14-07-2004 23:06									#1
	Terraforming philosphies Increase Your PM Length

Hello,

I've been doing something since I've played SMAC for the first time. I'm trying to break the habit, but its pretty damned hard.
Forests.

For the longest time, I pretty much put forests in every square when terraforming - unless it had a bonus on the square. What happened when the majority of my Former work was done? Waste the time by planting forests in the parts the forest didn't expand to.

Well, I'm getting a little bit better with it - putting farms/solar on rolling/rainy squares, boreholes or mines on rocky squares, etc. Working on each square so that it either produces only one Goodie Type, so I can use crawlers to get it. That way, I can assign that worker to another square, and get both.

Problem is, not every square is perfect for one method of production. So, I put down forests. Problem is, though, its less 'good' to crawl them, since I'm not getting 2 types of Goodies from the square.

I guess I'm wondering if this is normal, or the right way to go. Should I focus on making squares with 1-high-resource, or squares with an overall solid production? or both?

	14-07-2004 23:39									#2
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Depends how many crawlers you intend to use...
Nut tiles are good for farming/condensor, especially near sealevel. Rocky tiles ALWAYS put a mine on, and NEVER make a borehole on a rocky tile, those are better in flat/rolling tiles.
Mineral/flat/dry tiles are the best for planting a forest.

And could go on like this for a while, but essentially it shows itself.

	14-07-2004 23:52									#3
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Why are boreholes on rocky bad?

	15-07-2004 00:08									#4
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Generally I think because if you want to maximise the amount of boreholes within a base collection area...usually a lot of the other squares you can build on are slopes? A wild guess.

	15-07-2004 00:51									#5
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It does depend. From the sounds of it you are opposed to a grid or other strict rules regarding base placement or borehole placement. That's fine. Most player's I've seen would agree with that, if only for aesthetic reasons. How widely spaced are your bases? If you are grid-resistant but placing bases only 2 tiles apart, you obviously need to focus on condensors, even more than boreholes. I suspect you are in the 3+ spaces between bases camp though.

In this case, you can fit 6 boreholes in a base radius. That's the max. It doesn't matter what the base square is for a borehole, with the exception of a nutrient bonus. Mineral and Energy bonuses get their added umph added to boreholes just the same.

The big 'It depends' factor is when you are getting to tree farms and hybrid forests. In a tech stagnation game on a huge map, this can be quite late, far after you've blown past the first and second beaurocracy warnings. In these games you'll be wanting specialists, which means growing bases to size 5 as soon as possible, top priority. With a couple condensors crawled and perhaps either a tree farm or nutrient bonus somewhere, this issue is solved.

Farm-solar is o.k. in the early game, but is surpasses by hybrid forest returns in the mid-game. Mines on rocky are perhaps the worst return on terraforming investment. They don't improve ever again. Personally, I'll make 1 or so per base, if time permits, if I'm playing fairly spread out. Mines on a mineral bonus rocky are of course, the best thing going for early SP's. But two crawlered forests return the same as one rocky mine, and the crawlers can later be shifted to condensors as Tree Farms come into play.

If you don't care to get your bases to size 5 (have the PTS, HGP, VW, or small empire) immediately, consider terraforming max boreholes and then max energy or nutrient crawled squares in our out of the base radius.

I hope Blake comes along to the thread. He can justify the numbers for keeping with a forest-borehole strategy better than I. The all important factor is how soon you are going to get to tree farms and hybrids. If it's slow, yeah, take up condensor building. If it's fast, use the formers to pre-form for base expansion, crawled energy, or crawled nuts. Crawling forest for minerals is not at all a waste. Consider the terraforming investment = 4 or 0.

And for Chirons sake, don't let the tile tell you what to build where. Rocky --> Rolling is not a big terraforming deal. Neither is raise land or lower for borehole placement.

-Smack

	15-07-2004 01:03									#6
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The best is a coastal - sea base (ESPECIALLY with Svensgaard) with rich nutrients from the water and rich minerals and energy from the forests and boreholes. I usually dislike going far inland, save for solar collecting and such. Usually by then I drop a few supplies from a coastal or sea base to the inland bases give it extra nutrients.

