How many of you are free marketeers?

[binTravkin]

I have to disagree...in the very early game, a free market can easily double your tech rate, and give atleast a 50% boom to economy...

Planned, on the other hand, helps expansion a lot more, but an early tech and economic lead is sometimes more valuable than horizontal growth...

If I'm playing the University, I already have a tech lead with the +2 research and the network node...if I can double my research rate with a free market, I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how big you are when I have chaos guns you don't even have missiles...

Bah, are you Commy blind?

Go read the quote to which I answered with this!
Noone questions the goodness of FM in early game!

I never run the same SE for entire game for the sole reason that it's 200% better to have a city of pop 14 while you've been running planned for the last 15 turns than to have city of pop 3 or 4 whose each citizen gives you 1 more EC!

Planned = popboom.

I couldn't explain it simplier..

[Tommar]

Originally posted by cal_01


But don't forget that FM also has a negative police rating. You won't get far with University and their extra drones plus the lack of police power.

Um, I beat the game consistently (not always, but often enough) with University in Transcend mode (dunno about PvP.) Free Market + Wealth + inherent research bonus + free network nodes = Very fast tech research + lots of cash (to rush build and/or use probe teams.)

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Frankychan
PLANNED



FM is ok (nah, I lied), but all those credits won't help you when the skies above your faction are filled with PB's.

It is if you've spent the credits. You're right that the money sitting in a bank account is of no use. But if the builder type has spent the money, they will have the abilities to block planet busters.

And can make PB's faster than you can, although they don't need to.

[GeoModder]

Or to buy those PB's hovering around.

[Tommar]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Or to buy those PB's hovering around.

Are you talking about using Probes on their base, or something different?

If different, do tell!

[GeoModder]

Nothing to tell thus, for I wouldn't know a way to buy a PB not stationed somewhere.

[Lazerus]

It is if you've spent the credits. You're right that the money sitting in a bank account is of no use. But if the builder type has spent the money, they will have the abilities to block planet busters.

And can make PB's faster than you can, although they don't need to.

You think ? I'd say a large industrial faction could outbuild a pure builder faction purely because ODP's are cheap so they'd quickly get control of the skies by having alot more bases thus making enemy PB's ineffective while his own can fire at will.
The builders only advantage is that in general they will reach the PB/ODP techs first and better make damn sure theyve got total power by then.

[sentry33]

SE choice depends mainly on faction, then on few other things like stage of the game, overall strategy, wars etc

[CEO Aaron]

I'm not so much a free marketeer as THE free marketeer. I love credits. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE credits. With the logarithmic power of recycling tanks and crawlers, a well-run cash-rich faction can outgrow ANY pure industrial faction, casually. Without cash, you can typically grow thin (ICS) or grow deep (OCC), but not both. With cash, you CAN.

Here's the bottom line on FM: Unless you CAN'T run it (Deedee), or don't get real benefit from it (Yang), you MUST run Free Market in peacetime. If you don't, you will be outgrown by a competent opponent. What's a 10% price break on your mineral costs compared to a 100% energy income increase? Not very much, that's what.

Don't get me wrong, having a good industry rating is good. It's just that having good economy is better.

[dacole]

Also the trick to using free market with the university is to research defense stuff early soon after IA and get the Virtual World and the Human genome project if possible. Then it becomes to costly for anyone until planet busters to try and attack you. As long as you have lots and lots of pb blockers you should still be ok even then.

[Zoetrope]

I enjoy playing a variety of factions, and for most my economy broadly changes through the game thus: Simple -> Planned -> Free market -> Green. My reasoning is thus: (1) Very early on, a surprise attack from a single worm can be devastating, and growth and industry are both greatly needed, so Planned is the go; also, there are few sources of energy (on land) at this stage and efficiency isn't a major factor yet. (2) Once i'm more secure and the rudimentary infrastructure is up (outside bases that includes clearing fungus, building farms, mines and solar collectors, and establishing sensors), then significant energy gains are achievable materially and sustainable strategically. Then Free Market is the go, the money rolls in, research accelerates, and probe teams gop on a buying spree. (3) Later, my empire has grown to the point where efficiency is significantly more important than economy to energy income, and I have the Cloning Vats, so I go Green. Of course the contest is well over by this point, but I like to play each game out to an official conclusion.

