I always end up destroying the planet

[Mart]

... You'll collect ample credits from planetpearls ....

I've seen that and have done that... thousands!!!!!! EC per turn. Imho, clear exploit not intended by game designers, or at least it does not seem to me like good game balancing. I have lost one multiplayer game to that strategy.

[BlackCat]

Just remember not building bunkers and to destroy them when you conquer an enemy colony.

If you get a pop on a tile with a bunker, you have to take them out one by one, and that ani't always fun.

[CEO Aaron]

Suppose your bunker is occupied by your own units? Can native life spawn on top of them?

I don't tend to use bunkers at all in my games.

[dnzrx]

Suppose your bunker is occupied by your own units? Can native life spawn on top of them?

I don't tend to use bunkers at all in my games.

I did some testing,

If there is a pop and it spread into a square with your units,

If native lifeforms are supposed to spawn, they will appear in the tiles around the square instead...

[CEO Aaron]

So the moral here is no unoccupied bunkers.

[RJPugh]

Possible bonehead question:

Do regular forests help curb eco-damage?

I tend to put forests in squares within my territory that I'm not using for other purposes. I've sometimes used them as a means of "stockpiling" minerals. If I need a little extra cash, I have a former harvest the forest, giving me 2-5 additional minerals. I then later have another former re-plant the forest.

After reading this forum I've started planting fungus on some of the islands that I don't use, and don't intend to use. Setting up these "reservations" for the locals seems to have curbed the mind worm attacks somewhat.

[CEO Aaron]

Forest squares in combination with tree farms are supposed to offset the eco-damage from passively damaging improvements like condensers, echelon mirrors and so on. I've never done exact testing to prove it, however, and my empirical observations show that eco-damage is tied to mineral income and nothing else.

I am not sure if planting fungus fields isn't ultimately counterproductive, since idle fungus squares do generate random spawns of mindworms. That said, mindworms are pretty easy to deal with if you've planned properly.

[Illuminatus]

I think it should be mentioned in answer 38 that the Bulk Matter Transmitter doesn't add a meek 2 mins, but add 50 % to basic min production.

Added. Thanks.

[Maniac]

Weeeeeeeeeeeeee Illuminatus!

[Ell_man]

What do you do when the computers use planet busters on every turn, making it impossible to raise the clean mineral limit beyond 0 for any length of time? To be honest, I'm causing so much global warming that everyone in my game will be flooded anyway. The sea level is set to rise by 1800 feet in the next 20 years! Soon enough the AI will not be able to build anymore planet busters because they won't build sea mines fast enough, so the problem sort of solves itself. However, assuming no global warming, how would you cope with constant eco damage from a clean mineral limit of 0?

My main problem is that once locusts of chiron start popping you can't kill the entire locust pop with one unit like you can with mindworms. Meaning I need 10-15 worm killing units per base to deal with the locusts.

[CEO Aaron]

The clean mineral limit is per faction. So your opponent's flinging PBs lowers their clean mins, not your own. However, the global warming metric is the combined eco-damage from all factions, so if their cml is 0, every mineral they produce will generate eco-damage, and therefore increase the likelyhood of a sea-level rise.

You CAN kill a stack of locusts, you just can't kill it with air units. However, with a SAM rover, you can blow up the whole stack, hence my recommendation for a landlocked base with SAM units as your worm farm.

The bottom line here is don't use PBs until you're lifted the charter.

[Ell_man]

Are you sure about the clean mineral limit being per faction? I'm playing a game where I have dropped only 1 planetbuster but the computers have dropped 6-8 total and now my clean mineral limit is zero. This is despite building tree farms/hybrid forests in every base after my first pop. I recall reading that nerve gas and nerve stapling can cause excessive eco damage sometimes. Maybe I'm in that situation?

I attached some recent saves from my game if you want to take a look.

Thanks for the tip on killing locusts with SAM units! I've got to try that.

Do planetbusters used after the charter is lifted not cause the clean mineral limit to go down?

[BlackCat]

Don't know what you have done, but with 2378 years of remaining sanctions you clearly must have been a bad boy

Your best min base produces 42 mins, you have 45 TF/HF/CP's and have a eco-damage on 121, that is actually well done

[Ell_man]

Yeah, I'm a bad boy in this game.

This is the wpc july gotm. The scenario maker made all the opposing factions pacted against you and attrocity victims, so I figured I'd use nerve stapling since I wouldn't be getting any commerce anyways. I also used a lot of nerve gas. I nerve stapled my people so much that some bases became immune to it . I never realized that could happen!

I think I hit some rollover bug with nerve gas/nerve stapling causing eco damage. This happened in an occ I played recently. With 162 minerals produced per turn I have 1069 eco damage and if I reduce my mineral production to 6 per turn I still have 238!

[molly bloom]

The Hive tried to eco-damage the planet in a recent game when I was Deirdre- they'd produced 60 Quantum Planet Busters (and over 500 Fusion Silk Steel Transport Foils- go figure), which I'd happily destroyed with a mixture of Locusts, elite transfoil probes, and gas shard choppers. Luckily they were never in a position to get up close and personal with their ecocidal armaments, but I'm just astonished they could crank out so many, and never yet use one.

I managed to prompt global warming in the endgame just recently- despite having the Manifold Harmonics and the Nexus and playing Dem Green & Eudaimonic- the problem being my starter bases were on the Pholus Ridge and the Borehole Cluster and a nice scattering of thermal boreholes on mineral bonuses provided a much needed necklace of energy for the Gaians in the early to mid game. I was loath not to use them, as they were so pretty...