Planned - Socialism has no future on Chiron?

[EtheMind]

From ideological perspective. Planned and Thought Control are only two social choices not supported by any SMAC or SMACX factions. Aliens distant appeal into human factions operating with Planned is hardly worth mentioning.

Have you ever heard these words?

"Your society's willingness to share its prosperity equally among even
its lowliest members sets an example we should all follow, I commend you."

I haven't. But there they are.


From practical perspective. +2 Growth is a very nice bonus and +1 Industry adds to the consept of fundamental production. Giving a nice overall boost to Planned economies.

But the -2 Efficiency is rampant! Especially because most rewards Planned holds for nations with expansive strategy, both colonizing and conquering. Growth bonus is much more important for small, less developed cities which tend to be abundant in such empires. Having non-scientifical/economical perspective one has to expand to overcome the more developed and build-centered factions and in such strategy the Planned can't sustain itself because of bureaucratic inefficiency associated in such regime.


This leaves little room for practical application of Planned.

I believe Planned is only useful when rushing for Population Boom and you must really need it in order to sacrifise that much efficiency. And what are you going to do with that disordered population growing rapidly every turn?

Also, the Planned might get useful when you reach Cybernetic and get that +2 extra efficiency, it's enough efficiency to run Planned without suffering intolerable loss of energy. But when you reach Cybernetic why not to take Free Market? You get -3 Police anyway and +2 Planet compensates some of Free Market's penalty and rewards are far more considerable. And what about Green? Get a +4 Planet bonus and say no to conventional warfare.


So I'm asking you for opinion. I've tried tweaking Planned by adding +1 Mineral and/or turning -2 penalty into Economy(-1 energy per base). But this doesn't work well with Hive

...interesting note: In Civ2 Communism, closest equivalent to Planned eliminated corruption and waste all together.

[Tenchusatsu]

Yang because of his immunity to inefficiency can run Planned without consequence.

Also specialists aren't affected by efficiency, so anyone pursuing a heavy specialist strategy might find Planned useful, especially due to its industrial and growth bonuses.

[Black Sunrise]

Or you could just use the growth and industry to make probe teams, and steal your tech advances. I'm playing a Domai game, and when I went to planned I was very very impressed at how easy it became to put together a large empire quickly, and grab a bunch of projects. And with enough probe teams, you never have to research again!

Indra

[Ned]

Actually, efficiency is important for two reasons - losses due to distance from home base and an increased b-drones. So, if you keep your empire just at the first b-warning (which increases as you increase efficiency with Demo, Knowledge or Cybernetic), Planned really has no downside. So it makes sense to run Planned as your preferred SE choice, especially in combination with Demo, to grow those bases rapidly.

If, however, you practice ICS, efficiency concerns will become paramount making it impractical to run Planned except for short periods of time.

Ned

[warmachine]

More population means more production and energy, hence growth is important. What will I do with so many, inefficient people? Maintain a larger army and build more units faster when attacked. Build Energy Banks, Network Node and Secret Projects faster. Get more votes in the Council. It may be also be a pain to deal with the multiplying drones but that's why I play the PKs.

The -2 efficiency of Planned is a pain but this is offset by Democracy and Children's Creche to an overall +2. The energy loss between +4 and +2 efficiency isn't that great. Plan your social engineering and infrastructure properly and Planned is useful. Better still, this forms the population boom you mention.

[EtheMind]

Yang because of his immunity to inefficiency can run Planned without consequence.

As one of the topic of the day between your friends is of course...SMAC. Having talked to a friend of mine, a frantic SMACer, as all of us here. He confirmed my doubts about playing Yang with Planned-PoliceState combination.

First of all Yang gets no inefficiency, nice. But what about the efficiency, it's zero, and that's really bad with big empires and even with smaller ones. And both growth and industry, PoliceState and Planned support huge empires strategy and Yang's Perimeter defenses make it even more easy. But the poor efficiency and especially the b-drones associated with such regime, not to even mention both economy and technology unfriendly -2 Economy, which makes a real difference in the beginning and when playing huge empires with relatively small cities due to poor technology and constant expansion

Summary: b-drones are Pain beyond expression and PoliceState can only do that much good, -2 Economy and inefficiency of large empire are rampant for economy/technology.


