Pops

[Ned]

Ever wonder why pops get worse?

I have. I had assumed it had something to do with techs, but let me assure you it does not.

What it has to do is with is total terraforming damage by a faction.

Why do I say this?

I just completed a game where I got two late pops - in the sea. Each apparently had just one locust and one isle.

What was different about this game was my entire world consisted of nothing but forests and sea terraforming. (It was an experimental world designed to test what pre-foresting would do to the AI.)

Since the only pops occurred at sea and the only "negative" terraforming was at sea, I suggest that the number of worms is highly related to "negative" terraforming. (Define: "Negative terraforming" is terraforming that subtracts from "clean minerals.")

Notice that the fungal blooms most often occur at mines and boreholes. This as well suggests that pop location and strength is highly related to mineral producing terraforming.

Finally, notice that the first few pops have no worms at all, but later pops have similar strengths regardless of where they occur. This suggests a faction-wide effect.

Ned

[Marid Audran]

Yes, you're right Ned, your eco-damaging pops are coming from "dirty terraforming."

The formula for it is in the datalinks, something long and obtuse that I won't reprint here, though I know that *all* terraforming to a degree is bad and contributes to ecodamage, just on different levels, with the exception of forests, which alleviate it. The real contributors are Echelon Mirrors, Condensors, and especially Boreholes. Planet rating aggravates or alleviates the affect conversely. Hybrid forests are supposed to eliminate eco-damage completely, but I know don't. I know that any mineral multiplying facility (Genejack Factory, Robotic Assembly Plant, Nanofactory, Quantum Converter) also greatly aggravates the eco-damage effect, especially with minerals coming in from particularly dirty terraforming in the first place. Often I have to rush-build preserves right after factories for instance, to avoid total worm-rape. This makes sensors particularly important late mid-game and onwards so I'm reminded of the worms present during eco-pops when there's a lot of micromanaging going on. Once I forgot about a late-game pop near a sensor-less base after all the pop-up boxes were gone and after the turn, it wasn't pretty.

Eco-pops seem to reduce eco-damage overall afterwards, converting those minerals it poped in the place of into "clean" ones. I think late-game pops increase in severity, regardless of the amount of eco-damage in a base, due to its relative population and overall mineral production. So an early game base producing 12 minerals at 20 eco damage may pop one or two worms, but a late game base producing 50 minerals at the same 20 eco damage will pop 10 or 12. Just my experience.

[Ned]

Marid, Thanks for the reply. Yes the formula for ED is in the Datalinks. Blake, Fitz and I did some investigation and found some interesting new information. See the long thread on "Base size and pollution." I submitted the below to DanQ last week for publication in some manner on this forum.

However, my post is not so much about the ED formula, it is about the degree of a fungal bloom. There is no formula for this in the Datalinks as far as I know. It just appeared to me that the number of worms was related to techs or years or something like that, as the number kept increasing as the game went on. However, that is wrong! It rather appears to be related to the total terraforming damage of your faction.

Anyhow, here is the draft of the "submission."

Draft:

Eco-Damage Formula Revised - Have you ever wondered why the number of minerals a base could produce seemed to rise as the game went on or was greater the more bases you had? There is a good reason for this, but it is not explained in either the Datalinks or the manuals. Ned, Blake and Fitz have discovered that each time you “build” (not acquire) a Tree Farm, a Hybrid Forest, a Centauri Preserve or a Temple of the Planet, the number of minerals you can produce before eco-damage begins at all increases by one. The effect is not limited to the base in which you build the facility. It applies for every base in your faction!
The effect is permanent. You can sell these facilities, give them away, have them captured or destroyed, but the number of “clean minerals” each of your bases can produce never goes down. You can even rebuild the facilities you just sold and the number of “cleans minerals” still increases.
The effect only begins after your faction (not others) experiences its first fungal bloom, aka, “pop.” From a strategy point of view, they suggest, it is therefore very important that you force a pop before you begin construction any of these “clean mineral”-enhancing facilities. Many of us have tried to avoid pops as long as possible. However, this strategy can severely backfire if you end up building a significant number of the “clean mineral”-enhancing facilities before experiencing that first pop. So force the pop.
In fact, you may want to force several pops before you acquire the technology for Tree Farms or Centauri Preserves. Each pop also increases the number “clean minerals.”
Ned, Blake and Fitz have also determined that neither the number of techs, the planet rating nor the construction of Nanoreplicators, the Pholus Mutagen or the Singularity Inductor have any effect on the number of “clean minerals.” Instead, these have an affect the degree of eco-damage when present. However, eco-damage is not present at all until the combination of terraforming damage and mineral production in a base exceeds the “clean mineral” limit of a faction. Eco-damage increases from this point for each mineral produced over the limit. It is then multiplied by a number related to the level of difficulty and native life setting from custom start that is adjusted, up or down, by each of these factors.
The entire revised eco-damage formula can be seen at: [Dan Q, you might want to post this formula in the forum or in some other location that can be accessed on a permanent basis.]
Strategy:

