A Few Questions About SMAC

[Sikander]

quote: Originally posted by Misotu on 05-06-2001 04:53 PM It's interesting, understanding ecodamage ... not that I'll ever follow it, sadly. I give up on formulae beyond a certain point. But what I am certain of is that a mineral strategy is always a poor second to an energy strategy. There's no need for 100+ minerals in a base - actually, there's rarely any need for more than 10. With serious energy, 10 mins is the magic number for rushing every turn. And with energy, there's no ecodamage once you have hybrids ...

Misotu,

Perhaps you can elaborate on your strategy a bit. I am curious, since my game has evolved in what is apparently a different direction. We both agree that 100s of minerals doesn't serve much of a purpose. I do however make a point of ramping up minerals as soon as possible until every base produces 15-16. I find a decent mineral output useful in a large number of ways.

1) It can stand in for support early on when you don't have clean reactors. This can be critical in early warfare, or in producing extra formers to increase your productivity.

2) 15 minerals will produce a supply crawler in two turns. This can be used to produce energy, minerals or nutrients, or to concentrate the construction of SPs in time and space, and beat your opponents to them.

3) Turn advantage. While you may run enough econ to merely purchase what you want every turn, I typically don't do that for at least 100 years. Higher production means that my tree farms are completed earlier (even if I buy them at some point before they are completed) for example.

4) Excess minerals. While any production above 10 minerals may be wasted on the turn in which an item is completed, in general excess production can be harnessed in a number of useful ways. Clean units, crawlers, probes are all items which can be useful at a later time. When all else fails, you can always produce money at the 2-1 ratio.

My early game focuses on FOP in the following order:

1) Mins
2) Energy
3) Nuts

Once my bases are producing up to the ecology limit, I change my focus:

1) Nuts
2) Energy
3) Mins

Only when my bases produce more nuts than they can possibly use do I start looking for energy. As you may know, rather than focusing on pure energy production, I prefer to use specialists to the extent possible. A simple calculation leads me to believe this is a pretty efficient way to do things:

2 food = 1 specialist = 3+ energy

(Late Game 2 food = 1 Transcend = 5+ energy + 1 food, min and energy with sats)

Of course this assumes that you are pop booming, and have space in your bases below your hab limitations. It is however easy to build plenty of specialist bases as drones are not much of a problem. Another advantage to offset these difficulties is that you lose no specialist produced energy to inefficiency.

What do you do? I imagine SSCs, FM and Wealth, GAs and energy trawlers with lots of orange balls on your base screens. What does your energy focused strategy look like?

Respectfully,

Sikander

[Chowlett]

In fact I'm surprised the game lets you build clean crawlers - I've never looked myself.

As to the questions...

1) I tend to space my bases so that the new base is 2 squares diagonally from the corner of the old base's production - this prevents any overlap at all. I realise this is nowhere near optimal, and I'm trying to break the habit. You migh also want to check the thread My take on Base Spacing, which still contains some good coments, even though the images are no longer available. If lbores is watching, putting them back could prove useful, if it's possible.

2) I've never really looked. By size 7 though, I tend to have 7 workers on tree-farmed forest, so 14 and 21 before enhancements, I think. I don't tend to think deeply about my games, so I can't even remember what a tree-farmed forest produces!

3) I don't. But I suspect that it is a combination of crawled mines and enhancement facilities. BTW, don't crawl boreholes, losing half the productivity isn't worth it.

4) Like Vel, I always have a couple of farms before tree-farms, for that very purpose. In general, I will Forest anything flat or arid, and farm anything Rainy and Rolling. I sometimes forest, sometimes farm Moist-Rolling. I just get confused if I have a Flat-Rainy.

5) Always WP, if poss, always HSA. Pretty much always VW, as I build nodes anyway. Cyborg Factory and CBA are always nice, but inessential. And of course, I always try to get the AtT

Next set:

1) I generally stay at home, which is a bad plan, and rely mainly on sensors to do my scouting. This again is a habit I try to break, and get som ZOC-holders out there. I ONLY use 1-best-1 defenders, or whatever is the same cost (note - you seem to be able to add a weapon a couple of notches lower than the armour for no extra cost - eg a 4-6-1 costs the same as a 1-6-1 IIRC). I also usually have a few best-1-1 or best-1-2 around for the cleanup.

2) Not really sure. I'll defer to the veterans of bee-lining.

3) Again, not usually either. But I do tend to have a sea base or two, and a couple of war-ships out exploring, so I do tend to get transport notice before they land.

