2139 End Turn and 2140 Discussion

[Mead]

We built the HGP in Impaler Polymers. Yeah.

Turn Summary:

Pop 10, Energy 53

Tech Cost 203
47 Tech per Turn, 167 Accum
Years per tech 5, Tech in one year (foils)
Will we have a truncation problem?

Income 39 before stockpile bug.

Uni switched to produce Virtual World after we completed HGP. No one else is producing SPs.

Gaians
Pop 11
Frontier, Planned, Wealth

Hive
Pop 44
Police State, Planned, Survival

Data Angels
Pop 12
Frontier, Planned, Wealth

Spartans
Pop 11
Frontier, Planned, Survival


Potential Rushes
Morgan Mussels (3 min production)
needs 37 - 6 = 31 ECs to rush crawler

Morgan Vulcanology (4 min production)
needs 22 - 8 = 14 ECs to rush crawler

City of ZZT (5 min production)
needs 25 - 10 = 15 ECs to rush crawler

Potential New Base at (25,17) if we build it (3 min production)
needs ?? - 6 = ?? to rush former/scout/probe

I suggest rushing Morgan Vulcanology, City of ZZT, and Potential new base at (25,17).

Production changes:
Swap Vander Eudamonics former for a probe foil next turn.

Consider swaping the *-2-1 probe in RFR for a *-1-2 probe so we can use it to infiltrate Yang. Add Stockpile to the build que.

Base building:
Establish a base on the river at (25,17) with the RFR CP. Let it work the forest north near it. Although I would like to get a base established on the chokepoint, it is better to get a base at (25,17) up and running now. Plus, if we establish it now, we start getting more ECs now, and it can turn out former next turn that we can use to road down to the chokepoint for another CP to travel in a couple of years.

Establish a base at on the river at (21,9) between the min special and the Pod. It will take 3 years to get the CP from SSR to (21,9), but I see no other site as useful right now.

Move the Probe near the chokepoint north into the fungus.

Garrison Impaler Polymers.
I realize that it is deep in our terrain, but I am a little concerned that it has only one population, is undefended, contains our only SP, and is ajacent to some fungus. Lets park one of our eastern scouts there just as precaution. Although I usualy like to go garrison 'light' the consequences of losing the HGP to a rouge MW are too great.

Which way are we going to send the Mead Metal scout?

Is he going to explore the NE or NW?

If you all like I can play and post the turn.

Mead

[arginine]

Could save money by not rushing the new base's production? We are racing to possibly get a second SP, and the sooner the foils are launched, the sooner trade and commerce can begin.

I think Morgan Mussels should wait, so both it and Vander Eudianomics can switch to foils and rush them next turn. Could we go for regular foils to get contact first and infiltrate later?

I have no objection to placing a city at (25,17) to get instant production. I don't think the location is a good place for a big base, but we don't care about that now. It'll probably take 6 turns to get the CP down south anyways :P Hopefully we will get a transport in ~10 turns so we only need 2 turns to get a CP into place.

For the long term I would like a decision on which cities we will want to pop boom, and which cities will be made small. There is a finite amount of land which can hold only a finite number of cities. Don't forget that there are a bunch of rocky squares, which I feel would be better crawled instead of used by a base.

A decision on where to put the next project would be nice, so we can move the crawlers in position there. We were in a rush for the first project, so it just went near the middle of our Corporate territory.

[Mead]

Originally posted by arginine
Could save money by not rushing the new base's production? We are racing to possibly get a second SP, and the sooner the foils are launched, the sooner trade and commerce can begin.

Rushing former there will give us more time for that former to make 2 nut squares, just in case we get PTS. Plus it will get a head start to start clearing a way south for our CPs to move.

I think Morgan Mussels should wait, so both it and Vander Eudianomics can switch to foils and rush them next turn. Could we go for regular foils to get contact first and infiltrate later?

I agree that Morgan Mussels should wait for now. It should continue with the crawler for now (we need the crawler for mins and the PTS) and then make a probe foil. I would like to get the probe foils because with the probe foils we get both contact and infiltration. Will the probe foil be a prototype? If so then we should just concentrate one base on making probe foils until th first one is complete (I want to use our crawlers for the PTS and don't want to use any of our crawlers to rush probe foils.)

I have no objection to placing a city at (25,17) to get instant production. I don't think the location is a good place for a big base, but we don't care about that now. It'll probably take 6 turns to get the CP down south anyways :P Hopefully we will get a transport in ~10 turns so we only need 2 turns to get a CP into place.

True. It may not be a good site for a big base, but we get into production now, earning us cash and making some units.

For the long term I would like a decision on which cities we will want to pop boom, and which cities will be made small. There is a finite amount of land which can hold only a finite number of cities. Don't forget that there are a bunch of rocky squares, which I feel would be better crawled instead of used by a base.

True.

A decision on where to put the next project would be nice, so we can move the crawlers in position there. We were in a rush for the first project, so it just went near the middle of our Corporate territory.

I don't mind placing the PTS in the same base as the HGP because, as jtisyoda notes, by the time PBs come around PTS is not as powerful. I would like to separate the PEG (if we get it) from the HGP.

I'll be offline for at least 20+ hours so I will not be able to play the turn. jtisyoda, please play it.

Mead

[jtsisyoda]

Ok, Mead, I DL'd it.

