How many of you are free marketeers?

[binTravkin]

I've never ran into a bright red super-drone before.

Means your expansion sucks is weak.

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

Native Life
consists of:
MWs - Mind Worms
SLs - Spore Launchers
IoDs - Isles of Deep
LoCs - Locusts of Chiron
FTs - Fungal Towers
[no abbrev for this] - Sealurks


I was referring to captured Native Life.

[dacole]

I've found that even with a 20% psych allocation I have much more science and energy per turn with FM than with planned even in the first 10 or 20 turns. The early science boost is the most important and I disagree that an early army is nessecary. Build probe units with defense maybe other sinse the only time you trigger the drones is if they leave which they shouldn't be doing, since they will be used for defense only. Now this is if you are a builder player which it doesn't seem like you are, if you are a momentum player then this will not work.

I don't think either a momentum player will always beat a builder player of equal skill depeds on other factors such as map size location. Also I never build holo theaters even if I miss the VW (which hardly ever happens) and the way to go is psych allocation and cities with no more than 4 actual workers (rest scientists usually) I also disagree that you should be nukeing and gassing cities right and left. The money you get from treaties at a late stage of the game can make a significant difference in how quickly you can get things. As well you can always play one faction of against another maybe give background unknown help to one faction to attack the faction you are competing with.

[GeoModder]

Edit on the NL explanation (saw to late BT already did that)

And on the Holo theaters, I share your reluctance, Dacole.

[Minute Mirage]

The trick to using needjets or choppers under FM: an all-specialist city or a punishment sphere.

I tend to switch to FM ASAP, and use Planned for pop booms. I try to be flexible though, and there are situations when I would rather use Planned in the very early game.

[binTravkin]

Wow, Minute Mirage!

This must be celebrated!

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by cal_01
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.

I certainly cannot find fault with your observation that proactive play is stronger than being reactive, however, I don't concede that Market requires that you play reactively. The additional energy offered by market gives you initiative in both technology and production, which, if you know how to manage it, leaves Planned in the dust.

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.

To be frank, I think you're overstating the benefits of the planned economy in the early game, while downplaying the benefits you can reap from Market.

The truth is that while the industry benefits from planned are nice, they're not overwhelming, certainly not overwhelming enough to be clearly better than the extra credits you'll be hauling in from market. And the advantage that credits offer is that their benefits can be funnelled to the projects that will increase your faction's productivity the most quickly, which is what turn advantage is all about. While planned gives a thin discount everywhere, market lets you dump all your surplus credits into rushing recycling tanks, colony pods and formers, the building blocks of a powerhouse faction.

And this completely disregards the scientific benefits you're reaping at the same time. In the early game when you're primarily harvesting forests, market more or less doubles your energy income, which doubles your research rate. Getting to lynchpin techs faster than your opponents can be gigantic, and if one faction is running planned and the other is running market, there's no doubt who's going to tech faster.

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)

Here, you're presenting the WORST possible solutions to Market's weaknesses. First of all, the loss in police rating only creates ONE more drone than you'd already have, so Holo Theaters are clearly overkill for running Market. Psych, too, is wildly inefficient as a stopgap against drones. So how do you cope with drones in FM? Specialists, facilities, SPs and transportation. If you're resorting to psych (without going for a Golden Age, that is) or Holo Theatres, it's no wonder you couldn't get the market to work for you.

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.

And once again, you're overstating the effects of the industry bonus, while completely overlooking the secondary effects of a high economy: Commerce. FM/Wealth boosts your commerce income substantially, and if you can secure the Governorship, you'll get even more. And you completely failed to examine the negative effects of Planned's efficiency penalty in your assessment of the Planned/Wealth economic package.

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.

Are you advocating the Planned Economy or Domai? Certainly I won't argue that troop building capacity is the key to winning a military contest, or that Domai is a strong faction, however I will point out that proper use of the Free Market in the early and midgame can translate into a technological and production advantage that will easily dwarf that offered by the +1 industry offered by Planned.

