Timing

[buster]

Having studied some of the more in-depth strategy threads I have a few questions. There has been a lot of discussion on specialized cities and on focusing on (mainly) energy/research type cities. While I can see such a strategy can definitely be valid - I do have some questions concerning its viability.

The times I have seen it practiced it seems to me that often too much focus has gone into developing such cities. Result of this is that I not infrequently see the situation where around maybe year 2160 one of the other factions is researching maybe at twice my speed but I am three times bigger or more (at times much more) and when final showdown arrives they are no match. All SPs in one or two cities makes a very vulnerable faction.

To compare - my own strategy as it has developed has been mainly oriented around growth. That is main goal is being simply getting big, and to keep the cities rather balanced (good output of minerals, energy and nutrients). Boosting energy output has mainly been done by taking advantage of obvious choices such as sending crawlers to energy bonus squares and other than that by having a large number of huge efficient cities.

Additionally while tech is the probably most important factor - I usually find that with one clearly faster researcher the others will manage to stay close behind by trading with each other. Meaning if you want to stay ahead one needs to research not just faster - but way faster. There is a huge "waste factor connected with being ahead" here due to others trading, but you not. This does not mean I think it is unimportant in any way, only pointing out that this alone far from secures victory.

Anyway - my questions are -

1) when is the right time to start seriously specializing and to what extent. For instance as an extreme - I would seriously doubt that beelining for crawlers and then building nothing else for 50 years is viable.

2) what sequence do you pick (do you make 5 formers, 10 crawlers and then an energy bank or what?)

3) Do you mainly boost one city and develop the rest "normally" or do you go all energy on all cities?

4) what priority is expansion (new cities) given? Do you deliberately keep the number of cities at a certain number?

I realize there are a lot of variables here such as Map size and whether or not some hyperagressive opponent or AI is 5 squares away, that a game needs to be played as it comes and that guidelines therefore probably will be rather general.

Is it time to revise my simple but old and proven strategy of "get big"?

[buster]

I actually wanted to call the thread something like:"Specialized cities - timing and focus", but forgot to revise it before submitting and now it seems I cannot change it.

Hope you find it anyway.

[Drago Sinio]

Often my timing is to set all my bases to crawler production as soon as I research the tech, and I keep producing only crawlers until all the bases have 16- 20 minerals. At that point I build SP's until I get the ones I want by cashing crawlers.


Then I build whatever facilities I have in mind for that particular base. It usually takes about ten to twenty turns to get all the bases mineral production set up. After that the timing of going back to building units and facilities varies depending on what SP's I need to build.

Then at that point , I would start crawlering nut's to feed specialists. Usually I would devote one or two base's to producing crawlers while the others build normal "stuff". The specialists are than chosen as to what I have in mind for the base, science, cash, whatever.

When the specialists are in place, more crawlers would gather energy. You can never have enough crawlers.

I also try to have one base building new colonies so expansion continues at a slow steady pace. I usually send a whole group consisting of a pod or two, formers, crawlers and garrison. That way I get a productive base right away. Especially if I own the Planetary Transit that starts a new base with 3 pop.
[This message has been edited by Drago Sinio (edited May 20, 2001).]

[Ned]

Buster, I am largely with you. But there is a compromise position. Pod boom key bases so that by mid game they not only work all nutrient-producing base tiles, but also have a number of specialists.

For a larger explanation for my agreement refer back to my own beginning. I starting playing this "game" with Civ I. There the typical mode of keeping up with the AI was to slam the research to 100%, and build facilities and units using minerals. I was somewhat dismayed to find in SMAC that one could not simply set research to 100%. However, the creation of "specialist" cities is the closest equivalent in this game. Overall production is heavily skewed towards research at the sacrifice of everything else.