[cbn]

Net maverick

The first questions were ably answered by others but I will have a go at your second set

1. I use sensors a lot to warn of encroaching units . These and formers and crawlers are part of the reason my garrisons are the cheaper 1-best-1-- I never plan to have them attack anyone but will do a crash upgrade if necessary. The idea is that you have enough "stuff" out there to be aware of enemy units far in advance - A crawler pays for itself over a number of turns, requires no support and provides advance warning-- you can armour it to provide enhanced survivability if you wish.
My attackers are usually best-1-2 rovers ( although 4-1-2 is enough to kill most attacking units) which I will often station in a base or back a square or two from the frontier. Fairly close base spacing and a direct road network mean I can usually concentrate a fair force pretty quick. My idea is to get early warning, perhaps at the cost of a sensor or a couple of crawlers and then concentrate a force.

2. This depends-- if war is imminent D:AP may be necessary for survival. But if enemies are further away or you otherwise feel secure it can be very very worthwhile to get those energy restrictions lifted. The "detour" can speed research significantly.

3. Neither -- sort of-- i try to get some sea crawlers out there as an early warning system with needlejet backup. Once air power is in play i find ships to have more limited use and use sea patrols less-- ships seem to have very low survivability in the best of cases. What I try to do is have a screen of spaced trawlers out there-- usually collecting energy. Then I have enough forces in my bases (usually needlejets) to kill that which kills a trawler.

[Ned]

Sikander, I'm with you. I use to think "clean." But now I simply multiply mineral production to preposterous levels. Pumping out units and maintaining them in large numbers is no problem at all. I tend to use the two "abilities" slots for something sexy. Ned

[johndmuller]

1) In SP, I usually try to expand my territory early and then fill in the interior blanks at my leisure. This is no doubt risky and inefficient in several contexts, but I find that the AI is relatively tractable at the very beginning and may change its expansion to a different direction when it encounters another faction. This can also be true of a human player as well since they wouldn't know how thin I might or might not be on their frontier. A combination of a close-spaced heartland and far-flung outposts might not be as bad a plan as it is usually thought to be.

2) Agree that ED and competing priorities are the limiting factors.

3) After the very beginning, the mins seem to mostly take care of themselves for me; I usually mine/crawl rocky tiles and plant forests. I get nuts from crawling rainy farm tiles and kelp farms; before restrictions are lifted, I farm/solar the (preferably high altitude) rolling plots more than I do later, when I might convert some (especially the low) plots to forests. I get energy from facilities and specialists, from working sea-kelp-solar and crawling (particularly to HQ) mostly from specials and ocean solars - I haven't really gotten off on energy farms, although they seem nice in theory. The Hydroponics and Solar Sats help out later in the game, but the mining sats are late and can be a potential ED trap if overused in conjunction with min enhancing facilities, especially the Singularity Inductor.
Mark: Regarding the non-rocky mines - while I don't build them myself, when I inherit a moist or wet rolling farm-mine from the AI, I don't find them half bad to have; they're not as balanced as a farm-solar or a forest, but if you're independently wealthy, its has what you need when you first take over a base and they seem to be the last of the AI's terraforming things I change.

4) I terraform according to the same terrain rules as Chowlett. I might level some rocky tiles for forests later in the game, but would otherwise build mines and crawl the mins for the most part; GA considerations sometimes suggest working all the tiles in the base instead of crawling.

5) In addition to many of the ones already mentioned, I would add the Living Refinery, the Nano and Cyborg Factories if one wanted to have a world class military.

1) In addition to sensors and sometimes patrols, I often put some native life units in the outlying territories in fungus plots. Locusts patrolling between 2 fungus tiles is cool too, although I've had a crash or 2 when I've tried to make the patrol (with any unit) too complicated as well as some difficulty getting the patrols set up the way I wanted them to be.
I go with the (max-free)-best-1 also. I think AAA is real important too and perhaps ECM or Non-Lethal when you can have 2 abilities.

2) I've lately been playing Blind, with fixed priorities, which spares me having to think too much about the beelines. I'm thinking of trying it with base governors too. Autoformers might be too much though (maybe every other one?). Despite the Blind Research, I root hard for D:AP, IA, Env Econ & Fusion; as a gesture toward the Blind, Centauri Ecology seems to be rigged to arrive early.

3) Mostly trawlers, probeships and planes.

Sikander, Good posts. I think I have an in between period where I am prioritizing Energy, Min, Nuts or Energy, Nuts, Min - perhaps due to having built more infrastructure. Once I get Fusion Labs up and especially after Energy Sats, I move toward your final stage. The funny thing is that even in my middle stage, I'm doing the same things, production-wise as in the final stage, namely food for specialists for energy, I'm just thinking about energy more - building energy facilities and otherwise focussed on energy and watching my spending.

