14-10-2001 12:02									#1
	Crawerless strategy. Long. Support Apolyton

Bewarned this post is very long, technical and contains a bit of maths. I'll post a shorter summary below.

* * * Introduction - safe to read

The crawlerless strategy is inferior in every way to a strategy involving crawlers, it exists as a challenge, and to hopefully make the game more enjoyable by reducing micromanagment.

For the terminally stupid, crawlerless strategy involves building no crawlers... there are less extreme variants like 'only use crawlers to rush SP's', or 'Only one crawler per base'.

The lack of crawlers hurts your game at two main points, the first is 'boot straping your industry with crawlers', using crawlers on forests to get to ~16 minerals per base, which allows very rapid construction of infrastructure and SP's.

The second is utilisation of terraforming, mainly Mines and Condensors which are somewhat less valuable when they have to be worked.


There are two terraforms which dont get an extreme benefit from being crawled, these are post-tree farm forests and boreholes.

* * * Getting into the heavy stuff

In analysis I will be using Factor Of Production, basically each Nutrient, Mineral or Energy is one FOP, in the early game minerals are more valuable than Energy, but later as you get energy enhancing facilities energy becomes more valuable than minerals.

Usuable FOP are Minerals and Energy, nutrients produce no real resource in themselves, but potentially allow harvesting of usable FOP. Net resources mean the resources after 2 nuts have been deducted for each worker.

Case study one:
Hybrid forests & +2 Econ.
forest = 3-2-3
Usuable FOP = 5
crawled:
Useable FOP = 3 (5 with engineers)
In this case, unless ineffeciency is high, you gain no benefit from crawling forests.. assuming you have population enough to work every tile.

Case study two:
Borehole & +2 Econ
6-0-7
Worked produces 13 FOP
Crawled produces 9 - 12 FOP
It is hard to get a net benefit from crawling boreholes - altough it can be worthwhile with a SSC and the amplification to energy...

* * * Cover your eyes and run away screaming

Terraforming Strategies.
Three obvious strategies come to mind, forest'n'forget, forest'n'forget + boreholes, Condensors + boreholes.

You can have highly productive bases once Hybrid forests arrive by working forests, boreholes, and any excess pop going to specialists. These bases compare well with a crawlered base, but do require the investment of a Hybrid forest... which is expensive, but well worth it.

1. 3 forests, hybrid forest, +2econ.
   Each tile produces net resources of 1-2-3
   the 3 tiles produce 3-6-9, and 1.5 specialists for another 4.5 - 7.5 resources.
   Total FOP = 0-6-13.5 = 19.5 (Libarian/Techie/Thinker)
   Total FOP = 0-6-16.5 = 22.5 (Engineeers)
   Population = 4.5
   
   
2. 2 Forests, 1 Borehole, Hybrid Forest, +2econ
   The excess 1 nut from each forest feeds the borehole worker.
   Total FOP = 0 - 10 - 13 = 23
   Population = 3
   Once engineers arrive you are barely better off working boreholes - may as well just go all forest and assign engineers.
   
   
3. 2 Condensors (1flat, 1rolling), 1 Borehole, +2 econ.
   Two Condensors produces net average resourcces 4-1-2, 2 nuts used on borehole, 2 left for specialist.
   Total FOP = 0-7-12 = 19
   Total FOP = 0-7-14 = 21 (Engineers)
   Population = 4
   Slightly less FOP than forests, but you dont need the expensive TF or HF to utilise. But requires a LOT more terraforming time. Quite a balanced tradeoff really.
   
   
4. 2 Condensors, 2 soil enrichers, 1 borehole, +2econ.
   Two condensors produce net average resources 8-1-2, 2 nuts used on borehole, 6 leftover for 3 specialists.
   Total FOP = 0-7-18 = 25
   Total FOP = 0-7-24 = 31 (Engineers)
   Population = 6
   This terraforming really blows forests out the water, so to speak.
   
