Minor Newb Questions

[Lord Avalon]

Appreciate the info, CEO Aaron. It seems to me that at medium to lower difficulties, being in Police State, while maybe not optimal, isn't a killer (although it may well encourage a bad habit that would be a killer at higher difficulties). If you have a weak neighbor, couldn't you go momentum in police state and take them out for elbow room, then follow the plan you've outlined?

[CEO Aaron]

My problem with Police is fourfold:

1) The value of Support is really overrated. Being a long-time Morgan player, I've come to realize just how marginal support is as a SE value. Scraping up 2 extra minerals per turn, per base just doesn't add up to much. For Sparta, especially, building that many units for very long is a crummy decision. Sure, gear up for a big war, but the trick is, wars done right should be short and sharp, and after they're done, you disband most of your forces to get put those minerals back to work on building your economy.

2) The value of Police is fantasic, but the problem is that once you need that extra police rating to keep your population in line, you're kind of stuck with it, or you wind up with rioting or starvation if you want to switch to something else.

3) For a War SE choice, for Sparta, Fundamentalism simply dominates Police state. Support is great for Yang who can field huge numbers of units with his great industry, but Sparta is about quality, not quantity, and with Fundy + Command Center, your land units are Commando out of the box, and one Monolith Visit from Elite. And Elite is where the magic happens. It lets you field 2 row infantry which can fight better than 3 row rovers. Plus fundy is quit nice for draining your enemy's coffers and using the money to bribe his troops and steal his tech.

4) Most importantly, you're missing out on the growth from Democracy. The opportunity cost of Police state is that you're not running Democracy, which is, IMO, the single best SE choice in the game. The efficiency isn't that wild, but the +2 growth is HUGE, and when combined with +2 from planned and +2 from creches, you'll increase in population every turn until you can't feed any more citizens or reach hab limits.

Yes, by all means, crush your neighbors, and do so with the best means at your disposal. For Sparta, IMO, that means is a command center, fundamentalism, and a monolith, at which point you can run rings around your opponent with 3 move recon rovers and 2 move infantry. With cagey scouting you should be able to demolish much larger forces with minimal casualties.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

3) For a War SE choice, for Sparta, Fundamentalism simply dominates Police state. Support is great for Yang who can field huge numbers of units with his great industry, but Sparta is about quality, not quantity, and with Fundy + Command Center, your land units are Commando out of the box, and one Monolith Visit from Elite. And Elite is where the magic happens. It lets you field 2 row infantry which can fight better than 3 row rovers. Plus fundy is quit nice for draining your enemy's coffers and using the money to bribe his troops and steal his tech.

Yep. Sparta rocks when churning out best weapon-1-1 infantry elites. They have two movement points get a bonus on attack against bases where rovers do not. Arty and a small amount of infantry based transports to aid in their ability to strike from 3 movment points out seemed to work well for me in the past. Obviously the elite rating makes them a psi combat threat to boot.

It was a perfect means to offset the substantial industry penalty effect by creating the cheaper but elite infantry units.

[Elok]

Wow. I, uh, see what you mean about Dem + Planning now. Pity I had to try it with Deirdre and her meh discontent suppression. I'm too lazy to micromanage specialists, so I just pumped up the psych rating by one to stop the riots. But I can't help but wonder if maybe Lal would be better for pop booming than Santiago. I mean, it *is* nearly impossible to get his cities to riot...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Wow. I, uh, see what you mean about Dem + Planning now. Pity I had to try it with Deirdre and her meh discontent suppression. I'm too lazy to micromanage specialists, so I just pumped up the psych rating by one to stop the riots. But I can't help but wonder if maybe Lal would be better for pop booming than Santiago. I mean, it *is* nearly impossible to get his cities to riot...

You will find every faction has their own unique strength and weaknesses. Lal's faction is THE monster when it comes to pop booming. In addition to his inherent population happiness his base population maximimums are inherently bigger before hab complexes and domes then other factions. In a word he is meant for pop booming. His inherent hit on energy innefficiency is moot if one goes with specialists. Get him to boom up in population and in a few turns he goes from also ran to dominant power. The key is to try to time it all in one fell swoop so that amximum of bases are booming all at the same time.

[rod87]

How much, on average, is it required to move up the Psych slider to get to pop booms? 20%? 50%? All the way up? Especially when playing one of the factions which cannot run Dem or Planned, like Yang, or if they're just not available due to the situation.

