Mission year 2124: we got IA.

[jtsisyoda]

The first crawler out of RFR will spend one turn on a river getting two energy, then one turn on the energy forest, then re-home to Mor Ind and continue on the energy forest.

Actually, we can rehome it twice... the crawler can go on the river next to Mor Met, then it can rehome to Mor Met and work the energy bonus (this rehoming might save an energy or two from inefficiency), then re-home to Mor ind and work the energy bonus again.

[jtsisyoda]

...gain two base turns at the upcoming western base, a total of 6 minerals and maybe 16 energy...

Actually "total" is not accurate. Everything the base builds also gains two turns of doing its thing.

Sorry, I'm nitpicking my own posts.

[jtsisyoda]

I don't recommend rushing the CP at Mor Met right now. It completes on its own, just barely, the last 5 mins this turn. We could rush that for 11 ec's, which is usually a pretty good deal, giving us a head start on the next thing it builds. But I think we'll barely be able to afford the CP and crawler rushes that are coming up in the next two to three turns, so I think it's better to let it barely finish and use the money for the other things.

[jtsisyoda]

Originally posted by arginine
I thought we were going to get 6 or 7 bases, and then build some crawlers. We talk about that here

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119253

but we didn't reach an agreement.

I thought 7 bases before HGP was more or less what we were going for. There didn't seem to be much objection to that. If anyone has other opinions, now's the time.

[AndiD]

No objection. It will be interesting to see whether we have the "drone bomb" (© and ™ by Kody) or not. In the minigame, it must have someone else, I get execptionally few drones on expansion.

[jtsisyoda]

I thought the "drone bomb" was the violent act of re-ordering the global base list to induce new riots where there were none before, by disbanding one or more of your own bases.

[AndiD]

Right, and that implies that one faction gets a different "distribution" of drones than other factions. I've had games where a 7th base caused two "droned" bases, one or even zero. (Maybe it caused drones somewhere else instead?)

So the "drone bomb" is always lying at least at one faction depending on everyone's base founding sequence. That's what I meant.

[arginine]

Hmm, I checked out some saved games as morgan on a large map, and the 7th base causes 2 drones... From what AniD's saying, we could get 0, 1 or 2 drones from the 7th base. We don't know which.

So, we can limit ourselves to 6 bases and be safe, gamble with a 7th, or crank up psych to pacify drones and go for 8 bases.

[jtsisyoda]

The way beauracracy drones work, the 7th base on a medium or large map might cause a drone at zero, one, or two bases. If you do a search in general/strategy/help (or the Hive forum for the last DG-- this was all discovered by Grandmaster Kody) for beauracracy or drone it might turn up.

[-SafaN-]

good work guys. Although in my opionon our next goal is to build HGP the turn after we get biogen. The more bases we have, the better, but we NEED that project. That is our first priority. We have IA before the rest, we should use it to the max. We don't know if the others have started projects yet ...

greetz.

I think the Chaunk Yoda sequence is not bad. Normally chauck gives a sign that he cannot play so then there is no problem. I'm just wondering why he didn't do it this time. Hopefully not bad news.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Well tecnicaly we want to build it JUST BEFORE anyone else gets close, that keeps our crawlers out in the field longer. We should direct ALL crawled Energy (from the 3 Energy Bonuses and any Solars on Mt Drouge) into Our HQ so we dont losse any to inefficiency AND pump as much energy into our Node as possible.

I think we still have time to pump out more bases before the other factions come close to Building the HGP. New bases could build Tanks to accelerate their growth (if cash permites) then pop out a crawler and contribute it to the HGP.

Also I asume we will be using un-upgraded crawlers as Kody has done some excelet work demonstrating that they are infact the most efficient method (unless someone can argue that a Cash Rich Morgan is a differnt situation)

[arginine]

Wealth is part of the advantage of IA. We are using that now. CPs give a better return than crawlers (3 mins and 7 energy & 1 supported unit vs 2 mins). Also, CPs give back 10 mins (sort of)

Per mineral upgraded crawlers are cheaper per min, but
unupgraded crawlers compensate by bringing back more minerals.

Are we going to have the brand new bases build formers first, crawlers then formers, or will they even build formers?

What are we doing with that mineral guzzling scout? I thought it was just insurance against a worm we killed.

I just realized that the other factions can see that we are using wealth and therefore must have IA.

[jtsisyoda]

I believe Minute Mirage was actually the innovator on the superiority of quantity over quality for using crawlers to build early SP's.

If you're rushing crawlers at every city, every turn, and still have enough to upgrade, then do it. But even Morgan would probably have to be silly lucky with pod cash to get that rich.

For HGP, it has the immediate benefit of allowing us to build more CP's. New drone-free bases provide more resources than crawlers, so for HGP, I think we should build it just as b-drone problems start to sap our resources. For projects like VW, ME, CN, etc., I agree it's good to build them just before anybody else, but without infiltration that can be hard to judge.

[jtsisyoda]

I moved the scout back onto the road so it could be disbanded toward the CP next turn.

Re: Arginine's excellent question... formers are cheaper to rush with the first 10 mins, obviously. I'll have to open a turn to evaluate former vs. crawler more thoroughly, though. It will depend on available ec's, growth-timing for building CP's, how many roads we still need, etc. After HGP, getting to the second b-limit ASAP is probably top priority. That may mean a quick former build followed by a CP. With extra cash we might squeeze in a crawler build. Then we'd need to reassess our available land to see if we want to go to the third b-limit before PTS. That timing will also depend on how long others have had IA.

Yes, the other factions can see we have IA. They have a choice of either racing to IA so they don't miss out on all the SP's, or going for exploration and conquer techs, effectively giving up on SP's. If they go for IA, we gain peaceful isolation, and if they go for anything else, we gain SP's.

[AndiD]

The alternative would be of course to keep 2 crawlers per base while insta-building the HGP and cash in those crawlers together with some few more for the PTS as soon as every size 2 base has built a CP and is finally down to size 1. By doing so workers (1/2/2 with the odd 2/x/1 without rectanks) replace the mineral crawlers (0/2/0) on forests.

Advantages: We look stronger on the powergraph (Hive...), each new CP is a very good investment and we would simply be able to do more in the same time (support 2nd former/base, more industry, more research, more credits for rush-building, perhaps even a rudimentary military).
It worked very well in the minigame and I am extremely satisfied. Despite trading a few techs I never had to wait more than five turns for a new tech to be researched, mostly four.

Disavantages: Expansion will be generally slower since formers need to prepare future base sites (it took me about 17 years to second b-limit), if you say PTS you almost need to say Dem next against b-drones and lose 10 free minerals (although three workers usually need 2-3 turns to make 10 minerals...), we look stronger on the power graph than we really are and the tactic is known from the minigame.