Newbie nerve stapling question

[pqow]

In a recent game, the citizens at my bases all started developing an immunity to nerve stapling. I've never run into this before in any previous games -- I'm playing at transcend level, but I've been doing that for a while.

Before I was pretty much able to nerve staple the bejezus out of them for as long as I wanted. Now they stay immune & the base essentially becomes useless to me.

I don't think I've set any preferences/customization differently. Does anyone know why this is happening seemingly all of a sudden? The only thing I can possibly think of that I've done differently from the past is that I founded more bases than normal this time around.

Thx for the help.

[Maniac]

IIRC, the first time you nerve staple a base, the citizens are 'content' for ten turns. The second time you use nerve stapling in that base it lasts only five turns. The third time two or three turns (never got that far). In any case, the amount of turns stapling lasts is supposed to halve every time. So stapling isn't really a good long-term strategy. I only used it extensively in one game when I had a massive vulcano eruption giving me -1 energy on each square for ten years. Psych became insufficient to please my citizens...

[Maniac]

Since you are a newbie:
Are you perhaps at -1 Police or below? Then you wouldn't be allowed to use nerve stapling.

[pqow]

Don't know about the -1 Police. I can check that.

The thing about progressively less efficient nerve stapling makes sense, but I just don't know why I haven't run into it before. Like I say, up until now the games allowed me to do it ad nauseum. Don't know why immunity kicked in now.

Mystery.

[Mongoose]

I think they (Firaxis) adjusted the nerve stapling effectiveness in one of the patches. Perhaps your prior experience was with an earlier version?


Edit. This from the readme, comes from the SMAC V2.0 patch.

* Atrocities have been rebalanced to avoid abuse:
(a) 12+ atrocities (depends on difficulty level) will cause all factions to declare vendetta

(b) Nerve stapling becomes increasingly ineffective at particular bases the
more you use it.

[pqow]

Damn, sir. You are correct. I only just patched it. Should've thought of that....

Do I gain 10 rounds of immunity from reprisals for asking silly questions?

[Mongoose]

Reprisals? Goodness, none of that! Glad to help.

[Sprayber]

Re: Newbie nerve stapling question

Some think nerve stapling newbies is cruel and inhuman be we have to control the newbie revolts somehow.

[aaglo]

A funny thing just accured to me... I've never ever used nerve-stapling in my games...

[Adalbertus]

aaglo, me too. I usually convert rioting citizens to specialists (which is certainly a good thing after you've got empaths or food crawlers), or have otherwise enough food to support librarians. Anyone got the impression that nerve stapling could give you an edge in the game?

[Blake]

Nerve stapling sure can. One dirty trick I like is in the very early game, when I have just got Social Pysch and Ind.Econ (but before getting any rec commons) is to staple all my bases and immediately switch to FM, then complete the commons as the ten years runs out.

A handy little boost

Also if an enemy really pisses you off capture one of their bases and staple it. Then they'll have a reason to be pissed off. (how does this help you? Dunno, but it's sure satisfying )

I can think off a evil strategy which involves researching to AMA then stapling everyone and switching to Freemarket and buying punishment spheres everywhere with the cash. Then switch to fundie and go on the warpath with military and probes and heaps'o'cash from FM. It'd work even better if you timed to complete a pop-boom just before doing the stapling/switch, or prehaps stapled before the pop-boom and complete the PS's at the end of the 10 years, that'd allow all the workers to be out gathering nuts and nothing would slow down the boom.

I doubt this strategies are terribly strong compared to specialists, but they are a bit of fun, and involve barely no micromanagment and a (un)healthly amount of evil laughing :

[Mr. President]

I wait until sunspots to nerve staple. But this tends to happen. Sometimes if I've had a really hard day at school and I get drone riots, I just nerve staple first and ask questions later. So this happens that much faster.

[The Mad Monk]

I have never stapled in any of my games.

[MariOne]

Beware:
Nerve Stapling is one of the atrocities counting towards EcoDamage.

I was only an occasional user of NS.
In a recent H2H (2 humans, Head 2 Head, WITH the other 5 AI factions) SMACv4 game against buster, I was at Vendetta with all the AIs (and with the only humna enemy of course), and I didn't want to bother slowly growing having to wait the the police units and the drone-checking facilities were in place. The game was also in a phase where most of my bases had 3 or 4 citizens, Thinkers or Empaths were not available yet. I was beginning to suffer ICS problems, despite I was the Hive and I was of course running Police, too many of my bases begun to require too much drone attention.

I said to myself: "Hey, I'm not gonna lose any commerce anyway this time (contrary to what I usually experience in my pbems).
Well, after the 1st round of extensive stapling, some bases had only TWO clean minerals.
I said Hey, the pops will help me raise that bar up again.
After the second round of stapling the sealevel begun to rise.
When I attepmted to NS a base for the 3rd time, I got a refusal.
I had to switch to green to be able to reduce the ED effect and easier kill the worms. Then came Locusts when not even SFF had been yet discovered on Planet (thus no D:AP neither...).
I had just conquered the Jungle form Gaian AI, only to see it comnpletely submerged...

I kept the lead in the game anyway, but I think my development has suffered more than it benefited in the end, and I had to resolve to build those RecCommons anyway.
And finally when I decided to temporarily Accept Spartan submission, I realised I had still over 1350 years sanction to endure before I could gain any commerce from them!

[Maniac]

I've also heart that using Nerve Gas (on aliens of course) deletes a clean mineral. Is this true? I don't see the logic behind it actually.