Comparative Transcend Times

[Archaic]

Not necessarily. Morgan might have better economy and commerce, but the pop limits hurt hard later on when you can't create anywhere near as much engineers.

[CEO Aaron]

Archaic: You definitely put your finger on Morgan's REAL weakness. The hab complex limit is pretty tame, most folks don't get very big before Tree Farms anyway, preferring to expand horizontally. But in the gulfs of time before you can obtain Hab Domes, those 3 specialists per base will add up to a whole lot of research. Nevertheless, your higher energy production and improved commerce rating can make up for it.

[Archaic]

Sadly however, those are things I find most human players don't tend to take advantage of, at least not in SP. And in MP, even when it is possible to take advantage, it's so rare that people will agree to a pact thesedays.

[Commy]

It's called sarcasim. I'm not asking for all of you to play Morgan. I don't care who you play, just don't play the Hive, and don't argue about Yang either. I hate the Hive, I hate Yang. I hate fascists. Yang is a fascist. Need I go on?

[Sikander]

I find pod booming to be pretty efficient for both Morgan and Yang at times, which takes care of their difficulty pop-booming as well as any problems with hab limits.

[Enigma_Nova]

No way! Yang for the win, always!

[Archaic]

Originally posted by Sikander
I find pod booming to be pretty efficient for both Morgan and Yang at times, which takes care of their difficulty pop-booming as well as any problems with hab limits.

Wouldn't it be just as simple to GA Boom with Morgan anyway? If you're playing a builder game similar to the way we both have in the past, that shouldn't be a real problem.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Archaic


Wouldn't it be just as simple to GA Boom with Morgan anyway? If you're playing a builder game similar to the way we both have in the past, that shouldn't be a real problem.

True enough, but there are times when I really want a few extra pop in a base (say one that missed part of an earlier boom) or a base that is at full hab capacity but still has extra nutrients, like when you have an extreme surplus of nutrients due to nutrient satellites and are still quite a ways from hab domes.

The source for the pods can be variable as well. Size 2 bases are great sources, even better when they crawl a few minerals and even better when they crawl more than a few minerals and some nuts too. The PTS recurring base works even better, as you can completely forego the crawled nuts and concentrate on minerals. Another fantastic source for colony pods is to build them during a pop boom in bases that have reached their pop limit. You can even save some of these up and then pod boom the same base that built them well beyond the hab limit.

[Archaic]

Oops, that's right, I forgot that you don't perpetual GA boom like I do. You might want to try it sometime. I've often found I have far higher cashflow and research when I go 40/20/40 than I do at 50/0/50, just because of the +1 economy at every base. Honestly, can you just imagine what kind of monster Morgan would be with +5 Econ running Demo/FM/Wealth at 40/20/40, if he had any sort of commerce?

You do have a few nice points on the source of the pods though, but I'd generally prefer to build another base then just add 1 pop to another. I don't ever go past hab limits with the exploit anyway.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Archaic
Oops, that's right, I forgot that you don't perpetual GA boom like I do. You might want to try it sometime. I've often found I have far higher cashflow and research when I go 40/20/40 than I do at 50/0/50, just because of the +1 economy at every base. Honestly, can you just imagine what kind of monster Morgan would be with +5 Econ running Demo/FM/Wealth at 40/20/40, if he had any sort of commerce?

You do have a few nice points on the source of the pods though, but I'd generally prefer to build another base then just add 1 pop to another. I don't ever go past hab limits with the exploit anyway.

I've tried out the perpetual GA pop boom previously (like sometime in 2000), and again recently and it does work very well. I like perpetual pop booms generally, which is one reason why I have tended to go with heavy specialists and crawlers while running Demo / Planned. As I wasn't using much forest later in the game the impact of +2 econ was minimal, as was commerce with my six vendettas.

I tried to emulate your success to some extent recently in the Sikander Build Game, and found that the forest and boreholes forming & a long GA boom was very strong. Once the AIs decided to gang up on me though, I switched back to 50 / 50. With the Vats in place now I'm thinking of going to a more heavy research profile, perhaps Demo / Green / Wealth and GA for the +2 econ, with most of the rest of the allocation for science. One thing I'm noticing is that I have less cash because I have so many fewer engineers, which is kind of tough. At this point in my crawler heavy games I'd put everything into science and rake in the money from engineers.

I can't do that right now basically because of hab limits. I have plenty of nutrients via satellites, so I'm building a lot of rover colony pods and building up one base at a time via pod boom. As I have the CV all my bases that built colony pods are magically back at size 16 every turn. So I'll get my vertical growth even before hab domes, albeit at a cost of keeping a lot of build queues tied up with colony pods and satellites.

I was fooling around with Morgan yesterday in response to CEO Aaron's comments about the best path to glory for Morgan. I got about 90 turns into the game, and things are looking pretty good. I don't think I'll boom for a bit yet (perhaps a decade), but everything is in place except the Hybrid Forests which have just been researched. I'm not an experienced Morganite, but I found taking formers first and then going for FM immediately paid off pretty well. So perhaps I'll see how Morgan looks at +5 econ very soon.

[binTravkin]

Boreholes, BinTravkin. You need to work a borehole or two per base, which will probably also require crawling a condenser/farm to balance out your nutrient input. With wealth, tanks, 4 worked forests and a borehole, your raw energy input is 12 energy, before inefficiency. With a river, energy special, monolith or landmark, you can get even more. That should be more than enough to pay for a couple of cheap facilities. Run your base population up to 7, to avoid expensive hab facilities, and you'll have 2 specialists to devote to either economy or research.