   
5. 3 Condensors (2 rolling, 1 flat), +2 econ
   3 Condensors produce net average resource 6-2-3, nuts support 3 specialists.
   Total FOP = 0-2-11 = 13
   Total FOP = 0-2-17 = 19 (Engineers)
   Population = 6
   This is really quite poor compared to having a borehole... but it improves if you throw up some orbitals. The main downside is a low mineral output, so you wouldn't want all your terraforming like this.
   
   
6. 3 Condensors (2 rolling, 1 flat), soil enrichers, +2 econ
   3 Condensors produce net average resource 12-2-3, nuts support 6 specialists.
   Total FOP = 0-2-21 = 23
   Total FOP = 0-2-33 = 32 (Engineers)
   Population = 9
   Now were smoking, All condensors+enrichers produces the absolute most resources. And when you add in orbitals, weeeee.
   

If not +2econ : This has the effect of reducing every FOP rating by 3. In general specialists are more usfull if you dont have +2 Econ.

The significane of Population: Population is important when it comes to work out gain from orbitals. Total resources from orbitals, once all things have been accounted for:

mins, energy = Pop*2
# Specialists = Pop
Total FOP from orbitals, specialists
7*pop (Libies, Techies, Thinkies)
9*pop (Engineers)
10*pop (Tranies)

So population is really quite valuable when it comes to orbitals. Note those values are *maximum*, in reality you will get less.

Two important cases, Hybrid forest, condensors, All orbitals, Engineers.

3 forest:
FOP = 22.5 + 18 + 22.5 = 63

3 condensors+enrichers:
FOP = 32 + 36 + 45 = 113

We are talking approximately twice the resoures from a terraforming heavy scheme, however bear in mind that the actual difference will be a bit smaller, the smaller the base the less benefit from orbitals (this is because only 'whole' specialists benefit from an orbital, while in my calculations I have 'half specialists' and the like... dont ask me to explain further, because I just might )

edit: Added formating, added explainations about +2econ, expanded on population...

Last edited by Blake on 14-10-2001 at 13:05

	14-10-2001 12:21									#2
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What terraforming strategy you use will often depend on the flow of the game. (how early orbitals arrive...)

Pre-Orbitals.
In a large well developed base with a hybrid forest you may as well stick with 100% forest, you get slightly more resources from other terraforming schemes, but the terraforming cost doesn't really justify it.

However a new base which doesn't have a treefarm will be a lot more productive working a combination of Condensors and Boreholes. If you have plenty of formers then this is a good option to get a new base productive quickly. OTOH, if you have cash to burn then throw up a TF and HF and the base will grow just fine on forest. A nice comprimise is one condensor, one borehole per base, the rest forest.

Post-Orbitals:
Now condensors start to look really good, especially if you have enrichers too. Once you have all three orbitals and enrichers you can get almost twice the resources out of Condensors than forests. However you'll be spending a lot of time assigning specialists, which may or may not be your idea of fun.


Other coping strategies:
Because you dont have minerals being crawled from mines the mineral enhancing facilities become much more attractive, in order to prevent ecodamage you should build & scrap CP's in advance of getting the tech for the facilities. This is a good task for bases with nothing much to build.

Minerals have one primary advantage over energy, PlanetBusters are very expensive to buy per mineral, having a strong mineral base really helps your planetbuster construction program. ( )

In the mid game 30 minerals per base is a good target to shoot for, because it allows one turn construction of "Trained" 1-1- >2 shell units, or 8-1-X*2 units. Both these units are great for upgrading, and plain chaos aircraft make great 'throwaways'

	14-10-2001 12:33									#3
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Great analysis !

I've been clean 3 days, 2 hours, and...no, just kidding . To make it more challenging, though, I haven't been using crawlers, and I've been going all forests (as in, no boreholes/condesors!).

Funny because I just posted a long (somewhat) mathematical analysis on the BENEFITS of using crawlers in the other thread. I didn't go into post-orbitals, though - most of the time you've won the game by then.