Now, I believe the designers of SMAC went out of their way to make the typical mode of beating the AI harder by introducing severe penalties for setting research to 100%. This forced me, for one, to adapt. Now I normally find myself behind in tech in the early game. However, I have a lot more money - which I spend to rush build formers and facilities. These facilities then let me catch up and eventually surpass the AI in tech. And, as you say, in a war with the AI, I win. I have more resources. (While I say AI here, the same undoubtedly is true in multi-player.)

So now I have become a believer in full, balanced development. The ultimate builder, so to speak. Size and infrastructue count.

[tyler666]

Good question Buster being a more momentum and expansion oreinted player I ussaly bulid like 2 crawlers minimum per city once its met its pod buliding and troop buliding "requirements" and I use 1 big city per area or "province" of my often huge empire to bulid extra formers/crawlers/garrisons and divy them out between my "devolping" cities (I.E,City that hasn't bulit enough pods,troops,or hasn't bulit its 1st former)As far as what year do you start this as soon as you get the tech you should start and BTW for the love of god if you use Direct res. B-line to Industrial automation (B3) so you can get Hab complex,crawlers.and for you people who are not conquers like I am the "wealth" SE chioce In fact I belive Ind. auto is probably the most important tech for every faction on a whole,what do you think?

------------------
Tyler Messer
"Theres no time to discriminate hate every mother****er thats in your way!"

[buster]

I will agree with you Tyler on ind. automation.
From what I can see the strategies outlined here also pretty much match my own. Growth and balanced development.

So far it seems the energy monster city advocates have not shown up.

Any of you ever get beaten by someone with a kingdom consisting of a few highly developed cities and a ton crawlers?

Also to what extent do you use specialists?

Personally I normally use them

a) To get a golden age
b) To prevent riots
c) If there is no productive square to work.
d) Otherwise normally not.
[This message has been edited by buster (edited May 20, 2001).]

[Misotu]

All right, here's one energy-lover showing up

It's very difficult - as you've already recognised - to give hard and fast rules about this. All I can say is that I always get to the same endpoint in my MP games, in the sense of empire production. But how I get there ... well, that varies tremendously from game to game.

I'm not sure I'd advocate energy monster cities totally - I have and do build them, but they have their own problems. One of the greatest is avoiding huge quantities of lost labs - the city that makes the b/through doesn't carry spare labs over so if you have a truly super-science city, beware! I've just made that error - yet again - in a game that will complete tomorrow. I've been cursing every turn for the last 40+ MY ...

Responses to your questions follow. Disclaimer: My answers really relate to how I play, personally. This will absolutely not work for everyone. MoSe, take note!

Q: When is the right time to start seriously specializing and to what extent. For instance as an extreme - I would seriously doubt that beelining for crawlers and then building nothing else for 50 years is viable.

A: I have seen someone do just that - build crawlers for many years - with absolutely phenomenal results. I can't play that way - but Big_Canuck can, and sometimes does. It's impressive (gulp!) to watch ...

I tend to use crawlers on a very ad hoc basis. It really depends on the game. If it's an intense race, I might use crawlers to get a few decent mineral bases up and running. If I am the PKs I tend to build very few crawlers, because my pop will be enormous and I don't need them. If I am the CyC, I will build a lot. Specialists are good, yes, but if you're running FM/Wealth, you'll find that the benefits of workers can often be higher than specialists. There is often a balance beyond which specialists actually reduce your base output, or make no difference, even in a super-science city. This is particularly true when commerce is a factor, because specialists do not contribute to commerce. Very hard to say ... has to be looked at case-by-case.

Q: What sequence do you pick (do you make 5 formers, 10 crawlers and then an energy bank or what?)

Utterly variable, I don't have any rules about this at all. Tanks are key. But energy banks are always quite high on the priority list. I would never make so many units per base though, particularly not early on. Later, I might have dozens of crawlers homed to one city. It depends.

Q: Do you mainly boost one city and develop the rest "normally" or do you go all energy on all cities?

I mainly develop my HQ followed by at least one other (if I'm being sensible). But at the same time, I will go all energy on my core early cities, certainly the first dozen or so.

