Strategy: Force Booming

[VoodooChild]

I wanted to move the debate over to strategy, since it had nothing to do with "Is this a cheat" Please note I like a good debate and I hope that no one takes any of my comments at a personal attack. Also it should be said that these are my impressions of the game based on my years of off-an-on play of SMAC and SMAX. I have not tried this at home, and I'm pretty much firing from the hip.

Situation: Very early in the game, you have expanded to your first warning. You stop expanding and start building your infrastructure, proto typing, and one or two SPs.

Question: How effective would dedicating your last built base to making colony pods to increase the population of your existing bases would be over developing that base on its own?

VoodooChild: After that base has a former, defender, and R.tanks I say the benefits outweigh the costs.

-What else is that base going to do, Build rec. commons?
Wont be needed if it keeps producing colony pods.

-Build Network Nodes?
Between the maintenance cost and the efficiency of an out lying base, at the current stage of development this is a break even proposition. There will be some turn loss later, but I will comment on how you are better served elsewhere.

-Build another type of structure or unit?
Depending on your faction's goals, techs on hand, or any number of other variables this could be anything. The only structure that could be worthwhile would be Creches, but its is very unlikely that you have these available at this time. Any other early structure can be built at another base, and you are better served without the duplicity.

Now I stop my expansion completely, your play style may be different, I don't know. If so, then force booming is not for you. I completely agree that it is FAR better to build a new base than it is to force boom an existing base.

Since I stop my expansion, my main goal is to make my bases as efficient as possible. At this stage of the game I have a serious pop cap of 4 without having drone riots. I generally want my food production to +1 nut after I reach pop 4, so it will take a long time before I get into trouble.

There are two ways I could force boom.... Bring my bases from pop 3 to 4, or 4 to 5.

If I bring my pop up to 5, then they will all most certainly become a doctor, but I did save myself 50 nuts for the cost of 10 nuts and 30(?) minerals. As I tried to indicate before the value of those minerals isn't that great, since your choices are limited and the benefits are minimal. There will be some loss from the fact that I could be developing my feeder base and getting some returns from extra workers in the field, but since the former of my feeder base needs only to develop two squares, they can regain that "turn loss" by building roads to new sites, planting sensors for added security, or developing the new area for an instant productive work force. All in all I would say that this was a break even proposition.

I could also force boom my pop to 4. The ratio is negative on the resources lost / gained, but there is also another way to look at this. If I am planing to build a SP at a base, then I am trying to work as many minerals as possible. For me this means lots of forests, but forests don't produce a lot of nuts. How long will it take for that base to go from pop 3 to 4 with all those forests? 20-25 turns would be my guess. How long will it take for your feeder colony to build and move to a new base? 13-15 turns I would say. My estimations may be off, and depending on the situation at hand the numbers can shift, but there are some added gain to the numbers.

If planned for correctly, it can be significant impact. Now how important is it that YOU and not some AI build that SP? So are the minerals better served building the SP or developing your feeder base? In a military base those minerals can help that expensive prototype move along. This will increase your ability for diplomacy, exploration, or outright combat. The same principle can be applied to a base building a network node. Make that that 4th pop into a librarian or a solar collector worker. Extra turns of labs from the sacrifice of minerals at the feeder base.

Whatever the base is doing for your faction, they can do it better with a force boom. Have each of your bases specialize in one particular field, and have that base that much more efficient by force booming to its maximum potential. Even in the case of the pop 5 doctor, your ready to put that doctor in the fields at anytime. Remember that the time it will take for your feeder base to gain back that population is nothing compared to what it would take for a size 4 base to gain that worker. This could mean all the difference when its time to elect a governor.

My final point, and thank you for reading up to this point At some time you will begin to expand again. If all your bases are size 3 or greater, then which ever base you use to start the process, it will take a loss in resources and productivity in time and materials to make the colony pod, time and resources to recover the lost worker, and turn loss of starting the next item in the que just to start the next phase of expansion. Not so in the case of feeder base since its already dedicated to just making colony pods. Not only are you not taking the loss, but you can double your expansion efforts by not having to wait until your next base can make a colony pod on its own to continue the expansion.

