developing bad habits on librarian level?

[lord of the mark]

I played some more last night, my game referred to in an earlier thread (univeristy, on Librarian level)

I see myself getting into the same bad habits i developed playing civ2 on king level - Building lots of improvements early, while still expanding.

I assume that as in civ 2 to win on higher levels i will have to expand in more disciplined fashioned, building mainly colonies, or keep to a small number of perfectionist cities.

OTOH in SMAC the early improvements like recycling tanks and childrens crech seem hard to resist. And low food production makes it hard to whip out colony pods. and lack of camels(er, crawlers) at this stage leaves me with "what to build" problem.


Your thoughts on early game strategies at different levels, and differences or similarities wrt Civ2.

[BigRich]

Hi,

Far from an expert and probably teaching you to suck eggs but....

I try and get a decent number of formers going (at least one per base) fairly early on. They only cost minerals (not minerals and nutrients a la Civ2) to maintain and the quicker you can get your terraforming down the more productive you're going to be in the long term. If you have the requisite techs then foil probes are a useful build for your coastal cities - explore the map, infiltrate any factions you find etc.

As for expansion, I found this link to be invaluable:

http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/hartpence/

from there follow the links to: discussion forum, then SMAC, strategy and tactics and take a peek at the 'Tech Beelines' thread. Sorry for the roundabout instructions, I've never had much luck linking directly to the Renaissance portal forums.

hope this isn't revisiting stuff you already know!

Rich.

[Hydro]

A couple of rules-of-thumb I use. These were from the excellent advice given at this forum, and also from Vel's invaluable strat guide (read it - you'll be happy you did).

Number of bases ¡V I expand until I get bureaucracy warnings, or at least 12-14 (personal taste). I will consider more expansion as Phase 2 later.
* Rush build a former at each new base. It costs 25 energy, but it is worth every joule to get terraforming up ASAP. After the former build a defender. This is a risky strategy since you are vulnerable to worms, or an aggressive neighbor, while the garrison is being built.
* After the former and scout, if you can finish a colony pod AFTER you grow to size 2, do it. If you can't build a recycling tank (RT) to boost minerals.
* Consider starting a SP (after necessary improvements, perhaps including a rec commons (RC) and RT) at your first and second bases after they have build one colony pod. Your new bases can build pods from then on.

As BR said, early terraforming is critical. For terraforming, I make sure each base has at least 1 tile with +2 food. Rainy is good, but if not build a farm. Nutrient specials are wonderful. Connect your bases with roads ASAP since this speeds up colony pod placement and gets you interlocking defense. I pepper my land with forest, which grows for 'free' terraforming. Basically, if it isn't moist/rainy with ave minerals I put a forest on it. Much later I invest in mines+road for mineral harvesting on rocky tiles, but that is after roads, farms, maybe solar, and forests are supplying my greedy colonists with resources.

That is my general plan, and I'm sure others will disagree or have significant additions. Also, it will/does change based on starting conditions (like a howitzer-polishing Santiago being 10 tiles away¡K).

[CEO Aaron]

Show, don't tell.

Here's a thread that will give you plenty of food for thought on opening game strategy at higher difficulty levels:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70902

PS: Here's some related threads:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74982

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75614

[Frankychan]

Basic stuff when starting out (simplified version for the casual gamer).

Well, like every one has said, try to terraform your land to get the max benefit for your bases. All the extra goodies scatttered about will help your bases grow A LOT. Try to take advantage of these by placing your bases next to them. Additionally, provided that the "Bonus Tile" isn't rocky, you can build additional improvements on them. So, a nutrient bonus square can have a farm and solar collector on it.

As Hydro has said, linking your bases with roads are a must when you want to make colony pods. They'll get to where you want them to go faster.

Personally, I try to have every tile give me all three resources (Nutrient, Mineral, Energy). With some exception's of course. Minerals will make your production time faster so try to get a lot of minerals coming into your bases (but don't forget the other two!)

For inbase construction....it's basically priorities for me. For me, I tend to have a lot of drone problems so I focus my production on improvements that will help (Children's Creche, Hologram Theater, etc). It all depends on what you want your base to do and basically what kind of player you are.

One improvement I tend to NOT build is the Pressure Dome. I usually save this until later in the game because AFAIK, it only prevents your bases from sinking.