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 military units

As others in this thread have noted, there's ways to circumvent the problems posed by 'anti-police' units like needlejets and interceptors. But at this point, it sounds like you're no longer in a position where running Free Market makes sense. Simply put, Free Market is a SE choice whose strengths are geared toward peacetime. I certainly don't advise keeping your faction in a peacetime setting while engaging in a war. This is one of the issues I have with many advocates of the Planned Economy, they seem to think that the SE choices are some kind of 'set it and forget it' function, like Ron Popeil's fabulous rotissomat.

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.

Or I could just switch out of FM, and use my superior infrastructure and technology to build more and better units than you can field. You seem to assume that going FM means that you forego all scouting, surrender all military options, and resign myself to a peaceful transcendence on my own private island.

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.

In summary, you're WRONG.

The truth about the Market is that it requires skill to harness effectively, whereas Planned's strengths work equally well with or without good management. If you're not good at planning your growth, managing drones and choosing where to allocate your resources, you'll probably not do too well with the market.

Also, because much of Market's benefits are seen in early tech advances, if you don't make proper use of the techs you obtain, capitalizing your new technology into more concrete advantages in population and production, you'll also not realize market's potential.

And by defending my favorite SE setting, I don't mean to imply that Free Market isn't without it's drawbacks:

Market is a PEACETIME setting. If you're under attack, or conducting an attack, GET OUT OF IT.

Market hampers your scouting. This is probably the biggest weakness that it has, hampering your scouting by making pods objects of mild trepidation and areas of fungus difficult to traverse.

Market's benefits are primarily experienced in the early game. By the time you've planted your tree farms, done your Pop Boom, and are rolling into the midgame, and you can compensate for the weaknesses of planned or green by using specialists, crawlers, and eventually satellites.

[cal_01]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron


I certainly cannot find fault with your observation that proactive play is stronger than being reactive, however, I don't concede that Market requires that you play reactively. The additional energy offered by market gives you initiative in both technology and production, which, if you know how to manage it, leaves Planned in the dust.

And here is where I disagree: Marginal increases in energy credits in the early game through FM does not provide much of an advantage since you don't have the facilities to take advantage of them! The difference here is usefulness of minerals vs energy; you're able to rush build cheaply and more often when you have both minerals, a mineral cost reduction, and a moderate economy compared to minerals and marginally larger economy in the early game.

To be frank, I think you're overstating the benefits of the planned economy in the early game, while downplaying the benefits you can reap from Market.

The truth is that while the industry benefits from planned are nice, they're not overwhelming, certainly not overwhelming enough to be clearly better than the extra credits you'll be hauling in from market. And the advantage that credits offer is that their benefits can be funnelled to the projects that will increase your faction's productivity the most quickly, which is what turn advantage is all about. While planned gives a thin discount everywhere, market lets you dump all your surplus credits into rushing recycling tanks, colony pods and formers, the building blocks of a powerhouse faction.

The problem here is assuming that you assume that I would not rush-build in a planned economy -- which is false. I definitely have the EC available to rush-build in a planned economy and the EC savings add up.

Furthermore, you have to look at the Growth factor within a planned economy; if we assume identical terraforming conditions between the two factions, the Planned player will have both larger bases and therefore higher minerals output -- an advantage that clearly dominates the FM and its EC advantage in the early game. And again: more minerals + stuff costing less = rush-building more often.

And this completely disregards the scientific benefits you're reaping at the same time. In the early game when you're primarily harvesting forests, market more or less doubles your energy income, which doubles your research rate. Getting to lynchpin techs faster than your opponents can be gigantic, and if one faction is running planned and the other is running market, there's no doubt who's going to tech faster.

But herein lies the problem: you're assuming that you have the facilities available to support your tech-boom. A player can have all the tech in the world, but if he doesn't have the facilities/infrastructure to support it, then it doesn't become a real advantage to the player. Let's put that into an example: Let's say you just got the Particle Impactor (4), Research Hospital, or Tree Farm -- all of which probably cost a huge chunk of minerals by the time you get them. The 10% advantage is huge when you're aiming for either of these units and facilities compared to the larger costs, in both minerals and EC, that the FM player will experience.

