MHGC FAQ (Courtesy of Richard Aronson)

This is for VERSION 3 of the game



MHGC is a game with economic, diplomatic, and military elements. But at its core, it is an economic game. Without money you have nothing to trade and no ships to fight wars.

Q: How can I grow my worlds faster?
A: Move people off planets onto transports, move the transports to a new planet, and then move them from the transport to the ground. Ideally the target world will have competitive advantages over the source world.

Q: But it's the same population on either planet? Why lose a turn or more of production to move the people? And how do a billion productive workers turn into embryos anyway?
A: Forget the embryo abstraction. Call it freeze drying instead. There are many reasons to have pop on a better planet. You will have very few leaders in the game. The more people enhanced by their high management leaders, the more they produce. Rich worlds produce more. Artifacts cost money but can enhance production.

Q: Artifacts?
A: Consider EUS, which allows worlds to grow beyond 10 population (pop, or P). Each EUS artifact costs 100 IUs. You are 100 IUs better off with a world with EUS and 20 pop and a world with no EUS and 10 P than you are with two worlds both with EUS and 15 P. Similarly, with the 20/10, you can build your first production enhancing artifacts (CB, VRB, BF, CM) on the planet where more P are around to take advantage of it.

Q: Which planet do I choose for big growth?
A: Rich worlds start out at twice the normal output of AUs or IUs. Higher habitability worlds will keep the people happy with less food.

Q: How important is happiness?
A: If you spend more time growing food for happy people, you will sometimes get some rewards. But you will generally get more usable value (EU or IU) by keeping the people happy and having them grow and eat just enough food to stay satisfied.

Q: So I should never worry about happiness?
A: No, there are some times you want to pay fairly close attention. The first is on low habitability worlds. An H, VH, or EH will grow a full point a turn with zero food longer than will an MH or PH. You want to grow the population; people mean money mean good things. Also, when your empire starts getting mature, you will want to move pop mostly to worlds with lots of combined production boosts: leaders, richness, and artifacts. As those worlds get big, you may need to feed them to Very Happy before they will accept any more people without rebelling.

Q: What about crowds protesting in anger over forced immigration?
A: It's a terrible message, because if you see it, decide it's dangerous, and stop moving people around, you'll lose the game. Ignore it. the player who sees that message most often is likely winning the game.

Q: When can I go to war. Sergeant, I want to kill!
A: Very good. Put that idea in the dump with the rest of your litter. MHGC is fairly well balanced. You can spend money on improving your economy, or you can spend money on war. If you go to war too soon, you may capture a planet or two, but you will be behind in economic technologies and artifacts because you spend on warships instead. A general rule of thumb is don't build the weakest ships unless you have to; most are either too slow or too weak to be of any real value unless you are under attack. Offensive and Defensive ships of speed three start gaining substantial value, because they pack a lot of bang for their buck, and faster ships can move to an attack sooner and retreat from a counter attack easily. He who fights and runs away gets to salvage his ships for another day.

Q: Salvage Ships?
A: The SS command returns roughly 3/4 of the construction value of a ship at the space port doing the salvaging. Usually you will want to salvage at the front lines if you are winning, so you can build ships where they are needed, and retreat ships back if you aren't so sure of winning. Although it eats up a spaceport build to salvage a ship, it still can save a lot of money. Or it can help a system get the IUs needed for an artifact build.

Q: So what's the best first move?
A: It generally depends on what planets your homeworld sees, and nobody agrees all the time. There are some general approaches which all have strong adherents. One approach is to start by BSP on the homeworld. This doubles your spaceport capacity early and gets more ships going. Another is to build a transport if you see two or more planets, so you can start building them up quickly. The third is to build a scout, to find more planets.

Q: How many ships do I build?
A: Few new players build enough ships early. By turn 5, you should have at least 7 ships. Scouts should go out finding new planets, and transports are needed both to settle new planets and to bring IUs from the homeworld to the colonies.

Q: So what do I load onto my first transport?
A: If you see 2 planets in the same direction, then 2 pop and 20 IUs is a fairly safe standard load. Drop 1 pop and 10 IU on the first planet, then move to the second and repeat. But some players like to put 3 pop on a transport, so they can go farther. Eventually that planet will build infrastructure, but the sooner you settle the planet, the harder it is for you to lose it. And others put 1 pop and 40 IUs on a ship. They drop the pop and 20 IUs, building 2 infrastructure, wait a turn for the planet to grow to 2 pop, take one pop (and the other 20 IUs) and move on and repeat. When the ship is empty, it can return to the core for more IUs with 2 or even 3 pop to bring back.