As soon as practically possible force a fungal bloom in one of your bases. This means that once you start building Tree Farms and/or Centauri Preserve’s they will increase your clean mineral threshold.
The number of “clean minerals” begins at 16. However, eco-damage unusually begins when a base is producing 12-14 minerals. The reason for this is that until you build Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests in a base, terraforming damage caused by roads, farms, mines, etc., subtracts from the number of “clean minerals” available for that base.

So, when begin to see eco-damage, rather than moving workers to less mineral intensive tiles to avoid it, just let the base stay “in the red.” Sooner or later, you will experience a pop.
Your “clean mineral” limit has now increased to 17. A base that once was creating eco-damage at 12 minerals may now be “clean.” Its limit has moved to 13.
But what do you do now? Do you act to reduce eco-damage at your bases or do you leave them alone to continue polluting? After all, each pop itself adds one to the “clean mineral” limit.
The answer is that you should keep your bases polluting until you experience your second pop. That one, as with the first one, is worm free. It increases your “clean mineral” limit by another 1, to 18.
From this point on, pops will have worms. In addition, too many pops in successive years may bring on Global Warming. Caution and control are both required.
A controlled method to continue to increase your “clean mineral” threshold via pops is to create a "polluter base." This base should be geared towards killing the mindworms that appear. Both empath artillery and empath rovers would be desirable. An eco-damage of ~ 40 should create a pop almost every other turn. This frequency should allow some healing time for the worm killers and also not cause global warming. Not only would this strategy increase your “clean mineral” threshold, it would increase your cash from the harvested planetpearls.

Centauri Preserves have three useful functions: 1) their constructions adds to “clean minerals,” 2) they reduce eco-damage if present, and 3) the add 1 to the lifecycle of native life produced by a base. The also cost 2 energy credits to maintain.
If you keep your “clean mineral” limit above your maximum mineral production, a Centauri Preserve’s second function will never be used. If have no need to produce native life at this base, neither will its third function. It is best then to simply scrap the Centauri Preserve as soon as you build it. You can then pocket 50 energy credits.
You might then consider the following strategy, which is especially recommended in small empires that will produce only a limited number of Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests. Set aside a number of bases that primarily do nothing more than build, sell and rebuild Centauri Preserves. This will continuously increase your “clean mineral” limit and generate a source of revenue.
Another way to increase your “clean mineral” threshold without requiring more bases is building Tree Farms (and maybe Centauri Preserves and Hybrid Forests) in captured bases before giving them to submissives. You get the clean mineral benefit, your submissives benefit from the improved infrastructure in the base, and finally, you benefit from the increased commerce the base produces with Tree Farms or Hybrid Forests.

Before using Planet Busters or Techtonic Missiles (both effectively reduced the “clean mineral” limit by 5) prepare your faction by building 5 more Centauri Preserves for every Planet Buster or Techtonic Missile you intend to launch. If you have 20 bases and build+scrap a Centauri Preserve in each of them, you can launch 4 Planet Busters or Techtonic Missiles without requiring you to lower your bases mineral production. You may still have to deal with “other” consequences of course .

