question

[d=me]

Should the other improvements also be built or just forests and nothing else? And what do you do about eco damage?

[Kataphraktoi]

4. As far as all his bases being empty, that is a personal decision...some players choose to build facilities, formers, and Secret Projects as early as possible. By doing so, your infastructure will be much better, and you have a better chance of getting early Secret Projects. However, you also are taking a huge risk. You mentioned Miriam. Aggressive players will usually take advantage of empty bases. However, if you are playing on a large or huge map, you won't have to worry about other players. Instead, you will only have to worry about native lifeforms like mindworms. Generally, only a few units, maybe one per base, are needed to defend against the native life. You just have to choose which idea you like best: build early military units, you minimize risk, but also lower your potential; build facilities and formers earilier, and you carry greater risk, but also higher potential. It is all up to you.

not really. with infiltration i can tell where and when all AI forces are, and they are atroious at attacking with transports. even on small\tiny maps,ill go defensless, except with a scout in all bases. this is enough to repel any attack save one from a human player, by means of upgrading.

Should the other improvements also be built or just forests and nothing else? And what do you do about eco damage?

definetly. that game turned out slow because i didnt get my condensers up fast enough,boreholes etc. for commerce purposes, you will always want to be working some forests. You place boreholes in the same pattern as the bases,except right between them on the diagonal. eco damage? mainly ignore it. in the process of getting tree farms, it will mostly be eliminated due to high minerals.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi



eco damage? mainly ignore it. in the process of getting tree farms, it will mostly be eliminated due to high minerals.

I can't agree with "ignoring" ecodamage. Kata is correct that ecodamage is largely self correcting since having fungal opops and then building treefarms and hybrid forests will raise the number of minerals you can produce without causing ecodamage. BIt if you pay attention to it and manage it, ecodamage can be the source of a lot of cash and morrale upgrades from killing natives

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Commy


2. You can't exactly tell your bases not to grow, but you can choose which squares to work within your base radius...you can work all squares within 2 squares of your bases. This is known as the "fat cross" due to its shape, as you can work the 20 squares surrounding any base. In the city screen, you can see how many nutrients, minerals, and energy each square produces. Clicking on any given square in the city screen will cause one citizen, or worker, to work that square, providing the bonuses indicated by the city screen. By choosing squares that don't provide nutrients, or by having some of your citizens become specialists, you can limit the amount of nutrients you produce, effectively preventing the base from growing.

Great post commy

I often have bases that I don't necessarily want to grow. They are usually military bases that build nothing all game long except formers, crawlers , units and morale enhancing facilities

[Kataphraktoi]

I can't agree with "ignoring" ecodamage. Kata is correct that ecodamage is largely self correcting since having fungal opops and then building treefarms and hybrid forests will raise the number of minerals you can produce without causing ecodamage. BIt if you pay attention to it and manage it, ecodamage can be the source of a lot of cash and morrale upgrades from killing natives

i meant to say ''i'' ignore it. ecoharvesting is of course one route to take-one i decline to use, but it has some value to it,as pointed out here,and elsewhere.

[Commy]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi

not really. with infiltration i can tell where and when all AI forces are, and they are atroious at attacking with transports. even on small\tiny maps,ill go defensless, except with a scout in all bases. this is enough to repel any attack save one from a human player, by means of upgrading.

True, but keep in mind the threat of native life...d=me said you had no units in your bases...if that is so, then you have no scout patrols to upgrade...while you could very easily switch production of all your bases should a threat from an opponent occur, you would have to retool all your productions, and if the threat came from mindworms (which you can't predict nor have infiltrators), while a mindworm can't exactly take a base, it can do some hefty damage, particularly if you are building a facility or if a crucial facility like rec commons or rec tanks is destroyed...

[Commy]

Originally posted by d=me
Should the other improvements also be built or just forests and nothing else? And what do you do about eco damage?

Eco-damage in SMAC is very complex...several things can cause eco-damage...

The most common reasons are a lot of advanced terraforming (condensors, echelon mirrors, and especially boreholes) and a lot of minerals (usually around 20 is where you'll see problems)...tree farms halve the damage caused by terraforming, and hybrid forests eliminate it...centauri preserves help reduce damage caused by lots of minerals...

