence with them when the invaded the Thoraxians and killed them. This trashed my chances of an 8 man fed. I saw their space fleets attacking the Thoraxians, but I figured I would let it slide while I built influence. I never even saw the Evuck ground forces and the Thoraxians don't generate pirates to be smuggled in as resistance fighters.

I REALLY wish this game had a notification for a ground invasion or a space attack. Even an option to automatically PAUSE the game when a ground invasion happens would be great. I have lost so many races when I wasn't looking. It sucks.

[Tolc]

Tactical support for ground defence is your friend.

Not if you're trying to defend another race from the Thoraxians... I learned that the hard way in my first game. They just steamroll other ground troops.

I was able to get the Thoraxians in to the Federation by building up their mutual rep with the Actuans via expense dispatch. Ugh.

I REALLY wish this game had a notification for a ground invasion or a space attack. Even an option to automatically PAUSE the game when a ground invasion happens would be great. I have lost so many races when I wasn't looking. It sucks.

If you had the Boarines alraedy in the federation why didn't you use their "encourage relations between races" ability? That's how I got the Thoraxians in my federation.

The pause button is your friend in that regard. But honestly what occupied your attention while being on a dispatch if not a war?

And of course: Welcome to the forums

[NickAragua]

I usually miss invasions when I'm helping other races colonize moons (3 months) or broker trade routes (2 months). It's even more ironic if I was trying to broker a trade route with the race I was invading.

Got the 8-man federation done tonight, on attempt #5. Thoraxians starting with the Mire meant I only had to keep the Burlust down. The Thoraxians did try to attack a bunch of people, but they never launched a ground invasion due to their awfully low population (at one point, I actually had to go help their medical RCI so they'd stop dropping below 1m population).

Some observations:
- "Expand Usable Land Area" is the single most profitable dispatch. Whenever I see a race with a gas giant, I start jumping for joy because that's basically insta-credits. Like smuggling, pirate base whacking and slavery, it's a limited use resource, though. On top of that, you get a little bonus influence, and it's something you can do even for races that you don't want to really help, because it takes them a while to fill out that land capacity. Gathering space junk is similar in profit, although do you really want those armadas coming out faster for that particular race?

- I followed the advice to build up ground combat tech, and also gave everybody free ion cannon blueprints. Avoided giving space combat tech to the aggressive guys.

- Started with the "Federation for Safety", then brought the Acutians in via 200-influence vote (it took a lot of tech gifts). It's critical to have one of the Skylaxians, Acutians or Andors trading with a lot of people early, as they can "convince other race to join federation", and it saves a lot of time and credits to have those 'race relationships' built up. Unfortunately, Boarines and Burlusts are anti-trade. Sigh.

- Burlusts eventually came to heel once I had enough members and was able to intimidate them into joining. I let the Thoraxians and Evucks (some kind of combo!) get them down to no armadas then killed the leader and THEN killed the attacking armadas. That way, their rage attack didn't actually do anything. After which I even built the Burliest a couple of free ion cannons. Aren't I a nice guy?

- The rest (Boarines, Evucks and Thoraxians), I had to "improve relations" and then "convince to join". However, my federation members all had super strong navies at that point, so I had the time. It was kind of funny, there was a never-ending furball going on above the Boarine homeworld, where it seemed like every race would just randomly send raiders, skirmishers and whatever else to shoot at each other. A little weird, but fine since it generated a lot of scrap metal that I could turn into credits. With the Boarines, I had no patience to wait for a mood switch (and didn't want to deal with assassination and rolling the dice on the next mood... err.. priority). With the bugs, I didn't have the goodies to get them up to 400 influence for the "join existing federation". As for the Evucks, they were already at ~180/180 with the Acutians by the time I targeted them for federation inclusion.

- I had to bail five of the races out from near extinction. The poor shmucks kept getting into "below 1m population" territory, so I had to keep an eagle eye on the event bar and pause button while doing dispatches. Thankfully, the "recently" revised RCI-related dispatches made it actually possible to bail those guys out. It's a little scary when there are a few non-fed races out there, all at near zero population and none of them like each other.

- The andors seem to have a "delayed reaction" in their election cycle. Seems to take about an extra month for the next party to take over. I guess what I'm saying is, don't abandon your construction project just because you think they've done an election.

[bobtheaverage]

Tactical support for ground defence is your friend.

Not if you're trying to defend another race from the Thoraxians... I learned that the hard way in my first game. They just steamroll other ground troops.

If you let the Thoraxians get that strong in the first place you are pretty much done with the 8 man fed. GG. Start a new game.

I was able to get the Thoraxians in to the Federation by building up their mutual rep with the Actuans via expense dispatch. Ugh.

I REALLY wish this game had a notification for a ground invasion or a space attack. Even an option to automatically PAUSE the game when a ground invasion happens would be great. I have lost so many races when I wasn't looking. It sucks.

If you had the Boarines alraedy in the federation why didn't you use their "encourage relations between races" ability? That's how I got the Thoraxians in my federation.

The pause button is your friend in that regard. But honestly what occupied your attention while being on a dispatch if not a war?

And of course: Welcome to the forums

I had let the Boarines slip down into hellish mediocrity and they were perpetually on some other priority.
Nothing in particular occupied my attention I simply didn't notice when the Evucks landed their troops. If I had seen the little soldiers I would have gone to kill them.

In other news, I just finished up an 8 man win. I started a game by crashing with the Thoraxians. The Burlusts got the Ark and were 30s from being spacefaring when the game started. I got those two to fight each other the WHOLE game. There were always Burlust armadas circling Thorax but their ground troops I went and weed-wacked them.

Other than that the game was pretty standard. I started with Boarine and Skylaxians. I brought the other races in 1 by 1 and I was able to keep all of them happy with each other so that no wars broke out.
A prolonged Burlust vs Thorax war is pretty awesome.

[Tolc]

I usually miss invasions when I'm helping other races colonize moons (3 months) or broker trade routes (2 months). It's even more ironic if I was trying to broker a trade route with the race I was invading.

Ok, I forgot those dispatches. Yeah, that annoys me a bit every time you do it, because you're basically just telling the race to do it and don't work on it yourself. I'd find it better if it takes 3 months to do it (in case of the moon colonizing for example), but those 3 months don't rush past you as soon as you close the race menu... Strikes me as a little odd, again, as you're not doing any "work" yourself.

Tactical support for ground defence is your friend.

Not if you're trying to defend another race from the Thoraxians... I learned that the hard way in my first game. They just steamroll other ground troops.

If you let the Thoraxians get that strong in the first place you are pretty much done with the 8 man fed. GG. Start a new game.

Well, yeah. It was my first game after all. I never underestimated them again afterwards.

[bobtheaverage]

I usually miss invasions when I'm helping other races colonize moons (3 months) or broker trade routes (2 months). It's even more ironic if I was trying to broker a trade route with the race I was invading.

Ok, I forgot those dispatches. Yeah, that annoys me a bit every time you do it, because you're basically just telling the race to do it and don't work on it yourself. I'd find it better if it takes 3 months to do it (in case of the moon colonizing for example), but those 3 months don't rush past you as soon as you close the race menu... Strikes me as a little odd, again, as you're not doing any "work" yourself.

Sure you are doing work. You are the emissary. The races need a go between to hammer out the details and keep the relevant parties from walking away from the table. Ideally someone with 8 heads and a spaceship that flies between planets in a day.