2116 end turn + 2117 discussion

[jtsisyoda]

AndiD, please change the thread title to 2116 end turn + 2117 discussion.

Angels pop: 4 (probably planted at least one base)
Gaians pop: 3
Spartan pop: 3

One former is out and about, and three more are on the way next turn. Colony pods after that, I guess. We could consider foresting the energy bonus and allowing MorgInd to focus on labs instead of growth, now that we have some more CP factories. As arginine pointed out in the previous thread, we may or may not want eight cities before HGP... we should think that through.

The first former is roading north of MorgMet, as suggested by our esteemed CTO #endgame. I agree with his suggestion because roading flat squares is cheap, there's a decent base site up there, and the former can explore a little, too.

A note for turn-players... I made "former w/stockpile" and "CP w/stockpile" templates, to save a couple clicks when setting base queues.

[jtsisyoda]

Western view...

[jtsisyoda]

Eastern View...

Remember to make base name suggestions in that other thread. Maybe we should poll a few options??

[AndiD]

(Thread title changed)

Whether to go for eight bases or not could depend on whether we have the "drone bomb" or not. In the minigame, I was able to found a seventh base and had only to pacify it and keep six productive bases.

What also should be taken into account is efficiency loss of that energy base square. That seventh base was planted a bit further away and lost 2 of its 7 energy to inefficiency...

I'd say seven bases are okay but not more.

[jtsisyoda]

So is that a vote for foresting the energy bonus, since we only need three more CP's?

[arginine]

Sounds good. We'll have to decide if we want to build all those CPs next, but we have a few turns to do so. +2 energy bonus, 1 energy from farm, 1 energy from river, 1 energy from FM for 5 energy. My complaint is that morgan met will be able to make colony 2 turns earlier than the later bases can. If that is worth much.

I figure the extra 3 energy, so half goes to research, so the net node would get 1 free lab. I'd rather morgan industries use the forested energy square, so we can continue to use the monolith. We lose 1 labs for 1 mineral.

The non CP making base gets put to work on making an armored probe team. 1 t former starts roading up north, and another starts roading south.

So, by about 2130, we have 7 bases, and shift them to HGP, and get it by ~2140.

We could conserve energy, get SotB and use upgrading to require less use of crawlers.
unupgraded crawler - 3 row, upgraded crawler (synth, trance) - 8 rows. Cost to upgrade crawler, 90 EC
HGP - 20 rows. PTS - 30 rows. For HGP, 2 upgraded & 1 unupgraded.
For PTS, 4 upgraded crawlers.
Total cost: 540 EC, 7 crawlers. Expensive, so it'll be cheaper, and more crawlers.
However, each upgraded crawler is almost 2 crawlers that don't have to be scrapped.

[arginine]

I am for foresting energy square because:

1) IA will not be ready when the older bases hit pop 2. It might be when the newer bases do. (cheaper rush builds)
2) It will give us a bit of extra time to put a sensor under the desired base square, should we choose to. I don't think we will have enough time for the upcoming round of bases.

The formers would have to be at the base square in about 7 to 8 turns to begin building the sensor arrays. We don't know where the bases will go yet. We should decide quickly, so roads can be linked up.

Building a base on the mineral rich square has been proposed. The mineral rich square look rolling, rainy, so I would prefer not to stick a base on it. A base between the pod and the mineral rich square looks good. A base to the south, as we want Yang's border as far south as possible. The third base would prefably also be to the south, but if the terran down south looks really bad, we can always stick the third base up north.

[Micha]

Foresting sounds good.
Why should the building of the HGP last 10 turns? If it does, we´ll never get away with it. Enigma has learned most of hid gameplay from Kody, and that means he will instabuild SPs whenever possible. He will also go for the HGP, so if he sees we´re starting it, he will do anything to rush one himself... (if possible)

[AndiD]

In the minigame I did the HGP in 2141 and in 2143 noone has finished a SP yet. (Drones and Spartans are competing for the Weather Paradigm)
I lost two crawler turns in mis-calculating rushing investments so 2140 would have been possible also.

