Democratic, Green, Wealth + GA

[Ned]

Does anybody disagree that the "subject" combination is the best both for waging war and making money?

[optimus2861]

*raises hand*

For money-making I'll agree that's a winner. But for waging war, you've got two pretty important shortfalls: a support hit under democracy, and a morale hit under wealth. If you're in the early midgame, prior to clean reactors, that support hit will catch up with you quickly enough. The morale penalty is subtle, but if you don't have superior weaponry it can cost you as well.

Now for building up an army, wealth is a fine choice with it's +1 industry. Extra cash means you can build some cheaper units (with High Morale!) and upgrade them to what you need for the campaign. Then switch over to Power when the buildup is complete, and it's clobberin' time .

Once you're well into the midgame (choppers, chaos weapons or better), I don't think it matters too much what SE you run, you'll be able to pound the AnotI regardless .

- Ian Merrithew

[Ned]

Optimus, good points. But consider the proposition: You want to simultaneously wage war and make a lot of money, both to build new facilities and to maximize research. Unless one carefully uses punishment spheres and clean reactors (expensive!), one cannot effectively wage war in FM, which is virtually the only other way to get to +2 economy. The support issue is really a non issue. Typically, by the time you can get your cities into GA, you will have had tree farms and should have "pop boomed" your bases to size 14-18, depending on which faction you play. And, as you noted, the "wealth" morale deficieny can be at least partially overcome by "training." Ned

[knowhow2]

quote: Originally posted by Ned on 03-19-2001 01:46 PM Typically, by the time you can get your cities into GA, you will have had tree farms and should have "pop boomed" your bases to size 14-18, depending on which faction you play. And, as you noted, the "wealth" morale deficieny can be at least partially overcome by "training." Ned

How do you planned to get GA?

[Sikander]

I have to disagree somewhat about the wealth morale penalty, I find it to be significant. I usually run wealth in my University games for most of the first century, after which I go Knowledge and start building a military force which is more than defensive. Units built under the Wealth SE never seem to get really good morale, while building under Demo / Green (or planned) / Knowledge (Vanilla Trained Units, then Upgrade) in bases with bioenhancement and the appropriate unit specific training facility all start the game as Elites. With a decent income, these units can roll off the assembly line in one (infantry, needles and copters) or two (interceptors and cruisers) turns, and be upgraded the next with clean reactors. This provides a chance for almost unlimited conquest.

My favorite way to make money during wartime (or anytime) is to use specialists with demo / green (or even planned if still booming) / knowledge in bases with all of the trimmings through fusion labs. Each base produces something like 100 econ under this scheme, even though I set labs to 100%. My 'war' tech is Fusion, which gives me Fusion labs, x2 hit points, and Engineers.

I realize that this is a mid-game phenomenon, and you may be stuck in a situation which forces you to war at a less than optimum economic situation. I have used the Wealth GA to raise my energy output for short periods of time, but I would rather pursue a specialist strategy for money, and utilize elite units for warfare. Morale upgrades are like weapon / armor / movement upgrades (for elite units), and thus really pay off handsomely.

[Fitz]

quote: Originally posted by Sikander on 03-19-2001 09:27 PM Units built under the Wealth SE never seem to get really good morale

I think this is because the halving of base failities that enhance a units morale (-2 MORALE does this) is permenant. Changing your MORALE SE from -2 to 0 (or +2 in Power) gets rid of the -1 morale penalty, but never gains back the lose of facility upgardes. That means you're loosing 2 morale levels permenantly assuming both a bioenhancement and the other appropriate facility for the unit.

I try to avoid building units in wealth once I have those facilities in place. Build facilities/SPs in Wealth, Units in Knowledge, and go to war in Power.

[Ned]

KnowHow, GA? +3 Police, and 3 police units, plus 20% psych should do the trick!

You get to +3 police with the Ascetic Virtues + Brood Pits.

Sikander, the Wealth morale penalty can be overcome by using Fundy. However, it not required to have all your units "elite" to effectively fight a war. Think about the choice you are making: You are giving up +2 economy and +10% industry for +2 morale.

Guns and butter!

Ned

[Ned]

Sikander, et al., Oh, BTW, if you are Morgan, you can get +2 economy in Knowledge so long as your cities are in GA. This seems to make Morgan the best warmonger of them all. Ned

[Sikander]

Ned,

If I have a choice when to fight, then I do what Fitz suggests, build my economy and infrastructure with Wealth SE (and usually Demo / Planned or Green). When that is finished, and I'm ready to kick some butt, I switch to Knowledge and build Trained Vanilla shell units which I then upgrade to clean. Effectively this puts a unit out of every base every turn or every other turn ad infinitum, and I can still turn a tidy profit. Even against a much larger AI opponent this tend to break them down very quickly.

I'm not giving up as much as you might think. My specialist bases don't produce all that much raw energy, but plenty of Labs and Econ. A +2 Econ only generates at best +5 or +6 energy per each of my bases. And the +1 industry is nice, but not at all useful when I'm just cranking out Vanilla shells (Infantry costs 10 Min). Think of what it costs to keep a base in a GA. If you use psych, it costs 20% off the top (in your example), which on sea squares is a break even proposition, and on Boreholes is a loser. Since these are the only squares I work (all the rest are crawled), it doesn't make any sense unless I was also GA pop booming.

