Reducing eco damage?

[BlackCat]

Quite right, no crawlers, but Nessus still only counts for 100 of the mins, so there are 146 that are possible eco damage.

[CEO Aaron]

Well, I'm guessing you've cranked up your clean mineral limit with a large base count. How many bases in your empire?

[Zeiter]

Wait, why are fungal pops "bad," per se? I mean, as long as they don't go into some sort of totally overwhelming apocalyptic overdrive (I admit, I DID have that happen to me one time, and it was not a pretty way to lose a game...whole cities emptied of defensive units and DEVOURED in single turns...that ecodamage was the result of a sudden string of atrocities, though, not the gradual ramping-up of industry), and as long as you prepare for them, fungal pops are huge cash cows--the credits from slain mind worms can easily double your per-turn production via rushbuilding. What this requires, though, is 1 or 2 SAM artillery and 2 or 3 mind-worm slaying units (preferably elite SAM empath rovers) per base. Sure, that's an investment, but so is repeated building and dismantling of centauri preserves. And your anti-worm units double as defensive (or occasionally offensive) units.

If I was playing Morgan, I'd almost be tempted to go from Free Market to Green to fully take advantage of such an opportunity. Seriously, you could probably get more energy through worm-slaying than through simple production.

[BlackCat]

Well, I haven't build that many bases but some of my neighbours was so kind to contribute

RAP count is 210 and there should be one in each - 71 CP, 65 TP, 109 TF and 99 HF's, so I guess that I'm a bit away from any eco damage

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Wait, why are fungal pops "bad," per se? I mean, as long as they don't go into some sort of totally overwhelming apocalyptic overdrive, and as long as you prepare for them, fungal pops are huge cash cows--the credits from slain mind worms can easily double your per-turn production via rushbuilding. What this requires, though, is 1 or 2 SAM artillery and 2 or 3 mind-worm slaying units (preferably elite SAM empath rovers) per base. Sure, that's an investment, but so is repeated building and dismantling of centauri preserves. And your anti-worm units double as defensive (or occasionally offensive) units.

If I was playing Morgan, I'd almost be tempted to go from Free Market to Green to fully take advantage of such an opportunity. Seriously, you could probably get more energy through worm-slaying than through simple production.

They are quite fine as long as you can control them. Problems arise if you haven't prepared for the results - that is raising ground so your bases isn't drowned.

[Zeiter]

Ah, but isn't a waterworld oh so lovely?

[BlackCat]

I hate wet feets

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Petek
Perhaps it's time to cite this article, which is the most authoritative souce for information on ecodamage.

I suggest that FMJ and Noesis read it, and then post again if any questions.

Petek

Petek, while I can't argue with your linking to relevant sites, and certainly won't dispute your knowledge wich has helped me a lot, I think I want to try to make a revolt.

This is a help site for people with questions and a link to guides is probably the best - at least the fastest, but ...

Several people has claimed that this forum is dying, though still new blood seems to seep in, and then I find it a bit boring/obnoxious when that fresh blood is just supplied with some links to what seems to be the dogmas of how to do things.

When we (damn, I've just been here a couple of years and now seems to consider myself a part of the cleregicy ) just answer with links we just keep people in dogmatism instead of maybe finding new ways by listening to heretics that have discovered that the world is round despite that "we" knows it's squared.

Viva la revolucion

[Noesis]

seems like nearly every single one of those bases is to close to the other. Wouldnt they cannabalize eachother to the point of stunting growth?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Noesis
seems like nearly every single one of those bases is to close to the other. Wouldnt they cannabalize eachother to the point of stunting growth?

They are close - two tiles between each, but it is possible to squeeze them down to 1 tile, though, I don't find that efficient (it can be but then you really are going to do some serious micromanagement).

Actually, it isn't as bad as one might think. Until housing it certainly isn't a problem - those max six/seven workers has room enough especially with crawlers. If you too are building CP's there is plenty of space.

Later in the game it still isn't a problem when you can get +1 nut from trees and when sattelites is available it gets even better. The gain is that you have more bases that can produce research and econ on limited space.

Imagine you start on a 4x4 island - using "normal" spacing, you only have room for one base - with 2 tile spacing you can build 4 bases that easily can feed until you have raised more land.

[CEO Aaron]

Welcome to the glorious world of intensive Infinite City Sprawl, where aesthetics take a backseat to powergaming mechanics. The bottom line about tight base spacing is that it is a more effective use of landmass early in the game, when time counts most.

The first 200 game turns are by far the most influential, and by leveraging growth advantages there, you'll be in a much stronger position later in play when your tight spacing might begin to be an issue.