Q: But which is best?
A: Best is a relative term. Mathematically, though, the game depends on pop growth. If you consider each option in a vacuum, the 3 pop build is best, especially if you know 3 planets to drop on. After no more than 14 turns, all else equal, you'll be ahead. However, there are other factors to consider.

Q: Like what?
A: If you keep the homeworld at max pop as long as possible, you lose out on growth rate there, at least until you have EUS. However, you gain on richness bonuses for the most people and your leader will help more people. This can help you buy techs early and trade them for profits before other people have bought them.

Q: Trading?
A: You can acquire one tech through normal means (purchase or trading) per turn. You can trade away one tech per turn. You can pay for techs at a negotiated rate. Different people try different approaches and may offer you better or worse deals. On the other hand, you can only trade techs with people you have met. That's another reason to send out scouts, to meet more people. If you don't make trades, you are extremely unlikely to win the game. Either you wind up paying full price for all your techs when other people are getting them at a shared price, or you aren't trading your techs to recoup some of the costs from other people.

Q: Different rates?
A: Lets say I buy Extended Home Computing, a 100 EU tech that everybody will want sooner or later. You want it. It will cost me 50 EUs to send it to you. If I sell it to you for 99 EU, you save one EU, and I make 49 EUs: good for me. If I sell it to you for 51 EU, you save 49 EU and I make 1 EU. Usually trades wind up near the mid point.

Q: But how can I trust people?
A: You can't. Some people are unreliable; they forget to issue orders, a tech trade doesn't go out, and you have no recourse other than to whine publicly. And nobody likes a whiner. Others deliberately delay a turn just because they can. The second variable in the trade equation is when the trade occurs. If I say, "Pay me 75 EUs and I will send you EHC the next turn" then I only need 75 EUs of my own to get and then gift EHC, and I had no risk; I didn't have to act until your money was in my hands. But if you say "Send me EHC and I'll send you 75 EUs" then I bear all the burden of risk.

Q: That sounds pretty bad.
A: Well, there are two fairly obvious ways to deal with risk. The first is to share it equally: this turn I am sending EHC and you are sending 75 EUs. The second is to value early money. For example, you send me 40 EUs, which reduces your risk from 75 to 40. Then I send you EHC, reducing my risk to 10 on the gifting cost. Then you send me 35, and we're even, with both of us sharing some risks.

Q: Isn't that fairer?
A: Well, it's a game; don't count on fairness. Besides, there are two reasons why trading generally is reliable. If the guy trading you the tech doesn't come through, people will stop trading with him, and he'll lose. And after all, the guy offering you the tech got it first; he already is ahead of you through being able to place EHC artifacts if he so desires. All of which is to say: shop around. Everybody you meet is a candidate for trade.

Q: How about pooling my money with others?
A: Ever herded snakes? Yes, mathematically two or more people funneling all their EUs to a front runner to get the two major EU technologies, CB and VRB, and their precursors, can be shown to have both players with a full set of VRB artifacts at least a turn sooner than a more normal sharing mechanism. Is there a player you trust that much? And do you see that really nice bridge over my shoulder?

Q: So we come back to trust again. Is there some break given to new players?
A: Depends who you talk to. Some players philosophically prefer to give breaks to new players. Some players have offered to sell a newbie EHC for 85 EUs, in advance. It's probably rare that a player will lie to your face and tell you that they like to give breaks to newbies, because if you turn out to be a good player you probably won't trust them ever again. Which all comes back to talking to as many people as possible.

Q: It sounds like a lot of work.
A: In the early game (first 25 moves or so) a move takes me about half an hour or less to calculate and enter. That move may have five hours of emails associated with it, maybe even more, sometimes less. The players who do well in the game tend to work harder at the game. They peddle techs harder, they offer more DCT trades, they calculate CSP to the least loss.

Q: DCT?
A: A 500 EU technology, it enables you to get 1/4 of a planets EU production in the form of non-specific passenger and freight trade each turn if you move a transport over that planet and then convert it to trade (take it out of the game). This can be quite the economic boost. Generally players share their DCT income, but that too is negotiatable.

Q: So I should do DCT with everybody?
A: Well, it depends. It can be very expensive to get 5 transports to planets 45 squares away. That's 5 moves at 5 IU and 5 EU, and 6 moves at 10 IU and 10 EU Upkeep on the transport, for 85 IU and 85 EU, assuming your transport makes it there intact. Often far off players will swap a planet with each other, ideally a low habitability planet near a metal rich world, and then with a base reducing the upkeep costs a lot, it's far more affordable.