Q: What priority is expansion (new cities) given? Do you deliberately keep the number of cities at a certain number?

I never keep the number of cities at a certain number, although I do stop expanding as I hit the efficiency warnings, until I can remedy that problem. Expansion is a high priority. Having said that, typically I'd have 14-20 on a medium map. But again, this would depend. If I had great territory, I would cover it with bases. But if I'm on an island, I will tend to be wary of expanding to new continents unless I can do it early-game, in numbers, and with confidence. Those cities become expensive to defend, and always have inefficiency problems. I reckon on burning through to orb improvements and hab domes, taking the Virtues on the way. As the PKs/Gaia/UoP, this will give me a more than sufficient pop and is more effective than having many, much smaller bases. So I prioritise expansion ... I just don't do it by building bases without number

Q: Is it time to revise my simple but old and proven strategy of "get big"?

"Get big" is a perfectly good strategy, I think. It can be done in a number of ways. I tend to reckon that fewer, very large, very infrastructured cities supported by max satellites is more effective, in the long run, than many small cities, even if I have fewer pop than the opponent. Again, this has limits. If my opponent has 4 times my bases and twice my pop, this is *not* a good sign! But I would certainly not build all my SPs in a couple of cities - my HQ tends to have several, and my secondary base may be the same. The others will be spread around.

Q: Any of you ever get beaten by someone with a kingdom consisting of a few highly developed cities and a ton crawlers?

No. But I have beaten others using this method, as long as 12-16 cities counts as a "few".

Q: Specialists, use of.

a) To get a golden age in FM
b) To prevent riots
c) If there is not a productive square to work
d) If a specialist increases base lab/energy output over a worker sufficiently to make the mineral loss (if any) worthwhile. Where this happens, I'll take the specialist and build a crawler to make up the mineral/nut deficit if necessary.
e) To reach a b/through one turn early, or boost my energy when I need to rush a project/important facility next turn.
f) To maintain my research rate vs that of my competitors temporarily, while I work out how to boost it more permanently with facilities.
g) When having more specialists means I don't have to use doctors - eg 2 librarians/technicians vs one doctor.
h) To prevent growth.

Sorry, most of this is rather vague. The way I play it, going for energy is more ad-hoc tactics with an overall strategy, rather than a set of fixed tactics that produce the desired result.

[buster]

Thanks Misotu - and I don't think its vague at all.
Fixed procedure will never match the varied situations one encounters, so this is a good as it will probably ever get.

It is basically taking the direction I expected it would - growth but with a lot more emphasis on energy and it sounds very sensible.

One further question - where do you send all these crawlers?

On sea bases there are obvious possibilities - but on land it would mean either huge unoccupied spaces or working city area (and turning citizens to specialists).

I have seen a lot of talk about energy parks and tried a few times myself but the huge amount of former time needed to put into it seems simply to make it a too lengthy procedure.

Personally I am almost only forest man (no rules without exceptions but 90% of my terraforming is forest) (not counting sea). Having crawlers working forest does however not give a lot (I think).

Guess one way is to go for coastal cities as much as possible. To me the gains on non-coastal cities seem somewhat more dubious (there is something to be gained for sure but potential seems way bigger at coastal cities).

Please correct mec if I am missing something.

[WhiteElephants]

Test.

I haven't been able to get through for some reason...

Anyway, yes crawler those forest for the two minerals and convert those lazy workers into specialists, preferably engineers, but those are a ways into the game. Bring food in from the sea, or special resource squares, or both. Working a forest for one nutrient and one energy isn't really worth it. Besides, if you've got all those forests you could just move the worker to another one and bump you mineral output by two. That can never hurt. By the time you've reached your eco damage threshold you should be able to build sea formers and trawlers realatively quickly, and then hit the seas for energy.

If you land locked the only real option for energy is the tedious energy park. All I can say is build more formers. With fifteen minerals coming in you should be able to build them in a two turns and building three of four shouldn't hurt your mineral outupt too bad.