	15-07-2004 01:53									#7
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Im obsessive compulsive when it comes to terraforming. Every tile I can I put Farms, road, mine or solar and a few condensers(where needed). To get as much as I can out of each tile.

I rarely build Boreholes.
Forests are planted only at remote base locations, If I dont have enough formers in the area.

	15-07-2004 01:56									#8
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The strategy of "to get the best out of each tile" can be quite ironic, since sometimes specialising each square is better as such "maximisation" ends up making all the resources compete for one space instead of proliferating. Mines and farms will lower nutrient output by +1, for example.

Generally it is why I prefer to extract minerals from rocky squares or boreholes, and not build them on farms.

Last edited by Natalinasmpf on 15-07-2004 at 02:06

	15-07-2004 02:29									#9
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quote: Originally posted by HongHu Why are boreholes on rocky bad?

I'm under the assumption that the mineral output of a borehole on a rocky or a flat/rolling tile is the same, hence a player loses 4 possible minerals when placing a borehole on a rocky tile when the tile next to it can be used to drill one.

	15-07-2004 04:04									#10
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I also have this habit of building nothing but forest. everywhere.

	15-07-2004 04:09									#11
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Nutrients are more important than minerals, anyway. By building a borehole on a rocky, you save yourself the effort of levelling it for a condensor-farm. It's not a big difference, but every bit helps.

	15-07-2004 04:49									#12
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quote: Originally posted by LoriTX *** I rarely build Boreholes. Forests are planted only at remote base locations, If I dont have enough formers in the area.

Try it.

6 Mins and 6 Energy for only one worker is not that bad.

Yes, they take lot to former turns to make, and if you have a lot of them at any one base they may need some ecological remediation (clean mins) to prevent fungal repetative pops.

A few bases each having 4 or more working boreholes can be a powerful force.


Mead

	15-07-2004 05:15									#13
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If im not doing ICS i do forest and forget + boreholes, all crawled to the capital.

	15-07-2004 10:26									#14
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quote: I suspect you are in the 3+ spaces between bases camp though.-Smack

Pretty much. I dislike ISC as a concept, but I do tend to build bases so that there is very few gaps.

	15-07-2004 11:02									#15
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Few gaps. Yeah, that would be base-space-space-base or base-space-space-space-base, which we can call 2-space and 3-space. Give a try with 2-space. There is lots of overlap, but plenty of space for all workers. The advantage is turnspeed. More bases, more formers, more production. Loop.

-S

	15-07-2004 11:59									#16
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quote: I hope Blake comes along to the thread. He can justify the numbers for keeping with a forest-borehole strategy better than I. The all important factor is how soon you are going to get to tree farms and hybrids. If it's slow, yeah, take up condensor building. If it's fast, use the formers to pre-form for base expansion, crawled energy, or crawled nuts. Crawling forest for minerals is not at all a waste. Consider the terraforming investment = 4 or 0.

Thats right. When you decide do go with pure Forest/Borehole there are 3 critical pieces of infrastructure you want:
Tree Farm, Hybrid Forest, Genejack.

The Genejack brings production up to levels very useful for building entire fusion units. For example, a frontier base that doesn't need to share could work 6 boreholes and 8 forests, for a whopping 54 minerals, increased to 84 by the Genejack, a base like this can build some serious Military, like Clean Shard Choppers or Defensive Hovertanks with all the bells and whistles.
Altough most bases will work 8 Forest and 3 Boreholes, for 54 minerals post-genejack - this is sufficient to build clean shard infantry in 1 turn with some minerals for support of unclean highly mobile units (ie shard choppers).

While you wont transcend quickly working forest & borehole (compared to condensor/specialists), you get a nice clean looking empire, immune to crawler harrass, pratically immune to pops (the forest mostly regrows over the fungus). And you have enough raw production to not need to rushbuy stuff or upgrade shells often. So half the appeal of forest/borehole is ascetic, or optimizing the amount of realtime required to win.

Boreholes (combined with forests) really are very important for The Hive and Gaians because they can't run Free Market (altough dee can get away somewhat by setting labs to 80-100% and harvesting worms for cash). A good Freemarketeer like Morgan doesn't need boreholes so much, so you can delay drilling them - which you'll want to anyway due to reduced support for formers.