Morgan Questions and Observations

[Sikander]

Does anyone here know if building an echelon mirror in a (soon to be) base square has any effect? What about a condensor? This seems like it might be worthwhile for those who are planning on using solar collecters / farms if it works.

[big_canuk]

IIRC, you can build a base on either of those, and while they would not affect the base square, they would have their intended effects on the surrounding squares. A echelon/base for interceptor cover of an energy park may be useful, and the idea of a condenser/base in the garland crater may be useful for say a early game WP/Hive.

bc

[freshman]

Sorry for the late reply - I've been camping

Originally by Blake: MORGAN CAN NOT POP-BOOM UNDER SMAC! GA's ARE BROKEN IN SMAC!.

I know a lot of people seem to think this, but at least with my classic version of SMAC version 1.5.2 patch for the Macintosh, I can pop-boom with Morgan with GAs. Tested and verified.
Creche+Democratic+GA+2food surplus = grow beginning of next turn.

The thing I learned about the test I ran is that 1 food surplus isn't sufficient - you need 2 food surplus - which is different than CivII.

Maybe this explains why I had so much less trouble doing OCC with Morgan than everyone else expected me to have; perhaps I'm the only person on this board with a patched version of classic SMAC that allows GAs to work for Morgan.

On another note, I have had difficulties with University in getting a GA at all - I guess the extra drone every 4 people puts a hamper on that which is impossible to break - even at 100% psych! The only way I was able to pop-boom with University was the non-GA technique of Creche/Dem/Planned; which I guess is the preferred way of doing it anyway since it is available to UoP.

[Ned]

Originally posted by freshman
Sorry for the late reply - I've been camping

On another note, I have had difficulties with University in getting a GA at all - I guess the extra drone every 4 people puts a hamper on that which is impossible to break - even at 100% psych! The only way I was able to pop-boom with University was the non-GA technique of Creche/Dem/Planned; which I guess is the preferred way of doing it anyway since it is available to UoP.

I believe that Zak gets an extra drone at size 4. He does not get extra drones at multiples of 4 regardless of the documentation.

Ditto LAL and extra talents.

I believe the reason you may not get into GA with ZAK is that pysch conversion goes first in a series of drone to talent conversions. If you have more drones than citizens, so that you have at least one superdrone, you cannot get a base into GA. Ditto if you have an odd number of citizens and do not have the HGP.

Ned

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ned

I believe that Zak gets an extra drone at size 4. He does not get extra drones at multiples of 4 regardless of the documentation.

Ditto LAL and extra talents.

Ned

This is wrong. Zac does get the extra drone every 4 pop, and Lal gets the extra talent. Tested and verified w/SMAX v.2. I know about both also from long experience. Playing Zac I always have to watch out for those multiples of four, and have to anticipate two drones when the population rolls over. Likewise Lal can really get away with high populations even with minimal drone control, because every fourth guy is not only not a drone, but can nullify a drone for the purposes of avoiding a drone riot.

[yavoon]

I think the Zak thing might come from the very real possibility that unmodified on transcend, all ur workers on drones. so for drone rioting purposes thats the worst case u can have, and adding extra drones does nothing. though I don't think thats true for golden ageing w/ talents. I think u actually have to go through all the builtup b. drones however many there are, to get to start makng talents, neway thats wut i read somewhere.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sikander


This is wrong. Zac does get the extra drone every 4 pop, and Lal gets the extra talent. Tested and verified w/SMAX v.2. I know about both also from long experience. Playing Zac I always have to watch out for those multiples of four, and have to anticipate two drones when the population rolls over. Likewise Lal can really get away with high populations even with minimal drone control, because every fourth guy is not only not a drone, but can nullify a drone for the purposes of avoiding a drone riot.

Sik, I "observed" the above. However, I will now run a test and see for myself.

Ned

[Ned]

OK, Sik, and you may want try this yourself to check my data, I saw that Zak got one extra drone at size 4 and no extra drones thereafter. I increased base size to size 12 before stopping. (Edit base from the SE.)

Lal, did get an extra talent at sizes 5 and 9. At 13 he got an extra content. At 17, that extra content turned into a talent for a total on 4.

Turns out you were mostly right on LAL.

Ned

[freshman]

If everyone is a drone (on transcend, size 5 Zak; before Psyc + facilities) how do you get MORE drones? You can't have MORE drones than citizens, can you? - it seems kind of obvious to me. Perhaps at lower levels of difficulty it would be easier to see Zak getting an extra drone at 5, 2 at 9, 3 at 13, etc... but at Transcend those extra drones just don't happen - do they?

Also, I'm still trying to understand the Psyc allocation thing; it looks like Psyc gets applied to half your drones turning them into talents - any more psyc does nothing to your other drones - facilities have to do the rest - is that right?
What I experience with Zak is this (no HGP; Rec+Holo):
Size_#Drones-before psyc__#Drones-after psyc_GA possible
4___4__________________2tal/2content______yes
5___5__________________2tal/3content______no
6___6__________________3tal/3content______yes
7___7__________________3tal/4content______no

[T-hawk]

Originally posted by freshman
If everyone is a drone (on transcend, size 5 Zak; before Psyc + facilities) how do you get MORE drones?

Ah, the famous "double-drones", which also exist in Civ 2 as "Outraged" citizens. If you look real closely at the Psych readout in a large base in a faction way over the bureaucracy limit, you'll see that some of the drones look different, as a male-looking face rather than the standard female drone. These are "double-drones".

One shot (2 units) of Psych turns one into a normal Drone, and subsequent shots of Psych turn it into a content Worker and then a Talent. Facilities and Police turn a double-drone into a Worker, but SPs (Human Genome and Longevity Vaccine) only turn a double-drone into a normal drone.

Double-drones count as normal drones for purposes of drone riots. This is UNLIKE in Civ 2, where they count twice. Also, Civ 2 (2.42, not sure about MGE) has a bug where a double-unhappy turns into a happy with only one shot of Luxuries (instead of the three that it should take, as it does in Alpha.)

Also, I'm still trying to understand the Psyc allocation thing; it looks like Psyc gets applied to half your drones turning them into talents - any more psyc does nothing to your other drones - facilities have to do the rest - is that right?

Actually, the limit is that a base cannot make use of more Psych shots than its size. A base of size 10 can never make use of more than 20 units of psych (after all modifiers) -- the extra is just wasted.

And yes, it's a known mechanism that a base of odd size, with all drones to begin with, cannot reach Golden Age without Human Genome Project or a Paradise Garden.