[This message has been edited by WhiteElephants (edited May 20, 2001).]

[Misotu]

quote: Originally posted by buster on 05-20-2001 09:10 PM One further question - where do you send all these crawlers? On sea bases there are obvious possibilities - but on land it would mean either huge unoccupied spaces or working city area (and turning citizens to specialists).

Yes That is the hard part. Sea is easy, and in SMAX I will almost always build sea energy parks rather than land. The exception is the Apolyton tourny map, where I spend a lot of former time on the land.

In SMAC, I tend to construct an energy park which may be extensive or quite small. Playing against many opponents, I have observed very creative and extensive schemes, but in my experience it isn't necessary to become too extreme. If you have the WP, more elaborate schematics become possible, but I don't usually bother.

The theory is one thing. In practice, I tend to work on a fairly small scale. I will identify a possible site for a park, which will ideally be outside my bases, but not so far away that it's impractical. Since I favour coastal bases, there is often a central area that is suitable. To make it viable, roads in are obviously necessary, but also worthwhile stop-off points on the way. So what I will do is make sure that there's a sensible solar, or at least forest/river, every 3 squares along the road (this is pre-fusion reactors). Then I relay my crawlers towards the embryonic park. The park itself will generally not be ideally designed. I always reckon that early energy is more valuable than later stuff. So I build more sensors than mirrors, working on overlapping 9-tile configurations, where you are talking a 3x3 square, with a mirror on the centre tile. As it expands, the 3x3 becomes, for example, a 5x3 like this:

xxxxx
xoxox
xxxxx

x = solar, o = mirror

because this is quicker to build, and reasonably effective on high ground. In spreadsheet terms, this is no way the most effective. But later in the game, I can add mirrors around the outside and I will also drill aquifers in the park, hoping for a good, long, snaking waterway

quote: I have seen a lot of talk about energy parks and tried a few times myself but the huge amount of former time needed to put into it seems simply to make it a too lengthy procedure.

You can construct something like this in a reasonable time frame with a gang of 4-6 formers. Even working with 16 max bases, I can afford to run a gang of this size. It won't build immediately, but over the course of the game it will come about and yield decent energy in the bases where energy is put to best use.

quote: Personally I am almost only forest man (no rules without exceptions but 90% of my terraforming is forest) (not counting sea).

I was the same for a long time, but more recently I am using solar quite extensively. Although it's slower to build initially, I find that over the course of the game I get a better return. I used to be a forest fanatic, but nowadays I've tempered it. I will even build solar on 1000<2000m squares when I have the Merchant, provided it's rolling and at least moist.

quote: Having crawlers working forest does however not give a lot (I think).

Not for nuts/energy, although I'm fairly happy with 2 mins/crawler once I've exhausted better options. Forest is much quicker to build than mines. But actually I have crawlers working forest late-game for energy, where my HQ is running FM/Hybrid/Merchant. 4 energy, not too bad if you're land-locked or don't have abundant sea crawler production. Add a river, and it's a very decent return on the crawler investment.

quote: Guess one way is to go for coastal cities as much as possible.

That's generally my approach. A lot of people avoid coastal cities in MP because they are more vulnerable to attack. But in my experience, this is not worth worrying about - a well-organised opponent will launch a competent attack either way. An incompetent opponent can be beaten off fairly easily. And then, I am perfectly sanguine about destroying one of my bases with nerve gas if the opposition takes it and it is a threat.

I build almost all of my bases on the coast, especially in SMAX because of thermoclines.
[This message has been edited by Misotu (edited May 20, 2001).]

[Sikander]

I'll respond from a specialist perspective, as I usually play a specialist type game. I don't build Super Science Cities, with the exception of my capital when I have the ME. Even then, it is boosted a bit, but not to the extent that other bases spend a lot of time helping it.

Assumptions: SP, alone on a medium sized or larger continent, Transcend. The example game below will be UoP, though I have played the same game more or less with the Gaians, the Peacekeepers, the Hive etc.