And to anticipate a point that you may bring up: Of course the FM player will rush-build (I'm not disputing that), but the Planned player is able to do rush build too. In fact, I'm willing to assert (again) that the Planned player is able to rush-build more effectively, more often.

Here, you're presenting the WORST possible solutions to Market's weaknesses. First of all, the loss in police rating only creates ONE more drone than you'd already have, so Holo Theaters are clearly overkill for running Market. Psych, too, is wildly inefficient as a stopgap against drones. So how do you cope with drones in FM? Specialists, facilities, SPs and transportation. If you're resorting to psych (without going for a Golden Age, that is) or Holo Theatres, it's no wonder you couldn't get the market to work for you.

But there's a few problems to your arguements:

1. Of course, I didn't deny that you can pop a specialist to handle the extra drone, but herein lies the problem to the arguement: extracting that one extra citizen out of work is still one extra citizen out of work! In the early game (where the only effective specialists available are the ones that give psych) using specialists to handle that one extra drone is orders more inefficient than having that extra police unit. Basically, that extra police unit pays for itself, especially when that would-be-drone is on a forest tile. Furthermore, once you get non-lethal methods, that police unit is effectively a mini-holo!

Of course, specialists do rock in the late game, but that's another thing altogether.

2. Concerning facilities, planned has the same access to those same facilities. That's not a valid point.

3. Secret Projects are not good for analysis since its advantage and accessibility are solely on the presumption that you do get them. If you don't get them, what then? Try a game without getting those early game SPs such as VW or Genome -- that's the only fair assessment available.

4. Transporting citizens away to different bases is probably the worst way of handling drones, imo, especially in the early game. It is effectively a temporary stop-gap measure that you have to address again when your bases grows in subsequent turns. True, it does build up your smaller bases, but those minerals can be put into something more proactive than moving citizens around. In the mid to late game, it's a bit more reasonable to do so, but it still has orders of inefficiency compared to what you could do with those minerals.

5. I'm not going to address your last point about not having FM work for me, because that part was pretty insulting. I'm not lambasting your play skills -- why are you attacking mine?

And once again, you're overstating the effects of the industry bonus, while completely overlooking the secondary effects of a high economy: Commerce. FM/Wealth boosts your commerce income substantially, and if you can secure the Governorship, you'll get even more. And you completely failed to examine the negative effects of Planned's efficiency penalty in your assessment of the Planned/Wealth economic package.

1. While commerce is a completely valid point, there is a problem with this arguement: that you need peace with pretty much all other factions in order for commerce to have a significant impact on your economy. At any given time, in my experience, half the factions are either under a truce or VDed against me. Furthermore, Planned has the same access to the economic benefits of commerce as the FM player.
2. Governorship is also problematic to think about, because it's not something you can get 100% of the time. Moreover, Planned can be a 'gov as well.
3. Um. I already did address Planned's inefficiency -- I build my bases close together? And of course, while inefficiency does affect your maximum city limit before you start getting extra drones, I usually only build up to the city limit, build up my facilities/police to handle the drones, and -- instead of building more bases after this point -- I just conquer the nearest faction. And, of course, Demos/Creches are definitely valid options, but that would not be a fair assessment of P/*, since FM can access those same SE/facilities.

Are you advocating the Planned Economy or Domai? Certainly I won't argue that troop building capacity is the key to winning a military contest, or that Domai is a strong faction, however I will point out that proper use of the Free Market in the early and midgame can translate into a technological and production advantage that will easily dwarf that offered by the +1 industry offered by Planned.

And I've addressed these supposed advantages in my pervious points already.

As others in this thread have noted, there's ways to circumvent the problems posed by 'anti-police' units like needlejets and interceptors. But at this point, it sounds like you're no longer in a position where running Free Market makes sense. Simply put, Free Market is a SE choice whose strengths are geared toward peacetime. I certainly don't advise keeping your faction in a peacetime setting while engaging in a war. This is one of the issues I have with many advocates of the Planned Economy, they seem to think that the SE choices are some kind of 'set it and forget it' function, like Ron Popeil's fabulous rotissomat.

