Newbie nerve stapling question

[pqow]

In a recent game, the citizens at my bases all started developing an immunity to nerve stapling. I've never run into this before in any previous games -- I'm playing at transcend level, but I've been doing that for a while.

Before I was pretty much able to nerve staple the bejezus out of them for as long as I wanted. Now they stay immune & the base essentially becomes useless to me.

I don't think I've set any preferences/customization differently. Does anyone know why this is happening seemingly all of a sudden? The only thing I can possibly think of that I've done differently from the past is that I founded more bases than normal this time around.

Thx for the help.

[Maniac]

IIRC, the first time you nerve staple a base, the citizens are 'content' for ten turns. The second time you use nerve stapling in that base it lasts only five turns. The third time two or three turns (never got that far). In any case, the amount of turns stapling lasts is supposed to halve every time. So stapling isn't really a good long-term strategy. I only used it extensively in one game when I had a massive vulcano eruption giving me -1 energy on each square for ten years. Psych became insufficient to please my citizens...

[Maniac]

Since you are a newbie:
Are you perhaps at -1 Police or below? Then you wouldn't be allowed to use nerve stapling.

[pqow]

Don't know about the -1 Police. I can check that.

The thing about progressively less efficient nerve stapling makes sense, but I just don't know why I haven't run into it before. Like I say, up until now the games allowed me to do it ad nauseum. Don't know why immunity kicked in now.

Mystery.

[Mongoose]

I think they (Firaxis) adjusted the nerve stapling effectiveness in one of the patches. Perhaps your prior experience was with an earlier version?


Edit. This from the readme, comes from the SMAC V2.0 patch.

* Atrocities have been rebalanced to avoid abuse:
(a) 12+ atrocities (depends on difficulty level) will cause all factions to declare vendetta

(b) Nerve stapling becomes increasingly ineffective at particular bases the
more you use it.

[pqow]

Damn, sir. You are correct. I only just patched it. Should've thought of that....

Do I gain 10 rounds of immunity from reprisals for asking silly questions?

[Mongoose]

Reprisals? Goodness, none of that! Glad to help.

[Sprayber]

Some think nerve stapling newbies is cruel and inhuman be we have to control the newbie revolts somehow.

[aaglo]

A funny thing just accured to me... I've never ever used nerve-stapling in my games...

[Adalbertus]

aaglo, me too. I usually convert rioting citizens to specialists (which is certainly a good thing after you've got empaths or food crawlers), or have otherwise enough food to support librarians. Anyone got the impression that nerve stapling could give you an edge in the game?

[Blake]

Nerve stapling sure can. One dirty trick I like is in the very early game, when I have just got Social Pysch and Ind.Econ (but before getting any rec commons) is to staple all my bases and immediately switch to FM, then complete the commons as the ten years runs out.

A handy little boost

Also if an enemy really pisses you off capture one of their bases and staple it. Then they'll have a reason to be pissed off. (how does this help you? Dunno, but it's sure satisfying )

I can think off a evil strategy which involves researching to AMA then stapling everyone and switching to Freemarket and buying punishment spheres everywhere with the cash. Then switch to fundie and go on the warpath with military and probes and heaps'o'cash from FM. It'd work even better if you timed to complete a pop-boom just before doing the stapling/switch, or prehaps stapled before the pop-boom and complete the PS's at the end of the 10 years, that'd allow all the workers to be out gathering nuts and nothing would slow down the boom.

I doubt this strategies are terribly strong compared to specialists, but they are a bit of fun, and involve barely no micromanagment and a (un)healthly amount of evil laughing :

[Mr. President]

I wait until sunspots to nerve staple. But this tends to happen. Sometimes if I've had a really hard day at school and I get drone riots, I just nerve staple first and ask questions later. So this happens that much faster.

[The Mad Monk]

I have never stapled in any of my games.

[MariOne]

Beware:
Nerve Stapling is one of the atrocities counting towards EcoDamage.

I was only an occasional user of NS.
In a recent H2H (2 humans, Head 2 Head, WITH the other 5 AI factions) SMACv4 game against buster, I was at Vendetta with all the AIs (and with the only humna enemy of course), and I didn't want to bother slowly growing having to wait the the police units and the drone-checking facilities were in place. The game was also in a phase where most of my bases had 3 or 4 citizens, Thinkers or Empaths were not available yet. I was beginning to suffer ICS problems, despite I was the Hive and I was of course running Police, too many of my bases begun to require too much drone attention.