Z

	14-10-2001 12:41									#4
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I always wondered how on Chiron could you tough dogs have Transcendance in the 23rd Mission Century - But now I know why.
I have never used crawlers as extensively as you. Just to balance situations where the number of produced nuts is odd, or likewise, but never had I used them in such epic proportions! My terraforming was basically just forest, forest and sometimes in very moist squares farm/solar. I just finished the OCC that turned a 2CC, and that was the first time I actually used crawlers to boost my mineral output or any output.

	14-10-2001 12:58									#5
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I play lots of games without crawlers, though the reason is less than spectacular. basically if the game gets too big, my computer can't handle the spriteload of that many crawlers and formers. Not to be all anti climatic cuz I don't posess a 10 page essay on crawlerless strategies.

but I like to treefarm pop boom a lot sooner when I don't have crawlers.

	14-10-2001 13:08									#6
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quote: Originally posted by yavoon I play lots of games without crawlers, though the reason is less than spectacular. basically if the game gets too big, my computer can't handle the spriteload of that many crawlers and formers.

That's half the reason I went crawlerless
It's also half the reason I play SMAC, which runs faster than SMAX, especially with low-res caviar(sp?) installed.

	14-10-2001 18:03									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Blake That's half the reason I went crawlerless It's also half the reason I play SMAC, which runs faster than SMAX, especially with low-res caviar(sp?) installed.

I bought a bigger computor to paly smac-x.

	14-10-2001 23:43									#8
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Blake, excellent analysis. I'd distantly waggled a finger at the comparison between worked condenser-enrichers and forest, but never did the calculations, many thanks! Now if only we could get some Hybrid Forests in our NCC game...

I noticed a couple things which may / may not be typos, but the confused me:

quote: Case study one: Hybrid forests & +2 Econ. forest = 3-2-3 Usuable FOP = 5

Isn't that Usuable FOP = 8?

quote: Case study two: Borehole & +2 Econ 6-0-7 Worked produces 13 FOP Crawled produces 9 - 12 FOP

Should be 0-6-7 but anyways... I'm wondering about your Crawled totals? I think you're summarizing added FOP's from Specialists in a few areas without the calculations posted and it's a wee tad confusing.

-S-

	15-10-2001 06:01									#9
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I didn't really care to explain much with the crawler/crawlerless comparisons. Crawlers are going to be superier, period.
Putting in too many calculations would probably just reduce readability...

Another thing of interest is the 'value' of labs, EC's, minerals, at different points in the game. I'm using the rushbuy comparison of 2EC's = 1 mineral, or IOW, the raw producivity. Which is a siplification, but not a bad one.


Start of game. 'Early game'
It is safe to say that 1min = 2EC = 2Labs.
Minerals = 2
Credits = 1
Labs = 1
That is, minerals are twice as valuable as energy.

Case study two:'End of early game'
Energy bank + Tree Farm + Netnode + Research Hospital
Now EC's are multiplied by 2, and Labs by 2.
Minerals = 2
Credits = 2
Labs = 2

Case study three: 'Entered the Mid game'
EBank + TF + HF + NetNode+ RH + Fusion Lab
Now EC's are multiplied by 3 and labs by 2.5
Minerals = 2
Credits = 3
Labs = 2.5
This has the rather suprising conclusion that a solar panel providing 4 energy is more productive than a mine. Prehaps echlons have their place....

Comparing the good ol' mine with specialists
Mine = 8 (11 if +2econ)
Libarian = 7.5
Fusion Engineer = 14
Or, iow. GET RID OF THOSE MINES! Your much better of with an engineer than working a mine - with the exception of building units/SP's.

Case study four: ' Midgame'
EBank+TF + NetNode+RH+FusionLab+Genejack
Minerals = 3
Credits = 3
Labs = 2.5
Incidentely, the Engineer is still beating the mine.

