Specialist cities

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Nigma,

Great point on the sattelites! 13 food sattelites will net you 7 population points which in terms of energy production is 35 energy (assuming engineers) per city that's almost 3 times the effect of a energy sattelite (and they come much sooner so you can start earlier). (Who needs energy sattelites that net you a +1 energy/city and is subject to efficiency loss when you can have return like that on food sattelites. Plus now that I think of it you don't need to worry about those damned solar flares wiping them out. I'm semi-kidding here you'll want energy sattelites but they become the lowest priority after food then minerals then ODP's then energy sats.) If only Nessus mineral sats could come sooner.

Regarding defense issues. My point on the defensability of the crawlers comes from an assumption that within the city sprawl you'll have a interceptor or two that will be able to scramble on defense, not so in the E park unless you follow the suggestion of an outside airbase but that takes up valuable square real estate. Now following Bonds advice going forward and upgrading those crawlers to best armor/reactor you've got a veritable swamp of hardened targets that should slow any offense, hopefully enough for you to counter.

My other point though was to contrast the immediate loss of a crawler in an E - park to a crawler lost in the Food Interior. E - park loss means immediate loss of energy. Loss of Food Interior crawler may mean nothing if you can replenish your crawler in time before you starve down 1 population point.

Your point regarding ease of replacement from mineral rich cities is very much on the money. The one thing this strategy doens't address well is overall loss of production power. OTOH you should be rolling in energy with your hordes of engineers contributing cash allowing for rush builds as needed.

[bondetamp]

Ogie-Boogie:
First: As the pronunciation of 'de' is close enough to 'the' that I'll use it, and 'tamp' is Norwegian (and originally Dutch, I believe) for 'short rope end' there is three obvious choices.

1. [James] Bond the [short rope end], a plausible, if somewhat cryptic alias.

2. [James] Bond the [end] [to all enemies, of the world, of the line (this is rather cunning, as line can mean rope), of the good time, of sanity, of any hope for a good/polite/sensible/sane/tasteful discussion]

3. Farmer boy (which would be a translation)

Second: If I find the Monsoon jungle during my expansion, it goes without saying that it becomes an 'all-c-area'.

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Enigma
first: As far as I can see, your dilemma 'Super-Borg' Vs 'E-park' assumes that one excludes the other.
Why not do both? I can see no reason not to alternate the 'all-c-area' with an 'E-park'. Assuming, of course, that you have a large continent to spread out on.

Second: You're right. Only four nuts per square. This will take the population up to five. Enough to get specialists. And for further growth, what do you think those 'all-c-areas' are for?

Third: About # of pods, and drones lost to inefficiency: Drones are hardly an issue in specialist bases.

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Ogie:
Third The facilities maintenance cost is a factor. With all lab- or econ enhancing facilities (biology lab; energy bank; fusion lab; hybrid forest; network node; research hospital and tree farm) you get a $16 output. You also get +200% on both research and income. Two engineers will take care of the expenses as well as net an extra $2 and 12 research. Assuming a population of six, you’ll have three librarians as well, netting 27 research, totalling 39. Energy harvested by workers are not counted. This will be affected by faction (free network node for University) and SP’s (free energy banks with whatever the name of that SP).

The expanse I’m planning will be far less rapid than traditional Borg. I will try to get an area terraformed ready before putting a base there. If I build Boreholes first, this gives the uttermost bases an extra borehole each, a kick start in other words. In the ‘all-c-area’ I will put down a couple of boreholes as well, so the bases on the rim have a bit extra production. These will, of course, be the ones building SP’s and prototypes.

You need to take into account that you don’t need rec. commons or hologram theatres. Nor do you need VW, Human Genome or other such SP’s. You should not spare any expense to get WP.

It could be an idea to put a crawler on the borehole. This would free a worker who could become an engineer, netting 5 energy. More than I would get on the bases some distance from the head quarter, as police/planned is assumed. This crawler does not need to be from the closest base. If one base is done building improvements, rotating crawlers could be a good idea. In fact rotating crawlers should be a vital point of the defence strategy. That way when someone takes one of my bases, the three crawlers next to him doesn’t disappear as well.

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Adam:
A forest square with tree farm + hybrid forest gives 3+2+3=8 resources. Farm + condenser + engineer gives 9. This number will grow with time, as soil enrichers and better specialists becomes available.

The philosophy behind this approach is to harvest the resources from somewhere else than the base squares, to give a compact and easily defendable whole. The theory is neither complete, nor actually tested. It seems like I never get the time to actually play the damn game anymore.
So I might be wrong. This whole idea may be ludicrous. And please point that out, because if the theory doesn’t stand a debate, it will probably be doomed from the start in an actual game.

