base planting and mindworms with wealth and free market

[Chaos Theory]

All mindworms suffer grievously until 2115, but mindworms against bases also suffer substantially until 2150.

[Lazerus]

I once got around 25+ demon boils each in 4 squares and yes i had around 7 bases in that area with close to a thousand eco damage each, i was trying to drown the AI for a laugh

and besides the cash you get from them is awesome

[Mr. Harley]

One thing you can do when beelining to FM, instead of going for Inducstial Economics (wealth), instead research Social Psych first to get the Rec Commons (if you cannot trade for it). Until then if you run 20% psych you can still let most bases build to two population without drone riots, and you still have a better research rate then any other Economic choice! Then go for wealth, and then Secrects of the Human Mind for Trance Scouts - you'll need them against the mindworms .

[Chaos Theory]

In a multiplayer game, I usually do not tend to my worm defenses. I have formers around empty, FM cities, and I hold off mindworms with those or a few scattered units either built or found in unity pods. I don't research Trance for worm defense (though I pick it up at some point for the tech).

I run the risk of losing a few units or even a base or two, but if not, I have an edge on my opponent. If I were more conservative, I would lose ground to a more aggressive opponent.

Of course, this is a bad idea if the risk of worms is too high, so I need to pay attention to my borders and adjust my strategy to the native life threat, but usually being apathetic to the worm threat is the best course of action.

[johndmuller]

Creches give back a bit of Wealth's morale-depressing effect to units whose home base has a Creche. Further, when they are defending the Creche base, the defenders' morale is as good as, and sometimes better than it would be without the Wealth penalty due to the benefits the Creche provides.

Armored Probes are not a bad idea for base defenders if you are running FM/Wealth, since you would not be getting any police benefits from the regular unit anyway. Res-3 Armor would be especially good for that, once you get it, but I believe that the mere fact of being armored at all will improve your odds (no non-com penalty). In any case, a probe team's morale is not affected by the Wealth modifier, but by boosts from various techs, like PolyM, as well as the usual military facilities - so you can get a decent morale probe sometimes when you are able to produce only barely capable regular units.

If you have a Creche in the base, the armored probe's main advantage would be its freedom from support charges (and of course its natural probe functions), since a 'reasonable' morale regular defender would not be hindered by the Wealth penalty and would be cheaper to build, so one might use the armored probes to occupy relatively new bases and the regular ones once you have built a Creche (which you will want to do reasonably soon), moving the armored probe defender further out to the frontier.

[Frankychan]

Well, I did use artillery to try and take care of them, and the creds you get from them are awesome!

But as pointed out, sooner or later in the game you can only destroy 1 or 2 units. And 1 unit taking on 50 or so demon boils is going to lose. Usually most of my units are away on some campaign to destroy another faction (I deal with Drone riots by nerve stapling them-atrocities repealed)

Weird thing is that I try to "appease" Planet by building all this eco-friendly stuff, and she pays me back by destroying my Condensers and all that other good stuff. A 5 tile fungal bloom results in the same thing Lazerus describes. I've seen a base rated 25 reduced to 8 or so....for some reason they don't destroy the base.

Sometimes the attacks come after me just having 1 borehole.....I usually can't build my planetbusters cause I'm choking on fungus.

That's why I run Planned or Green. Free Market is the work of the devil!

[Chaos Theory]

Artillery should be able to destroy the vast majority of native life in any given tile. Towards the end game, keeping 3 SAM string artillery in each base for worm defense seems entirely reasonable. One unit taking on 50 demon boil mindworms is hardly guaranteed to lose since collateral damage against native life is total. On the other hand, locusts of chiron do not suffer collateral damage, so you need artillery to blast them to pieces.

A base could be reduced to size 8 from 25 by 17 locusts. Each native life unit that enters an empty base of yours blows up one building and kills a population unit.

For what it's worth, I find that in the late game, Planned and Green give me more ecodamage than FM. The reason is that by that time fungus tiles are producing 2 or 3 minerals, so that if I run non-FM, I can work those tiles and produce plenty of minerals. What happens to me is that each pop makes the next more likely until the planet floods.

[RoadRash]

Originally posted by Starfarer
...My God, Franky, do you have triple-digit eco-damage or something? I mean... ouch. What are you DOING do that poor planet? I've NEVER had any fungal bloom with more than about five worms of middle-to-high lifecycle at best earlier than when I start getting close enough to Transcendance....

When I get close to Transcendance, sometimes I get major worm hordes that make Franky's situation look positively tame.

My outbreaks are late-game surprises. I have a decent planet rating, and all my terrain has been converted to forests. Furthermore, I have zero improvements that boost minerals (not counting recycling tanks.) I've committed no atrocities and launched no planet busters etc etc.