Case study five: 'Mid - late game'
EB+TF+HF+NN+RH+FL+Nanohospital + GJack + Robotic Assembly
Minerals = 4
Credits = 3
Labs = 3
Getting halfway into the late game minerals are making a comeback. The mine overtakes the Engineer in sheer construction power.

Case study six: 'Late game'
EB+TF+HF+NN+RH+NH+FL+GJ+RA+Quantum Lab+Quantum Converter+Nanoreplicator, iow, all everything!
Minerals = 6
Credits = 3.5
Labs = 3.5

Condensor and it's 5 Transcends = 105
Borehole = 57

This gives a definite guide to what you should be focusing on, in the early games minerals are everything. In the midgame energy becomes more valuable than energy. Later on minerals again overtake energy, but you need to deal with the ED... and in any case the sheer number of transcends supported by a condensor blows anything else out the water... netherless minerals can provide a usefull boost to your productivity.

Note these values give an excellent indication of the economics of building Orbitals, for example a Powersat gives +1 energy per base, so if you have 10 well developed bases, says +2.5 EC per base, or +25 EC, it costs 220 to rushbuy, iow, pays for itself in less than 10 turns.

	15-10-2001 06:27									#10
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Blake:
Assigning specialists is my idea of fun!

	15-10-2001 12:00									#11
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Blake,

It is good to put a lot of the theoretical stuff together like this rather than spaced out throughout a game thread with lots of unrelated business in between. I feel like I've got a lot to say on this subject, but so far I have started off twice and decided that the content content was just too low, so I'm going to try bullet points with little or no explanation/justification.

Early game:
- bases or forests on specials and/or rivers (preferably both but without other good values like high wet rolling)
- forest or forest/river preferably on the lowest/driest flat tiles
- enough farm/solar on rolling to feed/grow pop (as wet and high and riverine as possible); these are probably necessary unless your base is on a nut special.

Later Early game (after restrictions):
- bases or forests (preferably with at least TF) on low, flat, arid and/or where a special is mismatched with terrain (like low energy special or arid flat min special)
- kelp/solar on continental shelf (including min specials)
- farm/solar/mines on the most suitable tiles available as necessary for pop/growth

Late-Early/Mid game (after WP or Ecol Eng):
- bases on least valuable terrain
- boreholes on rocky or energy or non-rocky-min special or any poor terrain
- condensors on nut special and/or undistinguished rolling (flat in a crawler game )
- mine/road on rocky min specials
- farm-kelp/solar on continental shelf and on very good land tiles (highest, wettest rolling tiles)
- forest (preferably TF & HF) on middling terrrain

A particularly strategic tile might get a forest/sensor irrespective of other considerations.

Similarly, a base location may reflect strategic factors or be suggested by the location of neighboring base sites.

Last edited by johndmuller on 15-10-2001 at 12:11

	16-10-2001 11:09									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

And here is a SMAC 'savegame' as a form of terraformers sandbox.
Morgan : A heap of Sky Labs
Dee, Yang: Nothing special...

There are heaps of bases showing different possible styles of base placment, and even a section on ICS.

Of interest: At the top is a bunch of hive and morgan bases showing ICS strategies. Yum.

At the bottom is an island with a single Gaian base showing my base placment strategy, which allows you to drill boreholes at maximum density. This is much easier with base grid on.

In the middle is a big continent showing an 'ideal' forest+borehole terraforming and base placment...

=ICS=
Did you know that using just 4 tiles you can have a size 14 base? And all this requires is the WP and Orbital Spaceflight.

The base square produces 2-1-1.
3 condensors produce 12-0-0
14-0-0
14 population points produce 14 nuts from orbitals.
14+14=28
Or, using the same 4 tiles you can have 2 Condensor+Enrichers and one borehole, supporting a Size14 base with 11 specialists. Such efficent use of terrain is almost enough to convert one to ICS.

Attachment: formers playground.zip
This has been downloaded 10 time(s).