But herein lies the problem with Punishment Spheres: If you're building Punishment Spheres to handle your drone problems due to anti-police units, then you're also taking a -50% labs hit. While you may argue that the -50% labs hit is acceptable during wartime, keeping up the labs advantage is crucial even during wartime since you may find yourself lagging in tech after the war. And of course, you can just scrap your Punishment Spheres after, but then you'd have to scrap your built up military units, either quickly by scrapping them all outright or slowly by scrapping them for minerals for facilities. Either way, either one is problematic: you still need your military units after a war because there are obviously multiple wars and ultimately yields a loss of minerals that you spent turns ago, and a slow "burn" would equal to a turn disadvantage.

The third alternative then, is to keep up the momentum and strike at another faction. However, this alternative is also problematic because that's assuming the player can keep up their labs rating/tech level high (in various ways) and use probes effectively to keep up in tech. Furthermore, it's still a moot point because other factions have access to those same probe teams.

By the way, I never build Punishment Spheres for one critical reason: there are more effective and efficient methods to handle drones than to use PS.

Furthermore, I already addressed several points against the validity of FM during peacetime, so I won't restate my arguements.

Or I could just switch out of FM, and use my superior infrastructure and technology to build more and better units than you can field. You seem to assume that going FM means that you forego all scouting, surrender all military options, and resign myself to a peaceful transcendence on my own private island.

Hey, don't resort to implicity insulting statements; it's not polite and let's try to keep this civil.

Anyhow, I never disagreed that a player may switch out of FM; I never disputed that fact. What I am disputing is whether or not FM is effective during different areas of gameplay.

Nor did I state that FM is a completely defensive SE; it is possible to wage wars with FM, but my point is whether or not such methods are efficient and effective as other SE choices.

In summary, you're WRONG.

The truth about the Market is that it requires skill to harness effectively, whereas Planned's strengths work equally well with or without good management. If you're not good at planning your growth, managing drones and choosing where to allocate your resources, you'll probably not do too well with the market.

Again, that's a very insulting statement to players, especially skilled players, of Planned economies. There's no doubt that skilled players exist on either side of the debate, either with FM or Planned.

Also, because much of Market's benefits are seen in early tech advances, if you don't make proper use of the techs you obtain, capitalizing your new technology into more concrete advantages in population and production, you'll also not realize market's potential.

And of course, the same thing can be said of Planned economies.

And by defending my favorite SE setting, I don't mean to imply that Free Market isn't without it's drawbacks:

Market is a PEACETIME setting. If you're under attack, or conducting an attack, GET OUT OF IT.

Market hampers your scouting. This is probably the biggest weakness that it has, hampering your scouting by making pods objects of mild trepidation and areas of fungus difficult to traverse.

And again, I'm not disputing that you should get out of FM during or planning a war. However, I am disputing FM's effectiveness during peace-time (if there even is a concept of real "peace" in AC, but that's another topic )

Market's benefits are primarily experienced in the early game. By the time you've planted your tree farms, done your Pop Boom, and are rolling into the midgame, and you can compensate for the weaknesses of planned or green by using specialists, crawlers, and eventually satellites.

That's a fair point in that the mid-game has several ways to deal with Planned's disadvantages. However, that's not to say that there aren't ways to deal with them in the early game either, nor is it to say that Planned doesn't have significant early game advantages.

And while I think I sufficiently replied to this post, I think I'm going to experiment with University/Police State, like I said in another thread. Wish me luck!

[binTravkin]

And here is where I disagree: Marginal increases in energy credits in the early game through FM does not provide much of an advantage since you don't have the facilities to take advantage of them! The difference here is usefulness of minerals vs energy; you're able to rush build cheaply and more often when you have both minerals, a mineral cost reduction, and a moderate economy compared to minerals and marginally larger economy in the early game.

I don't really get your point here but I suppose youre advertising planned over FM in early game.

For an answer I have only one advice to you:

Open scenario editor, put 2 equal factions on map, probably PKs (they're good both at Planned and FM), run them both for awhile with the only difference that one is going for Planned/Wealth and the other - for FM/Wealth.

You will see difference in who is the first to arrive to Wealth.

If you do better with Planned than FM means only one thing - you've been running too little FM.