However, the reported experience of other players leads me to reconsider how soon use my freedom of choice to select FM.

Since I use a modified smacx initialization with ground-to-air (SAM) probe teams, those annoying Hive and Believer jets are soon Owned. FM is of course excellent for this.

In answer to Tommar's question, if a PB is hovering around (because blocked from its target base by a solid wall of units) then the SAM probes own that too.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

haven't bothered to read most of the posts here but a couple of thingd that I'm sure others have touched upon.

1) Depends greatly on factional choice no Hive No gaia typically big yes for buulders

2)depends on time in the game typically for builders early FM is extremely powerful assuming room to build without early momentum rush late game green typically is better

3) depends on version of game being played. Those patches including SMAX that allow GA pop booms obviously allow longer uninterrupted spans of FM with doses of psych to kick the empire into high gear periodically

[cal_01]

Originally posted by Tommar


Um, I beat the game consistently (not always, but often enough) with University in Transcend mode (dunno about PvP.) Free Market + Wealth + inherent research bonus + free network nodes = Very fast tech research + lots of cash (to rush build and/or use probe teams.)

Well, since there's a lot of posts concerning my comments concerning FM, I guess I'll mainly reply to this one, address the points raised by the others, and add a few more points to my arguement. In my analysis, I generally refrained from talking about SPs that the player may get, because that is the fairest way to compare the SE choices.

To start off, I used to be a major FM player when I started AC, but then went on to almost never using it at all once I got more experienced at it because I found the proactive styles of play tend to be more effective at winning games.

My main concern concerning your comments, Tommar, is the evident lack of credits, even with FM (unless you're Morgan), in the early game. The supposed advantage here is, of course, to rush-build facilities to gain turn advantages. However, Planned gives you the +1 minerals bonus (nothing to sneeze at in the early game), which are relatively accessible in this stage of the game through forests and mines (one can also add Recycling Bins to that list too). Furthermore, the FM player in early game doesn't have too much of an advantage in terms of EC compared to the Planned player, which means that the +1 minerals bonus is awesome since it costs less to rush-build. The growth bonus from Planned is great too, since city growth is one of the important advantages to obtain in the early game.

Moreover, the negative police rating from FM makes it hard to build up valuable facilities; you end up spending both EC and turns building Holo Theatres (3 EC upkeep I believe , and it doesn't do anything proactive for your faction) and increasing your Psych meter in order to keep your citizens happy, whereas you can spend that extra 10% (or even 20%) from Psych in your Econ or Labs. (As an added note, I pretty much never build Holo Theatres until I get Hab Complexes, and I never set my Psych meter to anything above 0% until I start hitting size 10 or 12 cities with excessive drones)

In mid-game, FM/Wealth is still less desireable compared to Planned/Wealth (or even Planned/Knowledge for that matter). With P/W, you now get 20% minerals off, complete with an economy bonus. Sure, there's a morale and inefficiency hit, but I typically take the morale hit and build my bases close together (quasi-ICS style) to avoid the inefficiency (IIRC, inefficiency is directly related to base distance from HQ, right?). Sure, you might get extra EC with FM/Wealth and a mineral bonus too, but it's more efficient and faster to rush-build with a medium sized economy with a significant minerals bonus, than to have a large economy with a small minerals bonus.

There's another point to address in mid-game and that's the following: you [/i]will[/i] be fighting wars, and a war is won with minerals, and not EC. That's the reason why Domai completely trumps most other factions (debatable whether or not he actually beats Miriam/Santiago in terms of military might) during wartime; he can produce more troops more often. Rush-building troops at 20% off is signficiantly more advantageous than rush-building at 10% off.

Furthermore, even if it is peace-time, there should be at least some build up of troops. Under FM, it's near impossible to produce the strategic military units needed for an effective war campaign with the Police hit, such as Needlejets, Copters, and the ever-useful Conventional Missile once your opponent starts getting AAA. I mean, sure, you could go the Probe/2-move-unit route since they don't trigger the "military" unit thing, but that's terribly inefficient and possibly dangerous when your opponent can build up strategic units.