So there.

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Enigma:
Satellites rock.

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Ogie (again! Don’t you ever get tired?)
I tried to address the point about production earlier in the post. But you are probably right. With this approach I get zounds of adequately producing bases, but no ‘super bases’ to produce SP’s prototypes etc. by straying a bit from the path, and putting down some extra holes, this could be remedied. As new cities are built, taking over those boreholes, the crawler moves to the next one, being completed by a former team the very same turn. The point here seems to be to have the formers preparing squares ahead of time.
Of course with mining stations, this cease to be an issue, but that is too late in the game.

[Christopher]

What I would like to see is a comparison to this strategy and the "forever expanding" strategy...
Could they be used in conjunction?
What are their weaknesses, strength etc?

For us "not as masterful as others" players such tips are really helpful.
How about a first-ring, second-ring tactic?

Start out as forever expanding, then change to Bondetamps tactic when you have achieved a fair number of cities, but do so only in your inner cities, when your seconday cities have built a new ring of expanding cities they switch to specialist cities.

This give a advantage of freeing the formers that you used in ring-one. I.e the formers follow the everexpanding ring of specialist cities. As soon as one is ready it continues to the next city who then switch strategy..etc etc.

Christopher

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond et.al.

This whole topic has my interest peaked as few others have. So on with further discussions. (no not tired yet, just bored with my job )

I definitely see the benefit of keeping ahead by predrilling your borehole and putting down crawlers ahead of time. Doing so will also lead to little eco damage as the boreholes are outside city radii.

The 4 nutrients in time become 6 after soil enricher tech so a max of 14 (actually 15) population is psosible with the appropriate food sats. (6+6+3 matched by 15 sats)

Since this strat is inherently mineral hindered, I see benefits for any faction that has an inherent production and/or support bonus. I'm thinking Yang would be a good choice. Obviously UoP works (but that comes as no surpirse b/c UoP is a natural excellent builder faction).

Lastly, putting a crawler on a borehole. I hear what your saying about having yet another crawler to act as a defense, but unless your running a 100% energy loss efficiency (i.e. Police\planned on any faction other than Yang) I don't see that using that crawler in that fashion gains you that much. Better off gathering some real resources from the all "c" section or out to the outermost boreholes where you can another 6 mins. It occurs to me by sending these to the outer boreholes, when you set down your next city a simple rehome and reassignment of that crawler to the food farms for the new city and your off and growing the new city.

That's it for the night. Time to actually try some of these ideas. Think I'll start with Domai and take advantage of Police\planned with his industry he should be least affected by low minerals.

[Enigma]

The issue of increased costs to build these bases is definatley an issue. I always start an energy park about 10 years after I get magtubes, because otherwise the distances are so large I waste large amounts of time getting the formers there. Not only do you have to build much fewer bases with an E park but you can convert THOSE bases to pure specialists, build a base on top of an echelon mirror and build farms on the mirror squares, if you have enough food sattelites then that base can have a large amount of specialists.

I disagree with you about defending an E park, because I have magtubes and ridiculously high production at that point the AI is ridiculous. It offers no resistance. I assume we are talking about SP here because in MP the game would never last this long.

But here is another thing that affects the super late game with your specialist city idea: SATTELITES!!!

With every city getting +1/+1/+1 for every population point this can massively increase the capability of your bases.

For example at the initial 6 or 7 population you gain 7 more of each, meaning about 15 minerals and 15 energy at a base that uses only 4 squares. Quite efficient.

And then once these sattelites take affect you can reach a population of 14!!!
Add a hab dome here or there and a few extra crawlers feeding off more condensor/farm/enricher squares and you can have huge amounts of specialists.

The sattelite issue really makes me reconsider the Specialist Cities idea more. However, the main thing against this is the huge investment in minerals and energy for all the facilites and all of the extra colony pods and all the extra terraforming turns.

Plus the fact that the cities add production while an E park doesn't is also nifty.

Unfortunatley I have no clue how to calculate how all the facilities increase your energy, so I can not do a direct comparison but this looks favorable especially since it increases production.

The sattelites really make this an even more feasible approach.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Gave this a mini test spin last night. But instead of a best case situation using Domai or Yang I decided to take a worst case using an Industry hindered faction i.e. the Spartans. All in all I like what I saw again room for improvement as I learn more.

(firstly I was playing Thinker not transcend, Large Random mostly land, average everything else)

Bond the end of all _____'s excellent borehole, condensor farm, base arrangement layout works well. One SNAFU happens though once city sizes of 5 are obtained and number of cities exceeds bueracracy limits. If one does not have a unit acting as police the one worker on the boreholes is a drone (drat drat drat).