	16-10-2001 13:20									#13
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maybe I missed it, cuz I didn't read everything, but in all this # crunching and "fop" madness. yall forgot a lot of the less quantifiable variables. like if u crawl food for a specialist base, then get the crawlers killed, thats a serious liability. even if the food is in your base radius ur probably gna riot if u use ne workers to go get it. and if u use all the workers, hell u might lose the base.

other stuff I saw as weird, would u really farm/condenser every last square? seems like a huge waste of former management. are ur formers that bored that they can sit around 12(8) turns on every square to get a crawler one more food? that and an immense amount of condensers seems like eco damage waiting to happen and then it nukes a condenser/farm which is another 22 turns of former fun. I don't do the sell and rebuild thing for the preserves so maybe if u just use that its no big deal.

even on the transcend comment, who needs more labs that late in the game? sure transcends nominally give u massive "factors of production" but ur not rioting, hell if ur a builder u prolly started golden aging a while ago, so wut did the +2 pscyh really do for u? and unless a few extra transcends move u from a tech a turn to 2/turn, but if ur barreling at that pace its prolly just gna be who pulls the fastest finger on transcend, and u need a buncha money to upgrade crawlers(or should that be illegal, just buy it, and normal crawler it) in which case u prolly want engineers instead.

I prolly forgot something, but who cares.

	16-10-2001 23:47									#14
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yavoon, Blake more or less announced that this was an obsessive/compulsive thread, so excessive detail is part of that deal when you read the thread.

I don't think anyone said you had to have all Farm/Condensor/Enricher, you might want to have a bunch of boreholes too.

If you build a TF and HF, there is no eco damage from terraforming (esp. the condensors and boreholes) at that base, only from the mineral production.

As for the mineral production, I think you can get a pretty large amount of min production just by building 1 of each of the good facilities at each base; you don't really need to tear them down and build them again unless you're aiming for something really extreme. For example, if you had 20 bases with 4 goodfacs each, you would have nearly 100 clean mins per base right there (base of 16 clean + (4 * 20) = 96); that would be 16 boreholes worth of mins (or 8 doubled by production enhancement facilities)

	17-10-2001 01:02									#15
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It's worth noting that I do NOT delay treefarms in order to force a pop, I just go right ahead and build them. Without crawlers it is rather hard to force a pop (you really need a couple of boreholes, or a big base and prefferably a mineral bonus...).
Playing crawlerless you really need the extra nuts provided by a treefarm, ASAP. The bonus economy is always good too.

I usually manage to force a pop about half way through my Tree Farm construction project, and delay HF's until I do manage to force the pop. This means I'll get about 2/3rds of the possibly clean mineral benefit from my TF's/HF's. (Usually enough to bring it up to 30-40, which is plenty enough to go crazy with boreholes).

I do use the CPreserve scraping trick, because there is no advantage to keeping them. Indeed they cost 2 credits per turn. May as well sell the things for 80 credits (I usually construct them in waves, and use "scrap CP at every base....").

I also go crazy with genejacks and robotic assembly plants, and once I've thrown a dozen Mining Orbitals up mineral production can skyrocket. I consider it worth the effort of scraping dozens of CP's, lets just say I have a thing for planetbusters

	17-10-2001 05:02									#16
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aye, I always get into trouble when replying to a builder's thread. I don't reach 4 goodfac, infact I rarely reach 2. most of my games are done w/ an extreme prejudice nature to them. since I'm more in luv w/ war strategy than # crunching terraforming, though surely I have to know about it to play.

just as a for instance kinda thing, since I get the feeling I don't play normal smac games. I'm hive right now in like 2197? or something std map 30-50 water, I got bio engineering like 6 years ago. Lal, Zak and Deidre have all surendered to me. Santiago should be gone in like 4-10 years. I don't have a lot(read any) of the facilities that make the game's eco damage non consequential. I think my bigger bases produce 20-30 minerals right now, and I most certainly get pops. my games are much dirtier and less precise than builder games. so I'm kinda trying to edge towards a more practical view of things, if thats not gna hang here, then my bad.

