Population, Drones, and Psych

Grail Quest · March 25, 2002, 03:09

What's a good strategy for handling populations out of control?

The scenario I was faced with was:
(a) I have Cloning Vats Secret Project

(b) The map (Huge Map of Planet) is more or less full. Only at most 10 spaces unless I head for open ocean, which does not have any shelves for terraforming.

(c) Drone Riots every turn. I fix each one every turn, and have gone so far as to put 10%-20% energy into Psych globally (which I've never done before until tonight's game) but they still keep popping up. I think it's because some bases were so huge and had such huge production capabilities that even 10% was good to keep out the Drones, but others were still suffering, meaning wasted energy.

I'm thinking I can let the population in each base hit the maximum population limit and just ignore the maximum population messages.

Mongoose · March 25, 2002, 15:26

Build the Telepathic Matrix ASAP, hehe.

Why would you build enough bases to cover the Huge map of Planet? Wouldn't you say you've won already? Call the council, vote yourself SL and be done with it!

PS. You shoulda thought of the drone trouble BEFORE you built the CV.

Grail Quest · March 25, 2002, 17:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Mongoose
Build the Telepathic Matrix ASAP, hehe.

Why would you build enough bases to cover the Huge map of Planet? Wouldn't you say you've won already? Call the council, vote yourself SL and be done with it!

PS. You shoulda thought of the drone trouble BEFORE you built the CV.

I did think of drone trouble before building the Cloning Vats, but I had so many facilities that reduced drones that I really didn't think it would hurt. I think it wasn't so much the population at each base, but the overall Bureaucracy that started the Drone trouble. ARGH! Why am I being penalized for being successful?!

I had maybe a quarter of the bases to a third. By starting to conquer the Hive and building more, I was moving up to 1/3rd to 1/2. My bases don't have a lot of military, except where I was fighting the Hive, so my votes were relatively low. I had 2 Pacts and 3 Treaties, but they were with smallish factions. My own voting power was pretty big, but not quite there yet.
In the end, I took a chance and sided with one of the bigger factions to secure another Pact while breaking a Treaty, hoping that it wouldn't immediately break another Pact (I don't think it's fair that the other factions can buzz me up on the Comlink anytime during my turn, when I can't do the same when they are taking their turns... but I digress). I did at that point vote myself Supreme Leader. Would have liked to do it with six Pacts going, but having set up so many vendettas, it was now tricky to do so.

optimus2861 · March 26, 2002, 13:11

Turn the new population into specialists, preferably engineers or transcendi, if you've made it that far. It'll keep 'em from rioting, net you some cash & labs, and put a brake on base growth, too. Empaths or thinkers are OK, too, they'll get you a bit of psych to help with any other rioters.

Ogie Oglethorpe · March 26, 2002, 22:24

5 words

Gift them to a submissive.

Blake · March 27, 2002, 01:54

I would go with "turning population into specialists". You cant go wrong, not only do specialists reduce drones (both indirectely, through reducing workers, and directely through pysch) but they also reduce the nutrient intake, if nessecary you could set enough specialists to reduce bases nutrients to 0 or 1, thus halting the pop-boom.

There is no such thing as overpopulation/growth, because you can always use specialists to manage it.

Earwicker · March 28, 2002, 14:11

Unless there is a compelling strategic reason for hanging onto the newly-captured bases, then do like Ogi sez and give them to one of your pact-mates. Distant captured bases generally offer you almost no energy (even with Dierdre or Aki's efficiency bonuses, the losses can be severe). Given to a submissive, they're good for commerce energy to one of your bases (usually a high-energy core base where the efficiency losses aren't as great). Keeps those little pactmates happy and strong, too.

If you want to hang onto the base (even if only for a few turns until it's safe to give an empty base to your Mates), convert a lot of the populace into specialists - all those labs and econ from Engineers aren't lost to inefficiency. If you have CBA and enough skyfarms, hunger isn't even that big an issue.

If you are in the middle of a war, then it could be worth your while to switch to Thought Control SE, now that the CV takes away its penalty - that can also help quell those rioters.

johndmuller · March 28, 2002, 17:02

To put it simply, you need at least enough food production to support the people who would otherwise be drones if they weren't psych specialists. If you have exactly that amount of food (or one more), the CV will not bump the population. If you can't drum up that much food production, then you can let them starve until there are few enough and/or you can increase the food supply. If you have more than enough food with only psych specialists, you can utilize some workers as lab and/or econ specialists instead to reach a balance you like between growth and output.

Personally, aside from the MM reduction, I've never feel like it's worth it to give bases to the AI. In MP games, it's sometimes desirable to give bases to another human player, but there are other costs and side effects due to the need to go briefly into vendetta in order to take over the base. I suppose you could do it with mind control, but that would be wasting a lot of ec's, probably more than you would lose in trade with a short vendetta. The other side effects, notably allies going into sympathetic vendetta are also difficult to control, especially with AI allies. It can also be tricky sometimes to give a base to another human since the vendetta forces a return-to-home of each others forces, requiring the acquirer to re-enter the givers territory before they can occupy the base, possibly taking up valuable trade turns while travelling to the base.

Shai-Hulud · March 29, 2002, 04:21

I think it might be a good idea to give some bases to AI allies if you really don't need them. I just don't like to do that. You can always use specialist to make them productive and stable even if you loose all your energy to inefficiency. Many prefer a very centralized strategy without the burden of bureaucracy drones. I personally prefer to grow big if possible even though it increases the micromanagement.

I really don't like the way diplomacy was done in MP. Why, oh, why can't you give bases and units to other human players? It makes an MP little less entertaining to have these restrictions. Going vendetta in order to give bases to other human players doesn't work so well in late game when you might have a joint defense. It actually isn't even an option.

MariOne · March 29, 2002, 05:31

PS: and beware... you *CAN* GIVE UNITS to Pacted/Treatied firends.
Only in some randome game it seemed to not work (never foud out the cause), but in most of my pbems it worked ad I used that feature liberally

Blake · March 30, 2002, 06:59

My guess is MP base-trading is disabled to prevent human players abusing it to run diplomatic circles around the AI (or other players, for that matter). Other abuse is also possible, consider for a second gifting another player a freshly founded size 1 base then probe-raping it dry of tech (then razing it).

Did Firaxis make the right decision? Who knows, but there are plausible reasons for disabling base trading in MP.