One more thing about warfare, and this applies to all stages (early, mid, and late) of the game: a proactive and aggressive campaign can easily outpace a lesser campaign. The FM player will ultimately be less proactive and aggressive than players that have made other SE choices. While it is nevertheless possible for the FM player to play more defensively by using Mind Control and surgical strikes, the momentum ultimately resides with the player that is more proactive and aggressive in his or her approach.

In the late game, whether you're trying to achieve victory by conquest or transcendence, there's two things to consider:

1. You've taken a few (or many) bases, and possibly conquered a few factions. Your territory is huge, and inefficiency is up the roof. You have to ask yourself: do I bother rebuilding the facilities in the cities that I've captured, or do I concentrate on my core cities instead and use the captured ones as proxies/staging grounds?

If you're of the sort that rebuilds those cities, then it's better to go Planned/Wealth or Green/Wealth (or Green/Knowledge, but that's another thing altogether). Although Planned has the additional inefficiency hit, it does have the nice minerals bonus, which is useful in rebuilding since you'd have ECs off the scale by that time. Green/Wealth is pretty good too, since the increased efficiency can allow you to use Psych more efficiently (hah) in your outlying cities (less facilities tend to mean more drones) and you typically aren't too worried about city growth at that time.

If you're of the sort that uses them as proxies/staging grounds, then it doesn't make sense to keep yourself in FM since you're going to want to have some sort of a Police rating to keep the riots down. Furthermore, you can't even staple in FM! (Plus, why are you in FM when fighting a war anyway?)

2. If you're going for the Transcendence win, then you're likely going to be in a tech/SP race with your closest opponent in terms of faction tech/size/etc. At this point, the analysis is a bit tricky since the economies are nearly the same, with only a few hundred or so EC difference and maybe 1 turn tech advantage with FM. Moreover, both civs, either running Planned or FM can probably buy entire SPs in one turn, but FM can probably do it more often since it has more ECs. It seems that FM has the advantage in the late game, right?

Wrong, because it's on the incorrect assumption that the game is during peace-time. Once you're at that stage of the game where you're going for Transcendence against another faction, you should be doing everything you can to destroy that faction -- nerve-gassing, obliterating their cities, making them glow... anything! And, as addressed before, you can't fight wars effectively with FM.

And of course, I didn't mention two other possible victory conditions: Diplomatic and Economic Victories. Diplomatic doesn't really factor this FM/Planned debate since it really depends on how nice (or mean, if you're into submission pacts ) you are to other factions. Economic victories, on the other hand, take too long and are terribly inefficient to obtain. However, if you were planning on an Economic victory, you probably want to switch to Green instead of FM for the efficiency boost.

So in summary (tl,dr for the ones that didn't want to read all this):

1. FM is inherently weaker in all stages of the game compared to other SE choices, even in peace-time.
2. FM is not a proactive SE choice, and will ultimately hurt your game.
3. You can't effective wars with FM.

And to end my post, I guess I'll write about my typical playing style.

No matter which faction I go with (unless Miriam, at which point I'd just build up Scout patrols and "nuke" the nearest factions right then and there ), I almost always end up staying with Planned throughout the entire game, although I sometimes do go Green if there's a blue moon and during peacetime and the growth penalty doesn't really hurt me, while my other SE choices vary depending on the situation. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever really tried Police State many times before. Hmm.

And I agree with the other posters who say that switching SEs is very important. However, I just never switch into FM anymore.

Whew, that was a long post!

PS. Do people actually choose Green when they're playing as Deidre or Cha-Dawn? I find the Planet rating to be excessive, and I tend to get a lot more EC with a little Planet since it's not enough to capture but enough to give you a significant advantage over Mindworms.

[binTravkin]

PS. Do people actually choose Green when they're playing as Deidre or Cha-Dawn? I find the Planet rating to be excessive, and I tend to get a lot more EC with a little Planet since it's not enough to capture but enough to give you a significant advantage over Mindworms.

Deirdre running Fundy-Green-Wealth and 100% Economy is a killer!

Not only she's able to outbuild you, she also has very little b-drones, very much NL and a decent probe rating to use while extracting your techs.

[cal_01]

... NL? Sorry, I'm still new to this forum, so I don't know all the abbreviations.

edit: Speaking of which, I've never ran into a bright red super-drone before.