How To Play
From Lunar Wars Wiki
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[edit] How to Play
- Welcome to Lunar Wars. You have just founded your Moon Colony. Now How to go about daily business? Well here is a quick guide to what everything is and does.
[edit] Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a key aspect of your colony's progress.
Each colony has an AI rating. This, in effect, defines the colonies "level" in the game. Colonies unlock new advanced features as they move up in AI rating.
Domestically speaking, higher AI reduces your per person maintenance costs in the category called "Life Support." This is important because to have a strong economy, you need lots of people. Supporting those people is a substantial cost to your colony. The second most important link to AI in the domestic side is the mines your colony operates, which ostensibly is the reason you have a colony on the moon in the first place. With each increase of +25 AI a colony is permitted to buy another mine at $500. Mines generate a substantial portion of your total revenue. Moving up in AI allows you to buy more mines that support a strong economy.
On the military side, AI unlocks military technologies. To start, you may only buy soldiers. Soldiers and police are required to maintain order in you colony so you have to have soldiers or your economy goes down the tubes. At AI=100, you are permitted to build ground assault units, GAUs, like little tanks that can go to battle for you. They are more capable than soldiers, but it is not clear if they are worth the cost. Later, you can increase your AI to buy missiles, then Orbital fighters and finally nuclear weapons at AI=800. The maintenance costs for the military can become a burden if you don't keep growing your economy. Many colonies operate near the lowest limit of military they can to maintain order in their colony and only ramp up for war when it becomes necessary.
Another subtlety in the game is the lowest threshold for changing into war mode. One economic feature in the game is the grants received from earth each turn. This is not a huge sum of money compared to mine and tax income, but it is not insignificant. Below an AI rating of 50, a colony must stay in Peace Mode. In this mode you may not engage in military operations and you may not be attacked. Some call this the enforced "Newbie" mode. It takes a few days to get your AI to 50 and you can get a feel for the game during those few days. At AI=50, colonies have the option of switching to War Mode. This doesn't place you in a war, but removes the protections and prohibitions of getting into wars. The benefit of doing this is that grant income from Earth is multiplied by 5x and your maintenance cost for soldiers drops a little. For this reason, most colonies get into War Mode as quickly as possible and stay there. To avoid getting attacked by pirates (mid level colonies seeking to exploit new weak colonies) many colonies join an Alliance. The Alliance members pledge to fight for their members if they are attacked in exchange for the same consideration should the individual member get attacked. See the section on Alliances for more information.
Increasing your AI score is a matter of buying up your AI technology level. There are two tricks to this though. The first trick is that the cost of each level of AI is more than the previous. However, there is a benefit to be made use of in the purchasing of AI. You may buy up to 10 levels of AI at a single purchase. The benefit is that you buy all ten levels at the cost of the lowest level times ten. A colony doing this, saves the incremental cost of the other nine levels. So if for a set of ten AI levels the costs would be: 400, 405, 410, 415, 420, 425, 430, 435, 440, and 445, the sum of these bought separately would become $4,225. However, the game allows you to buy all ten levels in a single purchase for $4,000. Over the long haul this can be noticeable. On the other hand, waiting for long periods to buy AI in bulk could hurt you financially, as each improved AI point can help you increase your revenue.
Also, the game has a discount timer that allows you to receive a discount if you haven't purchased AI in a while. The discount is 2% per time period up to a maximum discount of 20%. By waiting an extra time period, a lunar day in game terms, you get another 2% discount. By alternating AI purchases with other items to spread out the costs, a colony can usually enjoy a 10-14% discount on average for AI purchases. This makes it extremely critical to purchase AI in 10 unit increments because once you purchase a single AI, the timer goes back to zero.
A new feature in LW also related to AI is the use of many minerals to advance a colony. In addition to the money to buy AI, a colony has to also "spend" Ilmenite and Copper from the colony stockpile. If the colony does not have the required amounts, they may purchase more on the open market at a price dictated by supply and demand. This new minerals system impacts other commodities purchased in the game. A full discussion of the new minerals system is presented elsewhere.
[edit] Housing
Housing structures are where your citizens live; the more Housing structures you have, the more citizens will live in your colony. More citizens mean more taxes, so housing is critical to your economic success. Without any improvements, housing structures hold about 7-8 citizens and require iron and aluminum, along with cash, to build.
[edit] Military
Wars are an everyday occurrence in Lunar Wars. Once your colony reaches 50 AI and enters War Mode, you will need to maintain a sizable military force for defensive and offensive purposes.
[edit] Improvements
Housing as mentioned above is important for tax collection, however there are other ways of increasing your income, these are improvements, however you need a set amount of citizens and the money needed buy them, however once bought there is no extra cost. There are 7 categories of improvements (total of 58) which are as followed
- Grant Improvements:- Increases the money received from your earth government.
- Tax Improvements:- Does exactly what is says on the tin, increases your tax collection from your citizens.
- Life Support Improvements:- Reduces the cost of life support to your colony.
- Population Improvements:- Increases the amount of people each house can hold.
- Mining Improvements:- Increases the amount of minerals mined, and also increases storage capacity.
- Discount Improvements:- Decreases costs of AI and Housing.
- Recruitment Improvements:- Generates free solders and Police for your colony