Force booming is not for everyone, and like most anything, to do it right requires exact planning and execution. Because of the ethics involved, I haven't tried this before, but maybe I will give it a whorl to see if my impressions are anything close to reality. Whatever the case, I don't think that this strategy should be dismissed out of hand like it was in the other post. I believe it is universally agreed upon that the first 50 turns of the game will determine the winner. Hopefully I have brought to light that there are tangible benefits if force booming is used and could very well give you the advantage that will carry you to victory. Please share with me your impressions or criticism. Thanks

[Misotu]

I think you should try actually playing it and seeing whether it delivers benefits in a real game by comparison with the way you'd usually play. I really wouldn't do it this way, as you know But I'm not you, and our playing styles are probably very different.

BTW, you don't need to worry about ethics. You're talking about pod booming to 4 or 5 here - I'm not aware that there's any objection to this. The grey area is where pods are used to break hab limits, so unless you're talking Morgan you're using a standard game feature about which there's no dispute.

[VoodooChild]

Starting the testing tonight, but didn't have much time to devote to the project. I picked the Angles since they about the only faction without a +/- pop, tech, drones, indus, or early auto building. Unfortunately, I had a superb start so I may have to scrap the game.

As far as my ethics go, I generaly limit myself to what the AI can do. The only exceptions are usually in the workshop. Its just a thing I do.

[WhiteElephants]

I'm for this strategy 100%. Unfortuantely, I didn't realize the benefits until we (Mistou + Garth Vader) were well into ACT021. What you can do with this strat is force boom a single base up to seven very early in the game. Depending on the location of the base (i.e. nutrient/mineral specials) you can have that base pumping out 15 - 20 minerals quite early in the game or, if it suits your fancy, and you have a nutrient special near, you can turn several of those workers over to librarians and have a rather productive science center quite early in the game as well. The best thing is a base with a nutrient special and then building the Weather Pardigm. You put a farm and condensor on the nurtrient special which nets you 7 or eigth nutrients (?) and frees up several of your seven workers to work forest or mines or turn them into librarians. Rather than being stuck to farms for the nutrients these workers can really pump up minerals or science, two of the most important resources. And consider that city with a net node and three or four librarians and you'll really understand the benefits. Try it and you should experience impressive gains all around. I kinda think this has been an unspoken secret around here as I have known about it for a while and I know other people have known about it, but no one has brought it to the forum. You really don't lose much in the other city (or cities) you are using the feed the big city (or cities) and you can forgo the rec commons, the net node, the creche, the command center, and the energy bank in that city, but I would recommend a rec tank to help growth and prdoductivity. One thing you left out of the equation Voodo was the ability to rush build the colony pods when the base gets to size two which significantly cuts down production time and allows for a more nutrient focused base rather than nutrients and minerals. I think the most important decision in this strategy is the location of the base you choose to force boom. You will need the nutrients in order to boom the base to its maximum potential which means size 7 and 14 nutrients. I tend to angle for a base with a nutrient special or a mineral special. The best, of course, is a combination of both.

The ethics of this is when you puch a base past its population limits. In other words pushing a base past 7 pop when you don't have a hab complex which I do not support 100%. That I consider a cheat.

[Dry]

We are here very close to my basic early game strategy: Cities & Towns.
I usualy build special cities for colony pods production only. I call those cities "Towns". Those Towns are usualy located between the real "Cities", to fill the lost spaces. They will remain small (<4) and are comdamned to destruction when the real Cities need more space to expand.
At the begin of the game, there is no difference between Cities and Towns: they build Rec.Tank,
Rec.Common, defender, rover, 2 formers and some col. pods (not in that order).
Later, Towns build only colony pods, Cities build whatever, except colony pods.

Produced colony pods are used for 3 purposes: found new cities and keep an even number of citizen in Cities (easier to keep GA), and of course pop booming.
I don't think pushing a base above 7, even if Hab is not build, is cheating, because
1. there is an existing maximum (8);
2. none of the existing patches have change that;

[WhiteElephants]

Well Dry, I can agree with #1 if it is true that you can't force boom above 8 (didn't know that), but #2 is quite disputable as none of the existing patches have fixed a lot of other things. Stockpile Energy Bug, Multiple Air Drop, etc., etc.