Playing in a SMACX game with AI Domai included I can agree with Black Sunrise. Domai and Planned make good friends, but harden the -2 Research penalty...probing has it's downsides, nothing to compare the upsides though

...Planned really has no downside.

The Efficiency, right? Even without b-drones limit it affects each and ever city unincluding capital

ICS....yeah , enlighten me master

Democracy and Children's Creche to an overall +2. The energy loss between +4 and +2 efficiency isn't that great

After updates, Children's Creche gives you +1 Efficiency and with the voice of experience...it isn't very much, actually the effect is pathetic.


In any case, Ned and warmachine gave some hope to Planned economics, good points. Still...I feel somewhat insecured about the sustainability of Planned in comparison to Green and Free Market...

[WhiteElephants]

I would think Planned is probably one of the most widely used SE choices simply because most factions require it to pop boom and it's typically easier to change to Demo/Planned than orchestrate a golden age. It's downside, - 2 efficeincy, is also easily countered by running its natural partner Demo, wheras if your running Wealth you pretty much have to live with the -2 Morale unless your willing to run Fundamentalism to reduce that to only -1 Morale (probably worth it if your building units). Another example of this would be if you were running Power you'd have to run Planned to lower your -2 industry to -1. Throw in the inherint faction modifiers and I could go on for days about the different modifications, but I'm sure you get my point-- Planned and Demo are two peas in a pod, while Planned ran alone or Demo ran alone just don't seem to be worth it.

[warmachine]

Planned economics can also be regarded as a means to an end. The problem with large populations and high productivity is eco-damage. High growth then becomes a liability and it's necessary to go Green. I consider Planned as the means to nurture your empire during its infancy and Green as maturation. After all. Marx and Lenin understood the need for industrialisation but never knew it might have an environmental impact.

[EtheMind]

Marx and Lenin understood the need for industrialisation but never knew it might have an environmental impact.

And I'm sure they never thought mindworms would come popping in masses to kick down the socialism on Chiron Mindworms are the enemy of the people as much as the evil, greedy, unjust working man oppressive capitalist pigs

I guess I simply like to raise a question about Planned, because I'm an obsessed neurotic control freek who fears the flow of free capita and mindworm praising eco-terrorist, too much CTP2 for me

Anyway. I really appreciate the participation of one of the finest minds on forums After all this, I'm starting to think Planned might actually work for the new world....certainly didn't for the old one. Keep on posting those arguments.

[Ned]

EtheMind, From reading your reply, I see you really understand the central problem with 0 efficiency: b-drones. However, If you stay just below the "second" b-warning, b-drones are no real problem for Yang due to his high police rating running running Police Atate. At +2 police, he could have three police units quelling 6 drones. If he has no super-drones, which would be caused by going above the second b-warning on Transcend, Yang should be able to GA all his bases to size 12 (+1 Yang, +2 Planned, +2 Creche, +2 GA) without adding a signal rec commons, holo or research hospital! All he would have to do would be to set pysch to get 24 pysch per base. (The 24 pysch convert 6 drones to talents. The police units convert the remaining six drones to contents.) However, realistically, to get that much pysch, Yang still may have to build some psych-enhancing facilities first, such as tree farms and hybrid forests.

Since the only way Yang can pop boom is through the use of GA, Yang MUST stay below the second b-warning, or get the HGP.

Even though Green's +2 efficiency would ordinarily allow 50% more bases before the second b-warning level, Yang, I believe stays at 0 efficiency when running Police State.

Also, Green is not normally a setting Yang can stay in permanently due to its growth penalty.

From an economics point of view, the only way Yang can get to that fabled +2 econ is to GA will running FM (Eudaimonia is way too late) and Wealth. Yang would be able to GA only if he held his base number to below the second b-warning so as to avoid super-drones. Also, due to a lack of police, the practical limit for a GA pop boom is base size 8 because one has to quell 50% of drones using only facilities. It appears that the combo of a Rec. Commons, Holo, and Research Hospital quells only 4 drones when the first four are content or talents. (The Rec. Commons effect reduces from 2 to 1.)

