Early game terraforming - farms or forests?

[WhiteElephants]

I'd like to recast my vote and say farms first. I stand corrected. Thank you.

[VoodooChild]

I would like to call for a revote. I was confused by the options and may have cast my vote for mines by mistake.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

VC,

Your only allowed a revote if your from Florida . Since your moniker says your from Georgia I'm afraid the election committee will most likely deny your request .

[Sikander]

I would like a chance to revote. The selections were very confusing, and I think I voted for Pat Bunkercannon instead of Al Farmboy. Let the confused speak!

[mark13]

Well, unfortunately, this is a vote about terraforming, and has nothing to do with some obscure election that may be going on in some unimportant part of the world

The thing is, I can't be bothered to do a manual recount - I'll leave that to all the farm supporters

[Zonk]

Unimportant part of the world? I say we keep having recounts until it comes out the way I like.

[Capt Dizle]

i think they are using fuzzy math in florida ....little known sub-project of Gore's Reinventing Government efforts was a lab on reinventing punch card tabulations...can't accuse him of wasting government money, he is putting all he learned to good use now...i wonder how the military folks whose ballots are being tossed out by the Dems are going to feel about their commander in chief if Gore is selected (i won't say elected, no way)...

[Skanderbeg]

[quote]Originally posted by mark13 on 10-28-2000 06:44 PM

My opinion is, every move of the former without terraforming is lost time. Normally, I would build
farm + solar collector first, but if the rainy square
is 2 squares away from the base , I would build forest first. If I start on a dry continent with only few wet squares, I begin with forest, because the forest can spread over the dry land. If you start with forest, don't forget to built a sensor array.

[Enigma]

Hey Jimmytrick! I doubt you know me but I have been lurking at these forums for a very long time and posting on and off for maybe a year...

The biggest question for me is what faction I am. When I am Morgan on a standard planet with selected research then biogenetics rolls around between year 5-7 and I rush recycling tanks into BOTH of my first two cities SIMULTANEOUSLY! Then I just completely skip centauri ecology for a few years and go with industrial economics for even more energy to further recycling tank powered expansion. Compare this to Yang- where you will have tons of cities with almost no energy. With Yang if I see any squares above 1000M I immediatly solar them, the single energy from forests is not enough since your base squares are not bringing in any energy. In order to not get completely behind as Yang farms and solars generally work well in the early game because you can support enough formers to make this more former intensive stuff, and you can support police units for the larger population. But I think that early forests are the best long term decision for most non Yang factions. The extra energy will be coming in before you would be able to finish a solar plant, and you can use your terraformer for something else quickly.

[mark13]

In my experiences with the good Chairman, you don't bother about energy - you use probes! And lots of them! Yang main strength is his industrial capacity, so forests work well to further strengthen that. As for tech, well, what do you think probe teams are for?

The fact is, however, in my experiences, Centauri Ecology is the most important technology in the entire game - I always research it before anything else. Industrial Base is next, and then you're on the road to Industrial Automation....

Mark13

[Fugi the Great]

Early in the game I forest all dry squares, and farm only wet or raining squares and add solar collectors. This does not change until treefarms are available, then everything from then on is forest. I very rarely ever build mines, and will totally ignore rocky terrain in the first part of the game, except to put road on them to get around faster. So far I have not had a problem with this, and it hardly ever causes sea level changes.

[TWEP]

My strategy is always forest arid squares, farm-solar the rest. Once Tree Farms become available, change the moist squares into forests. I forest everything when Hybrid Forests become available.

If I have a positive Planet rating, I fungus everything when I have most of the Centauri techs. At that point, I sometimes have my most productive bases build fungus missiles, detonate them over my own land, then send my units out to mop up the mindworms.

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[hellrazor]

Does anyone else find it incredibly annoying that by the end of the game, fungus is better than nearly anything else, especially if you have the MH? I terriform like mad...by the end of the game I usually have every square terriformed with my super clean formers, and the ugly red fungus makes all my hard work useless. The MH IMO is especially unbalancing...with a +3 green value you get 3 3 5 from a fungus square!!

[Bkeela]

This is off-topic, but what production values could pine forests possible have in a hostile alien environment? Do they make wooden bases and units, or somehow or other extract some kind of plastic from the pulp? And pine cone nuts surely wouldn't be worthwhile farming for food, surely?

Bkeela.

[Hydro]

Bkeela,

Forests can be rich and ecologically diverse. I think of forests as ranging from intensively harvested fruit groves to hardwood to quick-growth pine, or even tropical hardwoods. When you widen what a forest is it isn't too hard to think of ways that food (fruits) or food-like products (tea, coffee, pharmaceutical derivatives) might give you a nominal 'one' food. As for fiber products, walk through a store or where you live and observe how society uses paper and wood products. I think you'll find that wood plays a pivotal role even in heavily urbanized locations that are seemingly dominated by steel and concrete.

Also, Chiron is not hostile to plant live, just to animal (and human) life. Even with the lower partial pressure of carbon dioxide the trade off between high nitrogen and low carbon should come out in plant life's favor.

Hydro