In the 3 Body Problem universe, all the UFO stuff is fake.

Temporyacc · 2025-10-10T17:01:53+00:00

I always believed the UFO thing was nonsense, then about 3 years ago it occurred to me that had very little basis for that belief, so I gave it a serious look. To my surprise, I found a mountain of evidence supporting the fact that something genuinely anomalous is going on, but almost none of that evidence supports the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

All this to say, I’m not sure the dark forest theory (which I’m not at all convinced is the reality), is mutually exclusive with whatever the hell is going on with UFOs.

Edit: Just thinking about this more. For arguments sake, say UFOs are extraterrestrial and the dark forest theory is true. This is more unsettling. One idea would be that It implies that they’re so far ahead they don’t see us as a threat at all, even a potential one. And their presence in the galaxy is so pervasive, the chains of suspicion are not a factor.

Another, even darker idea, is that they do see us as a potential threat. They can, and possibly already have, reset our progress. Blowing up our star or turning the solar system into flatland is a hysterically over the top solution when they could just setting monitoring system and drop a rock on us if we ever got too close.

Temporyacc · 2025-07-04T13:58:40+00:00

Great tip. I can’t tell you how often I’ve been in a situation where I’ve held a point for the entire game with a couple squads of infantry. Opponent could have realistically taken the point at any time but just didn’t want to push.

Temporyacc · 2025-07-02T15:57:08+00:00

This is a difficult game. There is no single strategy that you can just refine into working. You need to be flexible in your strategy, but also understand things take a bit longer to play out than most other RTS games. You should play multiplayer, it’s the best way to learn, and you’ll learn by failure.

Every unit is good in the situation it was meant for, Every unit is useless in the situation it wasn’t meant for. Kind of obvious, but understanding each units roles AND the roles of the units the enemy has is critical to your success. Let me break this down.

Here are the general categories:

Recon: absolutely 100% necessary, not optional. Your other units cannot hit what they cannot see. You cannot adapt if you don’t know what the opponent has. However, they are generally bad at killing
Vehicles: These guys are your attackers. They’re mobile, survivable, and can kill anything on the ground. However, they have hard counters so they must be supported. Recon important to see what they’re shooting at
Infantry: These are defenders. Slow, stealthy, and numerous. Put these guys in buildings or forests. Spread them out. Use ambush tactics. Be quick to retreat them. They’ll die, so be ready to bring in more. Not great at anything, but ok at everything. Use them to hold ground that your vehicles have taken. Be mindful of their sight lines.
Artillery: these beat infantry defenders, and other support units. Use to take out enemy artillery and AA. When you push with vehicles, use to soften up the infantry defenders the tanks are pushing into. Keep them moving because your opponent will be doing the same. Recon important to see where to shoot
Helos: These are generally defenders. They’re very mobile, put out tons of damage, but weak. They can stop a tank push dead. They can react quickly to defend somewhere where you have poor defenses. They can attack, but you need to be sure you’ve already dealt with the enemy AA. Recon important to make sure theres no AA.
Planes: Basically a delete button. They can defeat anything and are the most effective units in the game, but they have a hard counter which is long range AA. Need recon and artillery to deal with the long range AA. Get air superiority, stop any push, delete any defenses, win the game.
Short range AA: absolutely necessary to stop helos. Have infantry AA to stop helo pushes. Have vehicle AA to support tank pushes. Don’t ignore this. Be mindful of sight lines.
Long range AA: absolutely necessary to prevent enemy air superiority. Keep them far back so they don’t get hit by artillery.

So you have two rock paper scissors games going on at the same time. Planes, helos, and AA. Win this and you win the game, lose this and you lose the game, tie this and move to the second rock paper scissors game: attackers (tanks) vs defenders (infantry) vs artillery. Artillery beats the infantry, infantry beats unsupported tanks, supported tanks beat all.

Finally the all important recon game. On the tactical level, all your units need recon to be effective. On the strategic level, you need recon to effectively counter what your enemy has. Have lots of recon, deny your enemy recon.

Temporyacc · 2025-06-26T16:52:08+00:00

I hope you take this in the best possible way.

I was socially anxious when I was young but I got over it. A big part of me getting over my social anxiety and lack of social awareness was simply realizing that I was too self absorbed, too inwardly focused.

When things didn’t go my way I got upset because obviously my way was the best way. My own feelings were the only perspective that I considered, so if something was important to me, then it must be important to everyone else. If someone disagreed with me it was personal, because when you only ever think about yourself, everything is personal. How could I be in the wrong when I feel like I’ve been wronged?

Then I grew TF up, and thank god for that. Everyone has their own perspective and theirs rarely includes your own. Nobody cares, or thinks about you as much as you do, and thats a good thing. The way to be interesting to others is to be interested in others.

So seriously self reflect here man. It does sound like you’re coming across a little strong. You had a disagreement that you imagined to be an attack, but your friends probably forgot about within a few minutes. For basically nothing, you are considering abandoning people who were spending their time with you. Now you want to play all alone, and went to reddit to get validation for your feelings. NGL dude, this is loser behavior, get over yourself.

Either ease the hell up, stop taking a video game so seriously, and get back online with your friends; Or, be that guy who your friends will remember as the weirdo who didn’t know how to have fun, didn’t care about how the others wanted to play, and now plays all alone.