[Elok]

I don't know that you could give a meaningful average for all or even most situations, due to the sheer number of variables. Look at Morgan and Yang, the two players who absolutely can't do Dem/Plan/Creche. Morgan, if he's doing Wealth, has a huge wad of raw energy coming in, so a pretty small percentage will do. It might be awkward with his pop limits, but the percentage would be low. Yang would need a higher %, assuming he could afford it with his mediocre cash flow. As for other players, Zak would need a higher percentage still, to neutralize his drones, since a city with drones can't do GA and subsequently can't pop boom that way. Lal, assuming you didn't want to do Dem/Plan for some reason, would be substantially lower due to his default talents. Deirdre? Crummy police, I'm going to guess higher than Yang (assuming equal SE, which isn't necessarily the case) but lower than Zak. Santiago? Excellent police, so a lower number. And so on. But then, I'm a newb. Honestly, I'd just raise it by 10% increments until you achieve the desired result.

[CEO Aaron]

How much, on average, is it required to move up the Psych slider to get to pop booms? 20%? 50%? All the way up? Especially when playing one of the factions which cannot run Dem or Planned, like Yang, or if they're just not available due to the situation.

An 'average' isn't really a helpful figure, it's completely different for each faction. Let me just explain the mechanic, it's not that tricky, actually. Your bases all enter population boom when they get to 6 on the 'growth' axis of the social engineering slider. How do you get there? Well, there's four ways to get a growth bonus:

1) Build a children's creche. As it turns out, free child care really makes it easier for your citizens to squirt out babies. Every faction has access to this.
2) Run Democracy. Who knew that getting to vote and getting laid were interconnected? Well, at any rate, only Yang is forbidden to run Democracy, every other faction has this option open to them.
3) Run Planned Economy. Apparently in addition to state run businesses, your faction puts up some state-run baby mills. I guess as assembly line jobs go, you could do worse than making infants. Morgan is forbidden to run a Planned Economy, so no for-profit baby mills.
4) Get a golden age. This is a per-base phenomenon which occurs when a base gets at least 2 happy citizens, and happy citizens comprise over half the populace. In effect, you'll have to spend psych, use the Human Genome Project, be the U.N., or some combination of them all to get this to occur.

So, basically, if you're not Morgan or Yang, you can pop boom out of the box just by building creches, then going planned/demo. For the xpack, I think one of the Alien Factions can't run Demo (Usurpers?), and another (Sven) gets a native -1 growth penalty. Those factions will all have to mess with getting golden ages to push them over the magic number 6. How much psych it takes you to get there depends on a) Whether you have other sources of happiness (HGP), how many un-quelled drones you have sucking up loose psych, how much energy production you have in any given base, and how many doctors or other psych granting specialists you have keeping your populace healthy and happy.

My general advice is this: Don't mess with golden ages if you don't have to, ie: You're not playing one of the accursed four. If you ARE playing one of them, plan your golden ages carefully for short stints. Expect to have a large nutrient bonus ready in all your bases, and be ready to use lots of specialists to keep your people happy and crawlers to keep them fed, as well as psych facilities to maximize the effects of your psych. In general, try to have tree farms, hologram theatres and recreation commons built at the very least, research hospitals are good too. Of course, HGP and Ascetic Virtues are winners as well. Once you get your main bases capped, (like the first 6-10 you founded), go back to normal psych levels and return your specialists to researching science or money. Then you can prep for the next tier of bases, and repeat another 6 or so turns of golden age tuned for THEM to reach their hab limits. Doing it that way, you don't blow too much of your resources down the psych hole for no real gain.

A well executed pop boom is the cornerstone of nearly every transcend-level builder strategy. Learn to do it carefully and well, and you'll destroy lesser players who haven't mastered the technique, and of course run rings around the weak-sauce AI.

[rod87]

Very nice! I guess it's actually quite difficult to say an approximate percentage, since situations vary wildly.

But it's true, I actually had in mind Morgan more than others, since he is one of the 'accursed five' (I think Aki-Zeta also has a -1 growth), and as such, one of the ones who need the most the help in Psych investment. I've recently accomodated myself to playing him, especially after seing the power of having lots of energy, being able to research in late game about one and a half technologies per turn. Totally insane.

And it's true what you said about energy in the 'Tectonic payload and Morganite advice' thread, it can provide a very useful alternative to minerals in some cases, especially considering that high amounts of energy per turn don't cause as much eco-damage as an equivalent amount of minerals per turn.