I have two types of base spacing, and either one will work well. The first I call the Lager, and I do this when alone on a smaller continent (not so small that it won't hold 9 bases) and I start near the sea. I place my bases two or three apart along the coast. There will usually be some land in the interior of my continent which will be used as a crawler park later.

The second type of spacing I use is a 3 on the diagonal spacing. (That is every base is three away up, down, left and right from the others). This allows more room for each base in comparison to the Lager spacing, and supports a more worker intensive production than the Lager spacing.

For my free tech as UoP I take Centauri Ecology. I build two formers at my HQ, and if I am lucky enough to get a free unit to garrison other bases I build two formers there also. I beeline immediately to Industrial Automation. My formers build roads and forests, with most bases after the first two also receiving a sensor before the colony pod builds upon the square. My first two bases produce their formers (possibly a garrison for the second base as well), and then build colony pods. I go for Planned as soon as I can afford to, then Wealth.

I usually will get Industrial Auto very close to the time my first two bases have completed their colony pods. If I have to wait a bit, I'll use my first two bases to build garrisons for the second two bases as well. I pretty much forest everything that I can at this point in the game, except when a base doesn't have a square which produces 2 nuts, when I'll build a farm if necessary (and possible). Once I reach Industrial Auto some things change. I research Biogenetics and Social Psych (followed by SotHB). My first two bases start cranking crawlers out, and these crawlers are set to crawling minerals from the road/forest squares my formers have prepared. When Biogen is researched, I will add to that mix recycling tanks, and when they are approaching three pop I'll add a Rec Commons as well. I otherwise will keep cranking crawlers until these first two bases are producing 16+ mins a turn. My 3rd and 4th base keep cranking out colony pods until I have 9 bases, then they start working on the crawlers etc. as my first two bases have.

Once my first two bases have reached full development (Tanks, Commons and producing 16 mins) I start working on the HGP, with one base building it and the other sending a crawler every other turn or so to help. The HGP should go up very quickly. As soon as the HGP is finished I switch to Free Market. At this point I usually have about 6 bases, though only two of them are mature, and two others are usually building infrastructure. Fortunately, the HGP lets me run FM without any problems from bases under size three. The next SP is the Weather Paradigm, and it is usually produced also by the first two bases (the second two bases are usually getting near full development while this is going on). Next I build the VW and (sometimes) the ME. By this time I usually have four fully developed bases (16+ mins, tanks, rec commons), so I can usually team up two for each SP and build them simultaneously.

Tech wise, after SotHB I beeline for the restriction lifting techs. By this time most of my starting 9 bases are placed (and when they are I go Democratic as well). I usually have enough slack capacity to build the PTS while I am waiting, but I don't live or die by this SP, and sometimes my developed bases will instead build an extra former, or crawlers for my less developed bases. When I get tree farms tech, I hit the ground running. Usually I have about 5-6 bases developed or nearly so, and a lot of cash (from FM). I start building those tree farms in every bases which is fully developed, and using cash to hurry along those that are less developed (if they can catch up quickly). I can often speed the whole process up by buying the last few turns of production at every base. Once the tree farms are in, I prepare for my first pop boom by building Children's Creches.

My first pop boom differs from the rest in that it is a Golden Age pop boom. I stay in FM, crank my psych from 0% to 20%. The payoff for the bases which go into GA are +2 growth (pop boom with demo and creches) and +1 economy (total +4 with wealth and FM). With the HGP, VW and Rec Commons I have plenty of drone infrastructure to handle a pop boom up to 7 pop. If I have trouble with a drone in the later stages, I merely switch a crawler that was hauling 2 mins to hauling 2 food, and turn one of my citizens into a doctor. The effects of this pop boom are usually very large. Most of my bases were at three or four population, and within 3-4 turns are at 7.

[buster]

Thanks Misotu and Sikander.

Think I pretty much got my questions answered, now some testing to see if I can make it work.