[jtsisyoda]

No lab truncation this time.

I rehomed a crawler to Mussels and one to Vulcanology. It makes rush-buying cheaper and increases the stockpile "rebate". Next turn we can rehome three crawlers to SSR to help it complete its crawler.

Mussels:
(9/14)*37=24

Vulcanology:
(3/9)*22=8

ZZT:
(5/10)*25=13

Regarding where to build PTS... Ideally there would be 9 2-mineral squares within one crawler move of the base. We could stage the crawlers around the base the turn before it completes the tenth crawler, and they'd all collect the maximum minerals. The two bases that are closest to that ideal are Imp Pol and Mor Ind. Mor Ind just needs a few roads on those western forests to provide plenty of those crawler "lilly pads." Unfortunately, our formers are tied up. Morg Ind is a good candidate for another reason, though... The effect of PTS is maximized if you build it in the base at the top of your list. (So every base gets the benefit of the growth that first turn.)

I deferred the build decision at RFR... it can be changed in the next couple turns with no penalty.

I'm too tired to take screencaps now, but here's an end-turn file. Somebody please check it over since I'm not at 100% tonight... had to do some overtime at work.

[jtsisyoda]

The mindworm wandered off to the northeast.

[jtsisyoda]

Turn posted for the Spartans.

For the CP, I went ahead with the spot that won out in the base placement thread a while back.

... Which reminds me, the NW base will be founded in 2142, not 2141 like I said last turn.

[arginine]

Yes, probe foils will get both contact and infiltration, but they also cost 5 rows. Regular foils are just 2 rows. I should point out that the sooner we make contact the more commerce we will get. That is about 8 energy per turn per faction we get a trade deal with. That is a lot. We can go about infiltration with 2 move probe teams and a transport (which can be used for other things as well). We have the HGP, so we are immune to unhappiness in size one cities.

[jtsisyoda]

I almost forgot...

Woohoo! The game's first SP.

[jtsisyoda]

Once we have PTS in a few more turns, Morgan Mussels will be in good shape to pump out a ship quickly. Personally, I prefer the probe, because there's no support, it's 1/3 faster, and it can infiltrate. We should consider delaying meeting Zak and Lal so we can infiltrate the other human teams ASAP. That's how important I think it is.

As far as ferrying around a 2-move probe on a transport, that puts us back up to 5 rows, plus the extra support. I don't see other uses of the transport offsetting that support cost.

All of our cities have enough space to boom to at least 5, to take advantage of specialists. Bases that are already doing well are often the ones that would benefit the most from more facilities and more population. So Mor Ind is clearly targeted for booming. Having a nutrient bonus to condensor-farm is a green light for a boom, too. SSR and the new southern bases might have a hard time getting enough nutrients. Crawlers can go anywhere, so they're not ruled out, but as a matter of convenience and setup time, they might not make the cut. Coastal bases can get lots of nutrients, if you get sea formers out early. Once we get closer to the mid-game, we can be more concrete.

Mines on rocky squares are great after Eco Eng. With Env Econ and lots of formers, though, I prefer boreholes.

[arginine]

If probe foils are truly superior to a transport for infiltration, ok. You have more experience at multiplaying, so probe foils have proven superior to a transport with regular probe teams for infiltration, ok. All I ask is 2 quickly built and cheap 2 min row foil to quickly establish contact with other factions to get a cheap contact. So we can use Morgan's strength: commerce bonuses.

I don't think 4 min rows will slow us down much. If another factor is involved (like the element of surprise) then going straight for the probe foils will be understandable.

We could announce our building the HGP in a "press release".

[jtsisyoda]

We'll have a couple formers that need orders next turn. Maybe they could head south to road toward the chokepoint? They could plant a farm or two as well, since PTS is coming in a few years.

The former in the east could either continue roading the volcano, forest the e-bonus, or road toward Imp Pol (with the idea of clearing the fungus between there and RFR, so we can connect them with a road).

I think the new base (what should we name it?) should build a former and start a farm to the south right away.

We can rehome crawlers to SSR and rush it's crawler. What should we build in the cities that we just rushed crawlers in? Formers? Synth attorneys? Synth attorneys can be shuffled around to coastal bases, so they can concentrate on ships. Formers building forest would be the best way to increase our post-PTS resource output. We also need to build more roads to our next six base sites (once we explore enough to figure out where to put them). I don't recommend more crawlers-- with PTS, there won't be enough good squares to crawl, except maybe on the volcano.

The press release is a good idea. How's the next MorganLink coming, anyway?

[arginine]

We could make a bunch of cheapo one move, unarmored defense teams (2 rows) for defense against infiltration. Now's a good time to make them. Is it a good idea to designate an unarmored defense team as a primary defender? I'd like other team's expensive invading probe teams to be killed by our cheap ones.

Rehoming crawlers to make more crawlers is good. I would like the crawlers to be moved closer together for quick SP completion.

If we need a farm to just prevent pop loss, have the new city's farm be the square directly north and have it be first city to make a CP.

Morganlink has been sitting around for over a month.

[jtsisyoda]

Probes can't be designated defenders. From my limited experience with multiple probe defenders, it seems pretty random which one defends.

The next turn is up... we'll have a new thread soon.

[Whoha]

dont stack probe teams, you lose em all and it makes you want to cry.