[Net Maverick]

Again, thanks for all the responses everyone

Chowlett,

I agree that its better to allocate a worker instead of a crawler if a borehole is inside a base's production radius, but what if its outside? You said yourself that the extra 2 minerals is worth the additional terraforming time...so basically, if you have a choice of putting a mine+road on a rocky square or putting a borehole, you'll go for the borehole, correct?

Sikander,

I'm intrigued by your stacked units (caused by probe teams) and artillery strategy...if it isn't too much trouble, can you please elaborate? Do you mean planting amphibious probe teams so that ships would be forced to stack?

[WhiteElephants]

I think terraforming a borehole outside your workable territory could add up to a considerable waste of former time, considering your only reaping the benefits of 6 energy or 6 minerals. Not to mention the vulnerability of lone crawlers out of your bases radii. Of course, under certain circumstances you might want to do this anyway. For instance, if you don't have many rocky tiles readily available. Otherwise you could build 2 mines in the time it takes to build 1 borehole, thus 8 minerals to 6. Then again, if it's energy your after I would consider heading to the seas. Besides, if you've got extra land to build boreholes, why not plop down a new base, go ahead and build the borehole, and put a worker on it from the new base?

[Net Maverick]

WhiteElephants:

Two things I'll like to comment on:
a) If your base is not a coastal base, how do you take your crawlers to the seas? Also...a tidal harness would only produce 3 energy, whereas a borehole would get double that amount, so I do not see any advantage in crawling in energy from the seas. Kindly fill me in if I'm missing something here.
b) Building a mine+road on a rocky square may take less time, but I have one question here...is 6 extra turns of terraforming worth +2 minerals every turn? It isn't, IMHO. What's your point of view on this subject?

[Misotu]

Hi Sikander

I hope my post didn't come across as if I were being disrespectful about a mineral strategy. If it did, then I apologise. Handsomely. Because a mineral strategy is a perfectly good one.

It's hard to describe what an energy strategy looks like. I'm not much of a theoretician, in a way, I tend to play each game as it comes along. But I win more than I lose in MP and I always prioritise energy, so I think my view has some validity, though it may not suit everyone. But by and large, if I play against a mineral strategy, I will win the builder game, and I stand a more than fair chance in the world-war scenario too, because I will out-research the opposition while being able to rush everything I need in terms of units.

Here are some of the things I think about, maybe this builds a picture:

1 Commerce income. The more energy you generate directly, (as opposed to crawler-energy), the higher your commerce income. This can multiply tremendously, particularly with double-trade. Eco-damage free, too.

2 Planetary Gov. Plus one energy per treaty/pact. Eco-damage free, too.

3 An energy strategy makes SE changes *very* meaningful. Switch to Green, I can use all that energy to *really* oomph research - 70-100% setting - with no inefficiency penalties. Switch to FM/Wealth, I am *singing*.

4 Aside from SE changes, with a serious energy focus a simple 10% tweak in economy, psych or labs will make a huge difference in my output.

5 GA in FM? Easy with an energy strategy. Just set my psych at the correct level, and I have money/labs coming out of my ears while still pop booming ...

6 So, I am generating a lot of energy. What happens? I use my energy to rush energy-multiplying facilities. Ebanks, nodes, hospitals, fusion labs, tree farms ... even holograms, at a push. You name it - the more energy you plough into it, the more it works. SuperCollider. ToE. All the other energy-based SPs ... minerals can't even begin to compare, the way I see Chiron. Energy is what makes the world turn - and even 1 extra energy can make my base output *sing*. I build a supply foil - and it gives me 8, or 12, or even 20 extra labs ...

It's a bit like compound interest, the unstoppable force (big paraphrase) in the Universe, according to Einstein

7 Ecodamage. Well, in an extreme situation, you could be incurring ecodamage from solar stuff and echelons. Build a hybrid forest. The ecodamage caused by terraforming disappears. There is no simple solution for the ecodamage caused by minerals.

8 Once you have used your energy to get to Nessus satellites, you can have as many minerals as you could possibly need, with no ecodamage. I don't usually bother to build more than 2 or 3 - that's generally enough. But you could build more, and run an energy/mineral late-game strategy ...

Energy rocks. I just can't explain it any better

[Sikander]

quote: Originally posted by Net Maverick on 05-07-2001 06:13 PM Sikander, I'm intrigued by your stacked units (caused by probe teams) and artillery strategy...if it isn't too much trouble, can you please elaborate? Do you mean planting amphibious probe teams so that ships would be forced to stack?