[Misotu]

WE: That's interesting about ACT021 But I don't have any objection to the strategy anyway - even if you pushed it above 7. And it's within the tourny rules.

I am interested though as to why you'd do it as the Gaians. Maybe I'm not thinking this through clearly ... but to sustain the city, you have to have the nutrients. If you have the nutrients, you're probably running demo/planned anyway in the early game, so surely you'd just pop boom to the desired level? Or are you trying to avoid running demo because of the support penalties?

About the 8 limit - I'm not aware of this. Pod booming isn't something I do, so maybe that's right. The one time I did it, I used 3 pods to push a size 16 city to size 19. I encountered no difficulties or limits which leads me to wonder about the size 8 limit?

[WhiteElephants]

Mistou -- To be honest I figured it out a little too late to impliment it properly in that game. After all we started back in April or May. And your absolutely right about Demo and Planned because it would make more sense just to pop boom. But I use this in the first 20 to 40 turns of the game even before I have the tech (Demo) to pop boom. And in Demo it hurts to expand at the same time because you lose those 10 minerals a base normally starts out with plus the lose of one support per existing base. Switching SE choices also costs energy, as you know, and I like spending it on rush builds instead. I was checking into switching to Demo earlier than I did, but the costs outweighted the benefits, but had I force boomed a few bases the opposite would be true due to inefficency. You also don't need to bother with a Creche unless you need the defense which gives you time to reap the benefits of a net node or energy bank earlier or put up the holo theatre you will inevitably need. Also the extra 2 nutrients can sometimes be hard to come across when your bases get to size five or higher, though with the Gaians you do get the 2 from working the fungus, but you take a lose of minerals and energy to do it. And to realistically pop boom you usually need tree farms which, I hope, none of us have yet.

In short, ACT021 was, and is, my first and longest MP game I've ever played and in the future I intend to do things differently. What I mean is, I'm the only one (human player) on Planet with size seven bases (three of them) and I could have had them 30 to 40 turns earlier had I played it different. Had I played it the way I want to now, I would probably be pop booming to fourteen and not seven.

[Misotu]

Well, I don't know ... I still have mega doubts about it as a strategy. Thing is, in the first 20-40 turns, I'm still expanding hard (or trying to. Hard to be disciplined about it, there are always more interesting things to build than more pods )

I don't think that typically I'd have Ind Auto until the end of that time frame or later as the Gaians unless I'm pacted with a good researcher or there's a lot of tech trading going on. Without industrial auto, it seems to take me a long time to build pods, even with formers and forests from the get go.

I'll be interested to hear what you think about it after you've tried it from the start of a game.

[WhiteElephants]

It's all about base location and execution. What is really all that valuable to build in bases during the first 50 turns? Rec commons, creches, a command center, formers, units, and more colony pods. Nodes and Enegy Banks are out of the question because your not generating enough energy at those base to compensate for their upkeep and cost. All it really takes is a colony pod from four different bases and your target base is up to its max size.

But, like I said, location is extremely important because you need the nutrients to support the population of your size seven base and, in my opinion, you don't want to have to work a bunch of farms to do it. I'd much rather have the higher mineral output from forests and mineral specials than a bunch of 2-1 farms, though 2-1-2 farms have their benefits. Obviously, this kind of strategy isn't going to work in a base that has a lot of arid land around it. It can work without the nutrient special, but you lose the bonus of all those minerals you could be harvesting from the surrounding forests.

The colony pod production is where exection becomes imortant. You want to get to size 2 quickly in order to increase production of minerals and rush build their pods after the first 10 minerals are completed. I generally get the energy to do this from popped pods. And while the "feeder" bases as, Voodoo has coined them, produce pods the target base needs to have a rec common and holo theatre going up in order to handle the drones. Once those are in place you can start your special project and add pods to the base as they come off the production lines. In all, a size seven base by 2140 isn't that unreasonable. Then if your content with that go expand some more or target another base for a forced boom.

I'll brush up on my game and send you an example later if I have the time.