Looking for people to try a build pattern

[#endgame]

I've been trying 1 space cityspam lately, seems to work alright.

The setup I use requires 7 workers and works every square in a tessellation (sp?), so crawlers aren't needed, excepting rushing and habcomplexes aren't needed except for specialists or morgan.

E = Mirror + Road
S = Solar
B = Borehole
X = Base + Sensor
C = Condenser + Farm (+ Enricher)

 BE
CXCS
 BE

Noting that SMAC has the iso tiles that are painful to draw in ASCII art.

Morgan could probly get by with 4 workers (2 on boreholes, 2 on mirrors) and crawler the nuts and solar.

Could someone try this out and see if it is any good? (I do alright with this setup, but I want to see if it's lack of skill on my part holding it back.)

I also beeline for restrictions, rather than IA, since I don't really need crawlers that urgently.

Morgan:
cent eco
biogenetics
social psych
industrial eco
ethical calculus
gene splicing - 3+ Nuts
eco eng - 3+ Mins
env eco - 3+ Eng

Zak for some reason has to have a "Null Tech" (i.e. one not on the beeline due to the way research options are handled by the game). Either SotHB and hope for another free tech, or get planetary nets and you have all you need to boom.
Zak 1:
Earlier restriction lifting
cent eco
biogenetics
social psych
ethical calculus
gene splicing 3+ Nuts
eco eng - 3+ Mins
Null tech
ind base
ind eco
env eco

Zak 2:
Earlier Null Tech - Hope to get SotHB
cent eco
biogenetics
ind base
ind eco
social psych
Null
ethical calculus
gene splicing - 3+ Nuts
eco eng - 3+ Mins
env eco - 3+ Eng

For those who actually try this, could you post some stats about how fast you grow, when you get each tech, etc.

Thanks in advance.

#endgame.

Thanks in advance.

[Blake]

While original I have a hunch this wont work well compared to plain forest/borehole or condensor/borehole, mainly because the extreme suckiness of echlon mirrors, but lets see anyway:

I figured out the block of 8 tiles that comprises each base+terraforming:
20 Food
17 Minerals
37 Energy
(I raised the solar panels to 3500, which also raised the echlons to 2000+, more investment in raiseland seems unlikely, also 3 rolling, 2 flat tiles)

Compare to straight forest w/ Hybrid Forest:
18 Food
24 Minerals
32 Energy

Both are running FM.

As suspected the forests produce (significantly) more minerals, a little less energy and food, while costing WAY less terraforming. But ofcourse a treefarm and hybrid forest are required for forests - but these facilities do carry +50% econ, +50% pysch.
With soil enrichers the dynamics change, with +7 more food for the echlons.... good for specialists, requiring more infrastructure development.

Because the solar/echlon doesn't give much more energy than hybrid forest, the commerce argument wont hold much weight. So that leaves specialist income, and that will definitely be better going straight condensor/borehole, even going down to 1 borehole per base, allowing twice as many size7 bases per 8 tiles...

Original anyway, I might try it in a real game, but the analysis suggests that it wont do much better than straight forest/borehole, while requiring heaps more terraforming.

[Blake]

Is this the correct build pattern? With that block of 8 (non-forest) tiles being stacked end-to-end and top-to-bottom, meaning each solar has an echlon on 4 corners.

[#endgame]

This is how I build it

Let me try and draw it as SMAC would see it:

same key as above, but capital letters are the tiles worked.

 C B c
e X E
 B C b
s E S

Well, what could replace the mirrors then?

EDIT: That is the right pattern, I just didn't see it at first

[Blake]

Echlons can be placed under bases. Heres an alternative that exploits that fact that echlons can be built under bases, it brings the energy total up to 42 by working an extra solar instead of an echlon - the solars still have an echlon on each corner. (ofcourse you need to built the echlon BEFORE the base, so your starting bases won't benefit...)

[#endgame]

But is this variant worth giving up the sensors ender each base for?

Also, what is the energy differences in using forest/market/treefarms/hybrids to solar/4 echelon/market

and would it be worth the extra energy?

I'm starting to think that the forest way -> more mins -> more support -> more formers (& easier forming) -> more bases running better.

[Skanky Burns]

Swap the e-mirrors and solar mirror around. Two mirrors and one echelon will give you the same energy bonus, but cost much much less terraforming time.

[#endgame]

The new plan is

 FB
CXCF
 FB

Which gives:
(With FM/Treefarms/Hybrids/Soil Enrichers)
Per forest
2/3/3 * 3 = 6/9/9
Borehole
0/6/7 * 2 = 0/12/14
Condenser
6/0/1 * 2 = 16/0/2

= 18/21/25

and you can start setting up the bases pre ecoeng.

also:
If you don't have the tf/hf/enrichers yet you get
11 nuts from 7 squares + (assume 2 from base) = 13 nuts. Since we are trying to do this without the IA rush, we won't have habcomplexes yet, nor planetary networks (planned) so we won't be booming.

post tf pre enrichers gives 14 nuts from worked squares.
so i'm thinking after picking up IA, TF all cities, boom to size 7 giving 14/18/22 per base.