This is why I suggested that ICS is not advisable for Yang. I take ICS to mean that one builds large numbers of bases and simply ignore b-warnings. With Yang, this can only mean no GA, which to Yang means no Pop Boom.

Ned

[EtheMind]

I can tell you that I truly understand the b-drone problem. If there's something in SMACX I really do understand it's probably this. Yang has some sufficient means to sustain control in the early game. But the -2 Economy and not so economy friendly overall strategy of Yang makes it pretty hard to support facilities, even when closing mid-game.

I haven't even dreamed of having Hive with GA's before the late game and some major concentration into build strategies. I doubt if Free Market is way to go with Yang until very late game. Hive has relatively small amounts of economic resources to pour into those expensive high tech facilities, which are also pain to research at Hive, and not any easier to steal since he gets no probe bonuses...I'd still go for tech probing. The inherent penalty makes running FreeMarket very expensive and it seems to me it's better to go guns blazing against the wealthy ones. And take by force what you can't achieve in any other means.

I could agree with you reasoning to limit the number of bases for the sake of b-drone threat, not to even mention the inefficiency.
But I find it very interesting you are suggesting more constructive overall strategy for Hive and developing sophisticated theories to state your arguments. Is it any good to try and achieve all that peacefully when playing dictatorian faction?

[Ned]

Agreed, Yang is "poor." His strength is in Police. I have argued before here that Yang's best early tech is Intellectual Integrity so that he can use police to quell drones rather than expensive holo's and research hospitals.

However, Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests are absolutely required of all factions for other reasons. You might want to read my post on Eco-damage formula revised to find out why.

Ned

[Earwicker]

Even for non-Yang factions, Planned has its place in the scheme of things. On a tech beeline for IndAuto, Planned is a very early SE option. The switch won't be painful as the inefficiency will not be an issue with so few bases at that stage of the game. Early on, food surpluses are few and minerals are scarce: both growth and industry bonuses make a tremendous difference. Helps build those next CP's more quickly and get up to 8-10 bases. By that point, Demo should be available, too.

FM is also available early, but I find it hard to use pre-HGP/ VW (or at least building some rec commons), and the payoff is best after lifting of restrictions. So planned is a good "getting off the ground" SE choice for anyone.

[WhiteElephants]

Not that I'm a big Yang lover, but I DO see his strength in the ICS scheme of things. I think what may or may not be over looked is that he can run Police State/Planned/Wealth for a +3 industry. Not to mention the +3 Growth! I think the real threat of Yang is that he's capable of taking these SE choices and churning out crawlers cheap to pump up his production even further. At some point he can switch out of Wealth and start building a massive army simply because he has so many base that support so many free units. Granted he's going to have to build each one as opposed to building the shell and upgrading it, but still. A +3 industry rating also shaves quite a few turns off projects, especially the early projects, provided that he can get the tech to build them.

[EtheMind]

However, Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests are absolutely required of all factions for other reasons.

I'd say these two facilities give the most important boost for your empire, especially if you choose all Forest terraforming strategy which has its benefits. I'll look for that eco-damage thread, but I know TreeFarms+HybridForests are suppose to minimize the eco-damage.

I agree Earwicker with your opinions and with all others who brought up those same reasons. Planned is definitely at its best in the early game combined with Democracy to give you that boost in Growth. After all, these fundamental areas of production, growth and industry determine much more than you'd think. A wise leader can harness the advantages when playing Hive, or Free Drones. I've played Yang to late game and in the end the science/economy starts to kick in if you invest wisely. I succeeded to get past Consciousness at tech in the mid-game when playing Hive...well, in fact I was in war with him

Nice thing when playing Yang is that CN project is a sure thing unless you really mess things up. Actually you can almost add that +2 Land Morale into Social settings whenever you choose to play him. And as said, Yang has easier time with projects. But on the opposite, more wealthy nations can always rush build projects and have much more chance to come up with the tech sooner than poor Yang