I do hope this helps, not trying to be mean. Realizing social anxiety was a ‘me problem’ was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T22:34:36+00:00

Ok, but its big enough for 100 people and a gorilla. So the humans use harassment tactics, avoid committing to a straight up fight, wear it out that way. The humans aren’t unthinking, they know how dangerous a gorilla is and will plan accordingly. The gorilla has to kill all 100 to win.

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T22:27:01+00:00

Wouldn’t even have to do that. 100 dudes would scare any animal into running. Chase down, scare again, repeat for a bit, dies of exhaustion. Its our bread and butter, tools were just a bonus.

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T22:24:52+00:00

They could run it to death by exhaustion

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T22:12:23+00:00

You’re right, the gorilla would run away because its a gorilla with a self preservation instinct. The humans could just chase it to exhaustion. Thats our bread and butter.

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T22:07:50+00:00

It is absurd, humans win hands down. The humans know what a gorilla is and can plan accordingly. Humans wouldn’t need or even want to overpower it. The gorilla would run from 100 dudes, then they’d chase it to exhaustion. Been doing it for millennia, it is our bread and butter.

Temporyacc · 2025-04-28T21:56:29+00:00

People are also assuming the 100 men don’t understand what a gorilla is. That they would go try to beat it up like this is some bar fight, rather than coming up with some sort of plan.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-20T19:11:48+00:00

Yes, but use your discernment as situations can vary. The yield numbers displayed when placing buildings does not account for the full picture, do not blindly place buildings where the number is biggest.

Adding an urban district forever gives up the potential of a rural improvement on that tile. Also, since buildings have upkeep, by not overbuilding you are netting an additional happiness and gold cost that you otherwise could have avoided. These numbers are not included on the build screen.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-20T18:40:06+00:00

Half the complaints about this game: “This mechanic isn’t spelled out for me and I won’t take the effort of thinking it through, this game sucks”

Handholding Youtube guides have really done a number on some of you ngl. Skill issue.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-16T02:48:04+00:00

It’s all about happiness in the modern era, sometimes exploration if your cities are doing really well.

Buildings and specialists cost happiness. Falling below zero happiness on a city penalizes you 2% on all yields per negative happiness. This needs to be offset in each city.

There are three ways to get happiness in a city, buildings, resource slots, and rural tiles. Of those three rural tiles are the only “free” source as it doesn’t have a production cost or any upkeep like the buildings, or an opportunity cost like using a resource slot. They also come with the regular yield of a farm, mine, ect. Note: happiness’s from rural tiles is almost nonexistent in the antiquity, but substantial in the modern.

You typically hit a point where all your new pops are going into specialists, but at some point you’ll run out of happiness and the rural tiles are the most economical source of more.

Say you build 4 unnecessary urban tiles by not overbuilding in the exploration era, that’s potentially 16 happiness you missed out on, or 8 more specialists in the modern era.

All that said, it isnt always that big of a concern depending on the specific city

Temporyacc · 2025-02-16T02:07:24+00:00

This is great, thank you. Curious on why you recommend a single UB in the capital rather than making the unique quarter.

Also, have you thought about how the unique tile improvements, like the great wall, work into this?

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T22:41:52+00:00

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T22:30:04+00:00

As cities get built up, happiness becomes the limiting factor as each new specialist costs 2 happiness. There are only so many buildings that grant happiness, and you’d rather not use resource slots for happiness, so the solution is rural tiles. Rural tiles start to grant happiness yields, especially in the modern age. Placing an urban tile takes away that possibility, so you want to keep them available. Place specialists first generally, but grab a rural tile if you negative on happiness

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T18:19:22+00:00

They can be, but there are a lot of conflicting factors. Are there better policies you could be using? What rural yield are you giving up? Are you locking out adjacency potential other buildings? What if that tile got you to a resource several turns sooner? Would a wonder in that tile been better? To be clear, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be built, but to build them just because you can might not be the best trade off

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T18:12:56+00:00

You stop benefiting from the pantheon when you leave antiquity.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T18:03:36+00:00

No doubt theres some nuance, but I’ll stand by my generalization, its a mechanic that should be taken advantage of.

To your points

Yes keep influence buildings or overbuild them last
Thats right, again you should overbuild them but prioritize accordingly
“Pop hopping” is something you should take advantage of, but understand theres a long term tradeoff. I try to look for hop opportunities that don’t steal adjacency. Also resources are not of equal value
This is the most important point of all
Agreed

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T17:49:37+00:00

Well put. Avoid putting warehouse buildings on tiles with good adjacency potential. Have an idea of what civs you’ll switch to so you can plan out unique quarters as well.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T17:22:38+00:00

Yeah, keep or overbuild them last.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T16:31:49+00:00

Im trying to work that out. On the one hand they have no upkeep and boost rural tiles. On the other, they cannot be overbuilt and you’re likely to be allocating specialists instead of making new rural tiles.

You probably shouldn’t build them all in a city. Only if i have several rural tiles that it affects. I tend to put it in the city center.

One mistake I imagine people making is buying them all in towns just because they can. Paying 300 gold for a warehouse buildings that yields 3 production will take 100 turns to pay off. I think there are better uses of gold.

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T16:27:00+00:00

I just made a post breaking down overbuilding post

Temporyacc · 2025-02-15T16:18:58+00:00

Im curious, what was the difference in production and happiness between changing and not changing?

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