Is Free Market unfairly penalized?

[The Bloody Baro]

Free Market provides to little of benefit to out way its disadvantages. What was firaxis sniffing when they decided lets put -5 support and -3planet on something that only gives +2 economy! You can't get those disadvantages from ANY number of combinations from any other SE. Thats why I make a custom fac that has immunity to to Free Market.

[The Bloody Baro]

Also I find that the Fundie choice doesn't give you enough bang for your buck.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by The Bloody Baro
Free Market provides to little of benefit to out way its disadvantages. What was firaxis sniffing when they decided lets put -5 support and -3planet on something that only gives +2 economy! You can't get those disadvantages from ANY number of combinations from any other SE. Thats why I make a custom fac that has immunity to to Free Market.

Um, actually I find that its quite equal....although your money starts fowing in and research goes through the roof, your penalized by mindowrms and bad police (hehe). makes you think twice before going to it....

[Blake]

Get it right, Free Market has -5 police and -3 planet. Sometimes these penalties wont matter, and in fact the only penalty which always matters is the lack of that 1 police. So if your units arent going to be leaving your territory and you have worms/ecodamage reasonably under control the actual, effective SE is +2 Economy, -2 Police.

So what you do is switch to Free Market earlyish, probably after swtiching to wealth and building some rec commons - or the HGP. This allows you to run FM without any drone problems, and you get to reap the benefit of +1 energy every tile, and extra energy at base tile, your tech rate will often go from about 13->7 (greater under planned) and your income will usually double or even triple (especially in the presence of commerce). So to get the full benefit you need to switch as early as you have the drone control in place.

And, use lots of probes. They are immune to the negative effects of both FreeMarket and Wealth.

When you need to go to war (which you should avoid, commerce is a Freemarketeers friend) you can either switch to green or use punishing/specialist bases. You can easily fight a defensive war using probes and this should be your first resort.

Fundie is a tough one to use right, IMO. It shouldn't really be a staple SE but it does have a major benefit, +1 morale. This is just as good as +2 morale from power (for all intents and purposes) and the penalty is less steep (-2 research vs -2 industry).
+Morale says one thing to me: Elite Units, and elite units are often the key to quickly conquering a hardened opponent.

A strategy I've developed quite recentely is to use a Fundie/Wealth wartime combination, this requires all the +2 morale buildings, children creche, and a monolith (or trained ability) but then you are building elite units and enjoying +1 industry from wealth.

So to summarise, both Free Market and Fundie can be used effectively, Free Market should be used to bootstrap your early economy and research, with the eventual intention of switching to green (unless your a diehard Free Marketeer). Fundie is more of an emergency SE, don't use it all the time, only when you need the better probes or elite units.

And the final note, Chairman Yang of the Hive should almost never run either Free Market or fundie

[Main_Brain]

Hive has certain Problems running FreeM
nevertheless the Main Problems for FreeMarket are Exploring (At the Start of Game)-countered with Probexploring
and the Difficulty of Maintaining an Offensive Airforce
(Punishment SPehre in one base +rehomning works but )

[Alinestra Covelia]

For most non-Hive players, Free Market is amazing. With +2 at overall economy, each square in each base produces one extra energy! With a network node and energy bank, this translates to an extra point of research and extra credit per square (assuming optimal efficiency, which is of course unattainable even on Paradigm economy).

I'd say that economy is amongst the most influential SE choice you can make. The Hive has to find a way around the economic drain of -2 econ, which it can do through the use of specialists.

But +2 is a massive boost to research and to taxes. If you have treaties and pacts with factions, going Wealth for your Values SE choice gives you a commerce edge, further cementing the benefits.

Of course, if you're going to fight a war, then it might be problematic, unless you have clean reactors (in which case your bases don't suffer unit drones).

[dworkin]

Free Market is the main way to bring in great galloping gobs of cash quickly with a minimum of fuss. It's disadvantages are not a problem when building up one's cities and 'fighting' with loads of scouts and later high tech gizmos that the enhanced research is bringing in.

