Overview
a bit long winded, but by following these basic steps you will be able to out science, out produce, and be fully prepared for any aggression by apollo ai, i wrote this guide after reading twilight dragoons how to win on applo in 50 turns guide. the ai in BE is still very bad but i figured if there were still people that had difficulty with apollo then they could use some help.The goal of this guide is to teach you how to effectively infinite city spam (ICS) in order to more than keep up with applo ai’s bonuses, and once you can keep up beating them is a simple matter because BE ai cant fight its way out of a wet paper bag unless it has a major tech advantage.this is also effective in multi, but you have to be alot more cautious since players will punish you for any vunerabilities or if they think your growing too fast.
How to beat apollo AI for BE for beginers to intermediary players
as the title says i made this guide after reading twilight dragoons how to beat apollo in turn 50 turns guide. theres really no need to rush the ai like this, beyond earth ai is pretty bad at war, so long as you remain ideologicly competitive you will win. heres how to outplay apollo ai without much trouble.
Note this works best on massive map, however the basic principles apply to all map sizes, for smaller maps you may just need less additional explorers after the 1st 6 and can probally make do with less cities so long as you get at least 4-5 on tiny/small and 7-12 on standard and large, more cities is better but you will learn that in time if you dont already understand why.
1. take engineers and worker for shuttle, if your using starships starter traits then also take expedition locations, otherwise it doesnt mattter thou i favor alien nests since it reveals strategic resorce locations. NEVER AUTOMATE WORKERS OR LET CITIES CHOOSE WICH TILES TO WORK. use worker to make 1-2 mines and the rest farmland, improve any basic resorces ofc.
for techs get pioneering then the 1 that reveals titanium, i think thats engineering. build old earth relic then 6 explorers, once explorers are done just make colonisers, and the occasional extra explorer to escort them then to go onto looking for more ruins. btw dont worry too much about unhealth, take the political traits that give 8 health in capital and +3 or w/e it is per agreement made by you, this is enough for starters, so long as your unhealth doesnt reach -40 you are fine, if it does just focus building or buying health buildings for a little bit
2. just constantly make cities untill there is no room to make more, build old earth relic, trading outpost, trade convoy recyler, thorium reactor 1st in every city. for culture path i recomend taking prosperaties +3 expedition then switching to industry to get +6 energy per lvl for station trade routes and the +2 production on manufactuaries but this isnt an absolute rule, its just a personal preferance since that station energy is good for keeping your income positive untill thorium reactors are online and the +2 prod to manufacturies means you only need 2 instead of 3 per city wich means less unhealth. while this is going on manually control all explorers to keep them alive and go for as many ruins as possible, the goal is to collect artifacts, do not turn them in immediatly.
3. use trade convoys to speed up growth of cities into outposts, also take any +energy rewards for quest decisions exept for culture or health, take more of those instead of free maintenance. PRIORITIES SETTLING NEAR TITANIUM and improve titanium asap, as the +5 production from titanium mines makes new cities build their improvements fast. but its ok if you run out of titanium sorces to settle near, or there just isnt any, for those cities just make 2 manufacturies on hills, if you get the +2 prod for manufacturies then they will be just as good as having titanium mines.
4. once cities complete the initial build order from step one have them build some military, for coastal and or ocean civs 2 patrol boats and 2 gunboats per city, for land 3 marines 1 ranger.
btw once you get your first 2 outposts unpacked into cities change trade routes to stations, then go back to internal trade routes once youve connected trade routes to all stations that you can. you should be able to find most if not all of them with explorers as they hunt for artifacts.
5. btw DO NOT ATtACK ALIENS if you dont then they will mostly leave your explorers, colonists and workers alone, only attack aliens once you have some military at every city and theres no more artifacts. by now you should have several artifacts, go through the x3 combinations to see whats available, while theres lots of good things here theres 2 things your aiming for, drone command – this is a building that adds +2 tile workers to all cities that build it, and +50% worker speed wich is excellent for making terrascapes, biowells, manufacturies and acadamies. after you get those 2 anything else is just extra but nice to have. once you have drone command build them in all cities aifter thorium reactor.
6. by now some of the ai will be getting pissed at you for taking expansions near them, but you should have a signifigant army, and it should be at 1st tir of your affinity of units by now especially if you got some lucky affinity boosts from ruins. so just group your army at your colonies closest to the ai’s that can reach you. if you have 7 or so units and are keeping up in ideology then ai has 0 chance of winning, just fight defensivly and pick off ai units and keep yours alive untill they have none left.
7. by now your well on your way to winning the game, just use your rediculose income you will have by getting thorium reactors out so early to buy health buildings everywhere, and if you run out of energy then just build them after drone command and military, unless you have a big enough army by this point in wich case skip making more army for more health. by now it should be about turn 100-130 and you should have 10-15 cities, untill this point your unhealth will hover around -20 to -30 but this is ok once you build all the health buildings it will shoot up to about +10 to +20 then when you add soma farms or gene gardens then itll shoot up to +30 to +40 and your science will be 300-400 at this point you can just go for any victory condition or kill all ai, but i recomend w/e u do kill harmony ai around about now because they will win mind flower victory by turn 180 if you leave them alive, otherwise u can win any victory condition by turn 170-220
8. final notes. If youve managed to follow this guide then you should be able to win the game by turn 170 to turn 200, dependant on certain wonders, good terrain and luck with finding the right artifacts determines if its closer to turn 170 or closer to 200, if you want to laze around and fight more or dont specificly go for completing a victory condition then it might go untill turn 230 wich brings us to the only real problem of apollo AI, mind flower is the easiest and fastest victory to achive, more so for ai because of their bonus yeilds, harmony apollo AI can and will win with mind flower by turn 170, occasionally a bit later if they are doing badly but dont count on it.
because of this i highly recomend killing off harmony players asap since you might not be able to do it in time if you attack when they start building the mind flower. Alternatively you can just post an army of 15+ units near each harmony player and attack any that start the mind flower and reinforce your attack using phaze teleporter satalites.
if you stuck with it thanks for reading, and good luck have fun, robo gandhi is with you! 😀
also i may have oversimplified this guide, that is because i only wanted to include the basics of how to do this so that you can learn your own way of playing, this guide will just help you set your empire up so you can choose how you want to play.
GL HF