There's actually some common pitfalls of new SMAC players and the inability/unwillingness to run FM over Planned is one of them.

As soon as you learn to properly use FM you'll understand what Im talking about.

A couple of MP games whether they're PBEM or TCP/IP will give you pretty much an insight in FM advantages.


I know this looks like another "you're newbie, so listen to elders" post, but there's indeed such thing as expierence and a knowledge base.
Reading SMAC academy over at CGN and/or Vels guide will give you quite much advice and you should actually do it and come back arguing after you've done it.

I bet your viewpoint will be very much different after you've read the knowledge base existing and tried that out in MP.

[Dis]

I use free market mostly. to pop boom I use plan. Occasionally depending on the faction, I use green.

[Sikander]

Amazingly no one mentioned above that the biggest boon of running FM early is the increase in base square energy production. It's much larger than the +100% energy assumed from the +1 energy per tile bonus, and between these boni you end up producing several 100 percent more energy in the very early game running FM than wealth. This means you get crawlers that much sooner, which more than obviate Planned's industry advantage.

[dacole]

Yea lets throw some math at this problem and then I sugesst that we do a pbem to test the ideas. Say CEO Aron vs. cal_01 same exact starting conditions?

Anyway runing free market you get 1 extra energy per square that you work now in the early game you have 1-2 people per base and six to seven bases by the time you have research free market. So that is 6-14 extra energy per turn. But wait you also get an extra unit of energy in your base square so that is six to seven more, so now we are up to 14-28 PER TURN. I don't consider that a small amount in the early game. In the first forty years or so of a game I consistently make 20 to 30 energy credits a turn and I don't consider myself a great FM player. This advantage only increases as your population increases and as you produce more crawlers more quickly.

You are correct that a higher tech rate is only good if you can use the tech however many techs can be used right away. When you look at the extra time given to build tree farms by researching the tech first as well as the energy you have it becomes obvious who will get them first. Also even if I don't have a large standing army but enough to keep me safe for several turns, if I have a higher millitary tech I sould be able to build an army quickly that out techs yours after chaning to planned or another economy and then succesfully counterattack.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Sikander
Amazingly no one mentioned above that the biggest boon of running FM early is the increase in base square energy production. It's much larger than the +100% energy assumed from the +1 energy per tile bonus, and between these boni you end up producing several 100 percent more energy in the very early game running FM than wealth. This means you get crawlers that much sooner, which more than obviate Planned's industry advantage.

Preach on Sik the converted.

Do I need to yet again for the umpteenth time refer people over to the builders guide at Civgaming?

FM early rocks, and allows a power drive through the all important early game techs allowing and setting up a dominant position throughout the rest of the game.

Only real issues things to concern yourself with is encroaching neighbors and lack of exploration.

Reading SMAC academy over at CGN and/or Vels guide will give you quite much advice and you should actually do it and come back arguing after you've done it.

Absolutely high priest of FM, Travkin.

[Lazerus]

Yea lets throw some math at this problem and then I sugesst that we do a pbem to test the ideas. Say CEO Aron vs. cal_01 same exact starting conditions?

The PBEM matchup will prove nothing, just because cal is preaching against FM does not make him the best anti-FM player around, and likewise i do not know how good Aaron is at running FM. In short the only way to prove something would be to have the same player who has a sound understanding of the best way to run all SE choices repeat using multiple factions using a mix of SE settings on the same map conditions (factors like pods can still alter even this dramatically) such as 3 games all FM, 3 games all planned, 3 games planned then to FM at x years,z years and q years etc then again using a different faction.
Then you also have the issue of quantifying this power, people would argue well this way has higher tech, then again this way has double the minerals so if he declared war it would destroy that method etc

FM is powerful, but i wouldnt say it was the see and end all of SE choices, if FM was such a must have then it would win most times yet in many of the tourney/ACDG games you see aggressive factions running planned/green winning just as many.
However overall i'd say due to small tricks like punishment sphere bases and specialists to get rid of war drones it does edge out the others in its large flexibility in that it can tech, rush and then boom with a GA or quick SE switch.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Wow, Minute Mirage!

This must be celebrated!

err... Ok.

[Maniac]