Sector Exploitation 101
Sectors
What is a sector?
Its a part of the map with certain climate and terrain. It can contain many things, independent armies, resource pickups, neutral buildings, but most importantly, it can be exploited by you. It can be colonized, annexed for exploitation or you can build a military base on it. This guide will focus on the second part of the usage. Let me show you an example on how a sector looks like;
Here we see an overlay map picture of a sector, we see its borders and some icons that show what kind of bonuses the sector can get from research.
Here we see a detailed analysis of the sector that can be viewed when you click on its central hex. It shows us its terrain and clime features and what (if any) buildings are present. Hovering your mouse over them shows what they do. Features influence how much stuff you can get from every sector, see those icons on the pictures? They show the bonuses you can get from research, useful when you get the most out of your territory, but more about that later.
Exploitation
Annexation
To successfully exploit a sector you must first annex, the tutorial explains this, but a small recap wont hur. Once a colony hits a certain population threshold it can annex a neighboring sector and harvest its resources. To do this park a unit in the sector’s central hex and click on Annex Sector button.
The process takes one turn and your units are free to do whathever you want them to do once they start the process.
Exploitation
Once you have a sector annexed you can click on the colony that annexed it and in the sector Production Tab choose what kind of resource you want the sector to produce.
As you can see there are 4 exploitation available; Energy (which produces power), Agriculture (which grows food), Industrial (which provides production) and Research (which provides knowledge). There is also fifth, Hydro exploitation which provide energy, research and food. But can only be build on water sectors. Hovering your mouse over will show you what will the sector produce. Note that you can only have 4 annexed sector per colony and only up to 2 of one type of exploitation.
Advancements
As you have most likely seen from the previous picture, every sector exploitation has 5 levels (except for hydro, which has 3). Levels can be increased by two ways.
1. Generic Upgrades
Researching “Development” technologies allows your colonies to produce sector upgrades. There are two technologies for each exploitation type, which makes maximum level achievable by this way 3.
2. Clime and Terrain Upgrades
Remember those icons I told you ill get back to later? This is where those will come in handy. If you look at a sector from the economy map, you’ll see a bunch of icons, representing resources that will get a terrain bonus if you build the matching exploitation on the sector and have the necessary technologies.
Here we see a previously mentioned sector, the two lightning and cogwheel icons on the left show that the sector can provide +2 levels to either energy or industrial exploitation. If you look on the right image you can see the clime and terrain that can provide those bonuses. Here we have Arid and Mountain. That means if I were to research Mountain Exploitation I would get +1 level to energy or industrial exploitation build on this sector. If I would research Arid Exploitation on top of it I would get +2 levels. Combined with the level 3 from basic upgrades that means energy and industrial exploitations can reach level 5 on this sector. That doesn’t mean I NEED to build either of them here. If I, for example, need a lot of food for a colony and there’s no field with a bonus for food I can build an Agricultural Exploitation here so my colonists won’t starve. Maximum level of the exploitation would be 3, though.
Buildings
You may have noticed the Overgrown Biodome on the locations tab. Some sectors contain buildings or landmarks that provide yield of certain resource when in an annexed sector. Buildings provide their yield even if their resource doesn’t match that of the Exploitation, so the Biodome would supply my colony with food even if it was in an Industrial Exploitation. Some advanced buildings (called landmarks) also automatically act as a certain exploitation so you dont need to produce it in colony. Buildings are mostly occupied by neutral monsters and those need to be killed before the building starts working. You dont need to clear it for the sector to be exploited, though. So if there’s a large occupying force you can just leave it be until you get a suficcient army to handle them.
Specialization
With certain technologies, you can upgrade Sector Exploitations with specialization buildings that provide powerful benefits for the colony. Each sector can only have one building, though, so you will need to decide what will be more useful for you. Here’s an example;
Here we have an Algae Farm that can be build in a hydro exploitation and that provides a lot of food for the colony.
Here we have a Hydro Battery which provides bonus power for hydro exploitations. You can only choose one of those buildings in a colony so keep that in mind.
Decisions
Specialization vs. Need
If you don’t want to worry about getting the max out of every sector, then you can just pretty much ignore every icon on the map and just build Exploitations based on your needs. But I would greatly recomment trying to squeeze at least one bonus level from terrain. Lvl. 3 sectors provide a lot, but the bonuses from level 4 and 5 specialization buildings are powerful as hell.