Artillery should be able to take out transports, or at least damage them (and their passengers) severely. It can also duel warships on a more or less one to one basis (which is an advantage for you since infantry mounted artillery is cheaper than ships). Covering every coast square with some sort of unit (I use crawlers and armored probe teams) is good proof against any seaborne invasion until airpower.

Defending a land frontier, my probe teams give the attacker a tough choice. He can either protect his troops from mind control by stacking them (in which case my artillery pounds the stack), or he can risk some or all of them in an attempt to rush my base. I usually then mind control the best offensive unit I can, and turn that against him (with it's target softened up by a blast from my artillery.

This simple system (2 units defending each base, arty and an infantry garrison on the frontier or coast, and a rover and garrison everywhere else) along with one probe team in every base can thwart all but the largest AI offensives, and at a very low cost. It is particularly effective when your bases are placed in a diagonal grid pattern, as each frontier base should have the capability of being reinforced by at least two units every turn for some time.

When airpower comes, I tend to rely on it exclusively to destroy enemy troops at a distance. Choppers with (best-1-x radar) are excellent patrol craft, with long range, a two square field of vision and the ability to eliminate an entire squadron of enemy ships. I usally only build choppers and fighters in numbers, though I will sometimes build clean needlejets with radar in pairs and rotate them on a strait or bottleneck which enemy forces may come through. This allows me to see things on the enemy's turn, which can sometimes be advantageous. In the case of a one square strait or bottleneck, these planes can block it more or less indefinitely.

If you are not familiar with the armored probe team, (infantry chassis, probe in the weapon slot, and armor) it is worth a look. For the same price as a rover (standard) probe team, it packs a good deal of defense capability, especially along land borders or sea coasts. It is clean (usually available well before the clean reactor), and can take the place of an infantry garrison (though it has no police power) in a pinch. It can also be stationed away from your territory when you run FM without causing drones. I like to place a line of them along my land frontier with another faction. When placed behind a line of slow terrain, they can buy off enemy units as they approach. They defend better than infantry when you are running wealth (due to the morale penalty for military units with wealth) though not as well when you are running knowledge (-2 probe).

I also build a very cheap infantry probe team (no armor) which I use as a static base garrison against enemy probes. These guys can sortie out on roads in an emergency, or be upgraded to armored in a pinch, but mainly serve to defend my bases against enemy probes. I like to keep my tech lead.

[WhiteElephants]

Net Maverick --

a) If your base is not a coastal base I wouldn't bother too much with pumping out energy. Granted, I'd go for as much as possible, but to put time into boreholes that you can't use efficently is wasteful to me. Besides, if your base isn't near the coast your going to have a tough time finding places to drill boreholes. As far as tidal harnesses go, you could build two, or more, tidal harnesses in the time it takes to drill a borehole, and the amount of area you have to work with is (usually) more than the amount of land you could borehole, not to mention the eco damage of an improvement your not using to its full fruitation. Along the coast you also have the option to crawler food which increases base size and frees up workers to become specialists, and therefore increase your energy or tech accumulation further. It's also tough to beat +3 nuts and +3 energy if you opt to use workers on those ocean squares, on top of that, get a +2 econ rating and you've got +4 energy per ocean square, and if your playing SMACX you've got that thermocline thingy that gives you another +1, so you up to +5 per ocean square, coupled with a kelp farm, your netting +4 nuts and +5 energy per terraformed and worked ocean tile.

b) I'm kinda confused by your question here because that's what I'm trying to point out to you. You could build two mines in the time it takes to build one borehole. I don't feel that the extra time it takes to drill a borehole outside the base radii is worth the extra two minerals you would net from it. I would rather road and mine a rocky square, given that there's enough of these tiles to go around. I have a hard time justifying the use of boreholes outside a base radius, given that you could opt to road and mine a rocky tile.

Hey, I could be way off base here, but I just don't find crawlering a borehole effective utilization of your land, your time, or your terraforming options.

I know there's a previous post about this somewhere in the archieved threads...

[Sikander]

I didn't think that you were coming across as disrespectful at all. I noticed that twice recently you commented on an energy strategy, and I realized that though you have been posting here for as long as I have been around, I didn't really have a grasp on what sort of game you tend to play. I was also curious about a mineral poor player (you mention 10 being a workable minimum) succeeding.

Though I stress mineral production early, I am hardly a mineral strategist. Up until fairly recently I never had any ecodamage. I've been learning to 'goose' up the clean mineral limit, but the main difference is to allow me to work more boreholes in my base radius. (As much for the energy as the minerals).