I said to myself: "Hey, I'm not gonna lose any commerce anyway this time (contrary to what I usually experience in my pbems).
Well, after the 1st round of extensive stapling, some bases had only TWO clean minerals.
I said Hey, the pops will help me raise that bar up again.
After the second round of stapling the sealevel begun to rise.
When I attepmted to NS a base for the 3rd time, I got a refusal.
I had to switch to green to be able to reduce the ED effect and easier kill the worms. Then came Locusts when not even SFF had been yet discovered on Planet (thus no D:AP neither...).
I had just conquered the Jungle form Gaian AI, only to see it comnpletely submerged...

I kept the lead in the game anyway, but I think my development has suffered more than it benefited in the end, and I had to resolve to build those RecCommons anyway.
And finally when I decided to temporarily Accept Spartan submission, I realised I had still over 1350 years sanction to endure before I could gain any commerce from them!

[Maniac]

I've also heart that using Nerve Gas (on aliens of course) deletes a clean mineral. Is this true? I don't see the logic behind it actually.

[big_canuk]

I have had a different experience than MariO.

I have stapled quite a lot over a period of about 30 years in 2 different games, and have not seen my clean minerals reduced. I am now at the point of having to use rec comms and specialists because the stapling in no longer effective. But mins are not or hardly effective.

In one game I have maybe 15 bases, in the other maybe 30. game 1 is dem(only recently) planned, wealth, game 2 is same and has been for a while. The reason I mention it, is maybe SE settings, or police level has an effect.

I have seen MariO's warning previously, so have been watching these games closely to see if/when the reduction in clean minerals, and the sea level raises take effect.

SMAniaC: I have never seen gassing aliens reduce clean minerals, or produce ED
bc

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Blake
Nerve stapling sure can. One dirty trick I like is in the very early game, when I have just got Social Pysch and Ind.Econ (but before getting any rec commons) is to staple all my bases and immediately switch to FM, then complete the commons as the ten years runs out.

A handy little boost

Also if an enemy really pisses you off capture one of their bases and staple it. Then they'll have a reason to be pissed off. (how does this help you? Dunno, but it's sure satisfying )

I can think off a evil strategy which involves researching to AMA then stapling everyone and switching to Freemarket and buying punishment spheres everywhere with the cash. Then switch to fundie and go on the warpath with military and probes and heaps'o'cash from FM. It'd work even better if you timed to complete a pop-boom just before doing the stapling/switch, or prehaps stapled before the pop-boom and complete the PS's at the end of the 10 years, that'd allow all the workers to be out gathering nuts and nothing would slow down the boom.

I doubt this strategies are terribly strong compared to specialists, but they are a bit of fun, and involve barely no micromanagment and a (un)healthly amount of evil laughing :

Blake,

Did you staple pre onset of drones. I was not aware this was possible. If so this makes a pretty strong opening gambit for a builder/turtle. No more worrying about oscillating and doctoring between size 1-2 and popping a colony pod out ASAP. As a turtle the negative trade effects are meaningless.


Interesting

Og

[Blake]

Sure did.

With respect to clean minerals, it seems that the effect is MUCH worse when you are at war with everyone. Like planet only punishes you if you aren't being punished by sanctions.... or something. It's weird, anyway.

[big_canuk]

Hmmm.. Both those games I am at war with everyone. I had the same "Well, nothing to loose" attitude as MoSe. I am mostly stapling before the riot. I check the F4 screen, and staple any bases that will riot the next turn. Does that make a difference, maybe?

bc

[big_canuk]

Originally posted by Blake
Nerve stapling sure can. One dirty trick I like is in the very early game, when I have just got Social Pysch and Ind.Econ (but before getting any rec commons) is to staple all my bases and immediately switch to FM, then complete the commons as the ten years runs out.

...

Blake. It would be more than 10 years I think. Don't you get 10 years of sanctions for *each* nerve stapling at *each* base?

The strategy might not be so great if you intended to have any friends soon.

bc

[Blake]

nono, the ten years is the time the drones are under control. You'll have as many decades of santions as you stapled bases, but if you do it early, say 2130, and have 5 bases, you would be back in commerce by 2180. On huge maps and playing isolationist style it is quite possible you wouldn't have had much commerce by then anyway.

