pop boom in smac

[Rubin]

Major Guz, to the best of my knowledge the #SOCECONOMY values in SMACX do not correspond to the actual ECONOMY effects in the game. To this, Chaos Theory's observations seem indeed correct.

This thread also addresses the ECONOMY settings issue.

[Major Guz]

Indeed, seeing the other thread backed by observations, I must say that I was in error. My apologies.
Another fine example of actual game differences and alpha.txt entries.

Thanks for pointing it out.
Now I see why going to +3 econ can be better. I never did it because the +1 commerce (which I thought to be the only improvement over +2 econ) was not worth the SE shift.
With Morgan I mostly only use wealth to be able to rake in +1 energy/sq without the extra drones.

Thanks guys, and may I add a merry christmas and a happy newyear to all of you!

Guz

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
The stated benefits of econ are incorrect. The actual benefits, based on my observation, are:

+3 Econ: +1 energy/sq, +1 commerce, +2 energy/base
+4 Econ: +1 energy/sq, +2 commerce, +4 energy/base
+5 Econ: +1 energy/sq, +3 commerce, +4 energy/base

This actually reinforces my point further. This means the only difference between a 4 and a 5 Econ is a little commerce. And most if not all of that would be eaten by psych.

[binTravkin]

well.. +1 commerce can mean very much if you have 2 submissive pactmates with the same basecount.
Even if they are underdeveloped..

[Kirov]

FM for Morgan works best only if you assign enough cash for psych to trigger GAs Combine it with Demo and Creches and voila! loads of cash and pop boom... I'm loving it!

[monolith94]

Yes, Morgan with police state, green and wealth is my favorite! Simply put, I love having a positive ecology rating. It makes everything so much easier for me - plus this set up usually puts me in yang and dierdre's good graces. Also, can be switched to democracy if I've expanded quite wide.

[Blake]

Firstly I think Morgan should always run Wealth.
I much prefer Fundie with Morgan than Police State. It's pretty simple, with Fundie you can get elite probes very easily and elite military once you have creches in place - exactly the same as if you had 0 morale (ie you need CC+BioC+Monolith/Trained). This elite military is expensive to mind control, both because of the probe bonus and Morganite cash stockpiles. The combination of piles of cash, elite military and elite probes is hard to beat.
The only penalty is -2 research, well guess what - you have cash to buy research from friends, and probes to steal it from enemies. And +2 Econ will more than cover the -2 Research - you wont be researching slower than those with low Econ and 0 Research.
From Fundy, Democracy is a painless switch, unlike with PS where you can become dependent on the police.

Whether to go FM or Green depends on taste, with Green you round out the trinity of military power with bonuses to psi and can use police and get some effic gains - while still having +2 Econ!!! With Free Market you get scads of cash especially with commerce, and the value of this is hard to understate. Green is definitely good if you have no allies because that means lots of fighting and no commerce - it's also good if you missed out on the VW & HGP but maybe got the LLV. But with a pactmate or two "Punishing" Free Market starts to look very attractive, try Fundie/FM/Wealth and build punishment spheres @ military bases and I guarantee you'll be impressed. As an added bonus, you can pretend to be America.

The main factor that favors PS over Fundie is ironically in peace time, early in the game the extra support (and maybe police) is very useful to keep your expansion going while the -2effic hardly hurts (it's like trading 1 or 2 energy for 2 minerals per base...). Demo is ruled out because it kills your support, fundie doesn't help at all if you don't need to fight anyone. But I still only use PS if I happen to get it early, say it's blind research, or Yang is my neighbour and I get it off him. Especially if I want to be pals with Yang.

[dacole]

Only problem with the above senerio is in a multiplayer game attempting to steal research inevitably starts a a war (since you can't do it without the other guy finding out) that you might not be able to deal with depending on your situation.

[Commy]

I heard about that error, where in multiplayer, is someone asks you to get out of their territory, the AI makes the decision for you, which can make you go to war instead of just moving your units. Same thing with probe teams, the AI decides to reprimand with war, not the human player...

By the way, does this error occur on civ, because I played multi with a friend on Napoleonic Europe conquest and the next turn we were all at war, and it wasn't because of mutual protection pacts...