Building forests can also help reduce eco-damage, but only on a small scale...generally, as long as you have decent garrisons and plenty of formers, eco-damage won't be a big problem to handle until late in the game...

[Lazerus]

centauri preserves help reduce damage caused by lots of minerals...

Just make sure to sell them straight after you've built em !

[d=me]

Is not having many bases a doomsday pratice? Like I always have around 10 bases.

[Commy]

The important factor is not necessarily how many bases you have, but how far apart your bases are...

A common strategy is ICS, or "Infinite City Sprawl". Essentially, all your bases are only one square apart (one square between two bases). Generally, a player that is ICSing will use crawlers to get most or all of the raw resources (nutrients, minerals, energy) to a given base. By having crawlers convoy minerals and nutrients to a base, all the citizens in that base can become specialists. There are several advantages of this. First, if all your citizens are specialists, you can't have drone riots. Also, you won't have inefficiency, as inefficiency only applies to raw energy from workers or crawlers. Having many, many bases has other benefits as well...the advantages of positive economy on Social Engineering become drastically more powerful...+1 economy, for example, gives plus one energy per base...if you have more bases then you will get more energy from this benefit. ICSing maximizes the usage of all available land...while your cities overlap, all the squares in your empire will get used up...since cities will never become particularly large while ICSing, the loss of one or even several cities is insignificant, as you will generally have many cities, sometimes as many as 50 or more (depending on map size)...there are many other advantages of ICS, but these are arguably the most important...

ICSing, however, prevents you from expanding your territory quickly...most players using ICS will generally put bases faraway from their HQ, then fill in the gaps later...ICSing also requires many many colony pods, and since no single city will ever become very powerful, many of the more expensive (but powerful) facilities become useless and very costly...

Loose base spacing (generally 3-4 squares between bases) allows more flexibility. It requires less colony pods, and you gain territory quickly. While loose base spacing won't use every square in your territory, it will use the best squares. You will have fewer bases, but each base will be far more productive than any base in ICSing...

The most obvious difference between the two strategies is the power of a single base...in ICSing, each base is relatively weak, but bases are plentiful and the loss of one base is insignificant. ICSing will quickly give you wealth and power early on. In loose base spacing, your bases are more powerful, but will take more time to grow. The loss of just one city can be tremendous, but, given enough time, your bases (and empire) can become vastly more powerful and cost effective than an ICS empire...

Much debate is made over which strategy is better. Arguably, ICSing is more flexible simply because it gives you power early on. While loose base spacing has more potential, the game will usually not last long enough to see the power of fewer (but more powerful) bases...

To answer your question more precisely, the amount of bases you should have is relative to the base spacing you use. If you ICS, having 20-30 bases on a standard map would be acceptable. If you use loose base spacing, 10-15 bases would be okay as well. However, these numbers only represent how much you would need to "have your share" of planet...in reality, you would need many more to ensure dominance, especially against a human player...

[d=me]

I like to have a few bases. That is how I'm playing. The 10 bases I have have nearly every facility built and many are around 10 popluation. And the morgans have many size 4 bases and when I looked at them they are still building some of the more basic facilities when I have every facility available to me built.

One question is that how come the game ends so early? The good techs and fun stuff like satillites never got used.

And how do they really rate who is the best at tech, wealth etc...?

[d=me]

How is the pulse 3 armour? The AI always replaces it with the R3 armour after a new tech is researched. How can I disable that? Every time a new tech is researched a lot of useless units are added.

[d=me]

Can someone judge this game for me? This is usually how I play.

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=43865_NewGame.SAV

[Commy]

Originally posted by d=me
How is the pulse 3 armour? The AI always replaces it with the R3 armour after a new tech is researched. How can I disable that? Every time a new tech is researched a lot of useless units are added.

If I understand you correctly, under preferences, you can turn off the option "desing units automatically"...that way, you create all your units...

[d=me]

What about the armour? I think that there is no reason to build garrison infantry with either with plasma steel or the trence armour. Because people like santiago really like to attack with veteran rovers. So like a base with a premieter defence with one of a 3 pulse garrison inside is pretty safe from a rover with a gattling gun.