Excessive MM?

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by kassiopeia


*Checks dictionary* Mongooses, wise guy...

Strange? I would have assumed polygoose...

- Scipio

[death_head]

MONGII

I'll write my own dictionary.

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Ned

Automating sea forming is a must.

Ned

Right. If there are non-fungus NUT/MIN/ENERGY bonus squares within the seabase's production zone I'll start off by manually building an appropriate enhancement at each such square, then after those are completed I'll release the sea former to improve the home seabase.

It's generally the same for land bases, but there are many more special cases that should be handled manually, like rivers, boreholes, echelon mirrors, condensors, etc... I'll start land forming by putting in a single forest/sensor square, enhancing bonus NUT/MIN/ENERGY squares, building roads to adjacent bases and then foresting every river square within a base's production radius - in that general order. Then if there are oddball combos like a NUT bonus or river in a rough terrain square and I have plenty of rough terrain squares elsewhere I'll even take the time to level the ground around the NUT bonus (increasing nutrient production by +1) or river (so I can put in a forest).

My general rules of thumb for land and sea formers are as follows;

1> Manually make specialized improvements untill there are none left to make

2> Set the former to improve its home base.

3> Move the former to another base (and reset the support for the former - CNTRL+H) then have it start at #1 for its new home base.

4> Once all bases have been fully improved begin releasing formers to full auto. I don't often get this far.

For land formers I will sometimes deviate from the above by setting a few formers on special faction-wide projects like mag tubes.

- Scipio

[Wiglaf]

Do you ever just feel like quitting mid game because the game just got really tedious and a turn takes an hour to finish? I've been getting that a lot lately and when midgame comes it's extremely hard to keep interest in the game. How do the rest of you deal with it?

I don't know what the reason is, but many people dislike automated formers. They seem to do a good job to me, and save at least an hour or two of wasted time. On top of that, directing each one of those big bulky boxes to build roads, tubes, farms, etc can very quickly make anyone go insane anyway.

City governors are good for unimportant cities you really don't need to spend time on, namely size two outposts far from the fighting.

My longest turn is about 15 minutes, with the above and some other little shortcuts.

[mrdynamic]

I prefer to MM but on large maps it just is not feasible once your empire gets so large. Something you just gotta get used to if you want to manage a large empire. Im sure Bill Gates MM in the beginning, and I know he does not MM now.

If tried the automation features described by the others above , it works quite well once you get used to it and your turns fly by..