19-02-2001 15:19									#1
	Permanent effects of stapling & atrocities Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I used to think it was a good idea to nerve staple a couple times in the first 40 turns, because obviously it's good to have the extra resources, and the sanctions are lifted long before you've got significant trade income.

But I quickly realized that people remember your "past atrocities against your own people" for a long long time. That makes it really seem stupid to staple at all, because even if you're at war with everybody, the "past atrocities" make everything more difficult. I have never been able to get any faction in a submissive pact after stapling. When I'm destroying every last city of theirs, they only communicate with me to say something about finding pleasure in seeing me executed.

So, am I correct here in thinking that any nerve stapling is fairly ignorant? Is it true that the effects never go away?

Another thing I've been wondering about is the way attrocities factor into eco damage. In a recent game, I was playing Santiago and quickly eliminated Zak/Mirriam, then crippled Morgan and the University while Yang fought with the Gaians. So, in the late 2200's, it was down to me basically owning the right half of the map and Yang owning the left half. For some reason Yang didn't have his usual horde of Needlejets by the time I had Orbital Insertion and Singularity, so I just made the chop/drop crew of about 10 blink choppers, a few tanks with drop pods, and some ridiculous 24/12 clean Gravships for taking sea bases and "because I could"--the damn things cost 715 minerals each .

Anyway, I didn't really feel like dealing with a million captured Hive bases, so I started a systematic Chop/Drop/Obliterate campaign and nuked Yang's command center. They wouldn't let me repeal the charter--I guess they're smart enough to know when I'm the only one who has a PB, but regardless, everything seemed to be going just fine, because I was already fighting Yang, and everybody else was too weak to do a single thing besides pick off a couple crawlers when they all declared war on me.

But then all of a sudden I started getting some SERIOUS eco damage. I mean harsh. I had two main production centers making 60 minerals/turn with no eco damage (even had Temples of Planet in each)... I didn't need much production with The Nano Factory and huge cash from all my population being Transcends. But then I started getting 400+ eco damage at those bases. So much damage that I stopped all my mineral crawlers, scrapped my robot factory, and changed my planet rating to 4, and I was still getting eco damage... then fungus popped up at all my cities, I got a message saying the seas were rising 900m in the next 20 years. I managed to upgrade about 20 crawlers to expensive models with Anti-grav Struts, get them on the mag tubes, and transcend in 3 turns, but I would've been taught a serious lesson if I hadn't been able to take the easy way out.

This all made me want to take a look back at the Eco Damage formula, where it says "add +5 for each major atrocity". The forumla is very vague, because even though it gives specifics about the equations and variables involved, it doesn't say what the "Ecology%" you come up with is supposed to mean in the first place--your bases eco damage is obviously not given in some sort of percent. It doesn't say how that percentage applies to base's eco damage and threshold of allowable industry...

But I'd be willing to bet that the +5 for major atrocities applies to every single base you obliterate, seeing as I had cities down to single-digit mineral production with Temples and a planet rating of 4 and was still getting damage.

Really, I just wanted to know if someone could verify this form me. Is it true that the effects, both diplomatic and ecological, of all attrocities (even stapling) last for the entire game?

	19-02-2001 18:42									#2
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It seems that you don't like use the diplomacy...
If you commit an atrocity against your own people (a non-conquered base)the Council use the economic sanctions and the others faction can have less faith in your words, but nether more (less then 12 nerve-stapling, obliterating... more then 12 w/out repealing UN Charter, you are expelled from Planetary Council -never seen, but I don't want to risk -)
If you commit a "normal" atrocity againts others faction's people (stapling,gassing,oliterating,infecting...) the faction will hate you and continue fighting till the death. (not a lot of time normaly... )
If you use a Planet Buster w/out repealing UN Charter
you are immidiatly expelled from the Council and you
increase the eco-damage. Also if you repeal UN Charter
you must face the Planet's Anger, a serius problem if you don't have the right units to face the invasion of angry mindworms and continous fungal blooms.
A method to reduce the damage of fungus' invasion is to own the SP Manifold Armonics and have +3 PLANET in SE and use the Council to lower the sea level. Also the Neural Amplifier and the Dream Twister can be a good weapon against the mindworms.
The effect of all atrocities is permanent.
-------------------------------------------------------
The luck helps the prepared mind
--Blaise Pascal

	19-02-2001 19:14									#3
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Let me just throw in one extra bit of information, which is not mentioned in the databanks:

If you commit many minor attrocities (e.g. nerve staple your own cities), they will also accummulate and count as major attrocity after a while, e.g. you can get everybody to declare vendetta on you and get all the anger of planet just by nerve stapling and no other attrocity ever (although you must do a really excessive amount of nerve stapling for that...)

Zsozso

	19-02-2001 19:34									#4
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I just had the same problem, big-time. I was well on the way to winning, and since the remaining factions didn't like me anyway I didn't see much downside to liberal stapling. Wrong. It seems to drive the planet crazy, at least when you do it in captured bases. I was getting eco-damage rates of over 50 in some places, and of more than 15 even in the smallest undeveloped backwaters, and could not figure out why. The worm activity this generated was basically more than I could handle, no matter what I did. I was getting like 30-40 new worms and locusts to deal with every turn, including in my soft underbelly, plus messages saying that the ocean would be rising 2300 meters over the next 20 years. And this with a +5 planet rating! Massive construction of Centauri Preserves and Hybrid Farms helped a little, but not nearly enough. It took me a long time to figure out what had gone wrong, but I now think it was stapling the conquered bases that did it.

A maybe related question: With a +5 planet rating, I expected to be capturing worms about half the time, but it isn't happening. I never catch anything anymore. I was doing ok on that earlier in the game, but then the magic seemed to disappear. Do even regular atrocities (stapling your own guys, gassing humans) make the worms less willing to get on the bandwagon?

	19-02-2001 19:40									#5
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[quote]Originally posted by zsozso on 02-19-2001 09:14 AM

If you commit many minor attrocities (e.g. nerve staple your own cities), they will also accummulate and count as major attrocity after a while ...

Do you think gassing humans would have the same effect?

	19-02-2001 19:57									#6
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Neuromancer

Apparently the chance of capturing a worm is reduced with every new worm that is captured. So with a plus 3 Planet rating you start with a 75% chance of worm capture but after capturing one your chance is reduced.

I thought I saw in other posts that your chance is reduced for each captured worm you have until it gets down to about 10% or so. I have never looked for a formula but this is consistent with my experience. As the cult I was capturing worms like crazy and then it just stopped. I had seen this idea of reduced chances of capture so I suicide attacked with about 8 captured worms to take a base. The next two worms that appeared were captured and then 2 of the next 3.

This has led me to use worms as disposable military since the worm lost today increases the chance of picking up a new free worm tomorrow. If I get a spore launcher, I move it next to an enemy and release it to the wild. Bottom line is that I don't want a spore launcher reducing my chance of capturing a very useful IOD.


The other phenomenon are the worms "directed by a more powerful mind". If you have peeved Planet it sends ecodamage worms which appear in new fungal blooms and appear to be impervious to capture. I do think though that if, on the same turn, you got regular worms out of a pod or in existing fungus-- captures are still possible for those worms.

	19-02-2001 20:30									#7
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[quote]Originally posted by cbn on 02-19-2001 09:57 AM

"This has led me to use worms as disposable
military since the worm lost today increases the
chance of picking up a new free worm tomorrow."


That's extremely helpful -- thank you.