Next time I'll try it, once I have lifted population limits. Extra energy per square plus an insane amount of population working those tiles (even more if using energy parks) and supply crawlers bringing in sea energy should even cause glitches :P

[Lord Avalon]

/pulls out Vel's SMAX Guide, confirms:

• -1 Growth for Aki Zeta-5 and Svensgaard
• Usurpers' aversion to Democracy (they do have +1 Growth)

[CEO Aaron]

But it's true, I actually had in mind Morgan more than others, since he is one of the 'accursed five' (I think Aki-Zeta also has a -1 growth), and as such, one of the ones who need the most the help in Psych investment. I've recently accomodated myself to playing him, especially after seing the power of having lots of energy, being able to research in late game about one and a half technologies per turn. Totally insane.

Yes, I had forgotten Aki, so it is indeed the 'Accursed Five'.

And it's true what you said about energy in the 'Tectonic payload and Morganite advice' thread, it can provide a very useful alternative to minerals in some cases, especially considering that high amounts of energy per turn don't cause as much eco-damage as an equivalent amount of minerals per turn.

Exactly! Now of course energy has to be split between labs and credits, but you get magnifications facilities for energy much, much earlier than you do for credits. Between Energy Banks, Tree Farms and Fusion Labs, you're getting +150% the credits you harvest to energy, as compared to Genejack Factories which magnify your minerals by only 50%. And Tree Farms also boost your food harvest from forest tiles, boost psych output and partically negate the eco-damage caused by terraforming, and fusion labs also give you 50% more labs. What do Genejack factories do? Give you another drone and likely some eco-damage to cope with.

In truth, I wind up getting both, eventually, but as Morgan energy comes first.

Next time I'll try it, once I have lifted population limits. Extra energy per square plus an insane amount of population working those tiles (even more if using energy parks) and supply crawlers bringing in sea energy should even cause glitches :P

I actually don't really bother crawling for extra energy(unless there's an energy special on the tile), on the undertaking that I'd rather use the money on acquiring more territory, which I can settle myself or grant to a submissive. My typical Morgan build has me working forests primarily, crawling a farm or two per base to cap my post-hab complex population. With only a recyling tank and one crawler working a 2 nut farm, you can get an 11 pop base working only 6 forest tiles, with 5 specialists. That's puts you at the pop cap, and gives you 12 energy plus the base square before inefficiency (if you're running FM or Wealth). Keeping 6 workers per base quelled is pretty simple, just Commons, Holo (ideally, Net-Node with VW) and a bit of psych, doctor or a SP (HGP really helps, since one happy citizen counteracts one drone, keeping everyone working. Also, past your base efficiency threshold, you'll need the HGP with Morgan or you'll NEVER be able to reach Golden Ages. It's a game glitch.)

Once you've got Tree Farms drill a borehole at each base and rake in the minerals and energy. From here on out, you can pursue whatever strategy you wish, it will be a long time, even at 1 tech per turn, to unlock hab domes. I typically try and grab Fusion and build labs to further cement my income, converting all my extra specialists to engineers for 3 econ and 2 labs each. With Banks, Fusion Labs, Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests, I'm getting my credit income tripled, leaving me awash in cash. At that point you can crank out supply crawlers once per turn and crashbuild SPs til the cows come home, or just crank out a huge army, switch to Fundy/Green/Wealth and whomp the tar out of anyone you choose.

[Petek]

Really great stuff, CEO Aaron. You should write a Morgan strategy guide.

[Hagen0]

Also, past your base efficiency threshold, you'll need the HGP with Morgan or you'll NEVER be able to reach Golden Ages. It's a game glitch.)

I'm pretty sure this is working as intended, although I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

It is possible (but expensive) to go around this problem by building a colony pod whenever your base has odd population size, growing one turn and then readding the pod. This will only work as long as you are below twice the effiency treshold.

Golden age pop booms also only work in bases with size >=3, another problem.

[jez9999]

I had a unit called "Mall Cop" which was usually 1-1-1 clean police.

The trouble is that you're using 2 special abilities there, which requires neural grafting - takes quite a long time to get that. I usually just have a unit with Non-Lethal methods.

And "Mall Cop"? They get fat eating donuts. This guy is putting down rebelling drones with TWICE the effectiveness of normal police - I call mine Judge Dredd.

[Lord Avalon]

It's not that much trouble - Neural Grafting is on the beeline to Bio-Engineering.