Of course if you prefer manic expansion/agression then this wasn't going to be your social choice anyway. You'ld be an evil greenie with the rest of them.

[Mr. President]

Free Market is my economy of choice, and I never go out of it once I start. Why? The money and the research is too much for me to pass up. With all the income, it doesn't matter that the Non-Lethal Methods slot is essentially useless since anyone who crosses my borders will be macerated by Shard Lifters.

[Blake]

Free Market can be remarkably good for rapid growth, because you can afford to rushbuy rec commons while for other SE when you exceed the b-drone limit you are stuck with size 1 bases until you build the rec commons.

IMO using Morgan and running FM early is one of the best ways to learn it's benefits, because Morgan running FM+Wealth gets so much cash in the early game, like 6 energy from every base tile!

Lal's also a good choice because of the talents and the easy FM GA pop-booms you can do. But overall you should consider running FM for any faction, if doing so will give you +2 economy (Hive, Cult and Gaians dont or cant benefit from FM much).

Like Mr President FM is my economy of choice, and I often never go out of it, altough this is usually for role-playing reasons because later in the game green can match or exceed FM income and research, especially with a farflung empire. The drone control and psi combat bonus under Green is quite valuable for any conquest of scale.

[Sikander]

I use FM only early in the game. It is very productive for a while, but once my terraforming and crawlers start to kick in it only provides a slight bonus, and I usually go to planned for the perpetual pop boom. Once I get the Cloning Vats I switch to Green for the efficiency. My usual game looks like this:

Wealth
+ FM
+Demo
Planned for FM
Knowledge for Wealth
Green for Planned

I usually don't tinker much with the SE settings anymore, in part because I tend to be aware of what the settings look like and in part because my game tends to make most SE choices work pretty well by the end of the 1st century.

[Blake]

One thing - I almost never switch out of Wealth, using Fundie to offset the morale penalty during wars (I'm a major industry/economy addict).

[Main_Brain]

Domai all the Way

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Main_Brain
Hive has certain Problems running FreeM
nevertheless the Main Problems for FreeMarket are Exploring (At the Start of Game)-countered with Probexploring
and the Difficulty of Maintaining an Offensive Airforce
(Punishment SPehre in one base +rehomning works but )

Punishment spheres are not the only means to allow an offensive airforce whilst running Free Market.

Any means to get to -2 police will do. Of the various methods available I prefer: Aescetic Values (spelling?) and Brood pits. Or simply brood pits if running a Spartan game.

This then allows you to have your cake and eat it too. No need to suffer the 1/2 research rate even for one base.

Og

[Zakharov VII]

I think there's been plenty of agreement that Free Market is great, but I think I'm only the second to comment on Fundy...

I find it useful only in extreme cases. For example, Santiago, Miriam, and Yang on the same continent, with you right in the middle (hmm, sounds familiar . Is it just a coincidence that the only other person to comment on Fundy is also in the succession game??). The -2 Research is bad, but if you're fighting under a Fundamentalist Free Market, your tech rate can still be pretty good. The +1 Morale makes it easy (easier) to get those Elite units, and the +2 Probe is nice, too. With a few "+ to Probe Team base morale" (Polymorphic Software, Optical Computers (I think), Planetary Networks, Pre-Sentient Algorithms, a lot of the Discover techs), Elite Probes are easy to get, making them able to very quickly zip to enemy bases, or even around stacks (ignoring ZoC) to get to single units for subversion.

And, if you ever play Miriam (and, also Santiago for fun Elite units), Fundamentalism is fun . Especially near Morgan, who, at least to me, seems to use the most probe teams.

Z

[Blake]

Seems that fundie is most useful in games with extremely bad odds, like the probe sucession game, and some of the CGN challenge games (I've used fundie to great effect for conquest victory vs vastly superier armed and armoured AI's). So if it works best in otherwise hopeless situations, prehaps it's a super SE