	17-10-2001 15:21									#17
	fun with number crunchers... how far will Blake go? :) Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I didn't bother to check the numbers, but I was wondering if you included a couple of calculable technical details like facility maintenance, terraforming time vs. turn advantage vs. former support costs, and drone control?

I.E. I got the impression that bigger bases were better because they utilized more satellite resources, but they also have more drones, which require more facilities, which require minerals to build and energy to maintain. Unless I'm thinking stupid, you *could* incorporate all this into your calculations, if you wanted to, and tell us the effects...
Also, you mention the tradeoff between forests vs. the terraforming time to build all these neato condensers/boreholes/etc, but you forget former support costs. If you put 16 formers on a square, you could get a borehole/turn, right? But that would take 16 minerals and the time to get the formers where they're supposed to go. What's the optimal number of formers to assign to the task?

Now, in theory, if we're talking drones, the number of bases plays into this, as well. Don't forget about energy lost to inefficiency, if we're going to get a number of bases into this mix. And while we're at it, don't forget to consider just how your SE choices affect everything (after how many bases or after how much time is the efficiency and growth of democracy better than the support and police of police state?). Of course, what would SE choices be without the technology to get those choices? Would that put an extra emphasis on labs? Or would the energy credits be more useful as an investment for rush building those facilities to enhance the labs later on with net nodes? Or would energy banks be better? Which techs in the tech tree should you research first? And if we REEEEEALY wanna go wild, consider different terraforming styles for different factions and for DIFFERENT VICTORY CONDITIONS! Hee hee hee hoo!

Come on, Blake... you know you want to calculate it all out...
And once he does, a couple of mindworms will come along and put him back to the drawing board. :P

Okay, getting back to reality now... what about drones/facility maintenance/former support? We can leave SE, # of bases, and just which techs to research first for later discussion...

	17-10-2001 16:06									#18
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Actually smaller more numerous bases are more efficient with satellites for several reasons. Firstly, every base you have gets one FOP per sat up to it's population (assuming it has an aerospace complex, otherwise halve this). Secondly after the first 16 specialists all of the specialists become psych types, which only net you 2 econ apiece (assuming that the psych is superfuous after a point). Thus it is more efficient in the long run to build a lot of smaller bases when it's satellite time, especially before hab domes make building really big bases a pia.

Another advantage of building lots of bases is that you have fewer tiles to terraform per base (and with all of the extra base squares fewer tile to form period), or put another way you have more support per tile with which to form your terrain. You also have more build queues with which to crank out formers and crawlers (as well as military if necessary) which increases your productivity of these items a lot. Clean reactors tend to solve half of your problem, the only investment being your initial cost.

On the minus side you have to spend more minerals on building up your (many) bases, and you may well have a lot of econ going to support. SPs which give you free facilities are great for this type of Borg strategy, as they save you coming and going. Drones are not much of a problem if you are using crawlers to harvest a lot of your squares, and are not much of a problem in any event if you are pop booming, as the psych and semi-psych drones are cheap and plentiful enough to take care of business, especially if you add a psych facility or two. The dual use psych facilities like treefarms and the hospitals should do nicely.

Reliance on specialists also means that you don't have to worry about inefficiency much either, as a vast majority of your energy production will be immune. And by the time you get mineral sats you can even go back and replace your boreholes with Condensor / Farm / Soil Enrichers for plenty of ecodamage free mineral / energy / food production via your population.

	17-10-2001 17:08									#19
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I regret that after trying to Calculate the relative merit of Democracy and Police State, in terms of support costs, efficency and drones, I hit a wall... essentially, when playing without crawlers the SE is so well balanced it is quite impossible to say which is better... except in limited circumstances.

Anyway, a few things which simplify stuff:
Clean reactor: Put clean on a former and it becomes a one-of payment. No ongoing support. Therfore it is effectivly free, making former time free. Thus once you have clean you can do as much terraforming as you want - the more the better.