Also, can all those IA rushers from the previous thread post how long it takes them to rush to eco eng? I'm thinking that if you start the WP early, in a base that won't need the land to be lowered to make boreholes, as soon as you get Eco Eng, gangform boreholes and condensers at the WP base.

The entire point of this plan is to:
a. Rather than adapt to the environment, adapt Planet to you.
b. An attempt to run productive bases without crawlers.

Thanks to Blake and Skanky for helping.

[Blake]

To get the WP, you want to rush rec.tank, rec commons in a base with a nut special in the radius, pod-boom this base to size4 and have it work on the WP as soon as the rec commons are done. It'll be too late by the time the eco.eng arrives.

IMO it's not worth using dense base spacing, instead aim for each base to work 4 boreholes and ~7 forest tiles, don't use strict base spacing either, 2-tile spacing works fine. Before hybrid forests build condensors to cover the borehole food decifict, but theres little point in having them around post-hybrid forest. Each big base will produce 50+ minerals w/genejacks, this is enough to produce entire clean shard infantry, or shard choppers/rovers in 1 turn.

This is where the crawerless strategy excels, extracting as much minerals from the ground as possible and putting them through amplifying facilities. Trying to play crawlerless but with packed bases & condensors is just deliberately hurting your play because it's obviously going to be better to crawl the nuts.

In contrast it is difficult to say where exactly crawlers will significantly improve the forest/borehole/mega mineral strategy (other than for rushing SP's), it's not as if the crawlers will allow more mineral production, and they wont help energy or food production significantly, because all the tiles are balanced. You need to say "well replace the forests with condensors and increase the base density" but by doing that your changing the strategy and reducing it's main strength - concentration of infrastructure allowing rapid production of entire high-tech military units! Thats the cool thing about megaminerals, it's not just playing without crawlers by choice, it's a strategy where crawlers arent even useful.

[#endgame]

What does a Hybrid forest do for forest nut production? I thought it was only the treefarms.

See, I'd never even heard about the megamineral strategy. I'm going to try Blake's idea to get the WP, then switch to librarians and crawl nuts when I get IA.

Who voted "#endgame is a fool"? I did, but who else?

[Sikander]

Crawlers are always useful when you can't work all of the tiles in your base radius due to inability to pop boom or population restrictions. They just aren't as useful on forest as they are on more narrowly focused terraforming.

[Blake]

Thats true if you get crawlers before treefarms, but not nessecarly vice-verca, it's possible you'll be growing faster than you can terraform. Crawlers dont do much crawling fungus or rocky tiles.

[#endgame]

Blake,
You mention getting TF before crawlers. How do you achieve this without you research grinding to a resounding halt?

[Blake]

Using every trick in the book?
Refuse to trade tech, unless it gets you to env.eco faster. If you grab optical computers, non-linear mathematics, secrets of the human brain etc etc from the AI's, then suddenly your techs are taking 20 turns apiece.
If your Morgan or Lal - get Ind.Econ early, and run FM. Problem solved.
If your Dee or Yang - Get Plan.Nets at some point, get a base to size 6 and create 3 libarians, this should keep the techs down below about 8 turns apiece (assuming no rampant trades). It's better if you can trade for plan.nets, inf.nets is okay too, because the netnodes will help.
Rivers can also help if your REALLY starved, drill them everywhere (obviously only for non-freemarketeers)

One of the biggest benefits of using unorthodox beelines is it develops the flexibility nessecary for blind research games.

I played a game as Yang, huge map, 30-50land/flat/standard life/dense rain.
It took me until 2167 to get Eco.Eng, then 2198 to get Env.Eco - but in the meantime I'd also got inf.nets and plan.nets. This was all with 0 AI contact, meaning no tech trades or commerce income. Yang is probably the slowest research faction, I'd think a freemarketeer or Dee would do it about 20-30 turns faster. But anyway in that Yang game I was down to 4 turns per tech, which is pretty good for the yangster, by 2208 I had Planetary Economincs and that vital AV - bear in mind this being SMAC the tech to planetary economics is different to SMAX.

[#endgame]

Yeah, I play SMAX.

Still 4 turns/tech!? with FM/Wealth/Morgan I get ~7! Looks like I have a long way to go.

Let's see:
Random map
Huge
30-50% ocean
strong erosives
rare natives
dense cloud
transcent difficulty
standard rules with directed research.
SMAC factions in SMAX
Morgan

Game start
Both bases start ME
Started with ind econ - switch to FM - 2107 (finished research)
Biogen - Rush tanks - 2110
Social Psych (Cent eco unavailable) - 2116
Cent eco - (forgot to note it) (2122?)
ethical calculus - 2132
Splicing - 2139
EcoEng - (forgot to check again)
EnvEco - 2153

I had no idea that early FM made such a huge difference!
I was getting enveco in late 70s before.