Generally it is faster to put 2 crawlers / base on a forest and keep those crawlers permanently while producing even more crawlers, since we are looking for the HGP and the PTS, right? I have attached an (atrocious looking, I admit) excel sheet where I calculated those building speeds roughly.

We will most probably have a few years advantage in reaching IA so that can work even here.

(We might want to discuss a SP building strategy in a separate thread but for now I keep that here...)

[arginine]

Nice spreadsheet. With successive crawlers, the build time becomes increasingly smaller. I know that's a "duh!", but a single crawler almost doubles a single base's min production.
I didn't think of it this way before, but when you rush build a crawler, you get the min gained from harvesting in addition to the amount bought by the rushing. 2 mins from crawling, and 3 mins bought at a cost of 9 energy. 5 mins for 9 energy. A good deal.

I figured we were going to be paranoid and grab the HGP as soon as possible. When I meant build the HGP for 10 turns, I meant build the needed crawlers for the HGP. I suppose 6 turns is a more accurate estimate of the time needed for a crawler round than 10, assuming rush building. If we can get both projects, I'd be for scrapping all the crawlers to make make both SPs as soon as possible. The PTS will double our base's productivity to sort of compensate. Instead of building permanent crawlers, why not CPs to take advantage of the pop boom (if we have accumulated the pop by then). I'm just paranoid, that's all.

Why would the DAs want the HGP? Also, I thought Enigma got kicked.

Sure, we went FM before DA, but if they have a site as energy rich as ours, our FM advantage won't be as great as in a normal game. They start out with an extra tech closer to IA than we do. 0 en instead of 1 is a greater margin than 2 instead of 1. Then again, we were the tech leader a few turns back...

I wouldn't expect the other factions to take the minigame as seriously. The other factions might assume we will pursue a different strat from the mini-game in fact.

[jtsisyoda]

My PC doesn't support all the formulas in AndiD's spreadsheet, but from what I can see, I think and alternative needs to be considered. Compare these two build sequences, assuming six bases:

A.
6 crawlers, 6 crawlers (year x), 6 crawlers, HGP, PTS, 6 CP's
Result: 2 crawlers left, 30 pop

B.
6 crawlers, 6 CP's (year x), HGP, 12 crawlers (12 bases), PTS
Result: 2 crawlers left, 36 pop

I believe the scenario B is faster and has better results. The twelve crawlers in scenario B complete more slowly than the six crawlers from A. After that you're done, though, whereas scenario A still has six CP's to build.

You can even stretch it to 12 CP's to maximize the effect of PTS. It delays it somewhat, but increases the benefit by six population.

C.
6 crawlers, 6 CP's, HGP, 10 crawlers, 12 CP's, PTS
Result: 54 pop, no crawlers

It's rare that I have enough terraforming done with Morgan to have three forests per base when building PTS. So extra crawlers aren't as beneficial, because they generally gather only one mineral. With three pop, though, you can afford to pump out an extra former to speed the foresting.

[AndiD]

Right, in the minigame I'm also going to cash in nearly all crawlers for the PTS depending on the amount of mineral specials, auto-forestation or Mount Planet around...

[arginine]

In scenario A, the later crawlers get built faster from the incoming minerals. Also, the terraforming is much easier to pull off with, as we do not have to build roads to the sites until later. With scenario A the pop increase from PTS takes the squares formerly worked by the crawlers.

Unless you decide to zen those new bases (build a base, then turn it into 3 CPs via PTS) I think our forming won't be extensive enough. The head of terraforming would probably be the best to ask.

[#endgame]

I'd recommend that we head north one more square with the former and road, which would mean that a CP from Morgan Metallurgy could found in the turn it was built. Otherwise it could stop at the end of the road and fail to step off it (1 turn wasted) step off the end (2 turns wasted) and then found the base. Following that, the former could also zip back and forest the E special.

-- CTO #endgame

[jtsisyoda]

The mineral bonus is on a flat square, so it's good as a base site.