Yet quite suddenly, about 10 cities per turn experience fungal blooms with 30-50 demon boils per square. I'm not kidding. Yet sometimes my planet rating is so high that I actually capture 30+ worms at a stroke. Unhappily this can cause the spontaneous disbanding of expensive units supported by the city.

Sometimes, I'll deviously walk these captured worms into my ally's back yard, then release them "into the wild".

What triggers these ridiculous outbreaks?
- Start with enormous cities surrounded by forests, which produce alot of minerals.
- Add certain late-game Secret Projects, and tons of mining satellites, to further boost mineral production.

To add insult to injury.... at this point in the game, fungus generates more minerals than forests, so each outbreak makes the situation even worse.

I got so sick of this crap that I tweaked the game to reduce the rate of global warming.

[johndmuller]

Roadrash, sounds like you are too clean for your own good.

I didn't see any references in your post to the usual methods people use to allow for hign min production without the high ecodamage; perhaps you are following that approach and are just producing humongous quantities of mins, but I'm guessing that you have minimized the ecodamage in the early/mid game and built most of the potential ecodamage-reducing facilities before getting your first >pop<. If so, the solution would have been to have been to force a >pop< before building your TFs, HFs, CPs, etc. (or to have delayed them until after the first >pop<) in order for them to have the beneficial effect on ecodamage.

As to why it happens all of a sudden, whether or not you have mitigated the ecodamage as above, it is likely the formula expressing itself - it has some factors like your number-of-techs that get pretty high as the game goes on, so once it crosses over into positive ecodamage, each extra min will get multiplied pretty heavily.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by johndmuller
Roadrash, sounds like you are too clean for your own good.
.

I agree with Johnd, you must not have ensured a mineral pop before building the eco-facilities.

Assuming clean minerals at 16, you can trigger say 4 pops. and then lets assume a dozen bases with a treefarm and a HF, bringing you to 44 clean minerals.

Why anyone would need more than that in a base in the late game ( when sats can feed and specialists and energy are abundant) would be beyond me.


MY advice-- stop the mineral satellites and just put up more and more energy ones. Also consider a few food sats and specialists.

Other than that . . . make sure to cause a fungal bloom early so that all your eco-facilities have their full effect. Building them before the bloom is crippling their effect

[starfish]

MY advice-- stop the mineral satellites and just put up more and more energy ones. Also consider a few food sats and specialists.

I thought that I'd read somewhere that mineral satellites didn't contribute to eco-damage - I don't see any reference to them in either the Datalinks' Ecology section or Ned's eco-damage write-up. Am I missing something?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Artillery should be able to destroy the vast majority of native life in any given tile. Towards the end game, keeping 3 SAM string artillery in each base for worm defense seems entirely reasonable. One unit taking on 50 demon boil mindworms is hardly guaranteed to lose since collateral damage against native life is total. On the other hand, locusts of chiron do not suffer collateral damage, so you need artillery to blast them to pieces.

A base could be reduced to size 8 from 25 by 17 locusts. Each native life unit that enters an empty base of yours blows up one building and kills a population unit.

For what it's worth, I find that in the late game, Planned and Green give me more ecodamage than FM. The reason is that by that time fungus tiles are producing 2 or 3 minerals, so that if I run non-FM, I can work those tiles and produce plenty of minerals. What happens to me is that each pop makes the next more likely until the planet floods.

When large stacks of native life appear it sometimes pays to self destruct a high attack value unit next to the native stack to destroy it. Copters or needles are great for this, as they have plenty of movement to get into position and can fly over sea squares with no problems.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by starfish


I thought that I'd read somewhere that mineral satellites didn't contribute to eco-damage - I don't see any reference to them in either the Datalinks' Ecology section or Ned's eco-damage write-up. Am I missing something?

Nope-- my comment was based on:

1. My belief that having massive mineral production is a waste ( even if completely clean)-- With enough energy and specialists you can rush everything anyway.

2. MY own preference for food and energy satellites combined with specialists as a way to drive research. You can work a few less tiles and produce a few less minerals and avoid ecodamage if you wish

[RoadRash]

Originally posted by Flubber
1. My belief that having massive mineral production is a waste ( even if completely clean)-- With enough energy and specialists you can rush everything anyway.

True but this lowers your energy score.

My experiences with massive end-game worms are due entirely to a single Secret Project: the one giving +2 minerals per base. It seems preposterous that those two extra minerals would cause 30+ worms per base. But it happens to me every time.

I'm starting to wonder if those 2 minerals are added in a wierd way that skews the normal ecodamage calculations.

[Skanky Burns]

I generally build large number of centauri preserves after the first >pop< so I have a large amount of free minerals before any eco damage occurs.