I have never been that big on worker produced energy, in part because I tend to play a xenophobic builder game in SP. I don't mind trading a few techs, but I fully expect to be at war with every other faction by midgame, and I really don't want to hassle with conquest until it's really easy. I just want to build with minimum interference. (I do enjoy being able to shoot up every foreign faction's units on sight. That makes things very simple, and there is no chance of probe actions or double crosses.) Thus commerce income has never seemed very important, as I've rarely seen it be very large.

If I can be said to prize one resource over the others, it has to be nutrients. I really go crazy for population. This leads to me being governor a lot of the time, though I probably don't take as much advantage of it as you do. I have been trying to keep an ever expanding strategy going in more recent games, which plays to my style's strength, (minimal drone troubles or energy lost to inefficiency) which is growth both horizontal and vertical. Unfortunately, one of the pitfalls of this strategy in SP is the tendency for the AI factions to be way behind on the power graph, and therefore hostile.

It sounds like we both make good use of SE. I like factions which have no restrictions on SE choices, or restrictions which are meaningless to my style. I sometimes run GA pop booms with FM, especially early on. I also run FM / Wealth fairly early (the HGP is great for this), as the increased base square production is really significant when all of your bases are small. Later on, (and no doubt due in part to my lack of trading partners) I tend to run perpetual pop booms (Demo / Planned / Wealth) and concentrate my growth into specialists while continuing my expansion horizontally. By the mid to late game (after I get the Cloning Vats) I switch to an efficiency heavy setting, usually Demo / Green / Knowledge) and switch to 100% labs. Since every mature base has 10 engineers or more, and every bit of infrastructure which multiplies energy, money pours in by the bucketful nonetheless.

You mentioned Lal's efficiency troubles recently in another thread. He seems like a faction played best somewhere between our styles. I tried him the other night using Ogie's Lal strategy, which seeks a 50/50 balance between specialists and workers. This worked out very well. GAs were a snap, as half of the workers were already happy to begin with (I also added the HGP for fun). Rather than using energy allocation to keep the GAs going, I simply adjusted the specialists in each base as needed. I ran knowledge rather than wealth most of the time to keep at least some of that energy I was generating. I'm sure that I could have played this game better, but it was fun to try another type of game. My bane as far as faction choices so far has been Morgan. I have never really figured out what to do with him other than ICS. Any suggestions?

[Misotu]

No. No advice to offer on Morgan at all. I am - despite my love of energy - the world's worst Morgan player. I *suck*

Nutrients. Yes, but they come automatically with my strategy. Looking at SMAX the energy player will take coastal bases for the tidal harnesses coupled with thermocline. This automatically gives huge numbers of nutrients. I don't really think about nutrients much - high land gets a farm/solar, sea gets kelp/harness. I found coastal bases wherever possible, even though these are vulnerable to attack in an MP game. If they run short for a while, I'll crawler them. The nutrients are just there once I have gene splicing, which I tend to get early. In a pop boom situation - either traditional Dem/Planned or GA/FM/Wealth - you only need +2 nuts anyway. More is wasteful.

My favourite faction is Lal (I'm told they're the beginner's faction, and it's probably true ) and as far as I know he is best played with exactly my strategy Not to disrespect another, but I have played him to death and I know what works even under very adverse circumstances in MP.

Do you ever play MP Sikander? I haven't seen you in the tourny. I'm sure you'd enjoy it. It's very good for honing what really works - SP doesn't test stuff the same way ... I don't think I've ever got the HGP, for example, in a multi-player game
[This message has been edited by Misotu (edited May 07, 2001).]

[Net Maverick]

Sikander:

Thanks for the extra input.

WhiteElephants:

You've answered my question perfectly. Thank you for filling me in on this topic...but if you can spare the time, I've got another inquiry. From the wording of your posts, I take it that you fill every inch of your continent with bases?

[Ned]

quote: Originally posted by Misotu on 05-07-2001 08:56 PM 7 Ecodamage. Well, in an extreme situation, you could be incurring ecodamage from solar stuff and echelons. Build a hybrid forest. The ecodamage caused by terraforming disappears. There is no simple solution for the ecodamage caused by minerals.

Misotu, While not simple, you can control ED by building Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Preserves and Temples of the Planet anywhere in your faction (after the first pop, that is). Each such facility increases the number of minerals the faction's bases can produce without ED by 1, regardless of the base in which the facility is built.

One can quickly determine the Clean Mineral limit by pressing F3, counting the number of the above facilities (assuming you built them), adding 16, and finally adding the number of pops. If you have a base the needs more Clean Minerals, simply build more Clean Mineral Facilities.

Ned