1. 100cs
2. ~1000 farms(or a total of 1000 farms/ICs) and 60 more CS, while taking care to allow pop to catch up with your acres by building CS
3.explore and build labs until you are 1900 acres anf fully built
4. batch explore 60 turns(it will cut you off after about 35-45 turns depending on govt)
5. build up your empty acres with Labs
6. destroy your farms/indies and replace them with labs
7. tech 200 turns
8. switch to casher or farmer


Written by Tmac

I have a couple of questions regarding this strat. I only started playing last week, I'm trying to get a better understanding of the long term concept of this strat.

Step 4 to 6 - You should have ~3800 acres all converted to labs / CS before you tech?

Step 7 - When you Tech for 200 turns, what are you focusing on researching?
Do you only focus on maxing Military, Military Strategy, and either Ag or Business depending on your future rebuild plans in step 8?

Is there an option after teching for 200 turns to rebuild into a blend of IC's / Military bases. The main concept would be to mass produce spies and sell on the PM then repurchase your own military through the PM.

You focus your research depending on what strat you're going to play, if casher you tech bus/res heavy, if farmer you tech Ag, etc etc

Selling spies on private market not good idea, you'll need them to spy plus you can produce better amounts of jets and sell them on public market

Ok, is it a viable strategy to mass produce oil? Or is that less effective then farming?

No oil research, no, fascist has oil bonus, you can do fascist farmer/oiler strat, play around with them in express, you get short resets with loads of turns!

Ok, that makes. I am trying this strat in express right now.

When you are on step 7 and after you tech for 200 turns, do you sell any of the tech on the market to get your farmer/casher build back up again and operational?

Or do you keep all the tech and once you max out, destroy all the labs and start building up your ICs / Farms again?

I don't sell unless I need cash desperately, you can sell to fund your conversion yes.

Quick question regarding the "switch" to your end game strat (once you've researched for 200 turns). Let's say your intent was to tech up agriculture. Would you still break down your first 1000 farms and rebuild them after teching? Or skip the step of breaking down 1000 (assume the latter).

Teching agriculture while keeping the farms seems strong, however would you then tech for 250 turns (25% more since you have 25% less tech labs)

Looking forward to your thoughts here.

The increased tpt is worth more than the food and rebuild cost for this few acres. Carry less military if you're worried about cash or food consumption. I play Jet/Spy countries, so explore phase has no cost other than building/razing.

Good question, i personally would tear down the farms totally prior to I ever begin teching. If I am teching, it’s always on 90-100 percent of my land as labs.

I did attempt a run at a tech start demo farmer last set in primary with the idea that it should optimize the democracy tech bonus. It was a poor farmers set but that strategy has a LOT of potential. It seems a lot harder than a rep casher though.

I’ve tinkered with this tech start for a while now and have got it dialed in pretty good now. This should be fairly close to optimal for a rep casher


modified tech start 3.33


Switch to rep

1. 100cs (I did 2 or 3 turns of farms at 20bpt)

2. 600 farms, and 80 more CS, while taking care to allow pop to catch up with your acres by building CS

3.explore and build labs until you are 1900 acres and fully built (I tear down all farms here all labs)

3.33 tech 30-40 turns bus/res (until at 145 bus/res)

4. batch explore 60 turns(it will cut you off after about 35-45 turns depending on govt)

5. build up your empty acres with Labs

6. destroy your farms/indies and replace them with labs

7. tech 100 turns bus and res (should be around 150k tech total at this point or in that area)

8. switch to casher

bonus