Hey, CEO Aaron, do you know what I was talking about?

I said

Have you ever tried ICSing hive CEO Aaron?

Notice the word "ICS"
With ICS I mean, that I have no more than 3 squares workable for 1 base!

its like

bobo
oooo
bobo
oooo

and so on where "b" = base & "o" = worked square

With such pattern you could further have the result of

bhbh
cccc
bhbh
cccc

where
"c"=condenser + farm
"h" = borehole
"b" = base

That outputs at max 8 energy per base (without commerce)

which means at max 4 energy for economy
How are you going to pay maintenance for a Netnode or Hospital???

In reality a base often gets only 2 energy as economy

Building 1 more base with at least 4 more specialists is MUCH more efficient than trying to put all in less bases

You get brand new 4-12 specialists for a cost of CP, 2 formers & a few facs (rectanks+creche)

and that base is merely affected by efficency (which is 0 for Yang), because:
1.specialists
2.close to HQ (tight placement)

Its THE BEST way to play Yang!

Go and check in "My Current AC Game" thread -> I posted an autosave archive there!

and btw-> with your vertical building variant youre going to have ~ 20-30 bases with some nodes & so on by 2200 which will output in total not more than:
(14 raw labs*1.5node*1.5Hosp )*30 = 945 labs/turn, but I will in 2200 have ~80(!) bases (as I produce CPs all the time) with a total of 14*80 = 1200

Which is better?

I presume I'll have also nutsats by that time & then the output would be ~2-3 times bigger with 11-13 citizens in each base from whom all but one are specialists

[binTravkin]

I'll see how Morgan looks at +5 econ very soon.

Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers

But of you dont run ICS(1x1) with Morgan which is, together with Yang and Zakh, among the best (1x1) ICSers, youre not on the path to glory, because your results will be mediocre compared to those who do!

Morgan is good at 1x1 ICS because of 2 reasons:

1.hablim
(max citizen count what you can get in 1x1 ICSed base is food ouput which is 5*2 (condenser,farm,soilenrich) + 3 (base) = 13*2 (nutsats) which is pretty close to hablim..
If you dont have popboom, which is most likely with morgan, you will have 11 citizens, because of too much time to those extra 2 (and lack of AV)
If you desperatly want to GApopboom-do the boom from 3to7 citizens, then start srawling condensers and use 1 worker on borehole, you'we got 6 specialists!

So practically, you have no penalty for that -3 hablim (it just disappears!)

2.huge energy/basesquare
It often reaches 8+ which repays your hurried CP (40ecs)in not less than 10 turns (A reasonable investment -> rate 10% not counting the borehole & other square incomes)


So..
But If you ask what I do before holes-> I forest-> it gives a good start & then I just re-form the land

[Sikander]

Are you assuming that you'll also have the CV by then in order to pop boom to those populations? Otherwise you won't be able to GA pop boom (not enough workers), and even with Yang's growth bonus and planned you won't get too far very quickly with natural growth as the nut sats will come kind of late for that I imagine.

I usually play Yang at half that density with the same forming pattern. I'll use a GA pop boom to get his numbers up to snuff, else (if I didn't get the HGP) a lot of pod booming, which thankfully Yang is pretty good at. Yang is very well suited to the specialists / condensor - farms & boreholes style. I've never seen him maximally ICSed like you do though.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers

If your bases are in a checkerboard fashion, you can set the 'white' bases to specialists and GAboom the 'black' bases.

Not all members of an ICS have to be identical.

Mind you, I have NFI how you'd boom an ICS as you'd have your bases filled with B-drones, removing most of your boom ability.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by binTravkin


Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers

But of you dont run ICS(1x1) with Morgan which is, together with Yang and Zakh, among the best (1x1) ICSers, youre not on the path to glory, because your results will be mediocre compared to those who do!

Morgan is good at 1x1 ICS because of 2 reasons:

1.hablim
(max citizen count what you can get in 1x1 ICSed base is food ouput which is 5*2 (condenser,farm,soilenrich) + 3 (base) = 13*2 (nutsats) which is pretty close to hablim..
If you dont have popboom, which is most likely with morgan, you will have 11 citizens, because of too much time to those extra 2 (and lack of AV)
If you desperatly want to GApopboom-do the boom from 3to7 citizens, then start srawling condensers and use 1 worker on borehole, you'we got 6 specialists!

So practically, you have no penalty for that -3 hablim (it just disappears!)

2.huge energy/basesquare
It often reaches 8+ which repays your hurried CP (40ecs)in not less than 10 turns (A reasonable investment -> rate 10% not counting the borehole & other square incomes)


So..
But If you ask what I do before holes-> I forest-> it gives a good start & then I just re-form the land

I'm playing Morgan at half that density and all forests. I quite agree that Morgan is the prime candidate for maximal density play, because nothing beats his base square production not only in the early game, but all the way up until satellites. At that point the best producing normal tile is condensor / farm / soil enricher, though this assumes that you have somewhere to put those extra people (ie hab domes if you are otherwise maxed out).

Btw, condensor / farm / soil enricher should produce 6 nutrients if you place them next to one another (2 for rainy + 1 for farm) = 3 * 1.5 for condensor (round down) = 4 * 1.5 for soil enricher (round down) = 6

So your bases should max out at 15 nuts when you add in the base tile, which with satellites will support 15 population.