How and when go free market

[dacole]

Ok tried to do a serch to find this but came up dry. After talking with a few people it seems I may be drasticly underestimating the useability of free market as a social choice even though the +1 energy a square is very attractive what is the best way to deal with the complete inability to use police? What is the earliest that you switch to free market? Any specific university strategies (favorite faction) for free market since we have an incredible drone problem to begin with...

Thanks any links to other forums on this topic would be greatly appreciated!

[Maniac]

For the UoP, building the Virtual World asap to go FM is a golden tip. Besides that I'll wait for advise myself from early-FMers like eg Archaic.

[Chaos Theory]

I generally switch to free market as soon as possible. The university is something of an exception, because I usually have wealth by the time I can afford a SE change and my cities are too small for the +1 energy/tile to be better than +1/base and +1 industry, so I first switch to Wealth, and then to FM as soon as possible.

As for controlling drones:
1) Keep cities small
2) Second-citizen doctors
3) Supply crawlers/specialists
4) Rec commons
5) (and by far the best for the university) Virtual World

You can have the Virtual World before 2140, especially if it's the first project you go for.

Later in the game, you may want to allocate 10-20% psych, depending on how many specialists you use. Also, on transcend difficulty, the univ's drone "problem" is hardly noticeable. Their size 4+ bases get one extra drone. Period.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
2) Second-citizen doctors

Aren't you losing a significant part of your production then, making going Planned until you have rec commons about everywhere better?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Not if you are ICS'ing like mad. Bases waffle between size 1 and 2. Amount of time at size 2 should be one turn ideally.

As you scream through b-drone limits first build is rush build rec commons or if you are UoP and have VW is moot issue.

[dacole]

What if you are not ICS ing like mad though? I usually try to stop at around 15 cities or so then go for pop boom. Since I don't run fm I usually only put three citizens or so as specialists thinkers or libraians. Thanks for the goood info keep it comeing please!!

[Minute Mirage]

A typical early game as the Uni for me is as follows:

- Beeline to IA, and switch to FM as soon as possible and then to Wealth.

- The first build in a base is a former, then a colony pod until you reach the first b-drone limit.

- Start building crawlers, and get either the VW (preferred) or the HGP


This is not carved in stone, and I can build scouts and use them as police at times. For instance, I might delay switching to FM, and switch to Wealth first and use police in the meantime. In some circumstances I might make a switch to Planned, and switch to FM only when I can control the drones.

[jtsisyoda]

I guess Ogie's too modest to post the link to his excellent civgaming SMAC Academy post.

http://www.civgaming.net/smac/acad_buildprimer.shtml

And here's the corresponding discussion thread:
http://www.civgaming.net/forums/show...=&threadid=863