Free Market becomes a viable SE choice even when combined with very high mineral production. Even though Free Market lowers the Planet Rating, a lower Planet Rating only operates to increase any eco-damage that is present. If none is present because you keep the “clean mineral” limit above the number of minerals your bases produce, Free Market causes no damage at all.
Once you have the technology to build both Tree Farms and Centauri Preserves and know to keep building them as your mineral production mounts, you may build as many boreholes as space allows without fear of eco-damage. Rocky areas that cannot be bored can be mined, roaded and crawled. Other base squares could be converted to condensers/farms/enrichers and crawled. In time, all your workers could be working boreholes, sea squares or be assigned specialist duties. Such a base, combined with either FM, Wealth plus Golden Age, or in the case of Morgan, Wealth alone or Knowledge + Golden Age to produce a +2 economy, will produce “extreme” amounts of eco-damage-free minerals, raw energy, commerce, and specialist-produced energy credits and labs.
The “Clean Mineral” strategy!

Ned, Blake and Fitz present a revised eco-formula below.
Eco-Damage = (DamageFactor * Perihelion * Techs * Life * Difficulty * Planet) / 300
Planet = PLANET Social Engineering -3, to a minimum of 1.
Difficulty = 3 on Librarian and lower, 5 on Thinker and Transcend
Life = 1, 2 or 3 for Rare, Normal or Abundant native life
Techs = # of techs discovered by your faction
Perihelion = 1 or 2 depending on whether Alpha Centauri is in perihelion

DamageFactor = Int{ [Terraforming - Cleanmins1] + [(Minerals - Cleanmins2 + 5*Atrocities) / (1+Goodfacs)] }
Terraforming = [(2*# worked (not crawled) improvements other than kelp farms)+(# of unworked improvements) + 8*Boreholes + 6*Echelon Mirrors + 4*Condensors +1 if a Seabase -#of Forests]/8.
Divide by 2 for presence of a Tree Farm and reduce to 0 for presence of a Hybrid Forest.

Improvements include Roads, Mag Tubes, Farms, Mines, Solar Collectors, Soil Enrichers, Boreholes, Echelon Mirrors, Kelp Farms, Tidal Harnesses, Offshore Platforms and Condensors.
Cleanmins = 16 + # Fungal Blooms + # Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Preserves and Temples of Planet constructed by your faction since the first Fungal Bloom.
Cleanmins1 = Cleanmins or Terraforming, whichever is less. If Terraforming is negative, Cleanmins1 = 0.
Cleanmins2 = Cleanmins - Cleanmins1.

Minerals = Total minerals produced by this base after multiplying by facilities - total minerals received by this base from orbit.

Goodfacs = 1 each for the presence of Centauri Preserve, Temples of Planet and Nanoreplicator in this base, + 1 each for possessing the Pholus Mutagen and Singularity Inductor.

Atrocities = Number of Major Atrocities committed by your faction. These include the use of planetbusters or techtonic missiles, but do not include the use of fungal missiles.

[Quantum]

I hereby nominate Ned, Blake and Fitz for the 2001 Nobel Prize in SMAC research. The recent ED work has some really significant strategy implications, which is rare for a game that has been out so long. Unfortunately I think the monetary award that goes with this prize is somewhat less than the one associated with the Nobel in Medicine, espcially after you split it three ways. But hey, you'll get the international recognition of the SMAC community.

I also have a question related to severity of the worm invasion after the pop. Often a given pop will result in the appearance of two or more worms (or other native life form). Sometimes, but not always, if I kill the first worm the others instantly "grow" one lifecycle. If I kill the second (now bigger) worm, all remaining worms grow one lifecycle again. If you started with three or four worms and they grow everytime you kill one it is easy to end up with a couple of Demon Boils to deal with. My question is this: why do the remaining worms sometimes grow after you kill one but other times they don't grow? Is it random? Does it depend on total ED? Difficulty level? (I ususually play Transcend).

[johndmuller]

Quantum, I believe that when you kill some native life, any adjacent native life receives the upgrade. I am pretty sure that this only applies to "wild" native life, not yours or mine; I therefore do not think it is random. As to whether the ED or difficulty level affects this, I don't know for sure, but I don't think so (except insofar as the ED and Diff level (or being green) affect getting the >pop< in the first place (and the being green your chances of killing the native life in the second place)).

