Importance of pop-booming

[Kirov]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Sooner or later, every game I run has a Population boom, sooner if I can manage it. I've found, above all else, that getting a population advantage over my rivals will ensure my eventual triumph. One of my favorite strategies is to skip some of the cheaper, earlier Secret Projects and grab the Planetary Transit System. If I time this well I can also pop out pods so that all my bases are at Population 1 or 2 when it completes, effectively negating the population cost of those pods, further magnifying the weight of my pop gain. The PTS is one of the more underrated aspects of Industrial Automation, in my opinion.

That undocumented feature of PTS (all bases grow to 3) is truly great, giving you quite considerable turn advantage. However, PTS has also its undocumented drawbacks.

First of all, if you expand onto unterraformed (or forested) areas, your newly built bases don't produce 6 nuts and quickly shrink. You either need luck with terrain or preterraform it first, which slows you down anyway.

Secondly, the drone issue. With simple/planned you can build a police unit, but Demo deprives you of free mins (which means doctors and hunger), and FM won't give you enough Psych in new bases (which leads to doctors and hunger).

So most of the time, PTS gives you "Any new bases you found begin at population level 3, effectively 2 or even 1".

Having saig, I must add than PTS is still my favourite SP in the early game, better than WP or VW. It's just you still have to know how to manage it.

[Nightlifter]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
No, you can still achive pop booms even with growth impaired factions, you just need to work a bit harder.

First: Get the Human Genome Project.
Second: Build Creches in every base.
Third:Research Gene Splicing.
Fourth: Switch to Planned/Demo.
Fifth: Crank up your Psych allocation to put all your bases in Golden Ages.

Those 5 steps will ensure that you're able to get +7 growth, and the abundance of sea nutrients will make feeding your population ridiculously easy. I expect your biggest problem will be affording the minerals to build the necessary base facilities to get your Pop Booms and maintain them through drone control.

well, lost the hgp, so there goes that. never mind, I started a new game with yang and ICS, but i tend to focus more on energy than minerals, would rather have a handful of chaos marines than a plethora of myriads of scout patrols lagging behind in technology won't hurt as much with spoils of war turned on, unfortunately I was all alone on the largest landmass, so I didn't steal any techs. no that im complaining for having a large continent on an over sized map to meself

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kirov



That undocumented feature of PTS (all bases grow to 3) is truly great, giving you quite considerable turn advantage. However, PTS has also its undocumented drawbacks.

First of all, if you expand onto unterraformed (or forested) areas, your newly built bases don't produce 6 nuts and quickly shrink. You either need luck with terrain or preterraform it first, which slows you down anyway.

Secondly, the drone issue. With simple/planned you can build a police unit, but Demo deprives you of free mins (which means doctors and hunger), and FM won't give you enough Psych in new bases (which leads to doctors and hunger).

So most of the time, PTS gives you "Any new bases you found begin at population level 3, effectively 2 or even 1".

Having saig, I must add than PTS is still my favourite SP in the early game, better than WP or VW. It's just you still have to know how to manage it.

All you need is four nutrients to be generated by your three population in order to avoid losing population. It's pretty simple really, especially if you have recycling tanks or a supply crawler.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Nightlifter


well, lost the hgp, so there goes that. never mind, I started a new game with yang and ICS, but i tend to focus more on energy than minerals, would rather have a handful of chaos marines than a plethora of myriads of scout patrols lagging behind in technology won't hurt as much with spoils of war turned on, unfortunately I was all alone on the largest landmass, so I didn't steal any techs. no that im complaining for having a large continent on an over sized map to meself

Heh, Yang can't pop boom easily either because he can't run democracy.

[Kirov]

Originally posted by Sikander


All you need is four nutrients to be generated by your three population in order to avoid losing population. It's pretty simple really, especially if you have recycling tanks or a supply crawler.

Well, it's not - after founding a base size 3 you have only one turn to take care for additional nuts. No time to build either tanks or a crawler. Of course you can build the latter somewhere else and rehome it, which leads to the same things I mentioned - you expand slower than usually.

[Nightlifter]

Originally posted by Sikander


Heh, Yang can't pop boom easily either because he can't run democracy.

yes, but he has +1 growth, so I break even in a worst case scenario. With my faction already fairly large, I should look to capture the HGP and put the final nails in my enemies' coffins

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Sikander


Heh, Yang can't pop boom easily either because he can't run democracy.