I passed on building Human Genome and VW so no help there. I was trying to run police to get the extra support so that each city was supporting 4 formers. When I went to Demo for pop boom the 2 extra units would drain the minerals too much for my tastes. Eco damage on cities was about 3-5 not too bad. (DIdn't get around to building tree farms)

Built WP and Transit SP's and Energy Grid(?) began working on empath guild. Stopped play at 2190 and was on the verge of fusion. I wasn't playing a speed game but think this could have easily been accelerated.

Once Industrial Auto comes along it took ~ 3turns per crawler and within 2 crawlers i.e. 6 turns/city you were set and beginning building infrastructure beginning with nodes. (I forgot just how many artifacts the Spartans get by cruising the continents).

I have no real reference to say that this is a superior approach but think it is comparable in the early game and has good potential for late game.

Number of cities was about 16 of which 80% I'ld say were maxed at size five with crawlers in place. 60% of cities had Network nodes. 30% had research Hospitals as well.

Tech was 5 turns/tech.

Terraforming was slow. By the time I had 8 cities down and forested everythin at first until WP was built (I think I made a mistake here and should have gotten WP built ASAP by cashing in some artifacts) I had a lot of catching up to do. In fact was still catching up and could not get ahead to predrill my boreholes for future city sites. In one instance I was able to but when I put a crawler on it from an interior city eco damage was pretty high (35ish) Again no tree farms of hybrids at this point.

Anyway that pretty much was it.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 17, 2000).]

[bondetamp]

I'm giving it a spin right now.
University on huge map with big landmass.
Found Monsoon jungle, bigger than my screen, just next to start point.

Also foud Angelz.

This means I have to go for some weapon tech to chrush them before being able to colonize properly (they're just too damn close).

As Ogie is doing a 'worst case scenario' with the NRL, I'm trying out a somewhat better faction. I suppose that'll be helpfull in evaluation.

[Christopher]

ha! yeah right....
you always plays UoP 'cs you like em so much.
...and because you whop my behind with em...

But more serious on the matter, I tested this strategy with Drones. Starting of with the ususal Borg strategy and then making an inner ring of specialist-cities. What I found was that I had to make a few more boreholes than what Bondetamp recommended.
But I find this to be my habit of building strong with the Drones. Appart from that I was very happy to see police powers come into my hands. I had the same problems with drones only they happened much later and wasn't really a problem, more of a nuisance.

I haven't played very long(hey! its late and I am tired)so I can't say for sure how I like it, ButI noticed that it takes quite some time to get the formers and cities ready for a specialist-strategy. It is a mid-game strategy not an early-game strategy.


Christopher

P.S:
Has anyone any experiences with support?
(for the game, not Apolyton)
I have sent so many mails for such a long time and still no answer! *disappointed*
D.S.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Have now tried this approach with the good Chairman. It's pretty sweet. He has police to start so you start with the ability to crank out 3 formers and a police unit prior to support issues. I'm now at 2210 and my tech strat was to get Formers first then bee-line to Industrial Auto then Beeline to Ecological Engineering concurrent with beeline to Fusion Power. Fusion Power absolutely is a must. Once you convert your 4 specialsits to all engineers you have cash to burn. I've rush built almost every research enhancing facility and genejack and am now going to start building an energy park. Techs are every 3 turns with energy income at 300+. Not bad considering it's Yang but could be better. I haven't made contact with all the factions yet as all this internal improvment has made my focus very builderish and not expansionist. Number of cities is 20 but next round of expansion is under way. All terraforming is complete. Had a brief run in with Cha Dawn but was able to simply ignore him by upgrading selective formers and crawlers to fusion armored trance. Stupid AI kept throwing small boils and laser speeders at me and kept getting chopped up without a single loss of mine. Finally decided to teach him a lesson and two Gatling laser (don't have missile tech yet) fusion reactor infantry units wiped him out. He's down to one far distant base that I'll get around to eventually.

Tree farms are coming in handy and am now beginning work to make hybrids as well. With tree farms I am starting the process of sending crawlers out to mines on rocky roaded distant site. I chose to mine these areas b/c it becomes a huge expensive Pain to attempt to level out the elevation around these distant areas. With 1-2 mines and 1 borehole and genejack I have the majority of my bases are 20+ minerals with no eco damage. Once I bring Hybrids online I should be able to get that up to a more respectable 30+ in short order. By that time hopefully I can bring online some robot factories and have some killer bases.

My plan going forward is to amass a goodly amount of cash (I think I'll need ~3500 credits) and upgrade all my infantry formers to armored clean superformers, therby allowing me to start my war building efforts.

