The Economic Planning Agency

[Modo44]

Originally posted by wuy3
I read once somewhere that the key to winning in SMAC was former armies...

True. But you can lower the necessary numbers considerably through good management. I believe Maniac and Googlie were doing that pretty well so far (except for the not planting Forests part ).

[Googlie]

Originally posted by wuy3
80 formers... wow

I once played in a PBEM with big_canuck (against Tau Ceti and Misotu) - where b_c had over 200 formers, and in 1 turn built a 14 tile long landbridge, with roads and magtubes, right into TC's heartland, and followed up with an invasion force that took about 16 of Tau's 20 or so bases.

Took b_c about 2 days to play the turn, and you can imagine Tau's face when he opened the turn and saw ..................

[wuy3]

So why didn't be build forests in the beginning? Did we just decide to concentrate on roads instead or something? Or did the worms get out formers?

[Maniac]

Just too little formers I guess.
Also our early terraformation was focused on farming the crater for 2-2-1 tiles. Foresting those wouldn't have been as good, as the extra crater mineral was lost before we had Ecological Engineering.

[vishniac]

Communication from the Ministry of Infrastructure

Ok, popbooming is on the way and we have some turns of peace to develop infrastructure and thus industrial and military capacity.

First thing to ask:
With the current 'soft' bullying of the Angels, and Yang having withdrawn his border units, how long can we hope to stay at peace?
Do we have any offensive desires or planning yet, or shall we wait for an opportunity?
The answers will determine the build options.

Some cities will need new build orders on turn 2171:
-South Craterwest, but it was said we'll instabuild The Planetary Datalinks there (yes?).
- Tegea Harbour, but perhaps we'll use it for the Ascetic Virtues.

Other cities in Messenia are:
-- Rio Grande
-- Fort Buster: growth stagnant but 17 minerals.
-- Santiago Citadel
-- Olympus Academy
-- Vladivostok
3 of the 5 finish a former. We have to decide between more formers, crawlers (there are already quite a few but some SP are coming), military units or facilities.

When we'll know about the pod-popping, there should be a decision about Minas Tirith and 2Nuts Strand, both at No Minerals. I would particularly like to see 2NS growing swiftly for it is our more southern base, is a harbour, and can be a major support point and colonization departure. It should be twined with another city sending it crawlers to build a sea former and land facilities.

Arcadia University: The sea former is an excellent idea. But after that, with growth stagnant, i'd advise a Tree farm ASAP. It would add 3 nutrients a turn and would be paid by its own 50% economy.

Fort Superiority: When some deny the construction of tree farms as too expensive, we build a hab complex when growth will still take 32 turns after completion (effectively costing us 64 energy). For minimizing the loss and maximizing the utilization of the hab, it should be followed by a Hybrid Forest.

Tegea harbour has 7 tiles of forest available for itself. You know what I mean!

About more mid-term expansion: there are some good points where to found bases on land (for bonus or strategic reasons) but I'd like to submit you something.
In a few turns (about 6 or 7), Fort Sup (and its 24 minerals) could build copter-colony-pods (expensive but much time-efficient) and Arcadia University 2 or 3 seaformers.
The goals?
-- Fossil Field Ridge! One base can encompass the entire field + 2 bonus nutrients!!! With Aquafarm and Subsea Trunkline, it would be a killer.
-- Geothermal Shallows! Just south of the FFR, we could found 2 or 3 bases there and boost our energy gain.
Add to this that these bases would be the closest from the Data Angels continent and their importance is clearly showing.

So, let's plan for 2171 production!

[Googlie]

Originally posted by vishniac
Some cities will need new build orders on turn 2171:
-South Craterwest, but it was said we'll instabuild The Planetary Datalinks there (yes?).
-

I thought we'd agreed that Santiago Citadel was the site of the PDL - that's where I set up the 4 crawlers for:

[Maniac]

Originally posted by vishniac
So, let's plan for 2171 production!

I hope I'll be able to respond more extensively later, but now some quick advertizing : if you like to plan for 2171 production and even see what we could do the turn beyond that, you can play ahead with the ACDG3 Simulator, always available for download in the Factional Datalinks, and just now updated to the MY 2170 endsave. The other factions aren't reflected well (meaning commerce income won't be correct), but Sparta itself and the University are almost completely correct.

[vishniac]

Thanks, I'll play now.
But I'm sure to get carried away by the game without planning

[Googlie]

Originally posted by vishniac

Do we have any offensive desires or planning yet, or shall we wait for an opportunity?
The answers will determine the build options.

How about the PK's as a traget of opportunity?

They have some juicy assets

• 2 AA's for instatechs
• 4 colony pods that we could subvert for our own pop growth
• a lightly defended HQ with some saleable assets (Command Center and Perim Defence)

We have available units - soften up Planning Authority from the air, then land and take it, followed, same turn, with a swift move to UNHQ.

My guess is that then he'll sue for peace and slavery, and we can extort Great Refuge from him (and maybe Commerce Committee as well, to complete our occupation of that southern 4-base area)

[Modo44]

Wrong thread, Googlie.

He did break the Pact, so I guess he is indeed asking for it. Plus, there would be the nice benefit of getting comfortably close to the Angels... But I would like to see what Yang does first—at least the next 2-3 turns. If he moves against us, we will need all available assets there. Once we are sure the Hive is contained, we can think about Lal.

[Googlie]

well - I'm responding to vishniac's earlier post here (hence my quote)

[Snoddasmannen]

Hmmm, yes I like this idea. We have plenty of planes not doing too much, and those PK:s are busy giving away techs to rogue human factions anyway, let's teach them a lesson Also note that they have 2 AA:s which we can steal liberate.

[wuy3]

does 1 Alien artifact autofinishs a SP when you cash it in or does it just contribut an arbitraty number of mineral points to the SP?

[Googlie]

It cashes in for 50 minerals, which is 1/4 of the early SP's (Command Nexus, Empath Guild, HGP. Merchant Exchange and Weather Paradigm)

But we'd rather use them for tech advances than SP building - we get a decent number of completion podpops that give us our "Gin Freighters" - they're worth much more in mineral value for an SP than AA's

[DeathByTheSword]

btw threadjack i think and attack on lal would be a great idea...maybe start seriously planning it?