What I'm basically trying to say is that your building style should reflect who you are. It sounds rather lame but its the truth. I tend to be a Build & Conquer person so I focus heavily on creating mines and nutrients to help my population boom. Other people focus on energy credits so they'll make more solar collectors and Energy Banks.

Good luck trying to find your style and hope to see your results.

[Frankychan]

for the CEO.

[Uchuu-kun[SM42]]

Pressure dome also increases nutrients, IIRC. Have to check, I'm at school.

[Chaos Theory]

Pressure dome = recycling tanks + submersion protection, but a pressure dome doesn't stack with rec tanks. Therefore, in every multiplayer game I play the Pirates, I immediately sell the rec tanks in the capital.

[CEO Aaron]

I wasn't aware that the capital typically _got_ recycling tanks, unless you explicitly built them. I don't generally like seabases, however, so my experience with them is limited.

Will a base even _let_ you build tanks in a base that has a pressure dome?

On a more lighthearted note, how does the pressure dome and the hab dome interact?

[Mongoose]

In on-line MP, your starting base gets increased pop and a few facilities.

No, you cannot build tanks in a base with a p-dome...you can, of course, build a p-dome in a base that has tanks.

P-dome and H-dome have no effect on each other.

[Chaos Theory]

Also, many PBEM games are accelerated some by the game creator, and rec tanks is a prime candidate to add to bases to speed up the early game.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Hydro
I pepper my land with forest, which grows for 'free' terraforming. Basically, if it isn't moist/rainy with ave minerals I put a forest on it. Much later I invest in mines+road for mineral harvesting on rocky tiles, but that is after roads, farms, maybe solar, and forests are supplying my greedy colonists with resources.

Interesting. Ive been starting with solar and farms, and then mines in the best mine locations. Following essentially my standard Civ2 pattern.

Ive started to use forests, but not as aggressively as you suggest.

It also takes a while to get full utilization of high resource squares - in Civ i just needed monarchy - here i need 3 special tech - gene splicing, env econ? and ?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Frankychan
. All the extra goodies scatttered about will help your bases grow A LOT. Try to take advantage of these by placing your bases next to them. Additionally, provided that the "Bonus Tile" isn't rocky, you can build additional improvements on them. So, a nutrient bonus square can have a farm and solar collector on it.

from what i can gather the resource specials are not places as regularly as in Civ2 - is this correct?

Also additional challenge to city placement - some locations have some good terrain - specials, or high elev good moisture squares - but also lots of fungus. Theoretically these will be good till i grow much more later in the game, and by then i can have cleared the fungus - but i still tend to avoid these areas. Should I?

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

from what i can gather the resource specials are not places as regularly as in Civ2 - is this correct?

Also additional challenge to city placement - some locations have some good terrain - specials, or high elev good moisture squares - but also lots of fungus. Theoretically these will be good till i grow much more later in the game, and by then i can have cleared the fungus - but i still tend to avoid these areas. Should I?

Yes and no. Resource specials can be found under Unity pods, which are much more common than villages in Civ2. Also, resource specials can appear at random if you have random events turned on. However, there's no time I've seen a map that started with resource specials that I didn't uncover by investigating a pod above it, or that appeared due to a random event.

As to your second question, with good terraforming management, large amounts of fungus can disappear under a tide of forestation, so by all means, jump on any base site that offers good early specials, they'll help your development enough to counteract the time investment involed in clearing the fungus later, especially if you use forests to aid you in your anti-fungal efforts.

Xenofungus only spawns worms when units attempt to move through it, or when there's a fungal tower (assuming you're playing the expansion) nearby, so a base that has fungus nearby is no more likely to be visited by a wandering mindworm than one that has not fungus in sight. However, the road effect that xenofungus has to native life will complicate your defenses, so if you do plant bases near (and especially next to) fungus, increase the priority of making a garrison to react to any unwanted guests.

[Mongoose]

LOM - correct. Special resources are NOT placed in a regular pattern as they were in Civ2. Indeed, as CEO notes, their eventual placement can be random, as sometimes they result from unity pod pops, sometimes not. If you 'pop' a resource, sometimes, if you reload the turn asnd proceed in your actions in a different manner, the eventual result of 'repopping' that pod will not be a resource at all. Additionally, if playing with the random events flag set, from time to time new resource tiles may appear, or old ones be depleted...another thing not in Civ2.