Quick Questions on Vel's Strategy Guide

[FleetingPenguin]

In the strategy guide, when he talks about the mid-game expansion strategies of thin expansion and yang model expansion, he says to place bases 3 or 4 squares apart. Does he mean diagonally, so that the bases make diamonds, or horizontally and vertically, so that the bases make squares? Does he include the bases as endpoints in the count, or is he just counting the spaces in between?

If someone could provide a quick screenshot of both expansion paradigms, that would really clear things up.

Secondly, how do I prevent my crawlers from being killed by worms? Should I add armor to them, or is there a more efficient way?

[Lord Avalon]

Greetings, FleetingPenguin.

1) Sorry, no screenshots, but 3 squares apart diagonally means 2 squares of overlap in the two BFCs. 4 squares apart horizontally/vertically would have 3 squares of overlap. Terrain will constrain colony placement.

And overlap isn't necessarily bad - you might want two colonies to be able to trade off using a resource.

2) If possible, attack the worms before they get to your crawlers, because "the attacking unit gets a 3-to-2 advantage in psi combat when the defending unit is a land unit". Otherwise, the Trance ability adds 50% psi defense. If you have SMAX, Resonance Armor adds 25% psi defense. Regular armor is ignored in psi combat.

[FleetingPenguin]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon

1) Sorry, no screenshots, but 3 squares apart diagonally means 2 squares of overlap in the two BFCs. 4 squares apart horizontally/vertically would have 3 squares of overlap. Terrain will constrain colony placement.

That's my question though. Does he mean 3 squares apart diagonally when he says Yang-style expansion, and 4 squares horizontally/vertically when he says thing expansion? He doesn't really clarify.

[FleetingPenguin]

It appears that by three spacing Vel means base-land-land-base going along the diagonals, and so four spacing would be base-land-land-land-base.

I found an excellent post on city spacing. It seems that the Yang model is the way to go. I'd like to see someone argue for 4-spacing, but both Vel's guide and the following post put me strong in favor of strictly 3-spacing my bases. Behold:

Spreading your bases apart may be more fun, but except in some extreme cases it is far from ideal.

Normally packing your bases in tight (2 square spacing works for me under almost any situation) has many benefits. You gain a lot of terraforming efficiency, putting your formers in gangs nets you terraforming time, and having to terraform fewer roads/sensor arrays means you formers spend more time making tile improvements that net you factors of production.

A smaller, less spread out empire that is productively dense is much easier to defend than a sprawl. 2 square spacing means an infantry unit can move between 2 cities in one turn, or a rover between 3 cities in one turn.

Since each city is closer to your empire, efficiency gains tend to outbalance the fact that each city will be producing less energy (not all the time!)

Since each city is much closer together, your colony pods will spend less time roving around and more time being productive as cities. This means your empire will be up and running much faster.

Basically packing your cities tight generates turn advantage, which can be used in multiple ways. It doesn't matter if your opponnent has a marginally better midgame, if you reach your *slightly* less optimal midgame 20 years earlier than him. Having secret projects etc. earlier can make your cities more productive in the long run anyways, and being ahead on tech and build queues because of turn advantage means that your cities will very rarely be less productive than a non packer during a given year.

I basically have gotten used to using multiple approaches to gain productivity. Extra population not working tiles is usually a *good* thing. Specialists are extremely useful.

Yang and Morgan tend to be ICSers much more than other factions because of their difficulty at pop booming, but I still pack in my cities as other factions. Extra pop just means more specialists...

If you want to see some extreme city packing check out Sikander's style in the thread he posted, he spaces them one apart vertically and two apart on the diagonal, each base only has 7 workable squares in the middle. Each of his individual cities is actually MORE productive than any comparable strategy in terms of lab and energy output than almost any other strategy at certain tech levels.