Hurry production

[BlackCat]

Damn. Several months ago (ok, max 6) someone gave a very sound advise when hurrying production. It was that you should only pay for the mins nessecary for finisihing the current build.

My problem is the following : did the advise only recommend to pay for the missing mins ? If that is the case, I disagree a little. It's fine not to pay more than nessecary, but why not spend a little more energy so ten mins are carried on to the next build ? That should make sense if you have a base building up because you then don't have to pay 'first 10 mins penalty'

Have I missed a point ?

[Ka Plewy]

I would say that this is bad advice, if that was the advice.
I always buy enough to get the 10 minerals, leaves me the option of rush-buying the next turn.

[BlackCat]

Exactly my point. I just rememer the "old" advise as "pay to zero", but i cant find it (the search function here sucks seriously, or said in another way, I'm used to better, but then again, it's my job )

[Commy]

I think I know what you were talking about, I remember reading that thread. Okay, so let's make up some numbers.

For simplicity, say one energy credit pays for one mineral, and you need 50 more minerals. Now, if you hurried right now, at these rates, it would require 50 energy credits. However, doing this pays for all fifty minerals, and pushes the minerals produced that turn towards the next thing. So if your base produced 10 minerals per turn, you could rush forty of the minerals, then the the next turn you would still have production complete.

The advantage to this is only if you are not going to rush build the next production. Personally, I'm to lazy, so I just rush the whole thing...

[Major Guz]

I remember this thread something like this (correct me if i'm wrong).

For facilities:
Penalty for rush buying = 4 ec IF 1st row built = FALSE
If you built the first row, then you pay 2 ec over the remaining minerals.
Example: Recycling Tanks (40 minerals)
if you rush buy from scratch, it would cost 160 (4ec * 40 mins). If the first row was built, you pay 60 (2 ec * 30 remaining mins).

The point was that if you overbuy (paying more ec's than needed to produce the current project), the 10 minerals that are in excess (displayed in red under the item built in base screen) will be carried to the next project, allowing it to rush buy the next project at the "discounted" price of 2 ec per mineral.

Except, I thought something was not right and the excess minerals were not carried over (it just happens with switching projects not when over-buying).

Try this with disbanding a unit (or over buying) so that the minerals row displays 10 minerals excess.
If done in a base that produces 10 minerals, set the next project (queue it) to something of 40 minerals.
See next turn if the production towards this project is 20 (in which case the over production (10) was succesful and 10 minerals of current production are added).
If production = 10 minerals, then the overproduction has failed and just 10 minerals of base production are added.

This is how I remembered this thread, maybe someone can elaborate further on this post or confirm this?

[BlackCat]

Sorry long answer, just got Civ III and have started learning to know that ***** - btw SMAC/X are stiil leading .

I think that Commie get close to what I mean. Say for example you have a base building Hab dome/160 min, producing 57 mins/turn, already spent 30. You can then hurry it for next round spending 146, and that is nice, but if you spend another 20 creds, the first 10 min on next build will be paid instead of that obscene price of 40 creds needed for the first ten mins.

According to that thread I can't find, then the advice was that you should only spend 146. That is good for a single hurry, but with 100+ bases it's worth sparing those 20 creds.

Since I maximise my research, I don't have an extreme income (actually, It's usually ngeative, planet pearls is just a gift to human ), it is interesting for me to maximise energy reserve usage.

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Since I maximise my research, I don't have an extreme income (actually, It's usually ngeative, planet pearls is just a gift to human ), it is interesting for me to maximise energy reserve usage.

Engineers are a great way to boost your research, while also getting huge amounts of ECs. My style changes radically once engineers become available because my gross income easily doubles or triples. Efficiency becomes temporarily less valuable, and the economy rating becomes disposible. Pop booming and further horizontal growth, combined with rushed lab/econ boosting facilities become the quickest path to more power.