Q: How would that work?
A: Pick an MH or PH world (generally: your empire may vary) and keep its population under 3.5. The key is to keep the fraction under .5. SL the integer part of the Pop to the transport when it arrives. The planet will die out, and be aware: you will take a happiness hit. Then your partner drops the pop back down from his transport, claiming the planet. You can either stockpile IU early or UG the IUs. You probably want a level 1 spaceport built in advance, maybe even level 2. Once he has transports away to all your planets, he can give you back the planet the same way, or pass it along to the next guy swapping DCT planets with you.

Q: That sounds highly cooperative?
A: Yes, fun and effective for both. Jeff Krasner told me about that maneuver. And DJ Byrne came up with a little enhancement to that plan; there's no reason why your transports heading out to his distant worlds can carry some IUs or Pop to help those distant worlds as well. Mind you, others may have come up with either plan earlier, but that's who shared them with me.

Q: Now back to the CSP thing.
A: Okay, everything produced in MHGC is produced in truncated integers. If you build 9.99 AU, and I build 9.0 AU, we both get 9 AU. So if you like playing with numbers, and since you're in MHGC I assume you do, you want to learn to calculate your builds and then adjust CSP to have the least rounding loss.

Q: I think I know how, but can you walk me through it?
A: Okay, each point of pop with Infrastructure built that turn (or earlier) produces 6 points of base production. Without infrastructure, it's 3 points of base production. So say you have 2.5 Pop on a world with 3 Inf. How many production points is that? Well, you don't know.

Q: I don't know?
A: You don't know, because the 2.5 pop is rounded, and could be 2.46 (14 production points) or 2.53 (15 production points). Sometimes you do know; planets at Happy that haven't been growing are probably going to remain at the same pop level as the previous turn, and 2.4 would always be between 2.33 and 2.5 for 14 points.

Q: So lets say I have 14 Production Points. What do I do now?
A: I try to run a lean empire with people barely happy, so I usually do AU first. I start at 14. If I have BF, I multiply by 1.5 to get 21. If I also have AF, I multiply by 1.5 again. If it is an AR planet, then I double that number. If I have a leader, I multiply times his MGMT skill plus 50 as a percentage. So a MGMT 91 leader multiplies times 1.41, and a MGMT 41 leader multiplies time .91.

Q: Why do you have a negative leader on a planet?
A: I rarely do, but if I have a young intelligent leader with high scores in ENG (damage reduction) and SOC (happiness hits and boosts) and MGMT i the 40s, I may move him in place and hope his MGMT skill improves to where he's useful. Leaders can get better until they are 20.

Q: Okay, so back to production. Say I have 14 PP and BF. Now what?
A: BF makes it 21 PP for AU. 10% of 21 is 2.1, rounds down to 2, which is a nice low rounding number. 14% is 2.94, truncates down to 2. So why put the extra four points into AU when they might make a difference elsewhere? If I think 2 food is enough, and it almost certainly is, I'd then look at IU or EU, whichever I want least of, usually IU except at MR worlds, isolated frontier worlds that need to save up for an artifact, or worlds without full Infrastructure. For IU production, you only have 14 PP.

Q: What if I have Core Mining?
A: Read all the techs, have you? Okay, then you'd have 21, but few people will build CM on a planet with only 2.5 Pop to use it. So lets say 14. 10% of 14 is 1.4, which isn't quite as good a round. 14% is 1.96, a terrible truncation. 15% is 2.1 IU, which is another good low truncation. So I have those two figures. 10% + 15% = 25%. 100% - 25% = 75%. No, I didn't have to use my toes for those, but I usually use a calculator on the odd percentages. 75% * 14 = 10.5. That's not great, but there's not much I can do about it. My total truncation is under 1, and that's always the goal. I *could* get one more EU and one fewer IU by going to 10/10/80 if I preferred. If I have CB, the numbers still aren't great, but they aren't dreadful. With 14, a number that has nothing in common with 10, it's hard. But if you have a better PP number, like anything that ends in zero, then you can probably eliminate all your rounding.

Q: And you do this for every planet every move?
A: Well, maybe not every planet every move. One planets have all the core economic techs and their growth rate has flatlined, then I can just use the same numbers turn in and turn out. In games where I have lots of money, have maybe captured some planets, I might do it less, because 1 extra EU when I'm making 1,000/turn means less than when I'm making 100 EU per turn. You work as hard as you want to at this game.