So far I have been most pleased with the progress of Yang's faction. In this particular case I think it helped him out. I have to date no landmarks so all this was on normal terrain.

Now realistically since I was pretty much unmolested I had the luxury of concentrating on internal improvement. If faced with a more immediate threat I likely would have geared up war efforts and made a beeline for missile tech and air power.

All in all I like what I see for Yang at least. It gives him the much needed energy in the late 2100's if you can get fusion by that time.

SP's include:
Weather Paradigm - Naturally
Virtual World - Allowed me to do away with police unit is later cities and make 4 formers
Hunter Seeker
Planetary transit
Datalinks
Longevity Vaccine - Perfect now for second round of expansion with no drones
Under construction:
Ascetic Virtues
Planetary Energy Grid


Passed on:
Command nexxus
Maritime
Citizen Defense

Missed:
Human Genome
Empath guild

SE choices: Police/Planned/Knowledge

Typical Base: 1Worker 4 Engineers

1 excess nut.
8 minerals + Genejack and 1 -2 mines = 18 - 24
8 energy

Typical Facilities:
Net Node
Research Hospital
Fusion Lab
Childrens Creches
Free perimeter defense
Gene Jack

3 bases have command centers and 1 has bioenhancement as well.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 21, 2000).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond,

I agree Yang seems to be ideally suited for this approach. Timing as to when to stop Borg expansion is something I too need to focus upon. I think Borging with Yang is realistically a decent approach in any event. I tried to stop expansion just before the second beuracracy warning. Now that SP's like Transit, Longevity, and Ascetic are in place expansion is resuming.

In regards to Gene Splice, the nicety of this approachis one can forgoe aquiring this tech for the short term. With the condensors and farms 4 nuts are available w/o Gene Splice. unfortunately it sits smack dab in the way of getting Eco Engineering for needed mineral restriction lifting (plus the Research Hospital are a nice to have). I agree full heartedly that the following techs are the ones I found most critical:

Industrial Auto
Eco Engineering
Fusion Power (damned if there aren't a lot of useless tech to get this though)

Of course as you expereinced with UoP a decent start position (as in any game) makes all the difference. Unmolested growth opportunity makes up for a lot of sins of play.

[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited March 22, 2000).]

[bondetamp]

I'd say that Yang is probably better suited for this approach. Trying to build an axtensive infra structure with Santiago seems close to the notion of drinking plumbo for kicks.

My game with the University, has gone the wrong way all together, and I'll probably have to start over. (*grumble* bloody Angels *grumble* stupid probes *grumble* I'm going to show /you/ who is boss, ***** *grumble*)


On another note, I'm also somewhat unsure where to start my game. Wheter to go for a full 'Borg' approach in the beginning, untill I have, say 20+ bases, and then go 'super-borg' or if I should start earlier.

On one hand, by starting as regular Borg, I get a good number of bases, from which I get a decent amount of cash and tech each turn.

And tech is important, as there is little you can do before you get at least industrial automation for crawlers and gene splicing for nutrients.

On the other hand, by consentrating to much on expansion the first fifty years, or so, you risk never being able to catch up to the expansion former vise.

This can be fine, but makes for another game than the one portraied in this thread, where formers are supposed to be one or two moves ahead of the expansion at all time.

Oh, well, back to the game. Let's see who is boss this time.

[bondetamp]

I finally got enough time on my hands to play a long game of SMAX. I started out doing the routine, but due to being a lousy player, it is hard to see how effective the strategy is.

On thing struck me, though. As soon as my headquarter finally reached six inhabitants, I made my first librarian. I then proceded to make the rest of the inhabitants librarian, but, alas, it could not be done!

It seems to me that only the specialists you create from inhabitant #6+ can become anything else than a psych producing doctor. (max five librarians in a city sized ten, etc) Is this so, or have I missed something crucial? Of course this is rather important as I then have five workers to cope with rather one, which means my lay-out doesn't work at all!

Other than that, I found the layout to be marvelous. I'm pulling in research faster than ever, and money problems are a thing of the past.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bond,

That seems very strange. The inability to convert all 4 of 5 pop to librarians wasn't something I ran into. OTOH I was racing toward fusion and wasn't so much concerned with getting to size 5 as much as borging. When fusion came along I was making 4 of 5 (sounds like a borg name) into engineers and ultimately 6 of 7 (she has larger breasts than 4 of 5 but not quite as big as 7 of 9 just in case your a Star Trek Voyager fan ).

So maybe I didn't actually run into the librarian issue b/c I was borging with smaller sized bases.

When you get fusion let me know if you still can't convert all but one to engineers.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Bump

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

bump