Most important Social Engineering area

[Clear Skies]

What's the most important area of social engineering for you? Do you prefer a hefty Research bonus, or is keeping on good terms with Planet more important? Are you one of those people who just goes all-out for all the Energy you can get, or do you want your population Growth to be as high as possible?

[The Mad Monk]

As a consistent builder of large, far-flung factions (I'm an ICS perfectionist, I just can't help myself--), efficiency is, by far, the most important attribute to me.

[Tai Mai Shu]

Excuse my ignorance, but what does ICS mean?

[Deimos]

ICS = Infinite City Sprawl. That's packing your available territory with bases as close together as you can, normally 2 or 3 squares between each base.

As for the poll, gotta love efficiency for keeping your world spanning empire happy!

[Marid Audran]

Infinite City Sprawl, a strategy of players continually expanding across every patch of land on the map, often with cities placed close together and with little infastructure.

[Drago Sinio]

Morale is most important to me, because I feel none of the other considerations are particularly important compared to controlling the planet with military power. I dont think it matters much how efficient you are, or how many techs you research or facilities you build, if you cant defend them.

Once you eliminate the military threats from the other factions, then I would say efficiency is second most important, since it strengthens everything else by maximizing your economy planetwide.

ICS stands for "Infinite City Sleaze", and involves building as many small bases as possible, very close together, until you cover as much area as you can with them. This gives you very many production centers, and the small population per base reduces or even eliminates drone riots. A very powerful strategy, although in SMAC I suppose it should be called "IBS", for infininte base sleaze. It is sometimes also known as "Borg Style".

[Method]

not economy i can do yang and be rich w/ out running FM. not probe or growth can both be eliminated by SP's. police is helpful early on but nessesary for higher pop like after i build the vats. support i like but can do with out morale can be fixed w/ children's creche. industry is never really an issue but i guess it's nice. that leaves efficiency research planet. efficiency is important for more money(unless your yang). research is very important to stay ahead of everyone (the AI doesn't even bother to attack my AAA trance probability defenders with the added bonus of tachyon fields everywhere) and planet is a must to keep mother nature and worms and what-not out of your face.

now after ascentic virtues and police state, i don't need efficiency to keep riots away.

without good research you won't even get to eudaimonia or cybernetic

and without a good planet thing you'll need a fleet of formers and trance empaths to keep away the worms and fungus.

and now after that careful disection of all the things i'm going to go with research.


now wasn't that boring and unnessesarily long?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I am a bit confused here. If this inthe context of what SE choices I make in order to maximize a given SE factor its one thing if this a poll as to what would make the strongest custom faction it another. Seems to me I remeber a little mental exercixse done on these forums a ways back where a killer faction was turned in the a plus 2 growth and a free childrens creche, and free tech planetary networks to allow this faction to pop boom from the start.

Hey with that type of growth who needs economy or efficiecny you can specialize your way to all the labs or credits you'll ever need.

[b&i_c]

Efficiency just rules totally, I mean even if you don't have far flung empires, you still aren't going to have them all in a one square apart format. At a certain point I actually get more money/research when I use green than Free Market, so I have to say efficiency all the way.

[Jokka das Trevas]

I think it is support.

You can't outexpand nor conquest anyone if you don't get free minerais per base and if all your units eat up 1 mineral each.

I particularly like Yang's because he's prone to get +4 support easily, then I'm unstoppable! Mwahahauhauahua

On second place, I'd place industry.

(I edited to disable mail notification. Alas, why it is coming by default? :P)

[Marid Audran]

I forgot to vote last time I was here. Anyway, I'm joining the chorus of "Efficiency" voices since it really is the most important aspect of your empire overall. Even with a baseline 0 Efficiency rating you may find half or more of your energy siphoned off as inefficiency at the frontiers of your empire. And if it's negative, forget it; you can kiss notions of money and research goodbye, not to mention drone control via psych allocation and drone control period. You can get by without a strong economy (as if Society Affect), or with poor industry, or even poor tech rates, but you gotta have efficiency.

Currently I'm playing as the Pirates and this is especially crucial, because of their inherient inefficiency penalty and propensity for lazy, sprawling empires over land and sea. It adds up to a lot of potential energy loss. With them I'm drawn almost exclusively to Demo/Green to tame this problem.

Soft spot in my heart for probe rating though. If Zak's next door or a Builder faction running Knowledge, embrace the good Lord (Fundy) for a few turns and probe your way to prosperity!

[b&i_c]

Well the support problem just disappears once you get clean reactors, and I'd say that INDUSTRY is way more important than SUPPORT, because INDUSTRY is essentially SUPPORT, but with an added bonus.
Take this example:
You are building something that cost 100 minerals.
Your city produces 11 minerals.
You have support such that you are losing one mineral/turn to support.
You have +1 INDUSTRY (-10% Costs)

So now, you have to build 90 minerals with 10 minerals/turn, or 9 turns.

W/O any INDUSTRY or SUPPORT problems, you would have to do 100 at 11 minerals/turn, so it would take you slightly longer to build stuff.

So having INDUSTRY is better than SUPPORT because you can also get less cost when you don't have support problems.

[Jokka das Trevas]

Yes, but if I use clean reactor units I can't combine especials =)

Sure Eff will get you broke if it falls negative, but pray tell: industry will do it too, and support, and police, and economy, and research, and planet... and note: a high police rating isn't a SE dream for most people, but it still hurts bad on negative.

Almost every trait is damn bad when on negative, but I think the question was referring "What SE choice you choose to raise by any means?"

Still going by my way of thinking (IMHO), children creche gives your base +2 efficiency and +2 growth - but WHAT building raises your production rate, or your support rate? Non-genejack factories will come much later in the game, you know... And clean reactors are a little more expensive and, as I said, doesn't let you combine abilities...

To illustrate my opinion (but surely is only MY opinion ), I feel great going pirate's with the -1 effic and all, but HATE morgans with that crappy -1 support...

Doesn't impress anyone, then, why I love playing the Hive with their +2 support early game (immunity to effic gives police state for free), and any "financial deficits" are solved with the planetary energy grid...

I guess money doesn't buy everything hehehe

[bondetamp]

Originally posted by Jokka das Trevas
I guess money doesn't buy everything hehehe

I find that it usually buys off Yang's armies just fine.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Deimos
ICS = Infinite City Sprawl. That's packing your available territory with bases as close together as you can, normally 2 or 3 squares between each base.

Further explanation: ICS takes advantage of the fact that:

- 1 city of (for example) 8 pop-points produce 9 tile-outputs, while...
- 8 cities of 1 pop-point each produces 16 tile-outputs.

This is built-in flaw, but it can be counteracted effectively by adding smart anti-ICS measures, as they plan to do in Civ-3.

Ultimately, its also a very boring, unchallenging and empire-ugly way to play the game, by the way. ICS have a very inflationary impact on gameplay, and it have destroyed many MP-games. I have a hard time understanding why some people thinks its so fun to use this repetitious one-dimensional tactic. Beats me.