will the AI out base me?

[icevic]

Hi there! Currently with the talent level, AIs are mass producing new bases and brother Lal has been pumping out new bases every turn (bad locations, since they are too close to each other and fight for resources)... my question is: should I now concerntrate on maintaining current bases with newer facilities (and the ever constant race for SPs) or start building some newer ones. I have 7 bases currently and 5 of them has population between 5 and 8... most of the AIs have one 6 and the rest are lower than that. Lady Deride, Bro Lal, and Zak are allies of mine while Yang (next to Lal), Mirmam (next to Deride) are fighting with their neighbors, so I ended up in long distance conflict with them.

My current strategy is to let Yang fight Lal and have Mirmam fight Deride. I am worried about Lal since he loves building sea colonies (we are seperated by a body of water with lots of fungus, and note, I am on a big land mass by myself).

so should I build bases to match the AIs or should I build better, less bases to out tech them (three bases of mine have 20 in mineral for production)

Vic

[Misotu]

Hard to say. It depends on which faction you are, and your playing style. Either could work ...

[Ned]

It's hard to answer your question without know what level you are playing on or on what size map. However, I would try to expand the number of my bases until I received my first Bureaucracy Warning - using pods from my smaller bases. Then, after receiving the BW, do something to increase efficieny, such as going democratic, and then continue the expansion until you receive your second warning. In the meantime, continue to build up your larger cities.

The BW tells you that adding additional cities will add drones. The added drone can be anywhere, including a city that may be producing a critical SP and now must now put a worker to quelling a drone riot. This can get ugly, since loss of the worker can lead to downward spiral if population loss is the result.

Be aware that distance from home base cuts income. You may want to cut off your expansion if your average new base is more than 16 tiles from Home Base.

Finally, there are a lot of techniques you can do to expand base size. These include crawling nutrients to a base. You can speed base size increases by so-call "pod" booming. Simply move a Colony Pod to a base and press B. The base increases in size by 1 - even if is at, for example, 7 and has no Hab. The base size will still increase to 8.

Many here beleive in building up a selected number of core bases using this technigue rather than building up all your bases.

[Blake]

Through a process of elimination I guess you are morgan. If I am correct then yes, you should build more bases, this is because you have the reduced population. Also, don't worry about bases having to "fight" for resources, it will be a long long time before you can work more than 11 tiles.

A good target is 10 bases, then build those bases up, rush-buying everything facility. If you mantain good infrastructure, both in your bases and terraforming then you can easily out tech and out produce the AI. While there is no effective limit to the number of bases you need to find a comprimise where micro-managment is tolerable. I prefer to have 10-15 bases.

[icevic]

Update:

Thanks for the reply. Actually I am not Morganite but Spartan in a large planet map. Now most of my bases produce more than 20 minerals per turn and I have acquired some lady Deride's base off her island. Things went really well and I was preparing to mind control the second largest Peacekeeper city when...

Yang and Mirmam came knocking! Yangs force came rolling south into the peace keeper territory and took 1/2 of them before slowing down. The believers went north and took all but 4 of Garian's cities. The morgans put up some pityful fight... currently their forces are isolated in five disconnected cities. Now with my great economy, I am planning to launch a major assualt deep into the Hive territory (away from the Hive-UN frontline where some of their older cities are) while another task force is being sent to protect the remaining Garian cities. The good thing about the fight is that everyone is rolling out military units and their cities became drone infested with poor infastructure...... ummm, rip for picking!!!

Now the sleeping tiger is about to wake up and do some base picking!

Vic

[Misotu]

Well, as the Spartans your best bet is to take bases from the AI, rather than building more of your own.