If I care to consider support before clean I can.
A former costs 1 mineral per turn.
A borehole requires 24 turns to drill, therfore it costs 24 minerals. It produces 6 minerals per turn and 6 energy. Assuming Netnode and Energy bank the energy should be worth about 4 minerals. Therfore a borehole requires a little under 3 turns to pay for itself - transit times for formers are neligable, especially if you plan stuff in advance, like I do.

The forest requires 4 turns to plant, add 1 turn for movement. It produces 1-2-1. Because most tiles produce an average of 1-0.5-0 a forests relative production is 0-1.5-1. Using the same energy:mineral value as boreholes it would require about 2.5 turns to pay for itself - this is assuming you have the man power to harvest it ofcourse, it doesn't start paying for the former time until you start working it.

*GASP*

The thing with terraforming is all terraforming is really really cheap, in terms of time to pay off the former construction/support cost. So working out which terraforming is 'best' isn't really a meaningless activity.

*GASP*

Oh what the heck, I'll explain some of the quantities behind democracy... Demo provides +2 EFFIC in exchange for -2 SUPPORT, there is a +2 GROWTH too...
Anyway, lets say you are on a standard map and have 6 bases using a standard faction, your bases are quite close together and your quite cash straped, you'll be keeping your bases at size 2 for a while, for the moment unable to afford rec commons on a large scale.
The +2 EFFIC would allow you to place about 3 more bases before drones... the tradeoff is 1 more mineral used for support at each base.
You have 6 bases, so there goes 6 FOP/turn right off the bat.
You'll probably salvage 3 energy from INEFFIC, this is worth *about* 2/turn FOP.
So, you plonk down 3 more bases, each of these works a forest. Each new base produces usable resources/turn of 0-3-2, oh heck, theres a river too, so lets make it 0-3-3. But one of those 3 is lost to INEFFIC so it's back to 0-3-2. This translates to standard FOP/turn of 4.5 per base. And because you have 3 new bases that provides about 13 FOP/turn.
You need to build a scout at each new base, but they have one free support slot anyway. Unless your mogran, but in that case you get +2 energy per base tile, and as luck would have it 2 energy = 1 mineral (in this stage of the game) so morgan is in the same boat as the others.
Getting back to it, you have 13+3 = 16 more FOP/turn, at the cost of 6. Leaving 10 FOP/turn profit. Each base cost 36 minerals (Planned +1 industry) to set up, total = 108 minerals. Requiring near enough to 10 turns to return the investment.
(the initial switching cost of ~25 FOP (transcend difficulty) requires 2.5 turns to repay...)

So it requires about 12 turns to get a return on investment of switching to Demo. After which you earn 10FOP/turn - incidentely in this case 1 FOP = 1 Mineral.
That is pretty much the worst case, in reality you'll probably utilise a mineral/energy bonus, for another +1-2 FOP/turn, additionally in about 15 turns after being founded these bases grow to size 2, bringing an additional +7 FOP/turn. Then you got the thing known as exponential growth / turn advantage, which makes the investment even better. But that's okay because I didn't consider the approximately 50 FOP lost by the 3 bases dropping to size 1 and supporting the CP's for a few turns.

CONCLUSION: It is worthwhile switching to democracy!

Spacecow, I could have just told you to f*ck off and die, but where would the fun in that be....

