Economic Timing

Timing your economy (and with it your research) is especially important, too. Its not enough that you build a large economy, a well defended base, have all the right technologies under your belt and a sizeable army; it's building it in time! Sure, advanced units pack a wallop, but they're expensive and time consuming to build at the outset (Its not just the cost of the unit itself, but the extra research and buildings needed to produce it, too). In order to get some firepower on the map early you may have to squander resources on cheap and nasty units, holding off research and for a while just to field those first rushes. Knowing when to step your economy to the next level or when to build particular units is very important. You can make decisions too late, but you can sometimes make them too soon! And upgrading your units can be counter productive if you haven't built that many; you might as well spend the cash on extra men up front and then get maximum value from an upgrade when you have a lot of them.

First of all, for any decision to ramp up - you've got to be able to afford it, and keep expanding your force. If not, you should be securing and developing more resources, ASAP!

What all this is boiling down to is when it comes to building up an economy and an armed force, time brings up the issue of efficiency. The rate at which you extract resources and the time it takes to build things is going to directly affect how and when you can move your forces, and how strong they will be when you do. More efficient economies translate into bigger and more powerful armies sooner. Less efficient players will find themselves disadvantaged or just plain destroyed. The trick is to knowing when and which bits of your build tree to work on first. Experience, as ever, will probably be your best guide.

By efficiency I mean an economy that's going to grow fast and be strong most of the time. This doesn't necessarily mean you should make all your building decisions based entirely on how cost effective they are - far from it! There are times when you simply have to waste a lot of stuff just to get into a good strategic position - ultimately you are trying to build a powerful force - and in a hurry, rather than dazzling your foes into defeat by impressing them with your accountant's ways. (Unless you're playing one of those great German games that just loves economic management, or a sim)

An "efficient economy" in RTSC terms = one that can whump your foolish foes sooner! Getting things started in a timely manner quickly translates into a more effective economy sooner, and thus the ability to dent the opposition's bases or defend against the first rushes of the game. This might mean holding off upgrades and research just to get an early swarm of cheap units - not a terribly sound economic decision overall, but potentially a lethal military one in the short term that makes it possible to make good economic decisions later on.

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Last reformatted Sun, Aug 3 2003 by Lindsay Fleay