In the base layout you're examining, each base may only have 4-5 workable squares each, but with the right terraforming, that's enough to sustain ~14 population, which is, conveniently, the level of population you can expect to have for the overpowering majority of the game. Also, remember my comments about the maximum productive output of any single base: One item per base per turn.

Put it this way: The span of time between Industrial Automation and Super-Tensile Solids is VERY long, so plan your growth accordingly.

[Straybow]

Change alpha.txt to make domes come earlier.

[FullMetalJack]

@BlackCat

I can perhaps understand why Petek might refer us n00bs to links that detail some of the queries on this thread, as I'm sure that he must get a bit fed up with answering the same old questions over and over again?

I've seen him labouring over on Civ Fanatics where the 'CPU not supported' question seems to come up ad infinitum for example!

At least here on Apolyton there's a nice sticky FAQ.

It's interesting - for me anyway - that I bought the game about 18 months ago at least, but have only found the time to play it properly over the last few weeks or so and even now I still haven't 'transcended' yet.

During those months I must have read the manual 3 times from cover to cover and Vel's guide at least twice, but it's only when you're actually in the thick of it during a game that the relevance and subtleties of these texts gets put into context.

For example what you said here:

Originally posted by BlackCat

They are quite fine as long as you can control them. Problems arise if you haven't prepared for the results - that is raising ground so your bases isn't drowned.

None of this was mentioned in the manual, but it was fun to discover it happening unexpectedly.

The solutions offered by Petek's link and here do seem more of an exploit/bug than a 'proper' (game intended) way of dealing with the problem?

BTW, because the Cloning Vats are just about to be discovered in 1 turn, I've now switched to Green as the growth minus won't be a factor then. This has reduced the eco damage a bit further, now that Planet is +2.

I can temporarily create specialists anyway to reduce minerals such that the eco damage is very low until I can up the Tree Farm / Hybrid Forest count Planetwide, or resort to scrapping / rebuilding which I'm reluctant to do, but thanks for the tips anyway.

[BlackCat]

Well, my call for a revolution wasn't aimed at Petek - I really like him and he is a fountain of knowledge (I've better stop - last time I and some others told what we thought about him, he started to blush - no need to put him in that mood once more ).

You are quite right when it comes to the "CPU not supported" q - read the damn FAQ - but when it comes to questions like the current, there is reason to take the discussion besides providing the link to Ned et al's article.

I've posted a couple of pics (damn red wine made me wanna brag a bit - even worse, some of the experts here are probably ROFLMAO'ing on my behalf ), but it made Noesis make some curious questions about the sanity of that and that triggered comments on the concept of ICS.

In my offline life I'm a SW programmer and there there doesn't exist stupid questions from users and I'll probably get fired if I answer with references to docs. Questions just like answers make you think - sometimes in new ways.

I don't consider waiting to build TF etc after first pop as cheating, but the scrap/rebuild isn't my cup of tea - if I understand it right it isn't allowed in MP.

You say that CV's are coming next turn - well I'm a lazy SOB, so I never build that before I have Eudamonia.

[Mead]

Is there a problem here?


Try (Empath, SAM, high weapon value) ships to take advantage of all the Locusts and other tasty native life forms (easy cash) that planet is offering you.



That's one option.

Another option, I'm sure other have, or will, mention, is to build Pressure Domes (doesn't do much to protect the nearby teraformed locations); use your formers to raise the land (you gotta be careful not to damage sea teraformed regions); plus, as already mentioned putting the solar shade in place (require cooperation; plus doesn't seem too effective if the sea levels are REALLY rising)


The other real option is to review the Clean Mineral Limit and the means of increasing it. Briefly these involve building enviromentally friendly base facilities (tree farms, hybird forests, century preserves, etc.) after your first 'fungal pop'. Each facilty built raising your 'clean mineral' number by 1. Some advocate building and scrapping these facilty (then rebuilding in the same base and so on) in order to raise the clean min limit, but I consider this a 'cheat'. Note, that I have no problem with building the facilty to raise the limit; I only have a problem with building and scrapping then rebuilding for the purpose of raising the clean min limit.

Solution to your problem: Your choice.
Harvest the extra energy oppurtunities presented by the life forms, or prevent the native life form attacks by watching your mineral production and avoiding ecodamange by raising your clean min limit.

The only thing that might be out of your control if you want to keep the sea levels from rising if one of the other factions is causing the levels to rise because of their eco damage. But, ... I guess you should, be able to control that problem, by making those nasty high mineral producing cities of THEIR's, YOUR bases.





Mead