[Blake]

I hereby nominate Ned, Blake and Fitz for the 2001 Nobel Prize in SMAC research.

oooh goody

Unfortunately I think the monetary award that goes with this prize is somewhat less than the one associated with the Nobel in Medicine, espcially after you split it three ways.

Doh' Once again my get rich quick scheme has been foiled by the properties of multipling/dividing zero.

But hey, you'll get the international recognition of the SMAC community.

Just what I always wanted!


With worm lifecycle increases. I find generally all adjacant wild native life gains 1 lifecycle when you kill a wild native life form. (I believe there are some exceptions, I think when you kill a locust nearby worms aren't upgraded, but if you kill a mindworm adjacant locusts are upgraded.) Ofcourse they can't be upgraded past demon boil, and I believe in the early game there is a limit to how big a wild mindworm can be.

Ned, I really don't know about size of worms, but I *think* the lifecycle stage of 'pop' worms depends on date/terra ED and the number depends on pop history (# previous pops). I also believe it has nothing to do with tech.

[Ned]

Blake, I think the lifecycle of the worms may and probably does have something to do with techs, but not their number. That has to do with ED.

In the forest-world game I mentioned, I had my usual number of pops primarily caused by pushing minerals to a new high by building factories and the like. However, I got only one locust in most cases. I never saw the isle, if it was there originally, in at least two or three occasions.

No, pop history has nothing to do with the number of worms from a boil.

Ned

[airdrik]

In a recent game, I had a major problem with pops, which averaged 10-15 worms, starting out pre-boils, and growing with every couple pops untill they reached mature status. In one group I managed to capture there were about 25 boil sized worms!

This was all mid-late game, when I had about 75-85% of the techs researched, about 25 bases scattered accross the continent, and extending onto other continents. Don't ask the game year, I don't keep track of that.

[ACOLKitty]

Wasn't there somewhere here that someone realized if you push pollution past a certain limit the pops stop?

[Blake]

Dunno, it may be possible to cause ED to "overflow" and result in no pop, I know that building VoP stops pops (or prehaps just stops the worms which comes with pops). But anyway, after you build VoP you have no more mindworm problems.

[Ned]

Blake, I've noticed that before: Build the VoP and further pops produce no worms. In a recent game, I let the AI build the VoP so that I could build crawlers and the like. Well, after the AI built the VoP, and in the turn before I built the final SP with the crawlers, I got a pop with a lot of worms.

Another side "benefit" of the VoP is that it doubles? rush costs.

Ned

[Darkstar]

No, KitKat. I posted my discover of high ED leading to no pops. It was above 200 somewhere. No pops occurred at that base until I dropped it's ecodamage, some 100 turns later, to the 100-200 range.

The pops following VoP are due to a PLOT device. So they have no worms. However, any ecodamage pops WILL have worms. Go figure. Another feature of SMAC/SMACX.

What about POPULATION? You can have a low mineral base that has a high ecodamage due to population. How does that affect your numbers and formula?

[Ned]

Darkstar, Now that's exactly what I thought before we began to verify what was causing ED. It definitely is not population. Nor are the number of worms. Ed is primarily caused by mineral production exceeding "clean minerals." See the above post and the thread on this topic entitle "Base size and pollution." Ned

[ACOLKitty]

thats right. oh well.

[johndmuller]

If the >pops< stop somewhere up the ED ladder (somewhere above 200, dild you say, Darkstar?), it (the amount of ED) probably exceeded the capacity of some counter and perhaps "rolled over", suggesting that there is are zones of free ED here and there.

If the ED value shown in the base screen could be shown to drop to zero when it was juiced up just past some magic number (like over 255, for example), that would be interesting and maybe useful, but if the rollover is lost somewhere in the middle of the ED calculation, it would be (not) fun to track down and/or use profitably. If it is a rollover, the ED might reappear once you added on some function of >clean minerals< more bad stuff.