Plus
1. golden ages are tougher since the econ minus really hurts for a while until you can get those former swarms working

2. The support of 4 units per base makes Yang more natural as an ICSer.

I still like Yang though. Pretty much perpetual +3 growth means you usually don't fall behind pop wise anyway

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Kirov
Well, it's not - after founding a base size 3 you have only one turn to take care for additional nuts. No time to build either tanks or a crawler. Of course you can build the latter somewhere else and rehome it, which leads to the same things I mentioned - you expand slower than usually.

Yeah, the PTS isn't quite the free ticket to massive ICS that it initially appears to be, but really all you need is something that gives 2 nuts in your base radius, or a spare crawler to crawl an extra nut for you. And even if you do lose pop, it's not like it costs you anything.

My preferred game settings are abundant native life and heavy rainfall, so usually formers are needed for clearing fungus anyway, and it's not too hard to find a 2 nut tile I can harvest for the 1 turn it takes me to rush recycling tanks.

Regardless, I'm primarily using the PTS as a mini-population boom, effectively converting minerals into population, which converts into yet more minerals. Playing Morgan, the mineral focus helps shore up the inherent weakness of the faction early on, namely the support limits, and also ensures that you'll enjoy the full benefits of your inherently robust tech rate.

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Flubber


Plus
1. golden ages are tougher since the econ minus really hurts for a while until you can get those former swarms working

2. The support of 4 units per base makes Yang more natural as an ICSer.

I still like Yang though. Pretty much perpetual +3 growth means you usually don't fall behind pop wise anyway

Seconded. Yang is probably the only faction that never achieves a true population boom, but it's also the one that needs it the least. High inherent growth, industry and support, coupled with free perimeter defences make for tough, productive bases, and plunking down swarms of them of them offsets the drawbacks of not getting boom growth until you build the cloning vats.

There is one nice advantage of Golden Ages over other forms of population boom: extra economy and efficiency. While the benefits extended by having your bases in golden age aren't typically enough to justify the cost diversion into psych, they do cushion the blow, whereas Planned/Demo really doesn't have much going for it other than having lots of growth.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Nightlifter

yes, but he has +1 growth, so I break even in a worst case scenario. With my faction already fairly large, I should look to capture the HGP and put the final nails in my enemies' coffins

That leaves you at +5 growth max in the early-mid game unless you use a GA. That's nice, but still a lot slower than a pop boom. As Flubber mentioned getting a GA with Yang is harder than usual because of his econ malus and low efficiency. He really needs the HGP to boom early, and even with that he needs a fair bit of infrastructure. I tend to pod boom Yang more than any other faction instead. Pod booming means that you build colony pods in small bases (size 2 is best) and move them to larger bases to build up the population there. This really requires crawlers to be effective, both to crawl nuts in the larger bases and to boost the small base's mins. Turn those pop units into Librarians in your larger bases in order to make up for your low energy outputs and efficiency.

IMO Yang is one of the strongest factions btw.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Sikander




IMO Yang is one of the strongest factions btw.

Seconded. It is interesting that while an early FM and easy pop-booming are seen as two of the most super-powerful techniques in the game, a faction that can do NEITHER still has enough compensating features to compete effectively.

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by Flubber

Seconded. It is interesting that while an early FM and easy pop-booming are seen as two of the most super-powerful techniques in the game, a faction that can do NEITHER still has enough compensating features to compete effectively.

If Yang could Pop-boom easily, he'd be unstoppable. Industry is indisputably the single most influential SE variable, and Yang's bonus, plus his efficiency immunities make for a faction that can build turn advantage on its competitors without ever leaving a war footing, something that only one other faction can boast: Miriam.

[#endgame]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Industry is indisputably the single most influential SE variable.

I'd dispute that. I thought it was ECON?

[Leon Trotsky]

Originally posted by #endgame

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Industry is indisputably the single most influential SE variable.

I'd dispute that. I thought it was ECON?

They work in a different way. The change between +1 economy and +2 economy is far greater that of the same values of industry. Economy penalties are a joke compared to those of industry. And lastly, since economy gives/substract N units of resources and industry deals with percentages, as the game goes on the latter becomes more and more important. That's it, I'm going to sleep.

[#endgame]

Yep, that makes sense. Thanks.