the Hive and forest

[SPasmofiT]

I don't want to restart that old flame again, but I was surpised today, when I replaced, for the first time, my ALL-FORMERS-ON-AUTO policy for a ALL-FORESTS tactics...

Pretty unimpressive!
The most productive squares were those with nutrient bonus... Other wise, this didn't quite worked out.

The point is that I suspect it's a "Hive thing", maybe related to the insane growth of the Hive, which I normally experience (but not in this game).

Any ideas? Am I doing it wrong? ;-)

[Flubber]

Auto-terraforming SUCKS IMHO !!

I view the terraforming of my little empire as being a key element of the gameplay so I plan it carefully. I do build forests a lot but not for every base. I may have a base that I plan to use specialists only with crawled resources and for that, forests are a waste. If you plan ahead, you will find that forests do play a big part but so will boreholes, condensers, farms and mines. Terraforming is situational and I find my strategy amd method varies a lot depending on my plan for the particular base.

[knowhow2]

AUTO sucks!

period.

[Blake]

well... on a rainy world the tiles are quite productive in themselves, you can win with pretty bad terraforming. Try the same on an arid world and about 50% of the terrain will end up unusable (montrosities like farm+solar on arid,flat,<999).

I use the rule "one +2 nut tile per base", "Everything else forest".
Later in the game I add a sprinkling of condensors and boreholes, but if you so desire you can go crazy with condensors and crawlers.

[Cybergod]

Yes, MANUAL of course!

PS: spam, spam, spam
PSS: I generally do not pursue an all-forest strategy althought I find it a most valuable terraform early in the game. But putting the former on auto makes me feel extremelly not in control (call me a control freak ). I mean, seeing the former wonder endlessly around and around and around the same patch of mag tubes...

[Admiral]

Auto is an evil tool designed by Firaxis to make the game more equal for the AI. 50% of the time, formers on auto move between two squares continously. Ahhhhh! The tiles they do terraform are idiotic, too. Mines on nutrient bonuses, farms on arid soil, etc.
I usually play with a lot of forests, but that may be because I am lazy.

[Juggernaut]

Manual terra is so boring, it would kill the game without an autofunction.

[Avenoct]

I'll play your killed game then.

[knowhow2]

If you let your formers run on auto you can kiss your *** goodbye in MPs. While your stupid former is making a farm and mine for like 12 turns(!) your competetor have already made 3 forrest! (or just two depending on roads). That's called TURN ADVANTAGES.

[Blake]

Originally posted by uncle_funk
Manual terra is so boring, it would kill the game without an autofunction.

Sacrilige! Terraforming IS the game! I would burn you alive, except forests are sacred. Therfore I shall just change my Avatar again.
(There is a lot of unstable energy left after the spamming and transition to 500 posts, each time my Avatar changes some energy evaporates, soon it should stabilise....)

[Tizzy]

I used to automate all my formers, when I first started playing, and had other things to concern myself with.
Now I've been playing for a while, I only automate sea formers.
Automated sea formers (auto improve home base) can't really go wrong, but land formers create all sort of weird terraformed combos! prefer to guide them myself, and usually build about 90% forest.

On that note - I automated a sea former the other day, and all it did was build sensors. Now I haven't played for a while, before this week, but I don't remember seeing a sensor in the sea before?

[Frankychan]

Manual vs Auto Terraformin'

Manual all tha way, Man!

One time I was lazy and put all my formers on auto-drive...next thing I know, every available space was covered in roads! I had enemy units using all those extra roads to just walk right to my bases...I learned a very valuable lesson.....the Former drivers are dumb, Only a directive from Homebase will get them straightened out.

[Sikander]

There seems to be a general agreement that the auto-formers are too stupid to be of much use. If terraforming overwhelms you, then it's time to simplify your forming with a set of rules. Almost all forest is a simple (though partial solution). I make my terraforming decisions rapidly because I know exactly what the square in question should get. I group my formers into gangs to get those squares up and producing quickly. I send a few formers ahead to build roads so that the larger groups of formers don't waste any time leaping off of the road and ending their turn.

Developing a set of terraforming rules usually takes some thought. Influencing your decisions will be your base spacing (or how many tiles each of your bases will have available to work), how quickly your tech is expected to advance, whether you want to build specialist type bases (and what percentage of specialists), whether you want to build energy, nutrient and mineral parks to boost base production etc. It's a complex game, and in many cases you are terraforming for only a portion of the game, and will have to re-terraform areas in order to take advantage of changes in technology.

[Earwicker]

The only time I'll trust auto is putting the occasional seaformer to "auto-improve home base" just to relieve the endless former micromanagement. I always have armies of the things running around changing my world. Whether there are a lot of forests depends upon how rainy and fungus-y the world, along with base spacing. The growth of forests helps clear fungus from new areas for development but is a nuisance when it grows over a rolling rainy square and people go hungry.

[Method]

the "rules" i use are:
rocky:mine and crawl
arid or moist/rolling or flat: forest
rainy-farm/solar
lots of farm/solars around each other: mirrors
sensors on forest
borehole coastal.

energy bonus-borehole
nut bonus-if moist forest if rainy condensor/farm 8+ nuts IIRC
min bonus-borehole or mine.

with sea bases, far from land, you need to somehow get a crawler to the mainland and crawl about 50 mines. if the sea base is in a sort of bay or something and has a lot of land squares then you can mostly do harnesses and bore/mine the land. you never have to worry about not enough nut/energy at sea especially with aquafarms and transducers.