What I'm gaining is an unstoppable war machine, while running Demo-Green-Knowledge, +2 research, +5 efficiency, and often 100% allocated to labs (could be to econ). All of my units produced are Elites, and I make a nice income from the 10-11 Engineers in each base (9 econ each with Energy Bank, Tree Farm, Fusion Lab and the other forest thing).

I realize that this is a developed mid-game proposition, and that often you have to fight a 'come as you are' war before you are prepared. When that happens I get out of Wealth as soon as I start to build units, for the reasons that Fitz mentions. Unless I start right next to someone, I can usually count on having a decent industrial base. Where I get into trouble is when I neglect military techs and someone like Santiago who has researched nothing but military techs suddenly shows up while I am in the middle of my infrastructure building. If I am behind two generations of weapon or armor and she is large enough, I'm in for a tough fight.

[Ned]

Sikander, It seems that you play an entirely different game than I do. You crawl food and minerals to your bases so that they can convert workers to specialists. What I do is something like this:

I limit my bases to around 23, which in a 180x180 map is just at the first efficiency warning. After I get tree farms and hybrids, I pod boom 1/2 of my bases with the other half until the bases nearest HQ and the coastal bases are all around size 18-21. This permits them to work all the bases squares, save mines, which I continue to crawl. It also permits around five specialists per pod-boomed base.

As the pod boomed base grows, it frees crawler to go to high altitude solar collector farms.

The smaller bases still have a number of crawlers working land not worked by the base workers. These I liberally use for SP's via the upgrade path. I then replace them after the SP is built.

But you can see, with so many workers out there, the +1 energy per worker (and +1 per energy crawler - which are most of them) is significant. Using this approach, I find I can research with the best of them, accumulate cash for new facilities and probe warfare and fight agressive wars - all at the same time. And with Morgan, one can do this in Knowledge (Demo, Green) so that the units can emerge Elite while maintaining a +2 economy!

BTW, If you have allies and pact brothers, the approach I describe above also generates significant commerce income. Commerce income works off the total energy generated by a base.

[Sikander]

Ned,

Yea, it sounds like two very different styles. I play on huge maps, and most often as the University. I take Centauri Ecology, and then beeline for Inustrial Auto. As the University this happens pretty quickly. My central bases switch over to crawlers, and then recycling tanks, and then back to crawlers. My formers plant forest everywhere they can. By about 2150 or so my 9 bases are planted, and the three central ones have recycling tanks, rec commons and are producing 16 mineral (via crawler mostly) or very close to that. I run Planned / Wealth here. Now it is SP time. While my exterior bases are playing catch up, my central bases are cranking out crawlers to build the HGP. Then I switch to FM (I switch to Demo when my last base is producing 5 mins or so). I keep building SPs, the Weather Paradigm is next, then the VW. Once my formers have finished the forestation they build condensor / farms for my pop boom.

I experimented today with a GA pop boom (Demo / FM / Wealth), and it worked pretty well. I usually pop boom in Planned, but this allowed me to remain in FM though it had to wait a bit longer to pull it off. I raked in large amounts of energy, and kept my science at a fairly good rate. Once a base reached 14, I switched the Doctors over to Librarians. In a more normal game I space a little less (2-3 instead of 3-4) and go over to specialists much sooner (no need to work 7 squares for GA). Before Fusion specialists aren't that much more effective than workers as far as energy production, so I'm not losing anything. When I pop boom in Planned, the inefficiency tends to eat a good deal more into my energy production, so specialists are more valuable.

By the time the last of my 9 bases reached size 14, I was making a tech every 3 turns (2200) and pulling in a decent amount of energy credits. Then I switched over to Demo / Green / Knowledge for my next round of base expansion, and went to bed. I have all of the SP except for the Maritime one (Lal beat me by buying it while I wasn't paying enough attention). I'm governor, and way ahead of everyone, with treaties with everyone except for Yang (who I haven't bothered to call up). I will get the super-tree-farms (can't remember the name) in one turn, and I have the PEG finished, so my income is about to rise substantially (+100%). I now will start replacing some of the forest with boreholes and condensor farms, and moving workers to shelf squares as my sea formers finish up. This system isn't as space efficient as my normal one, though I suppose I can pod boom a bit to use some of the extra nuts. (I've never pod boomed before, it seems like a bug like the crawler upgrade does.)

I often play the whole game with less than 15 bases, but I think I'll try to play a larger game this time. I did one stupid thing, which was that I forgot to build clean colony pods while I was booming for my next set of bases. Oh well, perhaps I will go back to an earlier save.

[knowhow2]

sikander,

super-tree-forrest = hybrid forrest

and a question: didn't any other factions build any SP s by 2150??? In all my Sing P games never had that happened. Usually the AI starts building SPs around 2120-30. Just wondering.

[Closey]

I've had a SP game where I managed to build all the SP's myself ones. Didn't capture any, and I had them all at the end of the game. All it takes is a tech lead and some fast workers.. (True, it wasn't a Transcend game tho)

[knowhow2]

I didn't say it was impossible, I even done it myself, just that on transcend the AI tend to be very good at the very beginning ( and as we all know the tend to screw it up later ...) so even if they don't build any SP before you do, when they initiate a SP you get worried somewhat and maybe start rushing things that you didn't plan to do. That could be annoying. That's why I always plan my first SP quite early, sometimes even before all the fascilities needed haven't been built yet. I recon that in MP it would be even more important. (the first few SP doesn't cost to much to rush either). A matter of turns could be quite decisive for the game in its entire.



[This message has been edited by knowhow2 (edited March 22, 2001).]

[Closey]

Ah, yeah. Good point.