	17-10-2001 20:56									#20
	Support Apolyton

I know I k now, I'm the pooper of this whole thread. but I'm actually intereesting in when to go demo, since usually I despise going it early for probably personality reasons.

so just a few questions. why can't the player w/ less efficiency just build the three more bases too? is there like a brickwall at the efficiency limit? how big are his bases? how much will the 3 extra drones hurt? wut if they do nothing? oh and is that 3 more bases on a huge size map, or would that apply to any size map? I think ur saying that democracy kinda makes up for itself in getting u back some energy. but isn't energy split between labs and econ. so even if its 2 energy/mineral u'd need to mine 4 energy to see that, though u would get the intrinsic bonus of the labs, u'd still lose productivity.

also there are a few things better about having bigger bases. say u have one base twice the size of two smaller ones(in productivity). and u wnt to increase labs, so u have them build network nodes. the big bases node will finish first, and start raking in advantage, the two smaller bases will take longer and cost twice the support. also the second of the two smaller bases confers atleast 1 extra drone(unles its really early) because of b. drones. prolly all moot cuz I actually like lotsa bases.

another thing I despise about demo is the % reduction it does in productivity of my smaller bases. if u take one mineral away from a base thats only size 2 and working a 2/1/2 and 1/2/1 that frigging hurts. and everything at that base will be lagged pretty significantly. mayhaps I should rehome formers to only larger bases, since they can more easily take the hit? but then my high powered production centers are bogged down w/ the empire's formers.

	18-10-2001 04:51									#21
	Remove this text

If you build 3 new bases w/o more effic you get about 3 more drones over your empire, this means you lose the use of 3 forest tiles, or a loss of about 7FOP/turn. Or you could shell out for rec commons which would cost about 1FOP/turn to mantain... if you can afford the rec commons (ie pod popping is on and you got a few big $$$ pods) then your prolly better off just buying rec commons. (I hate demo, myself)

This is what I usually do, being a dedicated Free Marketeer (you need the rec commons anyway).


Getting away from #crunching Punishment Spheres are gods gift to free marketeers under crawlerless. Even if you are using crawlers they are much more robust than specialist bases, in terms of being difficult to shut down. They are immune to crawler killage and have increased resitance against mind control.

I usually prefer to build PS's in captured bases, mainly because my own bases usually have lab improvments. However I still build energy improvments in a PS base.
note: The 'labs' value on the base screen is not correct when you have a PS, however the correctely halved amount is added to accumulated labs...

	18-10-2001 07:09									#22
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

I dont know if its fair to say 3 more drones means 3 unworked forests. cuz thats simply not my experience in the game. and I regularly blow by the efficiency limiter.

	18-10-2001 08:36									#23
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by yavoon I dont know if its fair to say 3 more drones means 3 unworked forests. cuz thats simply not my experience in the game. and I regularly blow by the efficiency limiter.

On Transcend, a size 2 base has 1 drone and 1 worker. The 1 drone is usually taken care of by your Scout Patrol (assuming 0 police). If you get an extra drone at this base, then you'll have problems. We're assuming you can't afford Recreation Commons, so the only other choice is to take a worker off a forest (so that 1 drone makes you take off 1 worker).

If all your bases are in this situation (size 2, no drone facilities), then that's 1 less worker at 3 of them, or 3 less forests total.

quote: also the second of the two smaller bases confers atleast 1 extra drone(unles its really early) because of b. drones

Yes, but the total number of drones is still the same - say you have a size 6 base and two size 3 bases. The size 6 base will have 5 drones (5 drones), the same as the two size 3's (4 drones + 1 bureaucracy drone). One good thing about smaller bases is that you essentially can use more police! The size 6 would have 1 drone taken care of by the one police (assuming 0 police on Social Engineering), leaving 4 drones. However, the two smaller bases would each get 1 drone taken care of, leaving only 3 drones!

quote: prolly all moot cuz I actually like lotsa bases

Same here - what I discussed above isn't too important, because I still sometimes like to make only 5 really big bases (don't get me wrong, I've had my super-duper number of bases before, but sometimes I do like only a few )!

Z

	18-10-2001 14:21									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I know when bases riot thnx. but u forget a very common occurance in early game. the size 3 base w/ a rec commons. since size 3's need them, that base can take an extra drone.

or the size 1 base pumping colony pods, that can take an extra drone too as its pop gain and colony pod are usually timed closely. only if yer base is caught w/ its pants down, moving up from colony pods to facilities, is it gna get smacked.