Ty for the the praise!
And I'm glad you'll be fine to sacrifice that forsaken, Early EE is really good, especially if you skip Psychic Reading and pick up extra extermination or longer evacuation from day 1. I don't know if it's clicked for anyone else, but recently I think I figured out the better of the two upgrades to pick and it varies depending on the chosen you first encounter.
Minor morality chosen are great at exterminating but they suck at evacuating because they aren't as pure as the other morality chosen.
Core morality chosen are great at evacuation because of their purity but when it comes to extermination they aren't as fast unless they have core confidence as well
So if my first chosen in the loop has Minor Morality I pick up wide deployment and if my first chosen is core morality I pick fast breeders with Significant morality chosen varying which one I choose depending on their damage output in the battle.
Basically the best upgrade is the one the first chosen sucks doing, this is less important when they all show up but I found taking this into consideration made my battles longer, thereby increasing the rounds and making the other chosen's first appearance happen quicker and ultimately giving 3+ EE per day as soon as possible
I think I've gotten used to planning and figuring out some good strategies over time, although some team combinations still mess me up, especially ones with a Core Morality/Core Confidence types haha. And honestly I agree that things don't really start rolling until Day 10-11 or so. I typically try to get a 4-5 commander with 1 extra capture charge for loop 1 after I pick up eager breeders and the 2nd deployment upgrade and that's where I try to get my first breakthrough with T1s, from there, if I'm going for a distortion- especially something like Tempt, I aim for versatility/ Hunger/ Anger upgrades next to make 4-5 turn HATE/INJU commander with 1 extra charge and target the chosen that has minor/significant dignity or the chosen most susceptible to HATE and INJU, after ambushing them, hopefully the 2nd chosen arrives in the battle by the time the 1st one escapes so I can capture her immediately and activate the FEAR trauma on Chosen 1 for more turns, and then I surround her and raise EXPO to make Chosen 2's time with the commander extra juicy and Caress to get PLEA levels to try and get Chosen 1's Pain to the next level before she escapes along with her other trauma levels. If I get some decent EE from the breaks relationship events, maybe even a T2 defiler off in the last second, then Instead of doing this strategy again immediately on the other chosen, I pick up Nursery Hives and Human Collaborators to Extend my time frames, sometimes Vengeful Reconstruction too. and then I try again. Things really pick up t2-wise close to or after the Interview, with it varying from team to team, with the most recent exception of this being in my loop 3 run where not only I broke almost all of t1's on a chosen on Day 9, but I also managed to get a core Broadcast break on her the day after which I never done before without using cheats, and the crazy thing is the Day 9 breaks was as a result of me using a forsaken Aversion Distorted one with 4EE with a 3 damage fighting style that I couldn't train her out of yet, it helps that her style was HATE/INJU/EXPO and her expertise is pretty high in all of them (100k+) but I still can't believe it haha, It makes me want to try some experiments with forsaken
Anyway This strategy is really good imo, especially for making orgies if you find out the team's flow strategy, My ultimate goal at that point is to get the defilers I'm looking for on each respective chosen and get an Orgy as soon as possible. For distortions this can meet most of the requirements for them if you play your cards, right . Doing an Orgy can get that PLEA requirement for the initial Tempt, and once theyre distorted you can grind and pummel that chosen without risk of breaking her T1 Morality anymore. Aversion requires Orgies in the first place, and Negotiation Distortion needs 1G angst on each chosen on the team, meaning an orgy is best way to reach that all at once.
I try to get at least 3 turn orgy since that's the sweet spot for getting the first T3 break in my experiences,
Beyond that, they're really good at getting the T3 requirements as soon as possible. And the sooner that they do that, the more time you'll have to increase % parameters for the T4 and the EE income will be really generous.
It also helps to plan out how you'll corrupt the chosen and imagine what the final battle will look like ahead of time, I've had times where I imago'ed and realized that the final battle is almost impossible either from the lack of upgrades, they weren't corrupted enough or I plain don't have enough EE for a decent commander. It's really easy for me to ride the high of corruption and I end picking upgrades I don't really need,
So if you want to do imago really really quickly, the best way to do an all break with 1-2 chosen with Aversion or Temptation on the last chosen, relationship wise, having them all hate each other is best for antipathy-sake and having Aversion/Temptation means you can OKO one of the chosen and focus on the other 2 Aversion good for knocking them out early in the final battle and temptation is good at the end,
And thankfully I looked at the scenes on my save and it looks like my loop1 chosen had the vacation episode so but didn't have the millitary meeting so I'm guessing the timeframe I won was between day 31-44 But I certainly remember having 10+ days for training so I'm thinking it was mid-30s when I imago'd
But yeah after loop 1 and if I have a low cost forsaken, I only pick up the first wave of upgrades so Weakness Sense, Enhance Polymerism, Eager Breeders, and Coordinated Deployment and then I hoard my EE until I can deploy my forsaken since the next few upgrades are commander based.