10-15 cities enough?

[vee4473]

Am I the only one who thinks that if you have more than around 15 or so cities, that the game gets more tedious than it is fun??

Sometimes even 15 is bit much...

I read about people having upwards of 30 cities, and I wonder how they can actually have fun playing the game at that point...even with governers, it would be tedious just trying to check on the governers to make sure they aren't going astray...

Of course, i guess many people find this kind of heavy management fun. And that's cool if it floats your boat!

[Ned]

Vee, I have had games with upwards of 200 cities. And yes, it does get tedious. I usually load the queues with a standard sequence of builds, or simply turn the governor on.

What the game really needs is better autoforming. This would make the game quite a bit less tedious.

Some factions cannot pop boom easily. The "borg" strategy is somewhat forced on these factions. Since they cannot pop boom, the only way to stay larger than the competition is to build more cities.

However, I do agree that having fewer, well developed cities, is more fun. I usually play that way with Morgan or Lal.

Ned

[Paul]

Vee, I feel the same way. I prefer to play with 10-20 bases. Any more and I get bored with all the micromanagement. By the way, I don't trust the governors, so I don't use them.

[Provost Harrison]

It would be nice if you could define what you would like the autoformer to do. A lot of the stuff could be automated (what squares to farm/forest, strips of echelon mirrors or solar collectors). Some I would have to do myself, deciding thermal boreholes. But I think that I could automate a large proportion of my terraforming functions. If this was possible, I could cope with a lot more bases. Most I've played with is about 100, but this is just too many to maintain interest. But some kind of programmable terraforming routine would be great.

[Velociryx]

Adam makes a very good point, and specifically what he's talking about there is dispersion. It's true that, because of the way the game handles the base square (ie - the base square is not required to be worked by a worker...it's "automatically worked") the player with the most bases will almost invariably have a higher mineral count, and, with more production centers be able to crank out more stuff in general, but, what most players who favor that approach forget is that while they have more production centers total, they also have slower production overall, because those bases are not well-developed. In the end, it is essentially a push. The player with relatively few well-developed bases has a vast concentration of industry and is able to crank out goods efficiently, vs. the player with scads of bases able to build more stuff overall, but at a significantly slower rate. Eventually, if the player with the ton of bases focuses on improving them, he will of course, be in the superior position, but you've got to believe that the player with comparitavely fewer bases is not just sitting on his hands. He's probably either planning for another round of controlled expansion, or building clean troopers in a single turn, with an eye toward acquiring some of those relatively harder to defend mass numbers of bases for himself.

Expansion gives you options, but it's certainly not a requirement to win the game. Several regular posters here have done the OCC challenge. Personally, I like to build 18-20 bases of my own, and acquire the rest...but then, when I go on the offensive against the AI, I almost always give all the bases I conquer back when I get a submission....less for me to fiddle with, and it spikes up my commerce rating quite nicely....

-=Vel=-

[Adam_Smith]

I just dominated two strong players with less than 10 bases in multiplayer. One of them had over twenty bases, but they were not developed. Eventually you may go on a whip ass tour, and you will end up with more, but you can win the game fine with less than 10 bases.

[Provost Harrison]

That's what I do; batter the opponent into submission and give them their bases back. And do hefty amounts of trade! I can usually cope with about 40 without getting too hassled, and build them all up to be massive.

[Chowlett]

I ususally use only a handful of bases, definitely less than 15, sometimes less than 10. The only exception is my "current" (I'm off SMAC at the moment) game on the Asia map. I was placed in the arid North-west so to compensate I have up to about Eta Sector by now. But I still improve the bases, It's just that every new base builds one defender then one colony pod. The centre bases all keep improving, and the territory keeps expanding. It is becoming a little tedious now, though.