[Patashu]

I've found that if you do enough artrocities, the santion period starts to increase by jumps bigger then 10. I think...

[MariOne]

Yeah, the default pattern is that the first stapled base deals you 10 years sanctions, the second base 20 *more* years, the 3rd 30 *more* years...
So after you stapled the 2nd base, you'll have *30* overall years (10+20), and not just 20, after the 3rd, yo'd have 60, after the 4th you'd have 100, after the 5th you'd have 150.

Thus, Blake's statement that if you staple 5 bases in 2130 you'll be back into commerce in 2180 should not be correct.
It should not be 10yrs * 5 bases = 50yrs.
It should be 10yrs + 20yrs + 30yrs + 40 yrs + 50 yrs = 150yrs.

I admit that I too got the impression that the years sanctions added do NOT strictly follow that pattern.
In that game I now have 1350ish years sacntions.
According to that pattern, the 16th stapling would have brought the overall total to 1360.

I think tho that my last stapling occurred earlier than 10 years before. Besides, while I recall being inflicted 120-130 years sancrtions, I don't recall the 160 warning...

Anyway, it must be because I didin't keep an exact record of my observations, I could easily be wrong or just not recall the details.

The general pattern should be the one I described, tho.

Of course the years increase counter is cumulative with all the other kind of atrocities you commit.
ANY atrocity will make your next extra sanction period bigger by 10 years.

___

b_c, I'll recheck in the earlier turns of that game, but definitely, after many staplings, I had EcoDamage in all my bases, and to bring it down to zero I had to take out workers from minerals till my production was down to 2-3 minerals.
In theory (offhand), each Atrocity shold count as 5 minerals produced in any base.
Pre-EDpops, your Clean Minerals Threshold shold be 16.
This means that after the 3rd Atrocity you should be "virtually" already producing 15 minerals in every base, with respect to ED, and thus you'd have left only 1 clean Mineral in any base...
Too bad I didn't keep track of EDpops in that game.

If that's the effect tho, it should be easy to reproduce starting a normal game, getting quick to 4 bases and begin stapling them all.
If it's not confirmed, the ED formula Atrocity Factor should be revised.

[Adalbertus]

So the ED punishment for nerve stapling and planet bustering is the same???
OK, I can imagine that stapling somewhat increases ED, because stapled citizens are inherently unwilling to cooperate in environmental efforts. But to equate this to a quasi-nuclear fallout (whatever this is), seems to be a bit harsh.

[Xian]

Originally posted by aaglo
A funny thing just accured to me... I've never ever used nerve-stapling in my games...

[big_canuk]

For the ecodamage formula, the way I understand it is that a Planet Buster is 5 clean mins.

X-gassing is 1 clean min each time. I am not sure it is *every* time, but it is close.

MariO, thinks that Nerve Stapling is equivelent to x-gas, not PBs, I think.

Here is where my experience differs. In both those games, I have stapled many times, and my clean mins seems not to be affected (yet).

Maybe it has to do with >pops
Maybe some factions are immune??

Maybe certain games, ie scenarios, are immune(that would be a bug)??

I might as well spill the beans. My two games are manifold 6, a game with 5 human aliens, and no computer factions, and the May-June CGN challenge, a scenario, where 2 blocks of 3 ais each, both consider me an atrocity committer anyway.

How could those games be different?

bc

[Maniac]

Boohoo! I can't gas the aliens any longer!

[big_canuk]

Nah, I'm sure, at least in SP, that X-gassing the aliens has no effect. In fact I am in a MP game (OCC on acol), where I have gassed them maybe 10 times already, with no effect.

bc

[Mongoose]

I'm rather sure that gassing Aliens has no effect other than combat and your relationship with them.

As I see it, the game treats nothing done to the other species as an atrocity...for ecodamage, clean minerals, sanctions, etc. Of course, the victim DOES consider it an atrocity.

Committing an atrocity as a Progenitor faction results in the breakdown of your energy grid for a period of time that appears to match the sanctions levied for human committed atrocities.

Probe introduction of germ agents is a nice way to soften up those hard to crack Caretaker bases.

[Blake]

I'm under the impression that as a proggie, only nervestapling causes your grid to shutdown?